Of "of" from 'from'; Rethinking the partitive cycle

Abstract

This paper argues that, in the history of English, of was reanalyzed from having a ‘path-from-source’ meaning to a ‘part-of’ meaning. This departs from pre- vious claims that the change was a matter of grammaticalization. While some have characterized reanalysis (i.e. a change in structure without a change in overt real- ization) and grammaticalization (i.e. when a form becomes more grammatical) as at least potentially overlapping in nature, this paper follows definitions that separate the two as receiver driven and sender driven phenomena respectively. In this light, and with other characteristics of the two phenomena in mind, the change in the realization of partitive expressions in English is cast in a new light and argued to account for the change seen in the history of English.