hard · LSAT Reading Comprehension
Linguists debate whether the grammaticalization of future-tense markers proceeds primarily through phonological erosion of a source verb or through semantic bleaching that precedes any phonological change. Cross-linguistic surveys favoring the erosion account point to the frequent coincidence of reduced verb forms with future meaning. Yet a closer look at documented intermediate stages in several unrelated language families reveals markers that had already lost their original volitional or motion-verb meanings while still retaining full phonological weight, appearing centuries later, in some cases, only in reduced form. If erosion were the primary driver, such fully-formed but already-bleached markers should be vanishingly rare rather than attested across independent lineages.
The documented intermediate stages showing already-bleached but phonologically unreduced markers function in the argument to
- reveal a methodological flaw in how surveys originally counted coincidences of reduced forms and future meaning.
- confirm that erosion and bleaching always occur together as a single unified mechanism in every attested language family.
- provide counterexamples the erosion account predicts should be rare, weakening that account relative to the bleaching alternative.
- establish definitively that bleaching is the sole mechanism responsible for grammaticalizing future-tense markers in all languages.
- acknowledge that the erosion account predicts most cases correctly, identifying only marginal, theoretically insignificant exceptions.
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