Grammaticalization and Degrammaticalization as Two Independent and Parallel Processes

Degrammaticalization is considered as a process by which either lexical items change into grammatical items, or grammatical items become more grammatical. This change follows certain stages and can be represented by the grammaticality cline: content item > grammatical word > clitic > inflectional affix. As linguistic elements become more grammaticalized, their autonomy both formally and semantically their autonomy decreases both formally and semantically. Traditionally the reverse process is known as degrammaticalization. This article, illustrates that some function words in Persian are decategorialized, and become more bounded. At the same time, these items gain more semantic substance and lose their grammatical functions in such a way that they are reanalyzed as derivational pre-verbs. In other words, in their degrammaticalization, they become less bounded, just as in grammaticalization. This supports the idea that grammaticalization and degrammaticalization are independent processes which may use same mechanisms or principles such as reanalysis and decategorialization.