Relation between Subjectivity and Grammaticalization

This study is aimed at presenting empirical and quantitative evidence for subjectification (Traugott and Dasher 2002) suggesting that meanings change from non‐subjective meanings to subjective ones in the grammaticalization process. To this end, this present study has identified the meaning differences of causal complex prepositions owing to, due to, and thanks to by measuring the degree to which subjectivity is involved in the construal of the causal relation (Pander Maat and Sanders 2000) with the help of the British National Corpus. This investigation has also measured the degree of grammaticalization of the causal complex prepositions in terms of morphosyntactic parameter and age of words, to compare the degree of grammaticalization with that of subjectivity. Interestingly, the result displays that a complex preposition which is higher on the subjectivity level is a more grammaticalized one. This conformity between the degree of subjectivity and that of grammaticalization strongly upholds the theory of subjectification.