Diverged Front: Grammaticalization of Front and Its Implication on the Grammaticalization Theory

This paper addresses the issues surrounding the divergence phenomenon shown in the contrast of the complex preposition in front of and the prepositional construction in the front of. In front of and in the front of are the grammatical locative items gradually developed from the relational noun front. Considering grammaticalization of front into the diverged grammatical markers, this paper aims to illustrate diverse grammaticalization paths of the two linguistic forms derived from front. Then, semantic split phenomenon of the complex prepositional phrases in the front of and in front of will be examined, on the basis of semantic designations provided in the Oxford English Dictionary (2nd ed. 1991). For the discussion of these issues, this paper will explore the split process of the locative grammatical marker in the front of, concentrating not only on its source lexeme and its formal development, but also on divergence and grammaticalization of front. In addition, this investigation discusses enabling motivations to generate this semantic split, calling for the division of labor among the competing linguistic forms. Finally, this paper attempts to illustrate what are the fundamental motivations to cause semantic extension of this spatial noun into the grammatical locative markers, relying on two major cognitive mechanisms, such as metaphor and metonymy.