grammaticalization

Meaning

Noun

• The process of making grammatical.
• The process of language change by which a word or morpheme is reduced to more of a grammeme than a lexeme, for example the reduction of a content word representing an object or action (a noun or verb) to a clitic.

Origin

• From French grammaticalisation, coined in 1912 by the French linguist Antoine Meillet, corresponding to grammatical + -ization.