Caritive Adjectives as a Source of Grammaticalization

It has long been understood that initially neutral words can develop quasigrammatical meanings in the course of grammaticalization. Recent studies in lexical typology have shown that mechanisms of new meanings derivation depend on the semantic class of the source lexeme. Even though many types of adjectives have already been studied, caritive adjectives and their ways of grammaticalization have remained outside the scope of scholarly research. The current study suggests a thorough analysis of processes of new meaning derivation in caritive adjectives. It shows that semantic properties of this group of adjectives affect the mechanisms of their grammaticalization. The leading mechanism of new meanings derivation is rebranding; metaphorization mainly results in developing of evaluative component. It is claimed in literature metaphorical meaning shift in caritive adjectives entails the development of closed group of meanings, we also discovered that grammaticalization processes that happens in these adjectives with the help of rebranding also produce closed group of grammatical meanings – namely, intensification, focus and restriction. Therefore, this work sheds light on the way the semantic features of caritive adjectives entail changes in their functions and use.