On the grammaticalization of as well as in the history of English

Abstract

The English language as it is known today has undergone a number of developments that have changed it throughout time. Among them, grammaticalization stands out because of its relevance in the progress of the language, as it consists in the process by which a lexical word having full meaning becomes a grammatical item. The present paper analyses the process of grammaticalization of the quasi-coordinator as well as in order to ascertain its origin and describe its developmental path, identify the linguistic causes that motivated the change, propose a functional taxonomy of the construction, and evaluate the influence of sociolinguistic factors in the development and standardization of the quasi-coordinator.