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Individual Semantic Extension Judgement Task
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Description: Across many languages, some spatial prepositions are derived from words for body parts. The semantic extension of body part nouns to spatial prepositions is an example of grammaticalization, the process by which lexical items become grammatical items over time. Grammaticalization is unidirectional; that is, lexical and grammatical items become more grammatical over time but grammatical items do not become less grammatical. There are a few theories for why grammaticalization is unidirectional, but they have not been tested experimentally. Following the idea that language change is shaped by individual biases, we use a human experiment to test whether individuals prefer extending body parts to prepositions over extending prepositions to body parts.
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