Abstract This article examines the diffusion of grammaticalisation processes of varying time depths and complexity across language communities. It argues that a process of grammaticalisation need not differ from other types of linguistic change in terms of its social embedding and evaluation and discusses sociolinguistic perspectives on grammaticalisation. It concludes that grammaticalisation processes can be described using the same sociolinguistic frameworks as other processes of linguistic change and that the present can be used to explain the past because similar social factors are found to correlate with ongoing changes in both real- and apparent-time studies.
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