A word meaning 'suddenly' shifts over centuries to mark the beginning of subordinate clauses. Which mechanism most accurately accounts for this semantic and syntactic change?

💡 Explanation

Grammaticalization, which occurs because frequent usage leads to semantic bleaching and syntactic reinterpretation, accounts for this shift. Therefore, a lexical item becomes a grammatical marker, rather than metaphor extension, which creates related senses, or phonetic reduction, which affects pronunciation.

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