Desemanticization has been called by many names in the literature: broadening, generalization, expansion or extension of meaning. In the context of grammaticalization, it is also called (semantic) bleaching. It is a common process of semantic change both in the lexical and in the grammatical sphere. A random example of semantic generalization in the lexicon is Engl. target. It originally designates only that characteristic pane which serves as the target for shooting exercises. It now designates the aim of just any process or action; thus all the features of a physical object have been lost. The discussion of the renewal of the ‘have’ verb in Portuguese provides another example: Latin tenere means ‘hold’, but its Portuguese successor ter means ‘have’. Here the condition of physical contact between the actor and the undergoer was lost.

The following instances of desemanticization in grammaticalization are observed in the sections of the present treatment:

• During its grammaticalization, the original syntactic construction of be going to V is desemanticized by eliminating the motion component and the purpose component, leaving only the immediate future component.
• The English progressive starts out, at least partly, in an absentive construction. In the course of its grammaticalization, the absentive component gets lost, and what remains is the abstract position of the referent of the subject in a situation.
• In the grammaticalization of the numeral ‘one’ to an indefinite article, first the cardinality feature and, thus, the contrast between exactly one and a greater number gets lost. In Spanish, the restriction to singular entities is dropped, too, so that the article can also combine with plural entities.
• In the grammaticalization of a noun to a numeral classifier, the meaning becomes more general, admitting the combination with nouns whose designatum would not fall under the original noun.

In all of these cases, desemanticization may simply be conceived as loss of semantic features.¹ There remains, of course, the question whether there is a principle determining which features are lost and which are conserved. This will be taken up in the section where desemanticization gets under closer scrutiny.

¹ The term ‘semantic feature’ is used on various pages of this website as a traditional term which is neutral to more formal and precise conceptions of the semantic entities in question, including ‘semantic component’, ‘meaning postulate’ etc.