In principle, grammaticalization happens in all languages, regardless of their typological structure. There are, however, differences both in the extent to which the grammaticalization parameters apply and in the grammaticalization paths which languages pursue.

As regards the former difference, it has been observed (Bisang 2011) that East and mainland Southeast Asian languages represent a type of grammaticalization that is characterized by its limited coevolution of meaning and form. Specifically, actual cases of grammaticalization display change according to most of the parameters, except that the phonological form remains relatively intact and no advanced extent of coalescence is observed. It seems that these changes are typical of languages in which phonetic stress is prominent and realized phonetically by pitch, quantity and intensity. This is characteristic of SAE languages, but is not necessarily so in languages of the isolating type. Their syllables are more stable. They are preserved intact by several phonological factors, one of them being tone.

In Mandarin, there are relatively few instances of grammaticalization which involve loss of tone. These include liăo ‘finish’ going to -le perfective and zhù ‘live, reside, stay’ grammaticalized to -zhe durative. An example of advanced phonological reduction is tā-men (3.ps-pl), in which not only did the plural marker forfeit its original tone, but the complex got reduced to monosyllabic tām in colloquial Mandarin. With some exceptions as these, erosion and coalescence play a lesser role in these language.

As regards erosion, the same proviso applies that was already mentioned several times: The loss of weight, insofar as it is limited to the individual item, is something characteristic of many actual cases of grammaticalization, but is neither straightforwardly deducible from the parameterized concept of grammaticalization nor empirically observable to the same extent in all actual cases. It plays a secondary role in the theory.

As regards cohesion, finer criteria are required. Some of the languages in question have a logographic writing system which conceals such developments as coalescence. However, even in languages like Mandarin, collocations become fixed, so periphrastic and even affixal constructions develop. However, one has to reckon with the possibility that, due to the prosodic structure of the languages in question, all phonological symptoms of grammaticalization are slowed down.