Univerbation

Lexicalization and grammaticization compared In Section 3, it was pointed out that there are two kinds of lexicalization which can be usefully compared with grammaticization, i.e. fossilization and univerbation. The discussion and examples in this section will be confined to the more general and widespread of these two types, i.e. univerbation (the emergence of new lexical entries from collocations), primarily in order to keep the presentation simple and straightforward.

Standard examples of univerbation are cupboard, brainstorming, or necklace.

This process is referred to as univerbation. An example from English is the word notwithstanding, which derives historically from the word not and the participle withstanding. In modern English it counts as a single word, namely, as a preposition, as in the prepositional phrase notwithstanding his request (compare the ungrammatical withstanding his request). Further examples are the conjunction because from Middle-English bi + cause 'by cause of', parallel to French par cause […]