Meaning of decategorialize | Babel Free

Definitions

To undergo decategorialization.

Examples

“[…] in which the lexeme begins to "decategorialize" (Heine et al. 1991), i.e. to lose the morphosyntactic behaviors characteristic of its original category. For example, in the English relator noun construction on top of NP, top, while clearly a noun […]”

“A grammaticalizing item decategorializes (Hopper 1991), losing membership of its source category. As a result of high frequency, it may become independently entrenched (Bybee 2006), receiving a kind of categorial autonomy, […]”

CEFR level