Walking on the grammaticalization path of the definite article : functional main and side roads A complex grammaticalization scenario for the definite article : the 17 interplay of different article forms Eva Schlachter The grammaticalization of the definite article in German : from demonstratives to weak definites Ulrike Demske What genericity reveals about the establishment of the definite determiner in German Svetlana Petrova The role of the definite article in the rise of the German framing principle : a comparative study of verbal and nominal constructions in the Old High German Muspilli and the Old English Dream of the rood Elke Ronneberger Sibold Cliticization of definite articles to prepositions in Middle High German : early stages of grammaticalization A qualitative study Sandra Waldenberger Absence as evidence : determination and coordination ellipsis in conjoined noun phrases in (early) New High German Antje Dammel The rise of the onymic article in Early New High German : areal factors and the triggering effect of bynames Mirjam Schmuck Die Capital der Astra das Adler : the emergence of a classifier system for proper names in German Damaris Nübling. This volume focuses on the grammaticalization of the definite article in German. It contains eight empirically based papers which examine individual stages of the grammaticalization path from its beginnings as a demonstrative to the definite article and beyond. Focusing on cognitive pragmatic semantic and syntactic factors the contributions not only address the development from pragmatic to semantic definiteness but also pertain to functional and formal changes starting as soon as the linguistic unit has acquired the function of marking semantic definiteness. Based on corpora spanning the entire history of the German language from Old High German (750 1050) to present day German the analyses challenge the traditional linear model of grammaticalization and provide alternative pathways. What all the contributions have in common is the idea that the main grammaticalization path is accompanied or crossed by several side roads which lead to different destinations such as preposition article clitics generic usages or onymic articles