Chapter 2 reviews previous literature on the evolution of composite predicates and discusses the relevance of these studies for the present investigation. While the present study is more interested in the semantic and syntactic changes that the CPs go through than in the question of whether they go down the path of grammaticalization or lexicalization, Section 2.1 briefly reviews how the evolution of the CPs has previously been classified as either type of development, with a only a few studies suggesting a combination of the two theories (Section 2.1). Next, I report on what previous research (on CPs) has to say on the notions of ’idiomatization’ (and its limitations) and ’specialization’ (Section 2.2). It is the latter concept that is the most relevant one for the present study. The chapter is rounded off by a review of how the NP status of the complements (e.g. use in make use of) may change over time (Section 2.3).

This chapter discusses the diachronic sources and the synchronic properties of the resultative construction from various angles, including a brief cross-linguistic comparison of similar phenomena; an investigation of the semantic, syntactic, and phonological properties of the resultative construction; and a consideration of its obligatory application in certain syntactic constructions.