Frame of Focus in Grammaticalization

There has been a large body of literature in the field of grammaticalization that attempts to identify exact nature of semantic change and to translate the findings in terms of gramrnaticalization models. This paper addresses an interesting phenomenon of semantic change that prima facie involves antonyrnization if the meanings of the source and the result are compared. This peculiar type of semantic change in the course of gramrnaticalization poses a problem for current gramrnaticalization models because none of them to date can accommodate such types of semantic changes. This paper attempts to provide an exposition as to the genesis of such semantic changes that can account for such rather bizarre phenomena It is argued here that the process of antonyrnization is a product of the changes of the speaker's viewpoint that shifts between microscopic and telescopic frames of foci on the event schema, in the course of interlocutors' pragmatic enrichment in meaning negotiation.