Grammaticalisation paths in the rise and development of aside

In this paper we analyse the grammaticalisation processes involved in the rise and development of the ‘a-adverbial’ aside from the original combination of the preposition on and the substantive side in Old English. Different aspects of this grammatical change will be discussed in the paper, from morphosyntactic and phonological (coalescence-univerbation) to semantic ones (development of abstract senses, extension of semantic range), taking very much into account the diachronic axis that underpins them. Special attention has been paid in the analysis to the variation patterns of aside that existed in the Late Middle English period (when the actual process of grammaticalisation was about to be completed) and to the correlation of these variants with the geographic provenance of the texts, trying to determine if the processes of word formation that gave rise to this new word class travelled homogeneously across Britain.