Grammaticalization of the numeral 'one' in Serbian as a Balcanic Slavic language in comparison to French

Predmet ove disertacije jesu odlike lekseme jedan u srpskom jeziku, i njene sličnosti s neodređenim članom un u francuskom jeziku, kao i s ekvivalentnim leksemama u balkanskim jezicima, pre svega u bugarskom. Teorijski okvir korišćen u ovom radu za ispitivanje sličnosti između lekseme jedan i neodređenog člana u francuskom jeste teorija gramatikalizacije. Gramatikalizacija je proces kojim od jedinica s leksičkim značenjem vremenom nastaju jedinice s gramatičkim značenjem. Na taj način od broja ’jedan’ nastaje neodređeni član. Ovaj proces odvija se u nekoliko faza, koje se predstavljaju gramatikalizacionim skalama. One se mogu posmatrati dijahronijski, kao razvojni stupnjevi, i sinhronijski, kao implikacione skale na kojima svaki stupanj podrazumeva postojanje prethodnih stupnjeva...This dissertation focuses on the properties of the Serbian word jedan and its similarities to the French indefinite article un, on the one hand, and to equivalent words in Balkan languages, most notably Bulgarian, on the other. The theoretical framework chosen for the examination of the similarities between the word jedan and the French indefinite article is the Grammaticalization Theory. Grammaticalization is a process by which units with grammatical meaning are, over time, derived from units with lexical meaning. In this way, the indefinite article is derived from the numeral ’one’. This process proceeds through several stages, usually represented in the form of grammaticalization scales. These scales can be viewed diachronically, as representing stages of historical development, or synchronically, as implicational scales, in which a function associated with a given point implies the presence of those associated with all lower points..