Measure schematicity through information content

Abstract Apropos of the level of specificity, schematicity is the key indicator of grammaticalization in linguistics; compared to lexical items, the information provided by grammar patterns tends to be more abstract. With recourse to the notion of the quantifiable information content in information theory, the schematicity of a schema can be quantified by comparing the information content provided by the elements occurring in the open slots to that provided by the schema itself. A formula is thereby proposed to measure schematicity. This schematicity measure is able to illustrate the gradience and gradualness of grammaticalization in its applications in synchronic English data and diachronic Chinese data. Compared to previous measures of grammaticalization, there is a notable improvement in reliability and applicability.