Abstract
<jats:p>The morphological strategies whereby languages encode the relationship between grammatical meaning and form can vary over time. The historical evolution of the main morphological patterns (isolation, agglutination, fusion) has traditionally been interpreted in cyclical terms, leading to the idea of a specific ‘morphological cycle’ that comprises exclusively unidirectional transitions between the different patterns, namely from isolating through agglutinative‐separative to fusional‐cumulative structures. By discussing not only the innovations apparently obeying the cycle but also those that are at variance with it, this chapter calls into question the descriptive adequacy of the cycle metaphor and explores both the mechanisms of change and the causes that may really account for the different outcomes that we observe in languages.</jats:p>