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The objective of this paper is to explore grammaticalization of top-bottom relational terms top and bottom into locative markers on top of and at the bottom of. Cross-linguistically, it has been observed that spatial notions often grammaticalize into locative markers, i.e. primary or complex prepositions. In English, of various spatial notions, top-bottom relational concepts also show gradual and intriguing developments, typically marking hierarchical conditions of status, position, state, or quality in addition to basic spatial notions. This paper describes such a semantic extension of top-bottom notion: [relational concepts >> spatial concepts >> abstract concepts], that occurred in the course of grammaticalization, based on semantic designations provided in the Oxford English Dictionary (2nd ed., 1991). In order to illustrate how particular meanings and semantic changes of top-bottom concepts evolve, basic cognitive mechanisms of semantic change are invoked here to explain such semantic changes, i.e. metaphor and metonymy. For investigating of structural development, i.e. from nominal sources in genitive construction [on-[the.top]-of-NP] into prepositional phrasal constructions [on-top-of-NP], this paper also shows the process of the formal development, focusing on 'reanalysis' which is defined as the reinterpreting or rebracketing of old structure. Furthermore, this paper deals with the functional-semantic specialization of the locative markers within the same semantic domain by using such corpora as MICASE, LOB, and Brown corpus. Finally, this paper discusses on the degree of grammaticality of the locative markers within the same category on the basis of their morphological weight and frequency occurrence, employing corpus data provided from the three corpora.