On creating grammar

by Bernd Heine

According to 20th century mainstream linguistics, language structure in general and grammatical categories in particular are essentially arbitrary manifestations of human behavior. This view is challenged by grammaticalization theory, which claims that both language use and language structure can be accounted for with reference to salient cognitive and communicational goals underlying human conceptualization and social interaction. Based on recent findings on grammatical development, the paper aims to explore what motivates these goals by looking at a selected range of grammatical functions.