Cognitiveprocessesingrammaticalization-Bybee.docVIP

PAGE 5 PAGE 21 Cognitive processes in grammaticalization Joan Bybee University of New Mexico All of linguistic theory is concerned with the enterprise of elucidating the nature of the grammar of human languages. But along with asking the question ‘what is the nature of grammar?’, we can also ask ‘how do languages acquire grammar?’. In the last twenty years, researchers interested in the latter question have elaborated a theory of grammaticalization, the process by which grammar is created, and in doing so have also come up with some interesting new perspectives on the former question. The terms grammaticalization and grammaticization are used interchangeably. Four main findings of this research are listed here: Grammar is not a static, closed or self-contained system, but is highly susceptible to change and highly affected by language use. The loss of grammar is generally acknowledged and often lamented by prescriptive grammarians, who mourn the loss of the distinction between who and whom but fail to rejoice in the creation of new grammar, such as the new future tense signaled by gonna. In fact, the creation of new grammatical morphemes and structures is as common as the loss of old ones. Once underway, the course of grammaticalization is unidirectional and thus in principle predictable. Nouns and verbs lose their categorical status and become prepositions, auxiliaries and other grammatical forms. Free elements become more restricted and fuse with other elements. Loosely conjoined main clauses fuse to become a main plus subordinate clause. The reverse directions are rarely attested. Both the general trends in grammaticalization and many of the very specific developments are not restricted to individual languages, but are common across genetically and geographically unrelated languages. This widespread distribution, which will be illustrated in section 2, provides a new view of language universals. Since patterns of change cannot in themselves exist in