Language universals, discourse pragmatics, and semantics

Abstract

Within ‘functional linguistics’, semantic explanations have often been offered for cross-linguistic grammatical generalizations. These explanations have been based on such semantic properties as animacy, volitionality, referentiality, and Fillmorean case roles. Dixon has expressed the relationship by proposing that ‘grammar is frozen semantics’. Intriguingly, examination of a range of cross-linguistic generalizations leads increasingly to the view that grammar is primarily shaped by the entire range of cognitive, social, and interactional factors involved in the actual use of language. In this paper we discuss a number of specific grammatical phenomena which support the view that grammatical regularities arise because of certain strategies people habitually use in negotiating what they have to say with their hearers, in terms of what the hearer is likely to know or be able to identify, what needs to be highlighted or presented as newsworthy, what makes a good story, and so forth. This process is known as ‘grammaticization’, and suggests that grammar is best thought of, not as ‘frozen semantics’, but as something more like ‘sedimented conversational practices’.