Theory of Grammaticalization

Paper Summary:

This academic paper examines contemporary linguistic theory, with a focus on grammaticalization in the development of language. This analysis is made for both language form and in acquisition by individuals. The author challenges the idea that language is structural. The paper addresses this issue by evaluating ideas that view grammaticalization as an epiphenomenon of language.

Outline
Abstract
Introduction
Epiphenomenon
Grammaticalization Defined
Grammaticalization as Epiphenominon
Works Cited

From the Paper:

"In a sense the epiphenomenon of grammaticalization, as many would claim is the psychological response to the neurologically fixed brain functioning that creates workable mental shortcuts through the utilization of commonly occurring rules that are unique to individual languages and to some extent people. The brain functions to save the individual undue work in forming language, when common rules are oft repeated and in so doing, as the theory goes it leaves the individual capable of the creation of language in an easy almost non-thinking manner. (Anderson, and Lightfoot 162) Yet, when an individual attempts, once these shortcuts have been set, to learn a unique language, a variation of ones own language, say modern English as compared to Middle English or even the English spoken in another country in the present world, he or she is stymied by these shortcuts as they would need to be eradicated or altered (which theory claims is difficult if not impossible to do) to think in and become fluent in another language. (Healy 3)"

Sample of Sources Used:

• Anderson, Stephen R., and David W. Lightfoot. The Language Organ: Linguistics as Cognitive Physiology. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
• Briscoe, Ted, ed. Linguistic Evolution through Language Acquisition. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
• Campbell, Lyle, 2001, "What's Wrong With Grammaticalization?" Language Sciences, Issue 23, 113-161.
• Haspelmath, Martin, 1999, "Why is Grammaticalization Irreversible?" Linguistics Volume 37 Issue 6, 1043-1068.
• Healy, Alice F. "Chapter 1 Toward the Improvement of Training in Foreign Languages." Foreign Language Learning: Psycholinguistic Studies on Training and Retention. Ed. Alice F. Healy and Lyle E. Bourne. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1998. 3-51.

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