Grammar emerges through reuse and modification of prior utterances

Abstract

Given the growing consensus that grammar emerges as language is used in social interaction, how grammar emerges through interaction still remains much unknown. This study demonstrates that the beginnings of the emergence of constructions can be found in individual interactions. Through an investigation on videotaped English conversations and corpora using discourse analysis, conversation analysis, and corpus linguistic methodologies, I find that conversational participants have a tendency as high as 80% or more to reuse words in prior turns. I argue that reuse as the mechanism of resonance motivation and modification as the mechanism of relevance motivation work competitively and conjointly, shaping the emergence of grammatical structures of a language. Reuses lead to formation of the fixed frame; modifications form the category for an open slot. In summary, grammar emerges through interaction among participants who are constantly reusing and modifying prior utterances to achieve current interactive goals.