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RUbRICA

meaningful Grammar

GüNTER RADDEN

English Linguistics at Hamburg University

Abstract

Grammatical structure is meaningful in at least three respects: It is symbolic
as a pairing of form and meaning, it is to a large part motivated, and it invites
implicatures. These meaningful aspects of grammar relate to the language
users’ cognitive abilities. The cognitive underpinning of language is demon-
strated in the areas of time/tense and modality.
Notions of time are in English expressed lexically, grammatically, and
lexico-grammatically as in the be going to-Future. The development of the
be going to-construction to become a future marker is motivated by impli-
cature and conceptual metonymy, and its present-day grammatical usages
relate to its lexical basis by conceptual metaphor.
Notions of modality are typically expressed by modal verbs, and the
same modals are used to express different kinds of modality. Epistemic and
deontic modality and share the property of force dynamics: Deontic modality
as in You must go involves a socio-physical force while epistemic modality
as in It must be true involves the mental force of reasoning. A commonality
shared by all types of modality is that the conceptualizer does not accept the
situation referred to as real and strives to bring its potential realization under
control.
Grammatical units tend to be polysemous. Polysemy is, however, tole-
rated when the meanings of the linguistic sign are conceptually connected
and relatable to a common, higher-level meaning.

Keywords: English; Grammar; Motivation; Implicature; Time; Modality.