Where Does Grammar Come From The Cognitive Basis of Transitivity and Grammatical Relations

For several decades, scientific debate in the study of human language has centered on the question of whether the structure of language is determined by the makeup of our brains, or arises from general principles of perception, cognition and interaction. The project addresses this question in an innovative way by examining clausal relations across the Austronesian language family and using what is known about their historical relationships to develop an in-depth analysis of how core principles of clause structure can develop from pragmatically-based systems. By building a model of this development based on cognitive principles, and grounded in empirical evidence of mechanisms of language change, the project will advance the frontier of research on the functional basis of human language.