Grammatikalisierung, Pragmatikalisierung und die Entstehung von Diskursmarkern im Deutschen

Since about 20 years linguists attempt to apply the grammaticalisation concept to the description of pragmatic phenomena. In this context some linguists speak about ‘pragmatisation’ – a kind of language change, which concerns the linguistic codification of certain pragmatic contents. The term ‘pragmatisation’ suggests a new process, which runs in opposite direction to the development of grammatical elements. Irrespective of how we define the relation between both processes, this means always a reinterpretation (mostly extention) of the grammaticalisation concept. The present article focus on the question whether such attempts indeed result in a new insight into development of pragmatic units, or lead to terminological confusion by different terming already well described linguistic mechanisms.