Discourse is where linguistic forms are subjected to semantic and grammatical changes through meaning negotiation between interlocuters. This paper aims to describe emergence of various grammatical items from one of discourse strategies, i.e. rhetorical questions. It shows that certain rhetorical questions are grammaticalized into various grammatical markers, and sometimes into lexical items. It claims that some of these developments exhibit the reversal of intersubjectification by losing their capabilities of directly reflecting the speaker-addressee relationship; that grammaticalization and lexicalization are not entirely discrete processes but intertwined, each even making use of certain identical processes; and that grammar and lexicon, rather than being two separate entities, form a continuum.

Seongha Rhee. 2001. Grammaticalization of Verbs of Cognition and Perception. Studies in Modern Grammar 24, 111-135. This paper is an exploration of the grammaticalization phenomena displayed by the verbs of cognition and perception. Drawing upon cross-linguistically attested data, this paper shows that verbs of cognition and perception predominantly grammaticalize into epistemic markers. This is a natural consequence because the grammaticalized markers exhibit semantic residue of the source items, which, in this case, make direct reference to the sources of the human construal of the world affairs. This paper explicates how other grammatical functions are developed from these verbs. In so doing it also argues that the features that are selected for grammaticalization are those that are experientially salient features in conceptual event schemas.