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In a number of East and South-East Asian languages, certain grammatical elements such as pronouns, generic nouns, or demonstratives (e.g. one, thing, this) have acquired additional pragmatic functions. Well-documented examples of this grammaticalization process are the Mandarin de, the Malay punya/nya/mia and the Japanese no (cf. Yap, Matthews et al. 2004); the grammaticalized element occurs in the sentence-final position encoding speaker's certainty about the proposition. A similar development has taken place in Abui (a Papuan language of Eastern Indonesia); markers describing speaker's attitude towards a proposition (evidentiality and assertion) are recruited from two sources: (i) demonstratives and (ii) the utterance verb ba 'say'.

Grammar, Comparative and general --- Typology (Linguistics) --- Historical linguistics. --- Diachronic linguistics --- Dynamic linguistics --- Evolutionary linguistics --- Language and languages --- Language and history --- Linguistics --- Linguistic typology --- Linguistic universals --- Noun --- Syntax --- Nominals (Grammar) --- Noun-equivalents (Grammar) --- Substantives (Grammar) --- Nominals. --- Syntax. --- Noun. --- History --- Typology --- Classification --- Nominals --- Noun phrase --- Asia --- Languages. --- Philology --- Grammar, Comparative and general Syntax