No student of a foreign language needs to be told that grammar is complex. By changing the order of the words and by adding a range of auxiliary verbs (助动词) ,we are able to communicate variations in meaning. We can turn a statement into a question, state whether an action has taken place or is soon to take place, and perform other word tricks to convey delicate differences in meaning. Besides. grammar is universal and plays a part in every language. no matter how widespread it is. So the question which has confused many linguists is: who created grammar?
At first, this question would appear impossible to answer. To find out how grammar is created. someone needs to be present at the time of a language's creation, documenting its emergence. Some linguists are able to trace modern complex languages back to earlier languages, but to know the forming of complex languages, the researcher needs to observe how languages are startedfrom scratch. Amazingly, however, this is possible.
Some recent languages evolved due to the Atlantic slave trade. At that time. slaves from different nations were forced to work together. Since they could not learn each other's languages. they developed a pidgin. Pidgins are strings of words copied from the language of the landowners. Little grammar is found in them. and in many cases it is difficult or a listener to infer when an event happened, and who did what to whom. Speakers need to use circumlocution (迁回曲折的说法) in order to make themselves understood. Interestingly. however, all it takes for a pidgin to become a complex language is for a group of children to be exposed to it. Slave children did not simply copy words from their elders, they adapted them to create a language. It included new word orders and grammatical markers. Complex grammar systems merging from pidgins are termed creoles, which are invented by children.
Some linguists believe that many of the world's most established languages were creoles at first. The -ed ending in English past tense may have evolved from "did", "It ended", which was first used by kids, may once have been "It end-did". Therefore. it would appear that even the most widespread languages were partly created by children. Children appear to have been born with grammatical machinery in their brains. which can serve to create logical, complex structures, even when there is no grammar present for them to copy.
