Bernd Heine argues that the structure of grammatical categories is predictable to a large extent once we know the range of possible cognitive structures from which they are derived. The author uses as his example the structure of predicative possession, and shows how most of the possessive constructions to be found in the world's languages can be traced back to a small set of basic conceptual patterns. Using grammaticalisation theory Heine describes how each affects the word order and morphosyntax of the resulting possessive construction.