ABSTRACT: What links the formation of the state, the formation of linguistic norms, and the development of a grammatical tradition of the state language? In France governmental institutions not only help to spread the state language, but also inspire the first analyses of that language. The model for the grammatisation of French, and the context to promote such a process, is the formation of a national judicial system, through the demand that customary law be written down, and then approved by central authorities. Establishing local texts written in the national language required the analysis of that language, and based that analysis on concepts drawn from legal language. Establishing a fixed national norm depended on the creation of a judicial system founded on writing, and on the royal bureaucracy that resulted from that change.