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A new theory of argument structure, based on the syntactic operation Merge and presented through an in-depth analysis of properties of the English passive construction.In Principles of Argument Structure, Chris Collins investigates principles of argument structure in minimalist syntax through an in-depth analysis of properties of the English passive construction. He formulates a new theory of argument structure based on the only structure-building operation in minimalist syntax, Merge, which puts together two syntactic objects to form a larger one. This new theory should give rise to detailed cross-linguistic work on the syntactic and semantic properties of implicit arguments.Collins presents an update and defense of his influential 2005 theory of the passive, including a completely original theory of implicit arguments. He makes a direct empirical argument for the Theta-Criterion against various claims that it should be eliminated. He also discusses the conception of voice in syntactic theory, arguing that VoiceP does not introduce external arguments, a position otherwise widely accepted in the field. He shows how the ”smuggling” approach to the passive extends naturally to the dative alternation accounting for a number of striking c-command asymmetries. He compares syntactic and semantic approaches to argument structure, outlining conceptual problems with adopting formal semantics as the basis for a theory of argument structure.The book will be of interest not only to syntacticians and semanticists, but also to typologists investigating the cross-linguistic properties of the passive, psycholinguists and computer scientists working on natural language understanding, and philosophers thinking about the issue of “implicit content.” It includes an appendix that provides common-sense guidelines for doing syntactic research using internet data.

The aim of this book is to provide a comparative analysis of intra- and inter- linguistic features, setting a benchmark for future typological studies. It contrasts cognitive and functional aspects of causative, agent-deprofiling, and resultative constructions in two typologically distant languages: English and Urdu. The detailed nature of the contrastive analysis opens doors for future research on the complexities of each construction and, by extension, of both languages. The study is framed within the field of cognitively-oriented constructionist approaches to language, specifically within the Lexical Constructional Model (LCM), proposed by Ruiz de Mendoza and Mairal. With its cross-linguistic dimension, it develops central aspects of this model at the argument-structure level and provides evidence of the role of high-level metaphor and metonymy in the motivating grammatical phenomena.

Konstruktionsgrammatik wird zumeist mit Begriffen wie Nichtkompositionalität (Idiomatizität), Lexik-Grammatik-Kontinuum, Netzwerk von Konstruktionen verbunden. Unberücksichtigt bleibt dabei die Musterbasiertheit der Konstruktionen und damit sprachliche Tätigkeit als Operieren über schematischen Konstruktionen (Konstruktionsmustern). Operationen wie Instantiierung und Fusion sind selbstverständlich regelhaft, wenn auch nicht im Sinne des traditionellen Regelbegriffs, in dem Regel an invariante Gültigkeit gebunden wird, sondern von Regelhaftigkeit im prototypentheoretischen Sinne. In den Beiträgen dieses Bandes werden anhand konkreter sprachlicher Phänomene theoretische Fragen der Form-Funktionsbeziehung innerhalb von Konstruktionen und zwischen Konstruktionen sowie empirische Aspekte der Ermittlung, des Erwerbs, der Vermittlung und des zwischensprachlichen Vergleichs von Konstruktionen diskutiert. Die gebrauchsbezogene Musterbasiertheit und Regelhaftigkeit sind ein gemeinsamer Ausgangspunkt der Beiträge. Die jeweilige Gewichtung der Form oder der Bedeutung oder des Verständnisses stehen zur Diskussion.

This volume is the first dedicated to the comprehensive, in-depth analysis of constructions with nouns like ‘type'and ‘sort'. It focuses on type noun constructions in Romance, Germanic and Slavic languages, integrating the different descriptive traditions that had been developed for each language family. As a result, a greater variety of type noun constructions is revealed than in the hitherto more fragmented literature. But attention is also drawn to the cross-linguistic similarity of the new pragmatic meanings, such as ad hoc and approximative categorization, hedging, focus and filler uses, and the new grammatical functions in NPs (e.g. phoric uses), clauses (e.g. adverbial uses) and complex sentences (e.g. quotatives). The volume offers survey chapters of type noun constructions in each language family as well as contributions focusing on specific aspects in one or two languages, such as their grammar, semantics and pragmatics, diachronic development, discursive and sociolinguistic variety. These complementary methodologies elucidate the unique cross-linguistic field of type noun constructions both descriptively and theoretically. Hence, this volume can also serve as a model for similar surveys in other functional domains.

This book presents a complementary study of lexicalist approaches and constructionist approaches in linguistics. Specific topics discussed include different versions of semantic roles, predicate decomposition, event structures, argument realizations, and cognitive construction grammars.For decades, the relationship between certain concepts and constructions along with related issues of verb-construction associations have been perennially taxing for both lexicalist and constructionist approaches alike. Indeed, in Chinese, unmatched verb-construction associations and the much richer alternate realizations pose very difficult problems. Based on a comparative study, the authors make an attempt to account for the possible correspondence between the delicacy of argument setting and the principles of their realization. They also account for the integration of construction with verbs in terms of their coherent conceptual content. The resultant newly developed model throws new light on these thorny Chinese problems.The book will appeal to scholars and students studying cognitive linguistics, cognitive semantics, computational linguistics, and also natural language processing. The book also brings up some new analysis of Chinese data for both researchers and learners of Modern Chinese.

How can insights from Construction Grammar (CxG) be applied to foreign language learning (FLL) and foreign language teaching (FLT)? This volume explores several aspects of Pedagogical Construction Grammar, with a specific look at issues relevant to second language acquisition, FLL, and FLT. The contributions in this volume discuss a wide range of constructions, as well as different resources, methodologies, and data used to learn constructions in the language classroom. More specifically, they seek to provide answers to the following questions: What do new constructional approaches to teaching and learning foreign language look like that take the insights of CxG seriously? What should electronic resources using constructions and semantic frames for foreign language instruction look like? How should constructions (pairings of form with meaning/function) in the foreign language classroom be introduced? What role does frequency play in learning constructions in the language classroom? What types of strategies does CxG offer to facilitate the acquisition of a second language? This volume is relevant for anyone interested in second language acquisition, foreign language pedagogy, Construction Grammar, and Cognitive Linguistics. Endorsements: If first language learning flows forth from language use, teaching language should be based on relevant usage-patterns, modified in accordance with the advanced cognitive and linguistic knowledge of older learners. The current volume shows how insights from first and second language learning and usage-based Construction Grammar can be turned into evidence-based teaching strategies.Heike Behrens, University of Basel Usage-based Construction Grammar has changed our view of language learning, but it is only recently that researchers have begun to apply the insights of the constructionist approach to language pedagogy. This volume brings together a collection of articles in which experts of Construction Grammar and Usage-based Linguistics make concrete proposals for teaching constructions by using corpora and other resources. A must read for everybody interested in grammar teaching.Holger Diessel, University of Jena With Directions for Pedagogical Construction Grammar, Boas has produced an impressive and much-needed volume which excels at illustrating the immense potential of constructionist approaches to improve language pedagogy. The contributions to this volume, all authored by leading cognitive and corpus linguists, convincingly describe what a successful future of language teaching could look like—one that is founded in usage-based linguistics and takes language patterns seriously. I consider this volume essential reading for any applied linguist.Ute Römer, Georgia State University

Sind Verbalperiphrasen die „perfekten“ Konstruktionen? Wenn ein und dieselbe Frage mit unterschiedlicher Intonation realisiert wird – liegen dann zwei verschiedene Konstruktionen vor? Wie geht die Konstruktionsgrammatik mit Nullrealisierungen und Polysemie um? Und was verraten Aphasie-Daten über den Konstruktionsstatus bestimmter Strukturen? Um diese und weitere Fragen geht es in diesem Buch. Die romanistische Linguistik bearbeitet zunehmend konstruktionsgramma¬tische Probleme. Bei aller Euphorie gilt es, thematische Lücken zu erkennen und zu schließen sowie konstruktionsgrammatische Konzepte kritisch zu hinterfragen. Beide Ansätze vereint dieser Band: Die Autorinnen und Autoren setzen sich mit sprachlichen Phänomenen auseinander, für deren Erforschung das konstruktionsgrammatische Modell hervorragend geeignet ist. Gleichzeitig thematisieren sie spezifische Probleme, die mitunter den (nur) eingeschränkten Nutzen der Konstruktionsgrammatik bzw. deren Schwachstellen aufzeigen.

In Ten Lectures on Construction Grammar and Typology, William Croft presents a unified theory of linguistic form and meaning that encompasses crosslinguistic diversity, verbalization and language change. Croft begins from construction grammar, a theory of syntax in which all syntactic structures are a pairing of form and meaning. Constructions are posited as basic; syntactic categories are defined by constructions. The internal structure of constructions directly link elements of constructions to the meanings they express, Constructions across languages can be situated in a space of syntactic variation. Grammar emerges from the verbalization of experience. Constructions occur in a probability distribution across the conceptual space of meanings. These probability distributions evolve, leading to grammatical change in language, modeled in an evolutionary framework.

Diese Studie analysiert die Prozesse des Erstspracherwerbs des Deutschen mithilfe dichter Corpora. Im Fokus steht die Entwicklung von Mehrwortäußerungen, die als erste kreative Äußerungen produziert werden. Unter Verwendung des sog. Traceback-Verfahrens werden diese in Form von Bausteinen zurückverfolgt. Hiermit kann die Studie die Bedeutung und den Aufbau lexikalisch teilspezifischer Schemata in der Phase der Mehrwortäußerungen nachweisen.

As a distinctive syntactic structure in Mandarin Chinese, the Patient-Subject Construction (PSC) is one of the most interesting but least well-understood structures in the language. This book offers a comprehensive account of the history, structure, meaning and use of the PSC. Unlike previous descriptions which were framed in terms of pre-existing grammatical notions such as ‘topicalization', ‘passivization'and ‘ergativization', this book offers a fresh look at the PSC, in which its syntactic and semantic as well as its discourse functions are examined within the system of major construction-types of the language as a whole. The PSC, being low in transitivity, serves primarily the function of backgrounding in discourse. Typologically, the PSC bears a resemblance to middle constructions in Indo-European and other languages, raising interesting questions about ways to understand congruent and divergent syntactic structures across the world's languages. This book will be of interest to students of Chinese Linguistics as well as Language Typology.

Die prototypentheoretische und signifikativ-semantische (semasiologische) Orientierung der Konstruktionsgrammatik (KxG) durch George Lakoff und Adele Goldberg (Berkeley Cognitive Construction Grammar) wird am Beispiel des Deutschen in Richtung auf eine tätigkeitsbezogene (sprachgebrauchsbezogene) Grammatiktheorie ausgebaut, jenseits des Competence-Performance-Dualismus bisheriger Syntaxtheorien. Teil I entwirft eine konstruktionsgrammatische Beschreibung der Grammatik von Sätzen mit einfachen (nicht-komplexen) Prädikaten im Wechselverhältnis von Konstruktion und Projektion (Valenz) unter dem Primat der Konstruktion. Aus diesem Wechselverhältnis erklärt sich die Kreativität der SprecherInnen/HörerInnen beim Operieren mit Argumentkonstruktionen und die Produktivität syntaktischer Strukturen (Konstruktionen). Eingeschlossen ist die Beschreibung der Fusion von Modifikatorkonstruktionen und der Einbettung von Substantivkonstruktionen sowie eine konstruktionsgrammatische Interpretation der Variabilität von Wortfolgen. Im Teil II wird das deklarative Vererbungskonzept der KxG zu Gunsten eines sprachgebrauchsbezogenen Konzepts von Vererbung revidiert. Grammatiktheoretisch zentrale Phänomene wie Passivierung, Medialisierung, Nominalisierung und die Entstehung von Präpositionalobjekt-Konstruktionen und Partikel- und Präfixkonstruktionen werden auf dieser Grundlage als Konstruktionsvererbung erklärt.

Despite its importance for language and cognition, the theoretical concept of »pattern« has received little attention in linguistics so far. The articles in this volume demonstrate the multifariousness of linguistic patterns in lexicology, corpus linguistics, sociolinguistics, text linguistics, pragmatics, construction grammar, phonology and language acquisition and develop new perspectives on »pattern« as a linguistic concept.

Der Band vereint linguistische Studien, die sich mit dem Zusammenwirken des Konventionalisierten und der Variation beschäftigen. Anhand konkreter Beispiele analysieren die Beiträge das Zusammenspiel zwischen Konventionalisierung und Variation, fragen nach den Gründen der Entstehung des Konventionellen und beschreiben das Variationspotenzial bzw. die Variationsrestriktionen. Die Beispiele decken das breite Spektrum zwischen eher grammatischen und eher lexikalischen Strukturen ab, lassen sich aber kaum eindeutig einem dieser Pole zuordnen. Somit liefern sie gute Nachweise für den ebenenübergreifenden Charakter des Konventionellen, der aber nur vor dem Hintergrund der Variation adäquat verstanden werden kann. Mehrere Beiträge diskutieren explizit die Vor- und Nachteile der theoretischen Verortung solcher Wortverbindungen im Rahmen der existierenden Paradigmen (Phraseologieforschung, Konstruktionsgrammatik usw.).

As we think and talk, rich arrays of mental spaces and connections between them are constructed unconsciously. Conceptual integration of mental spaces leads to new meaning, global insight, and compressions useful for memory and creativity. A powerful aspect of conceptual integration networks is the dynamic emergence of novel structure in all areas of human life (science, religion, art,...). The emergence of complex metaphors creates our conceptualization of time. The same operations play a role in material culture generally. Technology evolves to produce cultural human artefacts such as watches, gauges, compasses, airplane cockpit displays, with structure specifically designed to match conceptual inputs and integrate with them into stable blended frames of perception and action that can be memorized, learned by new generations, and thus culturally transmitted.

Aus einer soziokulturell-konstruktionsgrammatischen Perspektive rekonstruiert die Studie den literaten Sprachausbau des Mittelniederdeutschen, einen an das schriftliche Medium gekoppelten Sprachwandelprozess. Am Beispiel historischer Rechtstexte, bei denen es sich im Wesentlichen um spätmittelalterliche und frühneuzeitliche Stadtrechtskodifikationen handelt, werden das Entstehen und der Wandel von Funktionswort-Konstruktionen beschrieben und erklärt. Diese sprachlichen Form-Funktions-Paare werden mit Blick auf das in der Arbeit entworfene historisch-grammatische Programm (Sociocultural Construction Grammar) als schriftsprachliche Entitäten gefasst, die sowohl kognitive Gestalten als auch sozial geteilte Größen sind. Insgesamt versteht die Autorin die untersuchten Entwicklungen als soziogenetische Prozesse, die zur Ausdifferenzierung des kommunalen Konstruktikons der Recht-Schreiber beitragen. Dabei handelt es sich um ein sprachgemeinschaftliches Netzwerk an Konstruktionen, das – wie die Studie umfassend illustriert – an Komplexität zunimmt. Am historischen Beispiel vermittelt die Arbeit umfassende Einsichten in die kognitive und soziale Funktionalität von Grammatikalität.

Currently, there are two prominent schools in linguistics: Minimalism (Chomsky) and Construction Grammar (Goldberg, Tomasello). Minimalism comes with the claim that our linguistic capabilities consist of an abstract, binary combinatorial operation (Merge) and a lexicon. Most versions of Construction Grammar assume that language consists of flat phrasal schemata that contribute their own meaning and may license additional arguments. This book examines a variant of Lexical Functional Grammar, which is lexical in principle but was augmented by tools that allow for the description of phrasal constructions in the Construction Grammar sense. These new tools include templates that can be used to model inheritance hierarchies and a resource driven semantics. The resource driven semantics makes it possible to reach the effects that lexical rules had, for example remapping of arguments, by semantic means. The semantic constraints can be evaluated in the syntactic component, which is basically similar to the delayed execution of lexical rules. So this is a new formalization that might be suitable to provide solutions to longstanding problems that are not available for other formalizations. While the authors suggest a lexical treatment of many phenomena and only assume phrasal constructions for selected phenomena like benefactive and resultative constructions in English, it can be shown that even these two constructions should not be treated phrasally in English and that the analysis would not extend to other languages as for instance German. I show that the new formal tools do not really improve the situation and many of the basic conceptual problems remain. Since this specific proposal fails for two constructions, it follows that proposals (in the same framework) that assume phrasal analyses for all constructions are not appropriate either. The conclusion is that lexical models are needed and this entails that the schemata that combine syntactic objects are rather abstract (as in Categorial Grammar, Minimalism, HPSG and standard LFG). On the other hand there are constructions that should be treated by very specific, phrasal schemata as in Construction Grammar and LFG and HPSG. So the conclusion is that both schools are right (and wrong) and that a combination of ideas from both camps is needed.

The book series of the Leibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache (Leibniz Institute for the German Language, IDS) offers a platform for comparative research on selected aspects of German linguistics, especially with regard to their typological relevance. It includes both monographs and edited volumes, in English and in German, on topics such as grammar (phonology, graphemics, morphology, syntax, semantics), lexis, pragmatics, second-language acquisition, multilingualism and language contact. All publications are innovative contributions to the description of the linguistic phenomena in question, but also to the theoretical foundations of their respective fields. They all have successfully gone through a peer-review process. The series is published on behalf of the IDS and edited by Prof. Eva Breindl (Professor of Germanic Linguistics with special focus on ‘German as a foreign language'at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg) and Dr. Lutz Gunkel (Research Associate in the Grammar Department of the IDS Mannheim). Editorial Board Ruxandra Cosma (Bukarest)Martine Dalmas (Paris)Livio Gaeta (Turin)Matthias Hüning (Berlin)Sebastian Kürschner (Eichstätt-Ingolstadt)Torsten Leuschner (Gent)Marek Nekula (Regensburg)Attila Péteri (Budapest)Christoph Schroeder (Potsdam)Björn Wiemer (Mainz) From 2016 on, the volumes published in this series are freely available via Open Access.

This book analyzes events and narratives from the points of view of literature, grammar, discourse, and semantics. The contributors explore the issues related to the ways of portraying stories and their events within a cultural and literary framework. They also examine the role of prefixes in construing events and asymmetries that exist in time-creating event markers from a contrastive perspective. The contributions focus on narrativity as a semantic category, and on how events are described in signed languages. They place the event and narrative categories at the center of interest and their specific goals are pursued by applying different, both qualitative and quantitative, research methods.

Dieses Buch liefert eine neue Erkenntnisperspektive zur Deutung und Untersuchung der Fachlexik. Grundlage dafür stellen die anthropozentrische Linguistik und der epistemologische Ansatz zur Semantik dar. Aus dieser Perspektive zeigt der Autor, wie Fachlexeme entstehen und was ihnen an Prinzipien, Motiven oder Prioritäten zugrunde gelegt wird, wenn darüber entschieden wird, ein bestimmtes Fachlexem zu konstruieren und dieses als Fachneologismus durchzusetzen. Die Untersuchung stützt sich dabei auf eine empirische Studie zu Fachneologismen aus dem Fachgebiet «Byzantinische Hymnographie und Musik».

Up to now, most research in Construction Grammar has focused on single languages, most notably English. This volume aims to broaden the scope of Construction Grammar towards issues in bi- and multilingualism, second language learning, and generalizations across different languages and language varieties. The contributions in this volume show that speakers entertain generalizations across their repertoire of languages, which holds important implications for a multilingual Construction Grammar. Originally published in Constructions and Frames 6:2 (2014).

Satztypen werden gewöhnlich als Ergebnis einer modularen Interaktion morphologischer und syntaktischer Merkmale betrachtet, Konstruktionen sind dagegen als konventionelle, arbiträre Form-Bedeutungs-Paare definiert. Zugleich gibt es eine Tradition der Satztypbeschreibung, die Satztypen als Bündel von formalen Merkmalen auffasst, denen arbiträr bestimmte Bedeutungen zugeordnet sind („Satzmodus“). Dies wirft die Frage auf, ob sich Satztypen als Konstruktionen beschreiben lassen, bzw. welche Vor- und Nachteile eine solche Analyse gegenüber einer derivationellen Analyse hat. Eine konstruktionistische Analyse sollte den Unterschied zwischen den Standard-Satztypen wie Deklarativsatz, Interrogativsatz, Imperativsatz und anderen Konstruktionen erklären können und die Probleme der Bedeutungszuweisung ernst nehmen. Eine „Satztypengrammatik“ (welcher Provenienz auch immer) sollte anerkennen, dass es syntaktische Baueinheiten gibt, die kerngrammatischen Erwartungen widersprechen, aber in der Konversation eine wichtige Rolle spielen. Die Beiträge in diesem Band untersuchen anhand ausgewählter Datenbereiche das Verhältnis von Satztyp und Konstruktion aus unterschiedlichen grammatiktheoretischen Perspektiven.

In much writing on language change, there is a tacit assumption that change operates on a single source construction to produce an innovative target construction. This volume challenges this assumption, by showing that many changes involve interactions between multiple source constructions. In fact, the involvement of multiple source constructions is unexceptional. The phenomenon is observed in phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics. It is seen in language-internal change as well as in contact-induced change. Interactions may obtain between independent but historically related constructions as well as between historically unrelated constructions. The contributions to this volume, on the one hand, present specific case studies on changes involving multiple source constructions, in various domains of grammar and in a variety of languages. On the other hand, they discuss how such changes can be accommodated in current theoretical models of language.Originally published in Studies in Language Vol. 37:3 (2013).

The argument structure of verbs, defined as the part of grammar that deals with how participants in verbal events are expressed in clauses, is a classical topic in linguistics that has received considerable attention in the literature. This book investigates argument structure in English from a usage-based perspective, taking the view that the cognitive representation of grammar is shaped by language use, and that crucial aspects of grammatical organization are tied to the frequency with which words and syntactic constructions are used. On the basis of several case studies combining quantitative corpus studies and psycholinguistic experiments, it is shown how a usage-based approach sheds new light on a number of issues in argument realization and offers frequency-based explanations for its organizing principles at three levels of generality: verbs, constructions, and argument structure alternations.

In Categorization and Constructional Change Damián Vergara Wilson uses the Spanish change-of-state construction quedar(se) + ADJ to analyze the impact of categorization on constructional change and productivity in data spanning eight centuries. In usage, the appearance of one adjective in the construction triggers the emergence of related ones through analogical extension propelling the expansion of semantic categories of adjectives. Categories develop in different ways reflecting the characteristics of their members in terms of semantics and conventionalization. Emergence tends to relate to the ability of one construction to attract adjective types away from another. This study gives insight into the cognitive status and complex evolution of a schematic construction in a way that supports an instance-based model of memory.

This volume, which has textbook character, is intended to provide an in-depth introduction to different theoretical and methodological research frameworks concerned with the role of item-specific grammatical and lexical behaviour.

Construction Grammar as a framework offers a new perspective on traditional historical questions in diachronic linguistics and language change: how do new constructions arise, how should competition in diachronic variation be accounted for, how do constructions fall into disuse, and how do constructions change in general, formally and/or semantically, and with what implications for the language system as a whole? This volume offers a broad introduction to the confluence of Construction Grammar and historical syntax, and also detailed case studies of various instances of syntactic change modeled within Construction Grammar. The volume demonstrates that Construction Grammar as a theory is particularly well suited for modeling historical changes in morphosyntax, and it also documents challenging new phenomena that require a theoretical account within any competing framework of syntactic change.

This volume analyzes constructions with non-canonical subjects in individual languages and cross-linguistically, drawing on insights from cognitive and discourse-functional linguistics. Prototypical subjects have often been characterized in terms of their semantic, syntactic and discourse features, such as animacy, agentivity, topicality, referentiality, definiteness and autonomy of existence of the subject referent. A non-canonical subject is one that lacks some of these features. This may be reflected in its meaning, grammatical coding, and/or discourse function. In discussing non-canonical subjects in individual languages and cross-linguistically, the chapters in the volume address the following more general topics: What kinds of grammatical, semantic and discourse criteria can be used to distinguish subjects from non-subjects? To what extent are subject criteria construction-specific? What kinds of constructions have non-canonical subjects? What are the semantic and discourse functions of constructions with non-canonical subjects? Are subjects which are grammatically non-canonical also atypical in terms of their discourse features?

This monograph presents the first comprehensive diachronic account of copular and passive verb constructions in Old and Middle English. Peter Petré analyzes: · The mysterious loss of the high-frequency verb weorðan'become'as a casualty of changing word order in narrative during Middle English. · The merger of is'is'and bið'shall be, is generally'into a single suppletive verb, and how it is related to the development of a general analytic future shall be. · The co-occurrence of multiple changes that led to become and wax crossing a threshold of similarity with existing copulas, from which they analogically adopted full productivity in one fell swoop. In explaining each of these changes, Petré goes beyond the level of the verb and its complements, drawing attention to analogical networks and the importance of a verb's embeddedness in clausal and textual environments. Using a radically usage-based approach, treating syntax as emerging from (changing) frequencies, Petré draws attention to general principles of constructional change, including but not limited to grammaticalization and lexicalization. He proposes novel parallelisms between linguistic and ecological evolution. Going beyond the view of language change as propagating only in social interaction, Petré explains how each individual's mental grammar can be seen as a dynamic ecosystem with hierarchical environments (clausal niches, textual habitats). In this view, the interconnectedness of seemingly unrelated changes, itself resulting from cognitive economy principles, is arguably more decisive in lexical change than is functional competition.

The chapters in this book show how the different flavors of Construction Grammar provide illuminating insights into the syntax, semantics, pragmatics and discourse-functional properties of specific phenomena in Romance languages such as (Castilian) Spanish, French, Romanian, and Latin from a synchronic as well as a diachronic viewpoint. The phenomena surveyed include the role of constructional meanings in novel verb-noun compounds in Spanish, the relevance of lexicalization for a constructionist analysis of complex prepositions in French, the complementariness of fragments, patterns and constructions as theoretical and explanatory constructs in verb complementation in French, Latin, and Spanish, non-constituent coordination phenomena (e.g. Right Node Raising, Argument Cluster Coordination and Gapping) in Romanian, and variable type framing in Spanish constructions of directed motion in the light of Leonard Talmy's (2000) typological differences of lexicalization between satellite-framed and verb-framed languages.

Relabeling is a process that assigns a lexical entry of language-x a new label derived from a phonetic string drawn from language-y. This process plays a central role in the formation of contact languages such as mixed languages, pidgins and creoles, and New Englishes. In this book, Claire Lefebrve offers a coherent picture of research on relabeling over the last 15 years, and replies to the questions that have been directed at the relabeling-based theory of creole genesis presented in Lefebvre (1998) and related work. It addresses such questions as: how does relabeling apply across language contact situations and across lexicons, and what constraints act upon it? What other processes apply in language genesis and how do they interact with relabeling? Can a relabeling-based theory of creole genesis really account for all of the features that a theory of creole genesis must be able to account for? Since relabeling applies to the lexical component of the grammar, different theories of the lexicon should make different predictions as to the nature of the lexical items to which the process can apply. Lefebvre discusses the predictions of a Construction Grammar framework and how they compare to those of the Principles and Parameters framework, and how each framework accounts for data. She analyzes how word order is established within a relabeling-based account of creole genesis, and the role that relabeling plays in accounting for the differences between creoles. Other topics discussed include the contribution of the superstrate language to a creole within a relabeling-based account of creole genesis, and the predictions of relabeling in terms of the typological classification of creoles. Lefebvre ultimately demonstrates how the relabeling-based theory of creole genesis constitutes a strong alternative to the Bioprogram Hypothesis.

The last decade has seen a rise in popularity in construction-based approaches to grammar. The various approaches within the rubric'construction grammar'all see language as a network of constructions-pairings of form and meaning. Construction Grammar, as a kind of cognitive linguistics, differs significantly from mainstream generative grammar as espoused by Chomsky and his followers. Advocates of Construction Grammar see it as a psychologically plausible theory of human language. As such, it is capable of providing a principled account of language acquisition, language variation and language change. Research in Construction Grammar also includes multidisciplinary cognitive studies in psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, and computational linguistics. The Oxford Handbook of Construction Grammar is the first authoritative reference work solely dedicated to Construction Grammar. Divided into five sections, the book will be an invaluable resource that students and scholars alike can turn to for a comprehensive account of current work on Construction Grammar, its theoretical foundations, and its applications to and relationship with other kinds of linguistic enquiry.

Frames and constructions in metaphoric language shows how linguistic metaphor piggybacks on certain patterns of constructional meaning that have already been identified and studied in non-metaphoric language. Recognition of these shared semantic structures, and comparison of their roles in metaphoric and non-metaphoric constructions, make it possible to apply findings from Frame Semantics, Cognitive Grammar and Construction Grammar to understand how conceptual metaphor surfaces in language.

Elizabeth Closs Traugott and Graeme Trousdale develop an approach to language change based on construction grammar. Construction grammar is a theory of signs construed at the level of the phrase, clause, and complex sentence. Until now it has been mainly synchronic. The authors use it to reconceptualize grammaticalization (the process by which verbs like to have lose semantic content and gain grammatical functions, or word order moves from discourse-prominent to syntax-prominent), and lexicalization (in which idioms become fixed and complex words simplified). Basing their argument on the notions that language is made up of language-specific form-meaning pairings and that there is a gradient between lexical and grammatical constructions, Professor Traugott and Dr Trousdale suggest that language change proceeds by micro-steps that involve closely related changes in syntax, morphology, phonology, semantics, pragmatics, and discourse functions. They illustrate their exposition with numerous English examples drawn from Anglo-Saxon times to the present, many of which they discuss in depth. The book is organized in six chapters. The first outlines the approach and the questions to be addressed. The second reviews usage-based models of language change. The third considers the relation between grammatical constructionalization and grammaticalization. Chapters 4 and 5 focus respectively on lexical constructionalization and the role of context. The final chapter draws the authors'arguments together and outlines prospects for further research. Constructionalization and Constructional Changes propounds and demonstrates a new and productive approach to historical linguistics.

The papers in this volume study linguistic structures in the context of their interactive functions and usages; they concentrate on grammatical constructions for the positioning of self and others. Using empirical analyses of positioning constructions, the authors show that forms and functions of grammatical structures in everyday interactions are closely interwoven with the conditions for the production and reception of spoken language. This leads to the methodological conclusion that linguistic phenomena - understood as constructions of varying complexity - cannot be decontextualised but are to be examined in their particular interactional contexts. In the present analyses, therefore, attention is paid both to the mediality and actional reference of linguistic phenomena and to the dialogicity, sequentiality and temporality of the development of linguistic constructions. In order to take account of the tension between the stabilisation of grammatical constructions and the process of their actualisation in interactions, the authors combine methods from Interactional Linguistics with insights from usage-based positions of both Construction Grammar and Cognitive Grammar.

This collection of articles brings together new research from both established and emerging international experts in the study of English grammar, all of whom have engaged with the notion of'construction'in their work. The research here is concerned with both synchrony and diachrony, with the relationship between Construction Grammar and other linguistic theories, and with a number of issues in the study of grammar, such as raising and control phenomena, transitivity, relative clause structure, the syntax of gerunds, attributive and predicative uses of adjectives, modality, and grammaticalization. Some of the articles are written within a constructional framework, while others highlight potential problems with constructional approaches to English grammar; some of the articles are based on data collected from corpora, some on introspection; some of the articles suggest potential developments for diachronic construction grammar, while others seek to compare Construction Grammar with other cognitive linguistic theories, most particularly Word Grammar. The research reported in this volume presents a series of ways of looking at the relationship between constructions and patterns in English grammar, either now or in the past. The book addresses scholars and advanced students who are interested in English grammar, constructional approaches to language, and the relationship between functional and formal issues in linguistic description and theory.

In der seit Mitte der 1970er Jahre bestehenden Reihe Germanistische Linguistik (RGL) haben Veröffentlichungen zu allen Aspekten von Sprache und Kommunikation ihren Platz. Wesentliche Publikationsformen sind die Monografie und thematisch kohärente Sammelbände. Der Erfolg der Reihe besteht darin, die große Bandbreite an Themen, Theorien und an methodologischen Zugängen in der germanistischen Linguistik zu berücksichtigen und zu deren Sichtbarkeit im Fach beizutragen. Gleichzeitig war und ist die Reihe ein Ort, an dem innovative Impulse aufgegriffen und neue Trends geprägt werden. Wissenschaftlicher Beirat:Prof. Dr. Stephan Elspaß (Salzburg)Prof. Dr. Jürg Fleischer (Marburg)Prof. Dr. Stephan Habscheid (Siegen)Prof. Dr. Katrin Lehnen (Gießen)Prof. Dr. Barbara Schlücker (Leipzig)Prof. Dr. Renata Szczepaniak (Leipzig) Call for Book Proposals: https://blog.degruyter.com/call-for-book-proposals-reihe-germanistische-linguistik/

This book is based on the results of research in language typology, and motivated by the need for a theory to explain them. The essence of the approach is (a) that almost all aspects of grammatical structure are language specific, and (b) that language universals are to be found in conceptual structure and in the mapping of conceptual structure on to linguistic form. It proposes intimate links between syntactic and semantic structures, and argues that the basic elements of any language are not syntactic but syntactic-semantic'Gestalts'. Professor Croft puts forward a new approach to syntactic representation and a new model of how language and languages work. He covers a wide range of syntactic phenomena, illustrating these with examples that show the varied grammatical structures of the world's languages. The book will be accessible all linguists at graduate level and beyond.