Full Description
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.
Contents
1. In memory of Anna Siewierska (by Hollmann, Willem B.); 2. Diachronic Construction Grammar: Epistemological context, basic assumptions and historical implications (by Barddal, Johanna); 3. Toward a coherent account of grammatical constructionalization (by Traugott, Elizabeth Closs); 4. Constructionalization and constructional change: The role of context in the development of constructions (by Smirnova, Elena); 5. The influence of constructions in grammaticalization: Revisiting category emergence and the development of the definite article in English (by Sommerer, Lotte); 6. Irregular morphology in regular syntactic patterns: A case of constructional re-alignment (by Fried, Mirjam); 7. On the relation between inheritance and change: The Constructional Convergence and the Construction Network Reconfiguration Hypotheses (by Timponi Torrent, Tiago); 8. Constructionalization and post-constructionalization: The constructional semantics of the Dutch krijgen-passive from a diachronic perspective (by Colleman, Timothy); 9. Index Terms; 10. Languages Index; 11. Constructions Index
