Why Construction Grammar is radical

John R. Taylor | University of Otago

This article reviews some of the foundational assumptions of Croft'sRadical Construction Grammar. While constructions have featured prominently in much recent work in cognitive linguistics, Croft adopts the ‘radical’ view that constructions are the primary objects of linguistic analysis, with lexical and syntactic categories being defined with respect to the constructions in which they occur. This approach reverses the traditional view, according to which complex expressions are compositionally assembled through syntactic rules operating over items selected from the lexicon. The ubiquity of idioms, especially so-called constructional idioms, provides compelling evidence for the essential correctness of the radical constructional view. The possibility of a radical constructional approach to phonology is also discussed.

Keywords: Radical Construction Grammar, constructional idioms, compositionality

Published online: 11 January 2005
https://doi.org/10.1075/arcl.2.12tay

Cited by

Cited by 2 other publications

Macis, Marijana & Norbert Schmitt

2017. Not just ‘small potatoes’: Knowledge of the idiomatic meanings of collocations. Language Teaching Research 21:3 ► pp. 321 ff.

Vartiainen, Turo

2016. A Constructionist Approach to Category Change. Journal of English Linguistics 44:1 ► pp. 34 ff.

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