Grammatical categories as paradigms in Construction Grammar
This squib discusses the question whether Construction Grammar can account for the assumption of universal grammatical
categories (
Bybee, Perkins, and Pagliuca 1994) that are prone to language change, e.g. tense.
Most publications in Construction Grammar tackle individual constructions, such as the
way-construction (
Jackendoff 1990). But it remains unclear how grammatical categories as a universal phenomenon can be
described in constructionist terms. We propose that there is a way to (a) describe grammatical categories, which per definition are encoded
paradigmatically, as constructions themselves and (b) to thereby strengthen the assumption of a set of universal grammatical categories.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Grammatical functions and grammatical categories
- 3.What’s (in) a paradigm?
- 4.Bridging the gap: Paradigms and constructions
- 5.Conclusion
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
-
References