Paradigms lost – paradigms regained

Paradigms as hyper-constructions

Gabriele Diewald | Leibniz Universität Hannover

Based on Diewald (2009, 2015a, 2017), it is claimed that the notion of paradigm needs to be introduced into constructional accounts, as otherwise the essence of grammaticalization cannot be properly captured in construction grammar. It is suggested to define grammatical paradigms as a new node type, a “hyper-construction”, which represents the categorical, non-gradient specifics of grammatical meaning. This line of argumentation is supported by a discussion of changes in the German and English modality, tense, determiner, and number paradigms. Independent arguments for the psychological reality of paradigms come from the study of implicational relations in inflectional morphology and diachronic phenomena such as layering, suppletion, and paradigm pressure.

Keywords: paradigm, paradigmatic relation, paradigmaticization, grammaticalization, grammatical category, gradience, hyper-construction, constructional link, constructional network, inheritance

Published online: 13 May 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/cal.27.08die

Cited by

Cited by 3 other publications

Diewald, Gabriele, Volodymyr Dekalo & Dániel Czicza

2021. In Modality and Diachronic Construction Grammar [Constructional Approaches to Language, 32], ► pp. 81 ff.

Diewald, Gabriele & Katja Politt

2020. Grammatical categories as paradigms in Construction Grammar. Belgian Journal of Linguistics 34 ► pp. 42 ff.

Hilpert, Martin, Bert Cappelle & Ilse Depraetere

2021. In Modality and Diachronic Construction Grammar [Constructional Approaches to Language, 32], ► pp. 1 ff.

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 28 december 2021. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.