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Constructions in Contact 2: Language change, multilingual practices, and additional language acquisition
Edited by Hans C. Boas and Steffen Höder
[Constructional Approaches to Language 30] 2021
► pp. 233–265

Making one’s way in Welsh

Language contact and constructional change

| Indiana University

The English way-construction (He elbowed his way through the crowd), one of the clearest examples of an Argument Structure Construction (ASC), is a highly English-specific idiom that is reported not to have exact equivalents in other languages. Yet Welsh has a virtually identical ffordd-construction that must be attributed to language contact. Welsh speakers replicate the way-construction and its properties using native material, making this an instance of PAT. It appears in Welsh by the 17th century and follows a developmental trajectory similar to the English model. The ffordd-construction, then, instantiates the replication of a partially schematic construction in the sense of Construction Grammar (CxG). Discussion shows how models of language contact can incorporate the replication of an ASC.

Keywords: Welsh, the way-construction, argument structure, partially schematic constructions, MAT and PAT, pattern replication, calque, interlingual identification, French
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The English way-construction
  • 3.Cross-linguistic equivalents of the way-construction
  • 4.The Welsh ffordd-construction
  • 5.Welsh ffordd meets English way : Language contact and CxG
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • Glossary
  • References
Published online: 3 June 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cal.30.08rot
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