There’s grammar and there’s grammar just as there’s usage and there’s usage
Usage-based grammars have become increasingly prominent in recent years. In these theories usage is construed quantitatively and serves as a circumstance for the emergence and development of grammar. This paper argues that usage can go deeper than this, and may become a component of the semiotic resources of a language and a part of grammar. However, this semioticisation is restricted to interpersonal grammar, those semiotic resources of grammar that construe interpersonal meaning. Three apparently unrelated grammatical phenomena – optionality of grammatical markers, insubordination, and a range of repetition-based constructions – are shown to be unified by the notions of grammaticalised usage and interpersonal grammar. This has implications for the nature of interpersonal grammar: it represents the codification of the triadic actional frame, the basis of which is the idea that action on an interlocutor is effected via action on linguistic units.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Three domains of grammar where usage may be fundamental
- 2.1Optionality of grammatical markers
- 2.2Insubordination
- 2.3Repetition-based constructions
- 3.Usage as a grammatical system
- 3.1The limitations of unit and relational descriptions
- 3.2Usage as interpersonal grammar
- 3.3The range and extent of usage in grammar
- 4.A reconsideration of interpersonal grammar
- 5.Conclusions
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
-
References
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Cited by
Cited by 3 other publications
McGregor, William B.
2019.
Reported speech as a dedicated grammatical domain – and why defenestration should not be thrown out the window.
Linguistic Typology 23:1
► pp. 207 ff.

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