Constructional analysis

Kiki Nikiforidou
Table of contents

Construction Grammar developed as a non-modular, non-derivational, unification-based grammatical theory aimed at covering the facts of language as a whole (Fillmore, Kay & O'Connor 1988). Alongside the original approach, developed further by Kay and Fillmore (1999), Michaelis and Lambrecht (1996), and Fried and Östman (2004a), other constructional approaches have since emerged, Cognitive Construction Grammar (Goldberg 1995, 2006) and Radical Construction Grammar (Croft 2001) being prominent versions of the constructionist paradigm. Although the different constructional approaches are not intended as pragmatic theories or methods as such, they all assign a special place to pragmatic research and have often yielded fine-grained, detailed analyses of the pragmatics associated with particular linguistic forms. In this respect, constructional analysis allows for the natural integration of pragmatics into grammatical theory. The present chapter explores some of the ways in which this integration has been realized in different studies, illuminating the potential of construction grammar for describing (and even formalizing) all kinds of conventional linguistic knowledge, including pragmatic and discoursal.

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