Grammatical Constructions

Book excerpt: This volume brings into focus the conceptual roots of the notion ‘grammatical construction’ as the theoretical entity that constitutes the backbone of Construction Grammar, a unique grammatical model in which grammatical constructions have the status of elementary building blocks of human language. By exploring the analytic potential and applicability of this notion, the contributions illustrate some of the fundamental concerns of constructional research. These include issues of sentence structure in a model that rejects the autonomy of syntax; the contribution of Frame Semantics in establishing the relationship between syntactic patterning and the lexical meaning of verbs; and the challenge of capturing the dynamic and variable nature of grammatical structure in a systematic way. All the authors share a commitment to studying grammar in its use, which gives the book a rich empirical dimension that draws on authentic data from typologically diverse languages.