The Oxford Handbook of Construction Grammar

by Hoffmann, Thomas; Trousdale, Graeme

• ISBN13: 9780195396683
• ISBN10: 0195396685
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2013-02-22
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

The last decade has seen a rise in popularity in construction-based approaches to grammar. Put simply, the various approaches within the rubric 'construction grammar' all see grammar (morphemes, words, idioms, etc.) as fundamentally constructions -- pairings of form and meaning. This is distinct from formal syntax which sees grammar as a system of atomized units governed by formal rules. Construction Grammar is connected to cognitive linguistics and shares many of its philosophical and methodological assumptions. Advocates of Construction Grammar see it as a psychologically-plausible, generative theory of human language that can also account for all kinds of linguistic data. The research programs it has spawned range from theoretical morphological and syntactic studies to multidisciplinary cognitive studies in psycho-, neuro-, and computational linguistics. This Handbook is the first authoritative reference work solely dedicated to the theory, method, and applications of Construction Grammar, and will be a resource that students and scholars alike can turn to for a representative overview of its many sub-theories and applications. It has 24 chapters divided into 7 sections, with an introduction covering the theory's basic principles and its relationship with other theories including Chomskyan syntax. The book's readership lies in a variety of diverse fields, including corpus linguistics, thoeretical syntax, psycho and neurolinguistics, language variation, acquisition, and computational linguistics.

Author Biography

Thomas Hoffmann is Assistant Professor of English Linguistics at the University of Osnabrück.

Graeme Trousdale is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Linguistics and English Language at the University of Edinburgh.

Table of Contents

Chapter Authors

Principles and methods

Construction Grammar: Introduction

Constructionist Approaches

The Limits of (Construction) Grammar

Usage-based Theory and Exemplar Representations of Constructions

Constructions in the Parallel Architecture

Data in Construction Grammar

Constructionist approaches

Berkeley Construction Grammar

Sign-based Construction Grammar

Fluid Construction Grammar

Embodied Construction Grammar

Cognitive Grammar

Radical Construction Grammar

Cognitive Construction Grammar

Constructicon: from morphemes to clauses and beyond

Morphology in Construction Grammar

Words and Idioms

Collostructional Analysis

Abstract Phrasal and Clausal Constructions

Information Structure

Acquisition and cognition

Construction grammar and First Language Acquisition

Construction grammar and Second Language Acquisition

Psycholinguistics

Brain Basis of Meaning, Words, Constructions and Grammar Friedemann Pulvermller

Language Variation and Change

Principles of Constructional Change

Construction-Based Historical-Comparative Reconstruction

Corpus-based approaches to constructional change

Dialects, Discourse and Construction Grammar

Constructions in Cognitive Sociolinguistics

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