This chapter approaches the topic of constructional families by zooming in on five English motion constructions. Contrary to the traditional focus of Construction Grammar on verbal form-meaning pairings, the chapter discusses their multimodal dimension. A study in the NewsScape Library of Television News Broadcasts (Steen and Turner 2013) reveals that all five motion constructions studied therein show high co-occurrence rates with manner and path gestures. It is argued that according to the basic premises of Construction Grammar and the usage-based approach, co-speech motion gesture use is a defining part of these constructions. In support of this view, the chapter focuses on the influence of semantic readings, genre, and the broader discourse sequences’ degree of interactionality on co-speech motion gesture use.
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