Constructionalization (the diachronic creation of conventional symbolic units at different levels of schematicity and complexity) is a process which involves a series of micro-changes at different linguistic levels. The development of what with constructions in English is argued to be a case of grammatical constructionalization, whereby aspects of a construction become more general, productive, and less compositional. Equally, parts of the construction become more fixed (involving a reduction in variability), while other parts of the construction expand. The application of principles of construction grammar to aspects of diachronic change helps to clarify the relationship between theoretical principles of language change and the analysis of naturally occurring data; equally, the study of the what with construction reveals areas of potential convergence between formal and functional approaches to syntactic change, as well as areas of difference.
2024. Corpus linguistics meets historical linguistics and construction grammar: how far have we come, and where do we go from here?. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 0:0
Ungerer, Tobias & Stefan Hartmann
2023. Constructionist Approaches,
KIM, JONG-BOK & MARK DAVIES
2020. Englishwhat withabsolute constructions: a Construction Grammar perspective. English Language and Linguistics 24:4 ► pp. 637 ff.
van de Pol, Nikki
2019. A game of give and take: category change on the border between adverbial verbal gerunds and augmented absolutes in English. Language Sciences 73 ► pp. 91 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 19 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.