GradEast > Courses > Summer School in Grammaticalization > Abstracts > Lecturers' abstracts > Abstract Lene Schøsler

Introduction to constructions: the case of the dative in Latin and Romance languages

Lene Schøsler

Constructions have been defined as symbolic combinations of a syntactic element and a semantic component, organised in grammar in a taxonomic hierarchy. Put differently, "a construction is any linguistic expression, no matter how concrete or abstract, that is directly associated with a particular meaning or function, and whose form or meaning cannot be compositionally derived." Construction Grammar (CG) consider that morphemes, words, idioms, and grammatical categories are constructions. Per definition, as correctly pointed out by Noël (2006:9), grammaticalisation, as a change from lexical to grammatical,  is not an issue in CG. I do not share the general CG view, and I do not find it useful to extend the term construction to simple or complex words (labelled atomic and complex constructions respectively, by Croft & Cruse (2004:255)). Instead, I will propose a narrow definition of constructions. I find it useful to distinguish between the level of the individual lexical verb (labelled substantive constructions by Croft & Cruse) and the level of grammar, corresponding to the level of sentences in CG, and I will use the term construction only in the latter sense, which can be summarised in the following six points: a construction is a complex sign with an internal syntax and a semantic coding, its grammatical status is defined by its position in a paradigm (one or more), like in morphology and in topology, a paradigm has both a domain and a frame, the domain of a constructional paradigm is the syntagmatic context in which the paradigmatic relations between two or more constructions apply, the frame is the common semantic denominator for the paradigm (its conceptual zone, ‘Begriffszone' in Hjelmslev's sense), and its language-specific expression is linked to a language-specific content. In my presentation, I will illustrate these claims, mainly by means of examples from Danish and from Romance languages.

References

Croft, William & D. Alan Cruse (2004): Cognitive Linguistics, Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.

Hjelmslev, Louis (1963): Sproget. En introduktion. Berlingske Forlag: Copenhagen.

Noël, Dirk (2006): Diachronic construction grammar vs. grammaticalization theory. Preprint nr. 225. Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.