List of tables and figures
Acknowledgements
To readers: Why you shouldn't pick up, let alone read, this book
1 Introducing Construction Grammar
1.1 What do you know when you know a language?
1.1.1 Idiomatic expressions permeate ordinary language
1.1.2 Idiomatic expressions are more than fixed strings
1.1.3 Idiomatic expressions are productive
1.1.4 The growth of the appendix
1.2 What is a construction?
1.2.1 Defining constructions: a first try
1.2.2 Defining constructions: beyond non-predictability
1.3 Identifying constructions
1.3.1 Does the expression deviate from canonical patterns?
1.3.2 Does the expression carry non-compositional meaning?
1.3.3 Does the expression have idiosyncratic constraints?
1.3.4 Does the expression have collocational preferences?
1.4 Summingup
1.5 Outline of the following chapters
Study questions
Further reading
2 Argument structure constructions
2.1 Analysing'simple sentences'
2.2 Argument structure
2.3 Valency-increasing constructions
2.3.1 The DITRANSITVE construction
2.3.2 The CAUSED MOTION construction
2.3.3 The WAY construction
2.4 Valency-decreasing constructions
2.4.1 The PASSIVE
2.4.2 The IMPERATIVE construction
2.4.3 NULL INSTANTIATION
2.5 Relations between argument structure constructions
2.6 Summing up
Study questions
Further reading
3 Inside the construct-i-con
3.1 Meaningless constructions?
3.2 The construct-i-con: a network of interlinked
constructions
3.2.1 Inheritance
3.2.2 Kinds of inheritance links
3.2.3 Complete inheritance vs. redundant representations
3.3 'Normal syntax' in Construction Grammar
3.4 Summing up
Study questions
Further reading
4 Constructional morphology
4.1 More than a theory of syntax
4.1.1 one wug two wugs
4.1.2 skypable
4.1.3 shpants
4.1.4 a what-the-heck-is-wrong-with-you look
4.2 Morphological constructions and their properties
4.2.1 Morphological productivity
4.2.2 Paradigmatic organisation
4.2.3 Non-compositional meanings
4.2.4 Simultaneous affixation
4.3 Constructional solutions to morphological puzzles
4.3.1 Affix ordering
4.3.2 Compounding
4.4 Summing up
Study questions
Further reading
5 Information packaging constructions
5.1 The pragmatic side of Construction Grammar
5.1.1 Information packaging: the basics
5.1.2 Presupposition and assertion
5.1.3 Activation
5.1.4 Topic and focus
5.2 Information packaging and grammar
5.2.l Cleft constructions
5.2.2 Dislocation and related constructions
5.3 Island constraints
5.4 Summing up
Study questions
Further reading
6 Constructions and language processing
6.1 The quest for behavioural evidence
6.2 Evidence from language comprehension
6.2.1 Constructions explain how hearers understand novel denominal verbs
6.2.2 Constructional meanings are routinely accessed in sentence comprehension
6.2.3 Constructions explain knowledge of grammatical unacceptability
6.2.4 Constructions explain incidental verbatim memory
6.3 Evidence from language production
6.3.1 Constructions explain reduction effects in speech
6.3.2 Constructions explain syntactic priming, and exceptions to syntactic priming
6.3.3 Constructions explain how speakers complete sentences
6.4 Summing up
Study questions
Further reading
7 Constructions and language acquisition
7.1 Construction Grammar for kids
7.1.1 Item-based learning
7.1.2 The sociocognitive foundation of language learning
7.2 Evidence for the item-based nature of language learning
7.3 From item-based schemas to constructions
7.4 The acquisition of complex sentences
7.5 Summing up
Study questions
Further reading
8 Language variation and change
8.1 Language myths
8.2 Constructional variation
8.2.1 There's more than one way to do it
8.2.2 Variation in syntactic constructions: the example of relative clauses
8.2.3 Analysing variation between constructions
8.3 Constructional variation across groups of speakers
8.4 Constructional change: variation across time
8.5 Summing up
Study questions
Further reading
9 Concluding remarks
References
Index
