Constructionalization and Constructional Changes by Traugott, Elizabeth Closs; Trousdale, Graeme;

Series: Oxford Studies in Diachronic and Historical Linguistics; 6;

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Product details:

Publisher OUP Oxford
Date of Publication 7 November 2013

ISBN 9780199679898
Binding Hardback
No. of pages304 pages
Size 238x162x25 mm
Weight 620 g
Language English

Short description:

This book develops an approach to language change based on construction grammar in order to reconceptualize grammaticalization and lexicalization. The authors show that language change proceeds by micro-steps involving every aspect of grammar including pragmatics and discourse functions. A new and productive approach to historical linguistics.

Long description:

Elizabeth Closs Traugott and Graeme Trousdale develop an approach to language change based on construction grammar. Construction grammar is a theory of signs construed at the level of the phrase, clause, and complex sentence. Until now it has been mainly synchronic. The authors use it to reconceptualize grammaticalization (the process by which verbs like to have lose semantic content and gain grammatical functions, or word order moves from discourse-prominent to syntax-prominent), and lexicalization (in which idioms become fixed and complex words simplified). Basing their argument on the notions that language is made up of language-specific form-meaning pairings and that there is a gradient between lexical and grammatical constructions, Professor Traugott and Dr Trousdale suggest that language change proceeds by micro-steps that involve closely related changes in syntax, morphology, phonology, semantics, pragmatics, and discourse functions. They illustrate their exposition with numerous English examples drawn from Anglo-Saxon times to the present, many of which they discuss in depth.
The book is organized in six chapters. The first outlines the approach and the questions to be addressed. The second reviews usage-based models of language change. The third considers the relation between grammatical constructionalization and grammaticalization. Chapters 4 and 5 focus respectively on lexical constructionalization and the role of context. The final chapter draws the authors' arguments together and outlines prospects for further research. Constructionalization and Constructional Changes propounds and demonstrates a new and productive approach to historical linguistics.

[T]he qualitative framework presented in this monograph is without any doubt a most admirable synthesis of current historical analysis within the framework of construction grammar, and will inspire nearly any linguist interested in language change.