In the first chapter, we learnt that the basic units of a Construction Grammar analysis are FORM-MEANING pairings of varying degrees of schematicity. In this chapter we will see that for most Construction Grammarians, constructions are not just descriptive tools for linguistic analysis. They also maintain that constructions are in fact the basic unit of our mental grammars. This obviously raises the question of how people in general, and children in particular, acquire constructions. The majority of constructionist approaches answer this question by claiming that people acquire constructions through actual language use and with the help of general cognitive processes. These approaches are therefore known as 'usage-based'. In this chapter, we will explore a Usage-based Construction Grammar account of language acquisition, survey the types of data sources used in such approaches and discuss how we have to refine our definition of constructions in light of the results of usage-based studies.

In the last chapter, we explored word constructions and the basic phrasal constructions that they appear in. In addition to that, we saw that English has a great number of schematic and substantive idioms that can best be described as constructions. In the present chapter, we continue this approach and investigate how syntactic phenomena, such as argument structure (which tells us what happened) and its interaction with active and passive voice (which represent different vantage points from which to construe events), as well as tense and aspect (when and how something happened), can be analysed within Usage-based Construction Grammar. Moreover, we also look at abstract constructions for the various clause types (e.g., declaratives, interrogatives and imperatives, all of which basically express speakers’ illocutions). Finally, we also look at how Information Structure constructions can be used to structure information in a way that is most beneficial for a specific hearer in a discourse context.

In this book, we have explored the view that there is ample empirical evidence to suggest that the full range of mental grammatical knowledge, from morphemes to abstract syntactic patterns, can best be described as constructions. We have seen that Construction Grammar can explain how children acquire English and that it provides a cognitively plausible account of the synchronic variation of Englishes across the globe as well as the diachronic changes that affected the English language over the centuries. In this final chapter, I will show you how we can bring together everything that we have learnt so far to analyse authentic constructs. As you know, outside of textbooks, constructs are often going to be fairly complex and will involve the activation of a multitude of constructions. I will, therefore, introduce you to a representation system (Constructional Approach to Syntactic Analysis; Herbst and Hoffmann 2018) that allows us to illustrate the various constructions that combine to produce complex utterances. Then, I will conclude the book by briefly discussing some phenomena that I, personally, think are currently emerging as ‘hot topics’ in constructionist research.

All Construction Grammar approaches consider constructions to be the central units of language. On top of that, virtually all approaches subscribe to Goldberg’s (2013) four tenets of (i) the lexicon–syntax continuum, (ii) the taxonomic network of organization of the constructicon, (iii) surface structure-orientation and (iv) cross-linguistic variability and generalization. Nevertheless, the various Construction Grammar approaches also differ on a couple of crucial points that result in a wide range of representational formats. In this chapter, I will outline the major differences between non-usage-based (such as Berkley Construction Grammar and Sign-Based Construction Grammar) and usage-based approaches (Parallel Architecture, Cognitive Construction Grammar, Embodied Construction Grammar, Fluid Construction Grammar and Radical Construction Grammar). Finally, the chapter will also address the question as to how the meaning pole of constructions is analysed in the various approaches – which ranges from semantic paraphrases (Cognitive Construction Grammar) over first-order predicate logic (Fluid Construction Grammar) to Frame-based approaches (Sign-based Construction Grammar).

In the previous chapter, we have seen how constructional templates can be used to license new words. But what actually is a word? I know that this might seem like a very trivial question, yet as we will see, this is one of those issues that the more you think about, the less straightforward the answer becomes. In this chapter, we will therefore take a closer look at word constructions as well as the larger compositional constructions that they can occur in (phrasal constructions). On top of that, we will also focus on constructions that appear to consist of more than one word and yet have a single non-compositional MEANING that clearly goes beyond the meaning of all its elements – idioms. In fact, since the very first Construction Grammar publications dealt with the analytic problems that idioms posed for the dominant syntactic theories of the time, this will also enable us to trace the historical development “from idioms to construction grammar” (Croft and Cruse 2004: 225).

In this chapter, we will explore constructionist approaches to language variation and change in English. As part of this, we will see how classic sociolinguistic studies can be accounted for by a usage-based constructionist perspective. Then, we will look at how Construction Grammar offers a cognitive explanation of the evolution of new first and second language varieties of English around the world. Finally, you will learn how Construction Grammar approaches analyse diachronic linguistic change.