Syllabus
Main topics:
- Functional-cognitive vs. formal theories of grammar
- Arguments for Construction Grammar
- Issues in subordination
- Issues in argument structure
- Issues in grammatical change
Annotation
This course is intended to solidify basic understanding of the inner workings of Construction Grammar (CxG), a cognitively and functionally oriented framework in which syntactic representations are understood as conventionalized associations between form and function. Focus will be on the framework’s analytic methods and on articulating generalizations about speakers’ linguistic knowledge, using material primarily from English and Czech.
We will also examine the ways in which variation in grammatical form can be systematically captured and explained, and consider the question in what sense the constructional approach can serve as a universal model of language.