Syllabus
Major topics (a.k.a. rough syllabus):
Functional-cognitive vs. formal theories of grammar
Arguments for CxG
Basic concepts and terminology
Nominal constructions
Valence constructions
Phrasal syntax (phrases, clauses, sentences)
Constructional maps
Diachronic analysis in CxG
Annotation
This course is a primer in 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.
We will also examine the ways in which variation in grammatical form can be systematically captured and explained. Using material from English, Czech, and from various less familiar languages, we will explore what typologically different grammars share and in what sense the constructional approach can serve as a universal model of language.