Abstract
The talk addresses some of the newly raised issues in sorting out the relationship between Construction Grammar, grammatical change, and grammaticalization, including the merit of possibly differentiating (as suggested by Smirnova 2011) between 'constructional change' and 'constructionalization' (e.g. Trousdale 2010, Traugott and Trausdale 2010, Rosenbach 2010, Fried to appear) as distinct types of change involving constructions.
The challenge is to clarify these concepts, spelling out more clearly and precisely the role of constructions in grammatical reorganization. To talk focuses on demonstrating that a systematic examination of irregular morphology can also enrich our understanding of the anatomy of grammatical change and give us a basis for arguing that emphasis on the constructional (often taken only as 'holistic') dimension should not lead us away from studying and identifying also the micro-changes that often involve the internal features of a construction.