Construction Morphology and inflection

Abstract

Construction Grammar is a linguistic framework which postulates that all grammar is based on a single, relatively simple entity, the construction, defined as a conventionalized mapping between a form and a meaning. Construction Morphology is a sub-theory of Construction Grammar which deals with the word-level domain. This article shows how Construction Morphology can account for the full range of inflectional types. It argues that Construction Morphology falls into the type of morphological theory which Stump (2001) has designated ‘inferential—realizational’, and which he contends is the only kind of theory that accounts for all the known facts of morphology.