Constructions, grammatical status and morphologization

Abstract

This paper critically explores the question of what it means for a construction to be grammatical. The paper engages with some of the observations made in the grammaticalization literature, that elements in grammatical constructions undergo morphologization, and aims to show that grammatical status and morphologization need not be aligned. A number of parameters along which the grammatical status of a multiword expression can vary are proposed and data illustrating different aspects of these parameters are discussed in detail. The data are used to argue that grammatical status is complex and multifaceted and linked not only to the formal properties of a construction, but also to its semantics and the relationship it has with other grammatical forms (e.g. inflected forms) in a given language.