Defining grammatical constructions as a linguistic sign: The case of periphrastic progressives in the Germanic languages

Abstract

In typological and contrastive investigations, constructions that designate similar categories of meaning in different languages are often assigned to the same grammatical category. In order for a linguistic investigation to be truly comparative, however, it is not enough for the constructions that are being compared to be mere translation equivalents: they must be identifiable as genuine grammatical constructions in the languages in question. This problem becomes particularly acute with periphrastic constructions, as on formal grounds they cannot always be easily distinguished from free syntactic combinations. This article seeks to define periphrastic constructions on the basis of a renewed interpretation of Saussure's (1916) theory of the linguistic sign. It is argued that in order for periphrastic grammatical constructions to constitute linguistic signs in their own right they must meet the same criteria as lexemes or morphemes, i.e. they must be combinations of a specific linguistic content with specific formal characteristics. This definition is applied to several constructions in the Germanic languages that have been treated as progressives in the literature; the empirical evidence shows that the status of some of them as linguistic signs, and hence as genuine grammatical constructions, is questionable.