Issues in constructional approaches to grammaticalization in English

Abstract

Traditional work on grammaticalization has often focussed on the creation of new atomic linguistic forms; recent research has suggested that grammaticalization may be considered as constructional emergence at an increasingly schematic level. Such a claim relies on an understanding of a construction as both (a) a form-meaning pairing in which the meaning of the whole is not derivable from the parts and (b) a string whose meaning is predictable from its parts, but which occurs with sufficient frequency for it to be stored as a pattern. The article summarises relevant issues in Construction Grammar, outlines aspects of existing research on constructions and grammaticalization in English and discusses some aspects of case loss and grammaticalization in the history of English including the loss of genitive objects. It also examines the place of analogy in grammaticalization. The article therefore presents new approaches to grammaticalization from the perspective of Construction Grammar.