Why does kick the bucket mean "to die," when nothing about kicking or buckets seems to have anything to do with mortality? Why does kick the vase not yield the same type of meaning?

Construction Grammar (CxG) resolves this puzzle by proposing that such phrases are themselves stored, conventionalised form-meaning pairings, called constructions. Instead of treating syntax and lexicon as separate modules in language, CxG sees language as an (interconnected) inventory of these constructions which range from morphemes like un-, over word and phrase constructions up to argument structure constructions.

This seminar introduces students to the basic concepts and assumptions of the usage-based framwork of CxG and will cover the basic tenets of CxG and how we can model the language system in this way, but also look into language acquisition, variation and change and pedagogical uses from the perspective of CxG.

Knowledge of basic linguistic concepts and terminology (from the Introduction to English Linguistic classes) is required for this seminar.

Kurs im HIS-LSF