The Constructicon
Taxonomies and Networks

Describes how the inheritance model of construction grammar has evolved into a multidimensional network approach in usage-based linguistics.

Holger Diessel (Author)

9781009327817, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 22 June 2023

102 pages
23 x 15.3 x 0.6 cm, 0.163 kg

'[An] excellent guide to current thinking about cognitive representations in usage-based construction grammar that brings it into much stronger, though incomplete alignment with connectionist / neural network models of cognition.' Ellena Moriarty, LINGUIST List

It is one of the central claims of construction grammar that constructions are organized in some kind of network, commonly referred to as the constructicon. In the classical model of construction grammar, developed by Berkeley linguists in the 1990s, the constructicon is an inheritance network of taxonomically related grammatical patterns. However, recent research in usage-based linguistics has expanded the classical inheritance model into a multidimensional network approach in which constructions are interrelated by multiple types of associations. The multidimensional network approach challenges longstanding assumptions of linguistic research and calls for a reorganization of the constructivist approach. This Element describes how the conception of the constructicon has changed in recent years and elaborates on some central claims of the multidimensional network approach.

1. Introduction
2. From taxonomies to networks
3. Constructions as networks
4. Syntactic categories as networks
5. The global network: paradigms, families and neighborhoods
6. Concluding remarks.

Subject Areas: Grammar, syntax & morphology [CFK]