Constructionalization and Constructional Changes

by Elizabeth Closs Traugott and Graeme Trousdale

In this book Elizabeth Closs Traugott and Graeme Trousdale develop an approach to language change based on construction grammar. Construction grammar is a theory of signs construed at the level of the phrase, clause, and complex sentence. Until now it has been mainly synchronic. The authors use it to reconceptualize grammaticalization (the process by which verbs like 'to have' lose semantic content and gain grammatical functions, or word order is...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 019878354X
• ISBN13: 9780198783541
• Release Date: September 2016
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 304 Pages