Contrastive diachronic construction grammar

Abstract

Constructionist approaches to historical linguistics, increasingly referred to as “diachronic construction grammar”, (should) take a holistic, cognitively adequate, view at shifts in the constructional resources of languages. Various strands of research can be detected in diachronic construction grammar. One of them grew out of grammaticalization theory, but differs from orthodox grammaticalization theory in that it places the development of constructions in the context of the evolution of formally and/or functionally similar patterns. A contrastive diachronic construction grammatical approach does not merely throw up interesting similarities and differences in the evolution of cognate areas of the constructional taxonomies of different languages which are in need of explanation, and point to explanations for them that make reference to differences in relevant parts of their constructicons, but can also lead to language contact explanations. This state-of-the-art paper situates research taking such an approach within the wider diachronic construction grammatical enterprise.