Constructions in Contact

Constructional perspectives on contact phenomena in Germanic languages

Editors

Hans C. Boas

| University of Texas at Austin

Steffen Höder

| Kiel University

Hardbound – Available

ISBN 9789027201713 | EUR 99.00 | USD 149.00

e-Book –

ISBN 9789027263308 | EUR 99.00 | USD 149.00

The last three decades have seen the emergence of Construction Grammar as a major research paradigm in linguistics. At the same time, very few researchers have taken a constructionist perspective on language contact phenomena. This volume brings together, for the first time, a broad range of original contributions providing insights into language contact phenomena from a constructionist perspective. Focusing primarily on Germanic languages, the papers in this volume demonstrate how the notion of construction can be fruitfully applied to investigate how a range of different language contact phenomena can be systematically analyzed from the perspectives of both form and meaning.

[Constructional Approaches to Language, 24] 2018. vi, 316 pp.

Publishing status: Available

https://doi.org/10.1075/cal.24

Table of Contents

Part I. Constructions in contact	5–70
Preface	1
Construction Grammar and language contact: An introduction Hans C. Boas and Steffen Höder	5–36
Grammar is community-specific: Background and basic concepts of Diasystematic Construction Grammar Steffen Höder	37–70
Part II. Constructional variation and change in contact	73–177
Towards a constructional analysis of the progressive aspect in Texas German Margaret Blevins	73–113
Tense and aspect marking in (Low) German perfect constructions based on variety contact Kathrin Weber	115–142
Distributional assimilation in constructional semantics: On contact-related semantic shifts in Afrikaans three-argument constructions Timothy Colleman	143–177
Part III. Item-based patterns and constructional generalizations in contact	181–249
Constructions as cross-linguistic generalizations over instances: Passive patterns in contact Jan-Ola Östman	181–210
Texas German and English word order constructions in contact Ryan Dux	211–249
Part IV. Semantic frames in contact	253–310
A constructional account of the modal particle ‘ja’ in Texas German Hans C. Boas	253–276
Frames change in language contact environments: A case study of schleichen (‘to sneak’) and kommen (‘to come’) David Hünlich	277–310
Author index	311–312
Index of constructions	313
Subject index	315–316

“Language contact used to be a blind spot in Construction Grammar. This exciting volume demonstrates that it is now taking its rightful place in constructional research. The articles in this volume cover argument structure constructions, verbal inflections, split auxiliary systems, modal particles, word order, and motion verbs in languages such as Danish, Afrikaans, Swedish, Turkish, and Texas German. With its broad outlook, the volume not only pushes the boundaries of current constructional research; it also makes it relevant to researchers from other theoretical backgrounds.”

Martin Hilpert, University of Neuchâtel

“A timely contribution from Construction Grammar to the current discussion on language contact and multilingualism. The case studies in this volume are united by a perspective on multilingualism as normalcy that brings language contact phenomena into the mainstream of linguistic analysis where they belong, thus setting a challenge one hopes will be taken up by other frameworks.”

Heike Wiese, University of Potsdam

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