Grammatical Construction Theory and the Familiar Dichotomies

Publisher Summary This chapter presents the grammatical construction theory and the familiar dichotomies. Grammatical Construction Theory differs from a number of other frameworks, first in its insistence that syntactic patterns are often tightly associated with interpretation instructions, but secondly, in that it takes as a major part of its assignment the task of accounting for the workings of complex grammatical constructions as well as simple ones. The chapter only focuses on the structures that can be fully understood in terms of their constituent elements, but also in constructions that are complex to begin with. In Grammatical Construction Theory, constructions are taken as structured but not strictly decomposable, that is, they are taken as having properties in the manner of the properties of a gestalt in Gestalt Psychology. The properties of a construction may often be seen as motivated by, but they do not necessarily follow from any facts about their composition.