Plenary speaker

Alexander Bergs (Osnabrück University, Germany)

website: www.alexanderbergs.de

From sound symbolism to texts: constructions all the way!

Abstract:

Construction Grammar as a linguistic framework has been applied extensively in syntactic analyses. But can it be more than just that - a primarily syntactic model? In this paper I argue that Construction Grammar may actually be a general model of cognition and that many linguistic phenomena at different levels may be described, analyzed, and explained in constructional terms. By way of examples, this paper will showcase traditional constructional analyses next to constructional genres and constructional sound patterns, in order to illustrate how general cognitive (constructional) mechanisms and factors such as pattern recognition, extravagance and intention reading may be the building blocks of our linguisticality.