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In:Exploring Future Paths for Historical Sociolinguistics
Edited by Tanja Säily, Arja Nurmi, Minna Palander-Collin and Anita Auer
[Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics 7] 2017
► pp. 217–237

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Historical sociolinguistics and construction grammar

From mutual challenges to mutual benefits

Published online: 19 December 2017
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/ahs.7.09hil
This paper makes the case that Historical Sociolinguistics holds critical implications for Construction Grammar, which in return can contribute ideas to the study of sociolinguistic change. The relation of these approaches is discussed from two angles. On the one hand, there are theoretical and methodological divergences that translate into mutual challenges. On the other hand, there are common goals and assumptions that make it worthwhile to combine the perspectives. The advantages and limitations of such a combined approach are illustrated on the basis of a corpus-based study of an idiomatic schema that is referred to as the sarcastic much? construction in this paper.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Mutual challenges
  • 3.Mutual benefits
  • 4.An example analysis: sarcastic much?
  • 5.Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
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2025. Construction Grammar. In The Cambridge Handbook of Construction Grammar, ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Hilpert, Martin
2025. Construction Grammar and English Historical Linguistics. In The New Cambridge History of the English Language, ► pp. 796 ff. DOI logo
Säily, Tanja, Martin Hilpert & Jukka Suomela
2024. New approaches to investigating change in derivational productivity. In Crossing Boundaries through Corpora [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 119], ► pp. 8 ff. DOI logo
Hennecke, Inga & Evelyn Wiesinger
2023. Construction Grammar meets Hispanic linguistics. In Constructions in Spanish [Constructional Approaches to Language, 34], ► pp. 2 ff. DOI logo
Wiesinger, Evelyn
2023. On the role of verb-particle constructions in Old Spanish. In Constructions in Spanish [Constructional Approaches to Language, 34], ► pp. 309 ff. DOI logo
Hilpert, Martin & Samuel Bourgeois
2020. Intersubjectification in constructional change. Constructions and Frames 12:1 ► pp. 96 ff. DOI logo
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2022. Intersubjectification in constructional change. In Construction Grammar across Borders [Benjamins Current Topics, 122], ► pp. 95 ff. DOI logo
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