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Article published In: The Wealth and Breadth of Construction-Based Research:
Edited by Timothy Colleman, Frank Brisard, Astrid De Wit, Renata Enghels, Nikos Koutsoukos, Tanja Mortelmans and María Sol Sansiñena
[Belgian Journal of Linguistics 34] 2020
► pp. 122–134

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Strange sounds, familiar words

Interlingual decoding from a CxG perspective

 | Kiel University
Published online: 28 May 2021
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/bjl.00040.hag
Abstract
When communicating across closely related languages or varieties (e.g. in interdialectal communication or in regions such as Mainland Scandinavia), speakers have to learn how to decode words that show partial phonological differences from the equivalents in their L1. Although contact situations like these are rather common, interlingual decoding has scarcely been addressed in the CxG literature. As a contribution to this field of research, the paper discusses how (a particular stage in) emerging receptive multilingualism can be modelled from a CxG perspective. Specifically, it deals with the idea that repeated interlingual decoding generates partially schematic cross-linguistic constructions mirroring the speaker’s knowledge about sound correspondences, as suggested by Diasystematic Construction Grammar (. 2019. “Phonological Schematicity in Multilingual Constructions: A Diasystematic Perspective on Lexical Form.” Word Structure 12 (3): 334–352. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar).
Article outline
  • 1.Learning to decode across linguistic boundaries
  • 2.An ordinary (but underinvestigated) phenomenon
  • 3.Perspective and research questions
  • 4.Diasystematic construction grammar
  • 5.Example analysis
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (22)
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Cited by (4)

Cited by four other publications

Boas, Hans C. & Steffen Höder
2025. Diasystematic Construction Grammar at work. In Constructions in Contact 3 [Constructional Approaches to Language, 40], ► pp. 22 ff. DOI logo
Hagel, Anna
2025. Schemas all the way down?. In Constructions in Contact 3 [Constructional Approaches to Language, 40], ► pp. 291 ff. DOI logo
Morin, Cameron
2025. Are phonemes constructions?. Constructions and Frames DOI logo
Höder, Steffen
2023. The Devil is in the schema. In Constructional Approaches to Nordic Languages [Constructional Approaches to Language, 37], ► pp. 81 ff. DOI logo

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