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A Construction Grammar of the English Language
CASA – a Constructionist Approach to Syntactic Analysis
The present book provides an introduction to the linguistic model of Construction Grammar, offering a full analysis of the grammar of the English language. It covers all levels of morpho-syntactic form-meaning units: including sentence types, tense and aspect, argument structure, phrases, idioms, word and morphological constructions.
In line with its usage-based approach, all constructions are discussed using authentic corpus examples. In order to illustrate how constructions can be learnt, the book draws on authentic data from child language. Furthermore, corpus analysis is used to show which lexical items typically occur in the slots of constructions and make up their ‘collo-profile’.
A key feature of the book is that it develops a systematic method for showing how constructions combine to form actual utterances. For this purpose, so-called ‘construction grids’ are developed which contain all the constructions that make up even the most complex sentences and show points of overlap between them.
In line with its usage-based approach, all constructions are discussed using authentic corpus examples. In order to illustrate how constructions can be learnt, the book draws on authentic data from child language. Furthermore, corpus analysis is used to show which lexical items typically occur in the slots of constructions and make up their ‘collo-profile’.
A key feature of the book is that it develops a systematic method for showing how constructions combine to form actual utterances. For this purpose, so-called ‘construction grids’ are developed which contain all the constructions that make up even the most complex sentences and show points of overlap between them.
[Cognitive Linguistics in Practice, 5] 2024. xv, 315 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Published online on 16 October 2024
Published online on 16 October 2024
© John Benjamins
Table of Contents
- Preface | pp. xv–xvi
- Chapter 1. Introduction | pp. 1–21
- Chapter 2. Conventional wisdom: A chapter some readers might want to skip | pp. 22–29
- Chapter 3. Sentence type constructions | pp. 30–42
- Chapter 4. The roles of verbs | pp. 43–69
- Chapter 5. Who does what to whom? Argument structure constructions | pp. 70–131
- Chapter 6. Referring to, describing and evaluating things: Nominal constructions | pp. 132–161
- Chapter 7. Using adjectives to evaluate, describe and compare | pp. 162–175
- Chapter 8. Where, when and how: Specification of circumstances | pp. 176–191
- Chapter 9. Joining ideas and clauses | pp. 192–202
- Chapter 10. Information structure constructions | pp. 203–214
- Chapter 11. Speaking idiomatically: Prefabricated chunks as low-level constructions | pp. 215–230
- Chapter 12. Solving problems with Construction Grammar | pp. 231–238
- Chapter 13. Words as constructions in a constructional network | pp. 239–264
- Chapter 14. Word order | pp. 265–274
- Chapter 15. Putting it all together: Blending constructions | pp. 275–285
- References | pp. 287–299
- Appendixes
- Appendix I. List of argument and other semantic roles | pp. 302–304
- Index | pp. 311–315
“The book ultimately has much to offer to both target audiences: for students, it provides a good entry point both to syntactic analysis and to constructionist approaches to language; for Construction Grammarians, especially those interested in constructicography, it offers interesting theoretical, methodological and terminological considerations. Despite the small criticisms mentioned above, we remain positive that the CASA book provides a worthwhile and welcome addition to the constructionist literature, especially in conjunction with the CASA website and the broader constructicographic enterprise pursued by the authors, all while situating itself in a didactic niche that has been previously unoccupied.”
Bastian Bunzeck, University of Bielefeld and Stefan Hartmann, Heinrich Heine University, in English Language and Linguistics (2025).
Cited by (13)
Cited by 13 other publications
Herbst, Thomas & Thorsten Piske
2026. Pedagogical construction grammar — the fashion of the day?. Pedagogical Linguistics 7:1 ► pp. 1 ff.
Karamysheva, Iryna
Lyngfelt, Benjamin, Julia Prentice & Azizah Lenté Degez
2026. Constructicons as resources for language pedagogy — and vice versa
. Pedagogical Linguistics 7:1 ► pp. 38 ff.
Bloom, Barthe & Thomas Herbst
Herbst, Thomas
Stefanowitsch, Anatol
Şirin, İzzet
Uhrig, Peter & Thomas Herbst
Hoffmann, Thomas
Hoffmann, Thomas
Klotz, Michael, Brigitta Mittmann, Christina Sanchez-Stockhammer & Peter Uhrig
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 16 march 2026. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.