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Article published In: Grammar, usage and discourse: Functional studies offered to Kristin Davidse
Edited by Lieven Vandelanotte, Wout Van Praet and Lieselotte Brems
[English Text Construction 10:2] 2017
► pp. 199–232

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There’s grammar and there’s grammar just as there’s usage and there’s usage

 | Aarhus University
Published online: 19 October 2017
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https://doi.org/10.1075/etc.10.2.02mcg
Usage-based grammars have become increasingly prominent in recent years. In these theories usage is construed quantitatively and serves as a circumstance for the emergence and development of grammar. This paper argues that usage can go deeper than this, and may become a component of the semiotic resources of a language and a part of grammar. However, this semioticisation is restricted to interpersonal grammar, those semiotic resources of grammar that construe interpersonal meaning. Three apparently unrelated grammatical phenomena – optionality of grammatical markers, insubordination, and a range of repetition-based constructions – are shown to be unified by the notions of grammaticalised usage and interpersonal grammar. This has implications for the nature of interpersonal grammar: it represents the codification of the triadic actional frame, the basis of which is the idea that action on an interlocutor is effected via action on linguistic units.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Three domains of grammar where usage may be fundamental
    • 2.1Optionality of grammatical markers
    • 2.2Insubordination
    • 2.3Repetition-based constructions
  • 3.Usage as a grammatical system
    • 3.1The limitations of unit and relational descriptions
    • 3.2Usage as interpersonal grammar
    • 3.3The range and extent of usage in grammar
  • 4.A reconsideration of interpersonal grammar
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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