Book contents
- The Cambridge Handbook of Construction Grammar
- Cambridge Handbooks in Language and Linguistics
- The Cambridge Handbook of Construction Grammar
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Construction Grammar
- Part I The Constructional View of Language
- Part II Methodological and Empirical Foundations of Constructional Research
- Part III Case Studies in Constructional Morphosyntax
- 10 Different Constructional Approaches in Practice
- 11 Syntactic Innovation and Functional Amalgams
- 12 Constructions in Spoken Interaction
- Part IV Multimodality and Construction Grammar
- Part V Constructions in Sociocultural and Typological Variation
- Part VI Constructional Applications
- Index of Terms
- Index of Languages
- Index of Constructions
- References
11 - Syntactic Innovation and Functional Amalgams
from Part III - Case Studies in Constructional Morphosyntax
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 January 2025
Book contents
- The Cambridge Handbook of Construction Grammar
- Cambridge Handbooks in Language and Linguistics
- The Cambridge Handbook of Construction Grammar
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Construction Grammar
- Part I The Constructional View of Language
- Part II Methodological and Empirical Foundations of Constructional Research
- Part III Case Studies in Constructional Morphosyntax
- 10 Different Constructional Approaches in Practice
- 11 Syntactic Innovation and Functional Amalgams
- 12 Constructions in Spoken Interaction
- Part IV Multimodality and Construction Grammar
- Part V Constructions in Sociocultural and Typological Variation
- Part VI Constructional Applications
- Index of Terms
- Index of Languages
- Index of Constructions
- References
Summary
This chapter examines a class of grammatical patterns called functional amalgams, for example, That’s the real issue is that you never really know and I have a friend in the Bay Area is a painter. Distinct from syntactic blends, functional amalgams are innovative constructions that combine otherwise incompatible subparts of other constructions. These combinations are not licensed by the canonical phrase-structure rules of the language and may appear illogical or redundant. However, unlike speech errors, functional amalgams are purposeful productions and serve to distribute across constituents units of meaning that would otherwise coalesce in a single constituent sign of a complex linguistic expression. We examine the properties that distinguish functional amalgams from syntactic amalgams, and explore the syntactic, semantic, and discourse-pragmatic features of functional amalgams, using an array of English sentence patterns as illustrations and showing why amalgams qualify as constructions in the sense of Construction Grammar. Finally, we extend this conception of functional amalgams to complex words, asking how selection properties of derivational endings may lead to coerced meanings.
Keywords
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Handbook of Construction Grammar , pp. 290 - 308Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2025
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