Expressivity and Construction Grammar

Abstract This chapter provides an overview of the role of expressivity in Construction Grammar (CxG). Section 15.1 sketches the basic tenets of CxG and outlines a concept of expressivity. Section 15.2 discusses the notion of meaning as held in CxG, including some recent controversies, and relates it to the notion of expressivity and to general assumptions of the semantics/pragmatics distinction. It is shown that on a CxG view, expressive aspects are “pragmatic” aspects that have been conventionalized in (syntactic) constructions. Section 15.3 presents in more detail a variety of classic and recent CxG studies of expressive phenomena within the realm of sentence type constructions, phrasal constructions, discourse markers, and word formation. Section 15.4 summarizes the findings and points to some newly emerging fields of research.