Grammatical categories as paradigms in Construction Grammar

Abstract

This squib discusses the question whether Construction Grammar can account for the assumption of universal grammatical categories (Bybee, Perkins, and Pagliuca 1994) that are prone to language change, e.g. tense. Most publications in Construction Grammar tackle individual constructions, such as the way-construction (Jackendoff 1990). But it remains unclear how grammatical categories as a universal phenomenon can be described in constructionist terms. We propose that there is a way to (a) describe grammatical categories, which per definition are encoded paradigmatically, as constructions themselves and (b) to thereby strengthen the assumption of a set of universal grammatical categories.