Constructions are patterns and so are fixed expressions

In traditional theories of syntax, there are words, rules of syntactic combination that combine words and multiword expressions (like fill the bill and with flying colors) that sit uncomfortably in between, having less internal cohesion than words and far fewer potential permutations than syntactic rules. Construction Grammar replaces these categorical distinctions with a continuum. In Construction Grammar, the grammar is conceived as an inventory of form-function-meaning complexes of varying degrees of internal complexity and lexical fixity (Fillmore et al. 1988, Kay 1992, Kay and Michaelis 2012, Michaelis 2017). We will refer to this continuum as the continuum of idiomaticity. The complexes range from single lexemes like the verb deign to multiword expressions like the VP sweep x under the rug to syntactic templates lacking any lexical content, like that used to form polar interrogative questions. But despite what has been implied in some constructionist works (Boas 2010, Dabrowska 2009), words and constructions are two different things. A construction is a description of a class of language objects (constructs or, equivalently mother-daughter configurations), while a word is a language object, a type of sign (Sag 2012).2 Even if we were to