Talk by Prof. Dr. Holger Diessel at the RTG
The Constructicon in Cross-Linguistic Perspective
On November 27th, 2024, our Research Training Group was honored to host Prof. Holger Diessel from Friedrich Schiller University Jena, who delivered an insightful presentation entitled “The Constructicon in Cross-Linguistic Perspective” at the FAU.
Prof. Diessel’s talk offered a fresh perspective on how the network structure of the constructicon can serve as a framework for analyzing cross-linguistic patterns, with particular focus on the Greenbergian word order correlations.
Drawing on his research in usage-based construction grammar, Prof. Diessel challenged traditional views of the constructicon. While in classical Construction Grammar, the constructicon has been conceptualized as a taxonomy of hierarchically related grammatical patterns, Prof. Diessel, in line with recent research trends, argued for the importance of horizontal relations within this network.
Key points from his presentation included:
- Horizontal relations in the constructicon are motivated by two general concepts of perception: similarity and contrast
- These concepts of similarity and contrast define two general properties of the constructicon: construction families and paradigms
- The network organization of the constructicon provides a particularly useful framework for analyzing two fundamental findings in typology: markedness and word order correlations
One of the most compelling aspects of the talk was Prof. Diessel’s explanation of how word order correlations are created through the processes of grammaticalization and analogy. As he demonstrated through network diagrams, these processes affect individual constructions, resulting in word order correlations that constitute a network or family of horizontally related constructions.
The presentation was concluded by illustrating how different syntactic patterns (such as V-O/O-V, Aux-V/V-Aux, N-Rel/Rel-N) form a network of related constructions across languages. This network approach offers a more subtle understanding of typological patterns than the traditional binary distinction between head-initial and head-final languages.