This volume is based on a workshop we organized as part of the Annual Meeting of the German Linguistic Society (DGfS) in 2007. The workshop focused on the role of syntax in the emergence of new genres and brought together insights from research that uses the concept of genre as a reference-point for the description (and, possibly, explanation) of patterns of morphosyntactic variation.
During most of the 20th century, the classical Saussurean distinction between language use and language structure remained untranscendable in much linguistic theory. The dominant view, propagated in particular by generative grammar, was that there are structural facts and usage facts, and that in principle the former are independent of, and can be described in complete isolation from, the latter. With the appearance of
functional-cognitive approaches on the scene, this view has been challenged.
Stylistics is the study of the ways in which meaning is created through language in literature as well as in other types of text. To this end, stylisticians use linguistic models, theories and frameworks as their analytical tools in order to describe and explain how and why a text works as it does, and how we come from the words on the page to its meaning. The analysis typically focuses qualitatively or quantitatively on the phonological,
lexical, grammatical, semantic, pragmatic or discoursal features of texts, on the cognitive aspects involved in the processing of those features by the reader as well as on various combinations of these.
Grammatical Constructions: Back to the roots (Constructional Approaches to Language)
This volume brings into focus the conceptual roots of the notion ‘grammatical construction’ as the theoretical entity that constitutes the backbone of Construction Grammar, a unique grammatical model in which grammatical constructions have the status of elementary building blocks of human language. By exploring the analytic potential and applicability of this notion, the contributions illustrate some of the fundamental concerns of constructional research.
Language is people talking and writing. It is a concrete, tangible aspect of human behaviour. So, if we want to deepen our understanding of language, our best way forward is to apply the same empirical techniques which have deepened our understanding of other observable aspects of the universe during the four centuries since Galileo. Listen, look.
