William Croft’s approach to constructions in comparison with the system of constructions in the Russian Constructicon

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Abstract

In this article, we discuss the approach to description of constructions adopted in William Croft’s monograph “Morphosyntax. Constructions of the World’s languages” (2022) and compare it to the approach to description and classification that is used in the Russian Constructicon. We conclude that Croft’s system and the Russian Constructicon show several substantial differences. First, Croft’s approach is based on the notion of Comparative Concepts and on an a priori classification of grammatical domains. By contrast, in the Russian Constructicon, a bottom-up approach is taken: it presupposes collecting the most representative inventory of constructions and, then, creating a system for classifying them. Second, the Russian Constructicon represents properties of constructions as a system of tags, where a construction can bear multiple tags, while Croft does not discuss cases of multiple tagging or grammatical class intersection. Finally, Croft’s system focuses on the core of grammar and includes mainly those values that are grammaticalized, while in the Russian Constructicon, attention is given not only to grammatical constructions, but also to constructions that can be termed ‘quasi-grammatical’ or ‘lexicalized’ — they have narrow semantics and combinational properties (here belong, for instance, iterative / frequentative constructions, such as to i delo ‘frequently’, and constructions with the terminative / resultative meaning, such as svoё otguljal ‘[he] is done with having fun’).

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About the authors

Valentina A. Zhukova

UiT The Arctic University of Norway

Author for correspondence.
Email: valentina.a.zhukova@uit.no
Norway, Tromsø

Alexander B. Letuchiy

HSE University; Vinogradov Russian Language Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences

Email: alexander.letuchiy@gmail.com
Russian Federation, Moscow; Moscow

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