Evie Coussé

Benjamin Lyngfelt

Steffen Höder

Julia Prentice

This volume presents eight studies of linguistic phenomena in Nordic languages (notably Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish) from a construction grammar perspective. The contributions both deepen and widen the focus of construction grammar applied to Nordic languages by dealing with a variety of topics, such as the constructional network, pseudo-coordination, additional language learning and emerging multilingualism, prototypical semantics in argument structure constructions, and domain-specific discourse and language behavior. The volume showcases the vibrant research activity within part of the construction grammar community dealing with Nordic languages, contributing to the knowledge about the structure, use and learning of these languages, as well as to the field of construction grammar as a whole.

Constructional Approaches to Nordic Languages

Hans C. Boas

The last three decades have seen the emergence of Construction Grammar as a major research paradigm in linguistics. At the same time, very few researchers have taken a constructionist perspective on language contact phenomena. This volume brings together, for the first time, a broad range of original contributions providing insights into language contact phenomena from a constructionist perspective. Focusing primarily on Germanic languages, the papers in this volume demonstrate how the notion of construction can be fruitfully applied to investigate how a range of different language contact phenomena can be systematically analyzed from the perspectives of both form and meaning.

Constructional perspectives on contact phenomena in Germanic languages

Constructions in Contact

Kurt Braunmüller

Karoline Kühl

Convergence, i.e. the increase of inter-systemic similarities, is usually considered the default development in language contact situations. This volume focuses on the other logical possibilities of diachronic development, namely stability and divergence – two well-attested, but under-researched phenomena. The contributions investigate the sociolinguistic and structural factors and mechanisms that lead to or at least reinforce both types of non-convergence, despite of language contact. The contributions cover a wide range of language contact situations, including standard and non-standard varieties.

Factors and Mechanisms

Stability and Divergence in Language Contact

Steffen Höder

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