Construction Grammar Network -Page of AlexBergs

• Name: Alexander Bergs
• Email: _email0
• Group: CxGGroup
• Affiliation: University of Osnabrück
• Field of Interest: Language Change

• Project: I would like to discuss the pros and cons of modelling linguistic change in a construction grammar framework. The questions that have struck me in particular are:

• • How and why do new constructions arise (if at all)?
  • How any why do constructions change (in the sense of form-function remappings)?
  • How and why are constructions deconstructed (e.g. in language attrition, but also in regular change processes)?

Question (b) of course includes the question why some constructions do not change, i.e. remain stable over very loing periods of time.

My main areas of research at the moment are light verb constructions in English from c. 1200-today and future constructions in present-day English.

• Some Publications:

1. 1. Modern Scots. 2nd edition, completely revised and updated. München/Newcastle: Lincom Europa.

1. 1. Social Networks and Historical Sociolinguistics: Morphosyntactic Variation in the Paston Letters. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

1. 1. “What if one man’s lexicon were another man’s syntax: A new approach to relative who”. Folia Linguistica Historica 24.

1. 1. “The discourse-pragmatics of ‚demonstrative which’”. In: Matti Peikola, Risto Hiltunen and Janne Skaffari (eds). Opening Windows on Texts and Discourses of the Past. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

1. 1. Holismus und Individualismus in den Wissenschaften. (ed., with Soelve I. Curdts). Frankfurt a.M., New York: Peter Lang.

1. 1. „Holismus und Individualismus in der Linguistik: Ein Überblick“. In: Alexander Bergs, Soelve I. Curdts (eds). Holismus und Individualismus in den Wissenschaften. Frankfurt/M.: Peter Lang. 143-161.

1. 1. “The Role of Markedness in the Actuation and Actualisation of Linguistic Change”. In: Henning Andersen (ed). Actualization: Patterns of Linguistic Change. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 79-94. (with Dieter Stein)