[Dgkl] CfP: 35 Years of Constructions

[Stefan Hartmann]

Dear colleagues,

Lotte Sommerer and I invite abstract proposals for a special issue of 
the open-access journal "Constructions" (constructions.journals.hhu.de/) 
on "35 Years of Constructions". Please find below the CfP.

Best wishes,

Stefan


*35 Years of Constructions*

**

*The well-known conceptual metaphor ‘THEORIES ARE BUILDINGS’ (Lakoff & 
Johnson, 1980) suggests that theories are developed, rather than born. 
As such, it is impossible to pinpoint an exact point in time when a 
particular theory came to life. Nevertheless, the publication of 
Lakoff’s There study (1987) or Fillmore, Kay & O’Connor’s Let alonepaper 
(1988) can be seen as two of the key starting points of Construction 
Grammar, which has since grown into a broad and diverse field of 
research (e.g. Hoffmann & Trousdale 2013; Boas 2021). The papers just 
mentioned already established a number of central ideas that were later 
spelled out in more detail in Goldberg’s (1995) seminal monograph, which 
arguably consolidated the field and helped establish it as a major 
linguistic framework in its own right.*

*

We want to use the 35th anniversary of Fillmore et al.’s paper as an 
opportunity to discuss the current state-of-the-art in Construction 
Grammar by engaging with constructional Classics (papers and monographs) 
that have shaped the framework over the last decades (e.g. Michaelis and 
Lambrecht 1996; Israel 1996; Jackendoff 1997; Croft 2001; Tomasello 
2003; Cappelle 2006; among many others). We therefore invite authors to 
submit empirical studies as well as non-empirical think-pieces which 
take a cue or concept from these early influential papers and discuss to 
what extent the ideas hold up in more recent approaches, especially in 
the light of new empirical evidence. The idea is that the original 
arguments and ideas are briefly summarized after which the authors 
present their own research (critically) reflecting on the concept(s) 
highlighted and proposed in the key papers. It is also up to the 
contributors to freely choose a  ‘younger’ key paper for discussion and 
explain why they consider their choice seminal.


We invite expressions of interest via an abstract specifying the main 
topic, the chosen key paper or monograph and the type of submission, 
i.e. short think-piece (4000-6000 words) or empirical study (roughly 
10.000 words). Please send this information to constructions at hhu.deuntil 
July 10th, 2022. Notification of acceptance or rejection will be sent 
soon after.


After acceptance, the first draft should be submitted by January 31, 
2023, via the submission interface at constructions.journals.hhu.de 
<https://constructions.journals.hhu.de/>.  The accepted papers will be 
published in a special issue of Constructions (tentative publication 
date end of 2023).



References

Boas, Hans C. 2021. Construction Grammar and Frame Semantics. In Xu Wen 
& John R. Taylor (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Cognitive 
Linguistics, 43–77. New York: Routledge. 
https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351034708.

Capelle, Bert. 2006. Particle placement and the case for 
“allostructions”. Constructions1, 1-28.

Croft, William. 2001. Radical Construction Grammar: Syntactic Theory in 
Typological Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Israel, Michael. 1996. The way constructions grow. In Adele E. Goldberg 
(ed.), Conceptual Structure, Discourse and Language, 217-230. Stanford: 
Stanford University Press.

Jackendoff, Ray. 1997. Twistin’ the night away. Language, 73, 532-559.

Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: 
Chicago University Press.

Lakoff, George. 1987. Woman, Fire and Dangerous Things. What Categories 
Reveal About the Mind. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Michaelis, Laura A & Knud Lambrecht. 1996.  The exclamative sentence 
type in English. In A. E Goldberg(ed.), Conceptual Structure, Discourse 
and Language, 375-389. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Fillmore, Charles J., Paul Kay & Mary Catherine O’Connor. 1988. 
Regularity and Idiomaticity in Grammatical Constructions: The Case of 
Let Alone. Language64(3). 501–538.

Hoffmann, Thomas & Graeme Trousdale. 2013. Construction Grammar: 
Introduction. In Thomas Hoffmann & Graeme Trousdale (eds.), The Oxford 
Handbook of Construction Grammar, 1–12. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Tomasello, Michael. 2003. Constructing a Language. A Usage-based Theory 
of Language Acquisition. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

*

-- 
Jun.-Prof. Dr. Stefan Hartmann
Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf
Abteilung für Germanistische Sprachwissenschaft
Universitätsstraße 1
40225 Düsseldorf
Gebäude: 24.53
Etage/Raum: U1.94
Tel.: +49 211 81-13684
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/dgkl/attachments/20220620/8944bef1/attachment-0001.htm>