Nostalgia for the future of Construction Grammar

Abstract Construction Grammar is a nomadic family of theoretical approaches whose members are constantly moving in various directions. The diversity in construction-based approaches is a clear sign of a thriving and tolerant research community, but it also risks muddying the waters, leading to potential confusion. In this paper, I argue that the main source of confusion about Construction Grammar stems from the community’s gradual evolution from the traditional view of languages as static, idealized entities (the “aggregate” perspective) to the view of language as a complex adaptive system (the “population” perspective). While the aggregate perspective abstracts away as much as possible from variation and language usage, the population perspective greatly emphasizes the dynamics of language and situated communicative interactions. This paper illustrates what it means to perform constructional analyses from the population perspective; and argues that Construction Grammar is particularly well-positioned to lead the way in this new kind of linguistics, indicating that our community has a bright future ahead.