Review: Martin Hilpert. Constructional change in English. Developments in allomorphy, word formation, and syntax

Abstract

Diachronic linguistics has recently experienced a new impetus from Construction Grammar approaches to language change (for an overview of diachronic research in this field see Traugott and Trousdale 2013: 39–40). In this context, Martin Hilpert’s research monograph on constructional change in English provides a theoretically-informed as well as empirically-grounded account of language change in allomorphy, derivational morphology and syntax. The case studies contained in this book thus also consider levels of language structure below the level of syntax (so far the main focus of attention in diachronic Construction Grammar) and thereby contribute to the theoretical discussion of constructions and their abstract representation in the language users’ minds. What is more, the book expertly highlights the insights gained by corpus linguistic methodologies for theory-building and the statistical evaluation of diachronic corpus data. In the introductory chapter, the author concisely sketches the theoretical preliminaries of his Construction Grammar approach to language change, defining constructional change as follows: