Language change under the view of Functional Linguistics

In this paper, we take as central issue the treatment of linguistic change under the view of Functional Linguistics. Our aim is to draw a brief record of how this grammatical phenomenon has been approached from distinct biases within the scope the functionalist paradigm, attempting to identify advances and improvements of the researches on this subject. Therefore, we first recover studies on grammaticalization in the framework of classic Functional Linguistics, or North-American strand. Afterwards, we focus on the proposal that tried to articulate the study of grammaticalization to the concept of the construction. Finally, we present the constructional approach to linguistic change, especially in terms of Traugott and Trousdale (2013) as well as Hilpert (2013a, 2013b).