Construction Grammar and spoken language:: The case of pragmatic particles

There has been growing interest in studying the relation between how the notion of 'construction' is used in Construction Grammar (CxG) and other constructional approaches to grammar, and how it is used in Conversation Analysis and other interactional, dialogic approaches to language and communication. In this study we show that CxG is well equipped to address the complexities of spoken language, if one allows the notion of construction to be extended in a dialogical direction. The study tests the feasibility of using CxG as a framework that can provide adequate analyses and explanations of grammatical patterns found in spoken language, by studying a number of pragmatic particles as form-function constellations in Czech and Solv. The analysis thus also leads to systematizing the pragmatics and discourse toolboxes of CxG and such systematization, in turn, provides a deeper and more rigorous basis for the understanding of the pragmatic particles under investigation. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.