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Why Construction Grammar is radical

John R. Taylor
University of Otago

This article reviews some of the foundational assumptions of Crofts Radical

Construction Grammar. While constructions have featured prominently in
much recent work in cognitive linguistics, Croft adopts the radical view that
constructions are the primary objects of linguistic analysis, with lexical and
syntactic categories being defined with respect to the constructions in which
they occur. This approach reverses the traditional view, according to which
complex expressions are compositionally assembled through syntactic rules
operating over items selected from the lexicon. The ubiquity of idioms,
especially so-called constructional idioms, provides compelling evidence for
the essential correctness of the radical constructional view. The possibility of
a radical constructional approach to phonology is also discussed
Keywords: Radical Construction Grammar, constructional idioms,
compositionality

Radical Construction Grammar

According to its progenitor (Croft 2001), Radical Construction Grammar

(RCG) represents a dramatic break from prior syntactic theories; it does
away with virtually all of the syntactic apparatus that populate other syntactic theories; it goes back to the foundations of syntax in order to make this
new beginning. In brief, it is the syntactic theory to end all syntactic theories
(RCG: 4).1
These are bold words, to be sure, which are bound to raise some hackles.
No one will take kindly to being told that the concepts and categories of their
previous work are all up for revision. Yet, as syntactic theories go, RCG is rather
untypical. It does not promote a new set of theoretical categories, nor does it
require of its practitioners that they become fluent in new terminologies and
Annual Review of Cognitive Linguistics (), .
- John Benjamins Publishing Company

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formalisms. In fact, RCG, rather than a theory of syntax, is perhaps better seen
as an approach to the study of syntax, and, indeed, of language(s) in general.
It offers criteria for a critical understanding of central concepts in syntactic
theory, and sets out a framework within which syntactic investigations are to
be conducted and evaluated.
What, then, is RCG, and what is radical about it? In a nutshell, RCG claims
that constructions are the primary objects over which linguistic analysis is to
be conducted. (For the time being, constructions can be defined as syntactically complex expressions, characterized in both their formal and semantic
aspects.) Now, the traditional view would be to regard constructions as being
assembled out of their component parts in accordance with syntactic rules.
On this view, constructions would not of themselves be of any special interest,
since, barring obviously idiomatic expressions, their properties would be fully
predictable from the properties of their parts and the rules by which the parts
are combined. Although the traditional view is well-entrenched, and to many
might seem to constitute the only viable approach to the study of complex expressions, we need to remind ourselves of the presuppositions which it brings
with it. One of these concerns the need to make a clean distinction between the
lexicon (where the basic, atomic units are listed) and the syntax (which contains the combinatory rules). Moreover, the items over which the rules operate
need to have been already classified as belonging to the various phrasal and lexical categories. This is because the syntactic rules make reference, for the most
part, not to specific constituents as such, i.e., to specific words and phrases, but
to the categories to which the constituents belong, such as noun and noun
phrase. It is generally assumed that the categories in question are quite limited
in number, and are made available by Universal Grammar.
The claim that constructions are primary overturns all of this. Phrasal and
lexical categories, rather than being given in advance, are characterized with
reference to the constructions in which they appear. The import of this reversal
takes on special significance when it is combined with a further claim of RCG,
namely, that constructions are language-specific, in the sense that a construction in one language rarely coincides in its formal and semantic aspects with a
construction in any other language. If constructions are language-specific, and
if the syntactic categories of a language can only be defined with respect to the
constructions in which they occur, it follows that there can be no set of a priori,
universal syntactic categories, such as noun, adjective, noun phrase, transitive clause. These categories are irredeemably language-specific, and, indeed,
construction-specific.

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This is a conclusion which would seem to undermine the very possibility

of a typological investigation of the worlds languages. If there are no universal
categories, there can be no basis for a comparison of the syntactic resources of
different languages. One might wonder whether the thesis of the primacy of
constructions has not led Croft, the typologist, to deny the very foundations of
his own specialism.
Croft avoids this predicament by proposing that behind the languagespecific facts about constructions there exists a universal conceptual space,
accessible to all humans, but which is carved up differently by different languages and whose elements are encoded in language-specific ways in the constructions of each language. Linguistic typology is a viable exercise to the
extent that generalizations can be made about the mappings from universal
conceptual space into the language-specific construals conventionalized in a
languages constructions.
In spite of Crofts claims about the innovative character of RCG, it is not
the case that the theory breaks completely with all that goes before it. For example, the idea of a universal conceptual space has been implicit in much recent
work in language typology (cf. RCG: 8, 108). Second, there is a connection
with Bloomfieldian structuralism of the mid decades of the last century (RCG:
36, 84), with its axiom that the form classes of a language can only be identified with respect to the distributional facts of that language, not on the basis
of a priori assumptions about what kinds of form classes are likely to exist.
And, of course, Croft is not the first linguist to have recognized constructions
as legitimate objects of enquiry. Constructions have featured prominently in
the work of many cognitive linguists, e.g., Langacker (1987, 1991), Goldberg
(1995), Michaelis & Lambrecht (1996), and Kay & Fillmore (1999), to mention
just a few. Croft (RCG: 67, et passim) duly acknowledges his debt to this previous work. The radical nature of RCG derives, rather, from the fact that Croft
not only recognizes constructions as valid objects of enquiry, he takes constructions to be the primary objects of enquiry. This approach has far-reaching
implications, both for the categories that we appeal to in linguistic analysis, and
for our understanding of what constitutes knowledge of a language.
The bulk of Crofts book is devoted to examining some central issues in syntactic and typological research, such as parts of speech, clause
types, grammatical relations, voice, head-dependency relations, and coordination/subordination from the perspective of a universal conceptual space and
its mapping into language-specific constructions. It will be evident that these
issues are of concern, not only to typologists, but to all syntacticians, including

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those who focus on a single language; indeed, many of the issues are discussed
on the basis of English material. Given the range of data cited, and the insights which Croft brings to the discussions, an examination and evaluation of
these chapters would require several review articles. Here, I restrict my attention to a more fundamental issue. The crucial question, in approaching RCG,
is whether the wholesale reversal of the traditional view of the relation between
a construction and its parts is justified. My own view, is that it is. The matter is worth examining, however, if only because the basic ideas of RCG appear to have met with considerable skepticism and opposition (RCG: 47); indeed, Croft (personal communication: 22/11/2002) reports that presentations
of RCG have sometimes elicited incredulous or outraged reactions . . . and not
just from formalists.

. The rise of constructions

The claim that constructions are the primary object of linguistic enquiry begs
the question of what constructions actually are. The term has been much used
in discourse on language. It might be useful, therefore, to begin by reviewing
some of the different ways in which constructions have been understood.
Construction shares with many other derived nominals, such as examination and investigation, a systematic ambiguity between a process and a
result reading. The ambiguity is mentioned by Crystal, in his First Dictionary.
On one reading, construction refers to the process by which a complex grammatical unit [is] constructed out of a set of morphemes by the application of
a set of rules (Crystal 1980: 85). The result reading applies to the product of
the construction process. Here, Crystal draws attention to a further ambiguity:
construction can apply to specific expressions that have been created by applying the rules of the language, such as The man is walking. It can also refer to
general patterns by which expressions of a certain type are constituted; thus,
Determiner+Noun constitutes a noun phrase construction. A construction,
then, would be any internally complex expression whose components bear specific syntagmatic relations with each other. Constructions, thus defined, may be
fully specified, lexically, or they may constitute syntactic patterns, whose slots
can be filled by items of the appropriate category.
This understanding of constructions was quite widespread during the middle decades of the 20th century, especially in the writings of Bloomfieldian
structuralists. Here is Rulon Wells explaining the different readings of old men

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and women in terms of the different constructions which the word string can
instantiate:
In the meaning women and old men the sequence belongs to that construction (noun or noun-phrase + and + noun or noun-phrase) which has
the meaning of conjunction; the first noun-phrase belongs to the construction modifier + noun or noun-phrase. But in the meaning old men and
old women the sequence belongs to the construction modifier + noun or
noun phrase; the noun phrase in turn belongs to the construction noun or
noun-phrase + and + noun or noun-phrase. (Wells 1957/1947: 195)2

It will be noted that the emphasis, here, is on constructions as primarily syntactic objects, that is, complex syntagms of elements combined in prescribed
ways. While meaning may be involved in identifying and distinguishing constructions (as is apparent in the above quotation from Wells), constructions
were not subjected to a semantic characterization as such.
In recent years, the focus has shifted from constructions as syntactically
complex expressions (and patterns for their formation) to a consideration of
their semantic properties. Indeed, a common thread running through recent
work on constructions is the status of constructions as form-meaning pairings (Foolen & van der Leek 2000: ix). This very broad understanding would
render construction virtually synonymous with Langackers symbolic unit
(or even with Saussures linguistic sign), in that any meaningful expression
in a language, whatever its internal complexity and degree of schematicity,
would count as a construction. Thus, individual words and morphemes, fixed
expressions, word classes (to the extent that these can be associated with a semantics), and patterns for the creation of morphologically complex words and
syntactically complex expressions, would all be constructions.
If construction were synonymous with symbolic unit, one of the two
terms might need to be excised from our technical vocabulary, for the sake
of terminological parsimony. Construction, however, may still be a useful
term, to the extent that a more restricted definition is available. A number of
possibilities exist.
One possibility is to restrict the term to expressions which are internally
complex, thereby excluding morphemes (and simplex words). This is Langackers position, as is clear from the following passage:
Grammar involves the syntagmatic combination of morphemes and larger
expressions to form progressively more elaborate symbolic structures. These
structures are called grammatical constructions. Constructions are therefore

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symbolically complex, in the sense of containing two or more symbolic structures as components. (Langacker 1987: 82, authors emphasis)

A second possibility is to apply the term only to form-meaning pairs whose

properties are not fully predictable. This is Goldbergs position:
C is a construction iffdef C is a form-meaning pair <Fi , Si > such that some
aspect of Fi or some aspect of Si is not strictly predictable from Cs component
parts or from other previously established constructions. (Goldberg 1995: 4)

Note that on Goldbergs definition, the word cat, understood as the association of the form [kt] with the concept [cat], would count as a construction, since this particular association of form and meaning cannot be predicted
from anything else in English. Cat would constitute an atomic construction
(RCG: 17). On the other hand, The farmer kills the duckling would presumably
not count as a construction, since the formal and semantic properties of this
clause can be worked out on the basis of knowledge of other constructions
in the language.3 These other constructions include a schematically characterized transitive clause construction, a noun phrase construction, a morphological construction for the agentive noun farmer, atomic constructions
pertaining to the morphemes kill, farm, as well as several others.
Towards the beginning of his book, Croft offers a definition of constructions very similar to Goldbergs: grammatical constructions constitute pairings of form and meaning that are at least partially arbitrary (RCG: 18).4 (We
might note in passing that mention of grammatical constructions, both here
and in the previously cited passage by Langacker, raises the question whether
constructions might also be found in other domains, for example, in phonology. I take up the question of phonological constructions in a later section.)
However, as Crofts presentation progresses, it appears that the criterion of
arbitrariness is being relaxed. The constructional data cited in RCG include
fully predictable expressions, of the kind I didnt sleep (RCG: 26). This suggests
that Croft is appealing more to Langackers definition of a construction as a
syntactically complex object, or, indeed, as any form-meaning pairing.
Given that constructions are the primary objects of enquiry, what are we
entitled to say about them? The question is addressed in the first chapter of
Crofts book. One kind of statement concerns a constructions internal structure, that is, the elements (which themselves may be constructions) of which it
is composed. The second concerns a constructions semantics, whether of the
construction as a whole or any of its various constituents. A third kind of statement concerns the relations which constructions can bear to each other. Two

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kinds of relation are recognized, meronomic (or part-whole) and taxonomic.

According to the meronomic relation, a construction can feature as a part of
a larger, containing construction. For example, the farmer is a construction
which features in the larger construction The farmer kills the duckling. Taxonomic relations have to do with the possibility that a construction can instantiate a more schematically characterized construction. Thus, the farmer instantiates a more schematically characterized noun phrase construction, of the form
[DET N], while The farmer kills the duckling instantiates the more schematically characterized transitive clause construction, of the form [NP1 Vtrans NP2 ],
in which the farmer features as the subject NP.
As a matter of fact, the above remarks misrepresent Crofts position. I am
alluding to the fact that I characterized the schematic construction of which
the farmer is an instance in terms of the formula [DET N] and referred to this
construction as a noun phrase. This, however, is to jump the gun. The formula
[DET N] presupposes that the categories [DET], i.e. determiner, and [N], i.e.
noun, have been identified and characterized in advance. However, if the primacy of constructions is taken seriously, it will apparent that the categories
[DET] and [N] have no prior or independent existence. The categories have to
be defined with respect to the constructions in which they occur. Determiner
emerges as a category only with respect to those schematically characterized
constructions which contain a determiner slot, and the set of determiners is
constituted by those items which are eligible to occur in that slot. Similarly, it
would be getting things the wrong way round to say that a transitive clause is
composed of a transitive verb in association with a subject and a direct object
nominal. This way of describing the matter presupposes that the categories of
transitive verb, subject, and direct object can be identified independently of
the constructions in which they occur and are, once again, given in advance of
our characterization of those constructions. On the contrary, the very notion
of transitive verb emerges from, and has to be defined with respect to, the notion of a transitive clause. It is the existence, in English, of clauses of the kind
The farmer kills the duckling which enables the recognition of the category of
transitive verbs, of which kill is a member.

. The universal and the language-specific

The claim that syntactic categories must be defined with reference to the constructions in which they occur acquires a special significance when we take a

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cross-language perspective. If there is a leitmotif running through Crofts book,

it is that constructions are language-specific. Often, a construction in one language may have no obvious equivalent in another. For example, it may well
be doubted whether so-called ergative languages, such as Yuwaalaraay or Tongan (RCG: 134, 140), indeed have a transitive clause construction at all, consequently, the notions of transitive verb, subject, and direct object may not be
applicable to these languages. And even if we compare English with other accusative languages which do have constructions which are roughly comparable
to the English transitive clause construction, such as French or German, we find
that the range of application of the construction in one of the languages rarely
coincides with its usage range in the others. For example, English remember is
a transitive verb, as shown by the possibility of its occurring in the transitive
construction: I remember the event. In French and German, the situation of remembering something is encoded by different constructions. (This example
is mine, not Crofts.) French employs a reflexive construction with a prepositional complement: Je me souviens de lvnement; German employs a reflexive
with a genitive-marked nominal complement: Ich erinnere mich des Ereignisses.
The characterization of the English transitive clause in terms of a pairing of
formal and semantic properties cannot therefore coincide with the characterization of the transitive clause construction in French and German, since
different verbs are eligible to occur in the respective constructions of the three
languages. Equally, there can be no correspondence between the set of transitive verbs in English and in the other languages. The radical conclusion has to
be that there can be no universally valid notion of transitive clause, transitive
verb, and so on.
Leaving aside cross-language comparisons, one might suppose that the categories within a language are reasonably robust. Croft (RCG: 2947, et passim)
argues strongly that they are not. Consider the possibility that the set of items
which can occupy the X slot (where X stands for any lexical or phrasal category, such as noun, noun phrase) in one construction call this set of items
{X } does not coincide with the set of items that can occupy the X slot in
another construction call this set of items {X }. How do we identify the real
Xs of the language? Is it the items comprising only {X }? Or the items comprising only {X }? Are the real Xs defined by the intersection of {X } and
{X }, or by the sum of {X } and {X }? Any one of these options would fall foul
of what Croft (RCG: 30) calls methodological opportunism, that is, we would
be focusing only on some criteria for what an X is, arbitrarily, and opportunistically, disregarding criteria which would lead to other solutions. We will need

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to recognize as many X categories as there are constructions which contain

an X slot.
Consider, for example, the case of NPs in English (the example, again,
is mine, not Crofts). One construction which appeals to the NP category is
the auxiliary inversion construction. We may characterize this as [AUX NP
XP], where XP represents whatever material (including zero) completes the
construction. Instances of the construction include:
(1) [Should] [the Prime Minister] [resign]?
[Is] [there] [a doctor in the house]?
[Will] [mine] [be replaced]?
[Would] [under the bed] [be a good place to hide it]?

Another construction which makes reference to the NP category is the prenominal possessive construction [NP POSS N], where POSS is the possessive morpheme. Examples of the construction include:
(2) [the Prime Minister]s [poodle]
[the people across the road]s new car
[taxpayers] [money]
[some teenager]s [beat-up car]

Although both constructions contain an NP slot, it is not the case that the
same set of items can occupy these slots. Whereas there, mine, and under the
bed count as NPs for the auxiliary inversion construction, they are excluded
from the NP slot of the possessive construction:
(3) *[there]s [doctor]
*[mine]s [car]
*[under the bed]s [dust]

A characterization of the respective constructions as [AUX NP XP] and [NP

POSS N] is therefore far from optimal, in that these formulas do not allow us
to predict the usage range of the constructions. The set of items that can occur
in the NP slot of the possessive construction, or, alternatively, in the auxiliary
inversion construction, has to be characterized with specific reference to that
construction. We are not entitled to appeal to some generic notion of noun
phrase, valid throughout the English language, or even universally, and defined
independently of the (language-specific) constructions in which it occurs.5
The RCG position in this regard recalls that of Bloomfieldian structuralism, which aimed to identify word classes solely in terms of their distribution

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within a given language.6 Categories are not made available by a Universial

Grammar, nor are the categories of one language transferable to the description of another language. Joos summarized the anti-universalist stance with
his well-known statement that languages could differ from each other without
limit and in unpredictable ways (Joos 1957: 96, cited in RCG: 84), a view which
is also evident in the following passage by Bloomfield:
Features which we think ought to be universal may be absent from the very
next language that becomes accessible. Some features, such as for instance the
distinction of verb-like and noun-like words as separate parts of speech, are
common to many languages but lacking in others. (Bloomfield 1933: 20)

It will be appreciated that the structuralist approach is liable to lead to a position of extreme relativism. If universal grammar is taken to constitute a universally valid inventory of word classes and syntactic relations, then, as Robins
(1964: 184) stated, the quest for a universal grammar is a vain one. The most
that Robins could envisage was the possibility of a general theory of grammar (p. 185), comprising a set of methodological procedures which could be
appropriately applied to the analysis of any language.
Croft avoids the position of extreme relativism by appeal to the very criteria that the structuralists has spurned, namely, semantic criteria. He hypothesizes the existence of a universal conceptual space, whose elements are mapped
onto the specific lexical and syntactic resources of individual languages. While
it may be fruitless to equate the nouns, adjectives, and verbs of different languages (since the categories of individual languages are defined with respect to
language-specific constructions), or even of different constructions within the
same language (since each construction uniquely specifies the items which are
eligible to fill its slots), it may nevertheless be possible to seek a universally valid
definition of these categories in conceptual terms.7
Thus, Croft explicates the major parts of speech in terms of the universalconceptual macro-functions of reference, modification, and predication. Reference has to do with the use of an expression to pick out an entity as one about
which a speaker is talking. Modification has to do with the specification of
properties of a referent which render the entity more easily identifiable. Predication has to do with saying something about the entity referred to. Subcategories of reference, modification, and predication, as well as prototypical and
less prototypical examples of the categories, constitute a multi-dimensional
universal conceptual space, presumed to be available to speakers of all languages. The issue then becomes the (morpho-)syntactic resources available in

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a particular language for the realization of these universal functions. Language

universals pertain to the range of possible mappings between conceptual space
and the language-specific constructions which encode the elements of conceptual space. These typically take the form of implicational hierarchies, which
constrain the mapping relations in any particular case.
Insistence on the particularities of individual languages inevitably raises
the question (addressed in RCG: Ch. 3) whether language-specific construals
impose on their speakers different conceptualizations of the relevant situations (the Whorfian hypothesis). The observation that two languages encode
a given state of affairs in formally different ways might suggest that speakers
of different languages think of the situation in different ways. Since remember is a transitive verb in English, with syntactic properties quite different from
its translation equivalents in French and German, are we entitled to infer that
English speakers think of a remembering event differently than French and
German speakers? If constructions are understood, not simply as syntactic configurations, but as complex symbolic units which pair a form and a meaning,
one might suppose that the answer would have to be affirmative. Indeed, recent discussions of the Whorfian hypothesis (e.g. Foley 1997; Ptz & Verspoor
2000) have typically been framed in such terms. On the other hand, the conceptual space hypothesis would predict that remembering something could
well be experientially and phenomenologically the same for all humans, irrespective of their native language, language-specific differences in the expression
of the experience being due to the conventionalized resources of the different
languages.
The thrust of Crofts approach is not at all relativistic, in the Whorfian
sense. Citing an early and not very well known paper by Langacker (1976),
Croft scrupulously distinguishes between the conceptual and the semantic;
the former is taken to be universal, the latter pertains to the meanings of
language-specific expressions. Langacker (1976) had attempted to reconcile the
universality of conceptual structure, specifically, the thesis that cognition is essentially the same for speakers of all languages (p. 317), with the observation
that semantic structures are language-specific, as determined by a languages
lexical, morphological, and syntactic resources. The paradox is resolved by the
claim that language-specific resources require elements of conceptual space to
be structured in such a way that they can be symbolized by the conventional
resources of the language.
Croft (RCG: 111ff.) illustrates the issues on Langackers (1976: 345, 1987: 47)
example of the contrast between English I am cold and French Jai froid. These

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expressions might suggest that speakers of French think of being cold differently from English speakers, namely, in terms of the possession of a property.
Such a conclusion would be premature, however, since there is no evidence
(other than that provided by the two languages) that French and English speakers do conceptualize the body state in different ways. But even the argument
from the linguistic evidence, Croft argues, is spurious. For example, it presupposes that the French body-state construction Jai froid I have cold is identical
in its syntactic and semantic properties with possessive uses of avoir, as exemplified in Jai une voiture I have a car. The two uses of avoir are, in fact, quite
different, as shown by the possibility of modifying the body-state construction
with trs very: Jai trs froid, *Jai trs une voiture. The argument is also spurious because it presupposes that the semantic value of French avoir is identical
with the semantic value of English have. Such is clearly not the case, if for no
other reason than that French avoir can be used in the body-state construction,
whereas English have can not.
Based on this and other examples, Croft draws a more general conclusion. This is, that claims about linguistic relativity based on a comparison
of language-specific constructions have to presuppose the very universalist
position that the data is being used to argue against, namely, the universal,
language-independent values of (some of) the component elements of the
constructions:
Determining the relativity of the conceptualization given by one constructional element can only be done by assuming the universality of the conceptualization given by another element in the construction. (RCG: 126)

Claims that English and French speakers conceptualize the body state in different ways rest on the dubious assumption that have verbs in the two languages share a common, universal semantics, or, alternatively, that predicate
adjective constructions have universal properties across the languages. But one
could also take the line that what is universal concerns the manner in which
speakers of the two languages experience the body state. What differs, are the
language-specific constructions that are available for symbolizing this common
experience.

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. The building block metaphor

RCG reverses the standard view of the relation between the whole and its parts.
Rather than the whole being characterized in terms its parts and the manner
of their combination, it is the parts and the relations between the parts that are
characterized from the perspective of the whole in which they occur. The question before us is whether such a wholesale reversal of the traditional approach
is justified. If not, then RCG loses its very raison dtre. In order to examine this
issue, let us first take a closer look at the traditional approach.
The approach that RCG rejects has dominated mainstream linguistics for
at least half a century, probably much longer. It can be summed up in terms
of what Langacker has called the building block metaphor of syntagmatic
combination (cf. RCG: 238):
This all-pervasive metaphor portrays a composite structure as being assembled out of its component morphemes, which contribute all of its [sic] content
in the form of discrete chunks. (Langacker 1991: 186)

In order for the metaphor to work, a number of preconditions have to be met.

First is the need to postulate a lexicon and a syntax, cleanly distinguished in
terms of their contents and function, with the lexicon listing the basic soundmeaning pairings and the syntax comprising a set of rules for assembling items
selected from the lexicon. The lexicon, one might say, supplies the building blocks, the syntax supplies the cement (and the architectural plan). The
view of a language as lexicon-plus-syntax, or dictionary-plus-grammar book,
is very much alive and well, as evidenced by the following passage from a recent
monograph:
Suppose someone were to ask you what English is. [. . .] You might say that
English is the set of sentences that are constructed by combining the following
ingredients (you hand her a massive dictionary that lists all the English words)
according to the following rules of grammar (you hand her an equally massive
English grammar). [. . .] [B]etween them they would tell the reader how to
make any conceivable English sentence. (Baker 2001: 534)

The metaphor brings with it some further requirements. For example, it is

not the case that the syntax can combine any items randomly selected from the
lexicon. The syntax stipulates that only items of a certain type, say, items of type
, can combine with items of another type, say, type , in order to produce a
complex expression of the form . It follows, therefore, that items listed in the
lexicon must be assigned to different categories (these are, of course, the tradi-

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tional parts of speech). Moreover, combination in the syntax is recursive. The

structure may be eligible to combine with item of type , provided that is
of a type that is eligible to combine with . Hence, complex expressions assembled in the syntax also need to be typed (as noun phrase, adverbial phrase,
etc.). Another aspect is that it is necessary to suppose that items, when they
combine, enter into certain kinds of relation with each other. This is apparent
from the case of transitive clauses, in which two component units, both of the
same type, namely NP, bear different relations to the transitive verb. One NP
bears the relation of subject (of the verb), the other bears the relation of direct object (of the verb). Summarizing, we can state that the building block
metaphor brings with it the following model of language:
(4) a.

The basic units of a language are listed in the lexicon. Prototypically,

these units are the words of the language;
b. Items listed in the lexicon are assigned to types (the traditional parts
of speech);
c. Rules for the combination of the words are listed in the syntax;
d. Composite expressions, as assembled by the syntax, are also typed
(the traditional phrasal categories);
e. Typed items, when they are combined by the syntax, bear certain
kinds of relations to each other (the traditional grammatical relations).

Even with the above assumptions in place, the building block metaphor
still does not function adequately. For example, some items classified as V can
combine with two items of the kind NP, others can combine with only one. It
is necessary therefore to recognize various sub-categories of the parts of speech
(in this case, transitive verbs and intransitive verbs), or (which amounts to
much the same thing) to propose that items in the lexicon contain, as part of
their specification, information about the categories with which they are eligible to combine (so-called sub-categorization frames). Pursuing the matter
further, it is apparent that a transitive verb is not able to combine with any
two NPs; Sincerity admires John is not an acceptable combination. This aspect
can be handled by means of selectional restrictions. Thus, a verb may require
that its subject bears certain semantic features, such as [+human]. Other restrictions on the co-occurrence of items have to do with feature sharing; the
items in question have to share certain features, such as features pertaining to
number, case, person, and gender.

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Readers may recognize in the above a summary account (which, because

of its brevity, may strike some as a parody) of the theory expounded in Chomskys Aspects (1965). There have, to be sure, been major shifts of emphasis in
the development of Chomskyan theory. For example, increasing importance
has been assigned to lexical items and their properties, in particular, their semantic properties. The idea that lexical items are able to combine largely in
virtue of their semantics has led to a corresponding decline in the role of the
syntax. In fact, the syntax has come to be seen, not as a set of rules for combining items, but as being constituted by a set of constraints for evaluating combinations of items. Despite these re-evaluations of the role of the lexicon and
the syntax, some common threads run through Chomskyan linguistics (and
other syntactic theories). For example, even though the universal status of categories is not a logical requirement of the building block metaphor, it is commonly assumed that the syntax (whether as a combinatory mechanism or as a
set of constraints) operates over categories (noun, verb, etc.) made available by
Universal Grammar.
A further aspect of the building block metaphor concerns the principle
of strict compositionality. According to strict compositionality, a complex expression is a function of its component parts (supplied by the lexicon) and the
manner of their combination (as prescribed by the syntax). Following from
the compositionality principle is the low status accorded to the end-product
of the composition process, namely constructions. In fact, on a strict application of the metaphor, constructions turn out to be epiphenomena (Chomsky
1991: 417), which emerge as the result of combinations sanctioned by the syntax. Constructions, though obviously real enough in linguistic performance,
are of no particular theoretical interest in themselves, for the simple reason that
their properties are fully derivable from the properties of their parts and the
manner in which they have been combined. It follows, therefore, that speakers of a language do not need to learn constructions, they need only know
the building blocks and the rules by which they are assembled (cf. Lakoff
1987: 467).

. Cracks in the building block metaphor

A major challenge to the building block metaphor, and all that it entails, is presented by the existence of idioms (RCG: 15, 17985). In terms of the metaphor,
an idiom is any expression which lies outside its scope, that is, any expres-

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sion which cannot be assembled by the syntax operating over the lexicon. Now,
the remarkable thing about idioms, thus understood, is how many of them
there are, and the different ways in which expressions can be idiomatic. Once
due account is taken of idioms, their number and their variety, it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain a clean distinction between the lexicon and the
syntax. In the long run, even the distinction between the idiomatic and the
non-idiomatic becomes blurred, with everything turning out to be idiomatic,
to some degree.
As just indicated, the range of things in a language which count as idiomatic is immense. The idiomatic comprises expressions with an unpredictable semantics (kick the bucket); expressions with an idiosyncratic syntax
(one swallow does not a summer make); expressions involving cranberry words
(by dint of );8 collocations (heavy drinker); formulas (how do you do?); expressions with a conventionalized pragmatic force (Is that a fact?); proverbs, sayings, and quotations (kill two birds with one stone, to be or not to be); allusions
to proverbs and sayings (making hay); as well as the vast range of more or less
fixed, quasi-formulaic expressions (its nothing to jump up and down about, I
wouldnt do that if I were you). Even conventionalized names for things might
be considered idiomatic, something which becomes evident when different dialects of a language employ different names (RCG: 1801). A South African
telling you to turn left at the robot brings home to the non-South African
speaker the idiomatic nature of traffic light and stop light.
This is not the place for a detailed account of different kinds of idioms (see,
however, Nunberg et al. 1994; Jackendoff 1997; Taylor 2002). What idioms have
in common, however, is the fact that speakers have to have specifically learned
them, it is not possible to delegate their formation to the syntax operating over
the lexicon. It may be useful, therefore, to consider a couple of examples with
regard to their implications for the building block metaphor.
Mention of idioms immediately calls to mind expressions such as kick the
bucket (in the sense die), pull someones leg tease someone, and spill the beans
reveal confidential information. These are idiomatic in that their semantic
properties cannot be computed from the meanings of their parts (or, at least,
from the meanings which the parts have when they are not being used as parts
of the idioms). At the same time, the above expressions are, from a syntactic
point of view, quite unremarkable. Yet because of their special semantics, the
phrases cannot be assembled by the syntax, they have to be listed, presumably
in the lexicon. This, however, would subvert the role of the lexicon as the inventory of the basic building blocks. And indeed, the idioms do not function

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as syntactically encapsulated islands. As verb phrases, they can take the usual
range of auxiliaries and tense inflections, they can be internally modified (He
kicked the proverbial bucket), other syntactic configurations may be acceptable
(The beans were spilled), and some lexical modification may be possible (Go on,
pull the other one!). We see how the clean division of labour between the lexicon
and the syntax is being eroded.
The problem is a very general one. Take the case of collocations and fixed
expressions. Heavy drinker and heavy smoker are not obviously idiomatic in
the way in which red herring irrelevant and misleading piece of information
is idiomatic. In fact, the expressions might even be regarded as compositional
(provided, of course, that heavy is entered in the lexicon as polysemous, with
one its readings pertaining to a person performing an activity to excess). They
are idiomatic, however, in the sense that a speaker of English has to know that
these are the conventionalized expressions to use with reference to a person
who drinks, or smokes, to excess; one would not normally speak of an excessive
drinker. It is also not the case that heavy can be used with reference to any
activity carried out to excess. We can, to be sure, speak of a heavy sleeper (but
that means something different), but not of a heavy eater (although light
eater is possible).
We might attempt to represent these facts in the lexicon, by associating the
adjective heavy with a selectional restriction. The restriction, though, would
have to be very specific: heavy, when used attributively in the sense excessive,
selects only certain nouns. One might also try to jig the lexical entry in such
a way that the availability of heavy drinker preempts the use of excessive with
drinker. Yet this solution would not be optimal. It is not the case that excessive drinker is ungrammatical, merely that heavy drinker is more natural (more
idiomatic). Suppose, then, we list heavy drinker in the lexicon. This solution
is also not ideal, since it overlooks the syntactic and semantic regularity the
compositionality, almost of the expression.
The tension between the lexicon and the syntax evaporates if constructions,
characterized at different degrees of schematicity, are taken to be the primary
objects of linguistic description. Spill the beans is included in the grammar as
a lexically specified instance of a schematically characterized verb phrase construction [V NP]. The schema-instance relation captures the syntactic regularity of the expression, in that the expression inherits the syntactic properties of the schema. At the same time, the expression is associated with a special semantics, which is not derivable from the semantics of the atomic constructions which are its parts. The model is equally able to accommodate the

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vast range of collocations and fixed expressions in a language. Heavy drinker

and heavy smoker will be represented as instances of the [ADJ N] construction, even though their semantics are (relatively) unremarkable. (One might
even propose a construction which is schematic for both heavy drinker and
heavy smoker; this, of course, would itself be an instance of the [ADJ N] construction.). If this approach is pursued systematically, there emerges a model
of a language which differs radically from that entailed by the building block
metaphor. Rather than consisting of a lexicon and a syntax, strictly distinguished by their contents and function, the grammar turns out to be a vast and
complex network of constructions, which vary in their internal complexity and
level of schematicity, and which are linked by multiple, cross-cutting relations
of schematicity and meronymy. In this model, the distinction between the idiomatic and the regular itself comes into question. In fact, everything in the
grammar might be regarded as idiomatic, to some degree.
The argument for a construction grammar becomes even more compelling
when we consider idioms whose syntax is less than fully general. At one extreme are expressions such as by and large. This is possibly the only example in
English where (what looks like) a preposition is coordinated with (what looks
like) an adjective. By and large cannot therefore be formed by the syntax. Other
expressions exemplify minor syntactic patterns. For good, in short, in brief, (not)
for long, at best, at large, exemplify the combination of a preposition with what
looks like an adjective. The number of such expressions is strictly limited, and
new ones cannot be freely created. (We cannot have *in long, *at short, *for
best.) While the expressions clearly have to be individually learned (and individually listed in the grammar), it is also apparent that a minor regularity can
be recognized. The minor regularity is represented by a constructional schema
whose instances are individually listed.
Of special interest for our topic are so-called constructional idioms, whose
idiomaticity resides, not in the special meaning associated with a combination
of specific lexical items (as in kick the bucket), but in the special meaning associated with a syntactic configuration, often (though by no means always) in association with one or more specific lexical items. Unlike other kinds of idioms,
which tend to be lexically fixed, constructional idioms can be quite productive,
in that new expressions can be created in accordance with their syntactic and
semantic specifications.
In recent years, quite a number of constructional idioms have been subjected to intensive study (Fillmore et al. 1988; Jackendoff 1997; Kay and Fill-

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more 1999; Taylor 2002). An example is the way-construction (Goldberg

1995; Jackendoff 1997), exemplified in (5).
(5) a.
b.
c.
d.
e.

I elbowed my way to the exit.

I lied my way through the interview.
The government tried to spend its way out of recession.
We cant legislate our way out of the drug problem.
He wormed his way into her affection.

The syntactic and semantic commonality of these expressions will be evident

(as will the productivity of the pattern which they exemplify). Syntactically,
they all have the form [NP V ones way PP], semantically they all have to do
with the subject referent performing an activity designated by V in order to
move (literally or metaphorically) to or from a location, or along a path, designated by PP. Verbs and prepositional phrases are able to feature in the construction to the extent that they are compatible with the constructions semantics.
Importantly, the syntactic properties of the verbs, as these might be listed in
the lexicon, or as they might be stated with respect to other constructions, are
largely irrelevant to the issue. Thus, the verbs in (5) seem to be being used
as transitives, with ones way functioning as the direct object. Yet lie, for example, would not be listed in the lexicon as a transitive verb, and indeed, *I
lied my way is impossible. Likewise, although the verbs in (5) take a PP complement, these verbs do not subcategorize elsewhere in the language for a PP
complement: *they legislated out of the problem. In fact, verbs which do subcategorize for a directional or a path PP tend to be barred from the construction: *I ran/drove/walked/went my way to the office. Way-expressions cannot
therefore be compiled in accordance with the properties of their parts, as specified in the lexicon. Rather, it is the construction itself which, in accordance
with its semantic and formal properties, selects the items which are eligible to
occur in it.
The significance of constructional idioms (and of idioms in general) for
syntactic theory has been recognized by at least one linguist from within the
generativist tradition. Jackendoff (1997) envisages a much expanded role for
the lexicon, which comprises, not just lexical items, with their phonological,
syntactic, and semantic specifications, but also fixed expressions and constructional idioms.9 Fixed expressions and constructional idioms differ from lexical
items in terms of their internal complexity, while constructional idioms differ from the other kinds with respect to the schematicity of their formal and
semantic properties. Here, Jackendoff comes tantalizingly close to endorsing

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a model in which constructions are the primary objects of linguistic description. Indeed, Jackendoff (pp. 1745) observes that the only substantial issue
separating his approach from, say, Goldbergs (1995) Construction Grammar
concerns the treatment of core phrase structures, such as the transitive clause.
Jackendoff prefers to regard these as purely syntactic entities, largely, it would
seen, because they are not associated, or so he claims, with any specific semantic or lexical properties. But he also concedes that these core structures might
be regarded as maximally underspecified constructional idioms. If this move
were taken, Jackendoff s theory would, to all intents and purposes, constitute
a variety of construction grammar. The syntactic component of the grammar would be fully absorbed into the lexicon, understood as an inventory of
form-meaning pairings, that is, constructions.
The issue is whether we need to recognize a qualitative difference between
constructional idioms, such as the way-construction, and more general patterns of syntagmatic combination, exemplified by core constructions such as
the transitive clause. The RCG view would be, that even basic phrase structure
configurations are language-specific, and are therefore, in a sense, idiomatic.
In spite of the highly schematic nature, and the high degree of productivity of
the transitive clause construction, the language user still has to learn that such
a construction exists in English. Neither is it the case that the construction is
not associated with specific semantic and lexical properties. On the contrary,
a full account of the construction needs to specify the range of situation types
that can be encoded by it, as well as the range of verbs (and nominals) that are
eligible to occur in it.

. Phonological constructions
Croft presents RCG as a theory of syntax. In RCG, syntax does not, of course,
mean what it would mean in the building block metaphor. It is not concerned
with rules for the combination of items selected from a lexicon. Rather, syntax comprises a vast inventory of sound-meaning pairings, which vary with
respect to their internal complexity and the schematicity with which they are
characterized. An expression is assessed as grammatical to the extent that it is
sanctioned by the constructional resources of a language.
What place does phonology have in such a model? To some extent, phonological representations are subsumed by grammatical constructions. If constructions are pairings of form and meaning, specification of a construction

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includes a statement of its phonological properties. At the same time, there is

an important sense in which the phonology of a language is autonomous of
form-meaning relations, in that elements of a phonological analysis units
such as segment, syllable, and foot need to be identified independently of
their role in constructions. Although [p] may have the status of a phonological
unit in English, the segment does not constitute the phonological pole of any
grammatical construction in the language.
Croft (RCG: 612) briefly alludes to the possibility of a radical constructional approach to phonology. Such a move would, to be sure, necessitate a
redefinition of construction. The definition as a pairing of a form and a meaning will not be applicable to phonological entities, since these do not constitute
form-meaning pairings. We need, instead, a broader definition which pertains
to any linguistic structure, whether symbolic or phonological, which is analyzable into its component parts. Construction, in fact, will become virtually
synonymous with Langackers composite structure.
Once this definitional adjustment is made, the axioms of RCG readily transfer to phonology. The primary objects of phonological enquiry are
phonological constructions, that is, complex phonological entities whose parts
must be characterized with respect to their roles within constructions. While
phonological constructions may be expected to be specific to a given language,
it may nevertheless be possible to refer to a universal phonological space, whose
elements are given by universal aspects of articulation and perception, but
which are exploited in language-specific ways. The radical constructional approach would lead to a model of phonology which is constituted by a network
of phonological constructions, specified at varying degrees of schematicity, and
linked by the familiar taxonomic and meronomic relations.
An example may suffice as illustration of the approach. Phonological constructions of English include items such as [kt], [pet], [sI]], and so on. These
may be brought under a more schematic representation, namely, [CVC] . The
schema specifies the kinds of entities that are eligible to occur in the construction, namely, entities of the kind consonant (C) and vowel (V), as well as
the sequence in which they are combined. The schema also characterizes the
complex structure as a syllable, symbolized by subscript .
Mirroring our discussion of syntax, the question arises whether the categories of consonant and vowel, and what count as members of the categories,
are pre-ordained by a universal phonological theory, or whether the categories
and their memberships emerge as properties of the (language-specific) constructions in which they occur. There are good reasons for preferring the latter

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option. This is not to deny that there may be a language-independent basis for
classifying segments as vowels and consonants, in terms of sonority, for example. Vowels are relatively sonorous segments, produced with minimal constriction of the airflow through the vocal tract, while consonants, being articulated with greater degree of constriction, are less sonorous. Reference to
universal phonetics, however, does not enable a reliable classification of segments, valid for any and every language. For example, sonority, being a gradient notion, does not of itself give rise to a clear-cut distinction between vowels and consonants. Some segments of intermediate sonority, such as nasals,
may sometimes function as vowels, sometimes as consonants, as determined by
language-specific conventions. What triggers the consonant-vowel dichotomy,
rather, is the function of segments within the syllable constructions of a particular language. (In fact, it is only because of its relevance to syllable structure
that sonority is a linguistically relevant parameter in the first place.) Thus, a
segment counts as a vowel or as a consonant, not only, or not primarily, because
of its inherent phonetic properties, but in virtue of the slot which it is able to
fill in the syllable construction. It is, therefore, the syllable construction which
defines the categories which are able to function as its parts. Although based
in general phonetic aspects, the categories of vowel and consonant emerge as
functions of the roles which segments play within the syllable construction.
As with grammatical constructions, syllable constructions are languagespecific. It is well-known that a particular sequence of segments may be syllabified differently in different languages. Zimbabwe, for example, is syllabified
in English as [zIm.bb.we], whereas in Shona a language which allows only
syllables of the structure [CV] the word is syllabified as [zi.m ba.bw e]. Again,
this is not to deny that, as with vowels and consonants, there might be a universal basis for syllables, namely, as phonological structures characterized by
a peak of sonority flanked by troughs of lower sonority. Nevertheless, a particular sequence of sounds in a given language counts as a syllable, not only
because of its inherent phonetic properties, but primarily because it conforms
with (i.e., it can be regarded as an instance of) a schematically characterized
syllable construction in that language.
In discussing the RCG approach to syntax, I made much of the existence
of idioms, only to go on to query the validity of the distinction between the idiomatic and the regular. Does a similar situation hold in phonology? For sure
it does. The schema [CVC] represents an important phonological construction in English. But just as [NP1 Vtrans NP2 ] is inadequate as a description of
one kind of clause in English, so too [CVC] is inadequate as a description

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of one kind of syllable, and for much the same reasons. Just as not any randomly selected pair of NPs can fill the slots of the clausal construction, so too
not any randomly selected pair of consonants can function within the syllable
construction: []h] is not a possible syllable in English, since [h] is restricted
to occurring in syllable-initial position (and then, only in stressed syllables),
while []] is restricted to occurring in the syllable rhyme (and then, only in association with a short vowel). These idiomatic facts about English segments
need to be represented by means of low-level syllable schemas, which refer to
the particular segments [h] and []] and their role within syllables. As these
and other phonotactic (that is, distributional and collocational) facts about
English segments are taken into consideration, and as the descriptive scope
extends to other kinds of syllables, the picture that emerges is of syllable being represented by a large and complex network of constructions, comprising
schemas of varying degrees of abstraction, which make reference, not only to
intersecting and cross-cutting groups of segments, but also to specific sounds.10

. Acquisition
Constructions, in RCG, are the primary objects over which linguistic analysis is
conducted. By the same token, constructions are the primary input to language
acquisition (RCG: 578). Let us suppose that, sometime during the second year
of life, an English-speaking child produces her first transitive clause, such as
Me want that. What can we infer from this momentous event? In terms of the
grammatical model predicated on the building block metaphor, we might infer that the child has acquired the phrase structure rules for the formation of a
transitive clause. Once the phrase structure has been acquired, we might suppose that the child will be able to freely generate new instances of the construction, employing the full range of transitive verbs already known to her, in
accordance with general syntactic principles. An alternative view would be that
the child has simply acquired an idiomatic usage of want in association with
the constructional idiom me want X, where X can be filled by any item with the
appropriate semantics (as determined by the construction). On this account,
transitive clauses will be acquired on an item-by-item, or idiom-by-idiom basis, with the child showing little propensity to extend the construction beyond
its initial specifications. In fact, at this stage in the childs development, it might
not even be appropriate to speak of a transitive clause at all. Only later, when
a critical mass of verb-specific constructions have been learned, will the child

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abstract a schematic representation which generalizes over the instances, and it

is only then that the transitive construction can be used productively over the
full range of eligible verbs.
Research by Tomasello and his colleagues strongly supports the second approach. Tomasello & Brooks (1998) introduced children between the ages of
two and two-and-a-half to highly transitive situations, involving, for example, a puppet doing something to a small object, and described the situations
using novel verbs. In one condition the novel verbs occurred in the transitive construction (The puppet is meeking the ball), in the other condition the
verbs were introduced in an intransitive construction (The ball is meeking).
It was found that children who had learned a new verb in the one construction were reluctant to use it in the other. Tomasello & Brooks concluded that
children learn the transitive and intransitive constructions on a verb-by-verb
basis, or, to put it another way, they learn each verb in association with the
syntactic configuration in which it has been encountered. An item-based acquisition process has been observed for a number of basic syntactic patterns,
including the passive (Brooks & Tomasello 1999), complementation patterns
(Diessel & Tomasello 2001), and interrogatives (Dabrowska

2000). Tomasello
draws the conclusion that childrens early linguistic competence is organized
as an inventory of item-based constructions (2000: 76).
A radical position would be that an adults knowledge of a language may
not be qualitatively all that different from that of the young child. The adults
knowledge, too, is constituted by an inventory of constructions, the only difference between child and adult apart from the size of the inventory being, perhaps, the preponderance of more schematic constructions in the adults grammar. But even that is a matter of debate. As Langacker has pointed out many
times (e.g. Langacker 1999), a persons linguistic knowledge may be quite specific, not too far removed, in terms of its schematicity, from the actual linguistic
data that a person has encountered.

. Conclusion
This has been a somewhat atypical review article. By focusing on the conceptual justification for a radical construction grammar, I have commented, in effect, on the content only of the first three chapters of Crofts book (and not all
aspects of these chapters at that), touching hardly at all on the major substantive analyses presented in the main body of the work (Chs. 49). This in itself

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will be testimony to the scope and richness of the book, which, to do it justice,
would need several review articles of this size. I have also found myself, in a
strange sort of way, at odds with my title (and with Crofts title). In discussing
the radical nature of RCG I have, in effect, been arguing for the naturalness
of RCG, the inevitability, almost, of the RCG position, given the evidence of idioms (including constructional idioms), and the language-specific nature even
of the core constructions of a language. Perhaps these ruminations on the
conceptual basis of RCG should have been titled Why construction grammar
is not radical.

Notes
. RCG refers both to Croft (2001) and to the theory which it expounds.
. Wellss tortuous explanation of the constructional ambiguity of old men and women
points to a perennial problem in discourse about constructions. There are so many constructions in a language that it is difficult to find succinct names for them all! Instead of naming
the constructions in question, Wells simply describes their internal structure. Needless to
say, the naming problem explodes if it is accepted that constructions are language-specific.
(For the naming problem, see RCG: 513).
. The example is, of course, Sapirs (1963/1921), who discusses it in terms of the thirteen
concepts which it expresses, and the grammatical means by which they are expressed (pp.
829).
. As a matter of fact, the context for the cited definition by Croft (RCG: 18) does not make
clear whether the definition applies specifically to RCG or to construction grammars developed by Goldberg and others. Towards the end of his book, however, Croft appears to
be endorsing a view which would equate construction with the Langackerian symbolic
unit: Constructions are pairings of form and meaning which may be atomic or complex,
schematic or substantive (RCG: 362). Still, the main focus in the book is on syntactically
complex constructions.
. Similar arguments can be brought to bear on other syntactic and lexical categories. After
considering the occurrence of the English specifiers (comprising, roughly, the determiners
and the quantifiers) in a range of different constructions, Culicover (1999: 64) concludes that
there seem to be almost as many patterns as there are elements. It would therefore be inadequate to characterize the containing constructions by reference to category variables such
as DET or QUANT (and even more inadequate to make reference to the category SPEC).
. Although Croft acknowledges affinities of his approach with certain tenets of Bloomfieldian structuralism, he also claims that the structuralists were guilty of methodological
opportunism (RCG: 41).

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. It could be argued that any attempt to compare the semantic structures encoded by expressions in different languages must, as a matter of logical necessity, appeal to a universal
conceptual space as the tertium comparationis. (Likewise, the very possibility of translation
from one language to another and even more, the possibility of evaluating the quality
of a translation presupposes the availability of a language-independent conceptual grid.)
Consider Bowerman & Chois (2001) well-known study of the different conceptualizations
encoded by spatial expressions in English and Korean. While the thrust of Bowerman &
Chois work is to document major differences between the two languages, it is significant
that they explicate these by reference to a series of cognitive maps (my term, not theirs),
which are partitioned differently by the lexical and syntactic resources of the two languages.
. That is, a word which is used only in a single expression; dint has no other uses outside
the expression by dint of. Cranberry words create special problems for the building block
metaphor. Should they be listed in the lexicon? On the one hand, they should, since they are
clearly words. On the other hand, there would seem to be little point in doing so, since they
are available to the syntax only for the creation of the specific expressions in which they are
attested.
. Mention should also be made of Culicovers monograph, Syntactic nuts (1999). Like Jackendoff, Culicover comes from the generative tradition. Yet he finds reason to question the
thesis that there might exist a fixed inventory of lexical and syntactic categories, given by
Universal Grammar. As evidence, Culicover documents a very large number of examples,
mostly from English, where the categories of a supposedly Universal Grammar do not apply.
These are examples whose analysis requires the postulation of language-specific categories
and sub-categories, whose properties have to be learned, and which therefore have to be regarded as idiomatic to the language in question. Interestingly, the relativistic tendencies of
Culicovers monograph are moderated in exactly the same way as they are in RCG, namely,
by appeal to a universal conceptual structure.
. I have given only a brief glimpse of how a radical constructional approach to phonology
might be pursued. It will be apparent, for example, that syllable is by no means a phonological primitive, but must itself be characterized by its role within larger phonological
constructions, such as the foot and the phonological phrase. See Taylor (2002).

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Authors address
John R. Taylor
Linguistics program
Department of English
University of Otago
PO Box 56
Dunedin
New Zealand
email: john.taylor@stonebow.otago.ac.nz

About the author

John R. Taylor teaches linguistics in the department of English, University of Otago, New
Zealand. He is author of Linguistic Categorization (1989; 3rd edition 2003), Possessives in
English (1996), and Cognitive Grammar (2002), all published with Oxford University Press.
He is a consulting editor of Cognitive Linguistics, and is on the editorial boards of Language
Sciences and Functions of Language. He is also an editor of the monograph series Cognitive
Linguistics Research, published by Mouton de Gruyter (Berlin).