Abstract
If one wants to understand what lies at the heart of Construction Grammar, one should first tackle the following questions: what do speakers of a given language have to know, and what can they "figure out" on the basis of that knowledge, in order for them to use their language successfully and efficiently? Construction Grammar (CxG) is a usage-based framework that endeavors to treat all types of expressions as equally central to capturing grammatical patterning. It considers all dimensions of language (such as, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, discourse, morphology, phonology and prosody) as equal contributors to the process of shaping linguistic expressions. It is a constraint-based, generative, and non-derivational grammatical model. Its main feature consists in the insight that language is a repertoire of more or less complex patterns called "grammatical constructions", that integrate form and meaning, or content. They are the fundamental units from which sentences and their meanings are built.
