Adopting a corpus-based methodology, this volume analyses phraseological patterns in nine European languages from a monolingual, bilingual and multilingual point of view, following a mostly Construction Grammar approach. At present, corpus-based constructional research represents an interesting and innovative field of phraseology with great relevance to translatology, foreign language didactics and lexicography.

The new book series Formelhafte Sprache / Formulaic Language offers an integrative platform for innovative publications aiming at all forms of formulaicity (German: Vorgeformtheit, Musterhaftigkeit, Formelhaftigkeit) - linguistic, cognitive, conceptual - at all levels of language system and in language use as well as in not purely linguistic areas such as cultural heritage or knowledge creation and storage. Possible research directions are patterns/prefabs in lexicon and grammar, word formation and phraseology, written texts and oral conversations, discourses and text corpora, stereotype building and stigmatization, cognition and cultural memory, verbal and visual knowledge formation and language acquisition. The series covers monographs and conference volumes devoted to theoretical and empirical questions of linguistic, conceptual and cognitive pattern/prefab functioning in modern and historical times. Another central question is the practical role of formulaic patterns/prefabs in language acquisition and teaching. Theoretical and methodological studies from the area of usage-based linguistic frameworks, grammaticalization, lexicalization, Construction Grammars, Corpus / Computer Linguistics, Natural Language Processing and Digital Humanities are welcome. Languages of publication are German and English. All submitted manuscripts are peer-reviewed by the Advisory Board prior to publication. Advisory Board Harald Burger (Zurich, Switzerland) Joan L. Bybee (New Mexico, USA) Dmitrij Dobrovol'skij (Moscow, Russia) Stephan Elspaß (Salzburg, Austria) Christiane Fellbaum (Princeton, USA) Raymond Gibbs (Santa Cruz, USA) Annelies Häcki Buhofer (Basel, Switzerland) Claudine Moulin (Trier, Germany) Jan-Ola Östman (Helsinki, Finland) Stephan Stein (Trier, Germany) Martin Wengeler (Trier, Germany) Alison Wray (Cardiff, UK)

Die Reihe bietet ein Forum für gebrauchs- und korpusbasierte Studien, die sprachliche, kognitive und konzeptuelle Vorgeformtheit auf allen sprachlichen Ebenen und außersprachlicher Natur in den Mittelpunkt der theoretischen und methodischen Betrachtungen im synchronen wie diachronen Schnitt rücken.

Construction Grammar is enthusiastically embraced by a growing group of linguists who find it a natural way to formulate their analyses. But so far there is no widespread formalization of construction grammar with a solid computational implementation. Fluid Construction Grammar attempts to fill this gap. It is a fully operational computational framework capturing many key concepts in construction grammar. The present book is the first extensive publication describing this framework. In addition to general introductions, it gives a number of concrete examples through a series of linguistically challenging case studies, including phrase structure, case grammar, and modality. The book is suited both for linguists who want to know what Fluid Construction Grammar looks like and for computational linguists who may want to use this computational framework for their own experiments or applications.

Constructions in Spanish is the first book-length English-language volume in the field of usage-based and Cognitive Construction Grammar dedicated exclusively to Spanish. The contributions investigate a wide range of constructions from both a synchronic and a diachronic perspective, cutting across morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics. The constructionist perspective is also linked to comparative and typological research, to language learning and teaching and to multi-modal discourse analysis. The volume aims both at increasing the visibility of constructionist approaches to Spanish, and at offering data and analyses of Spanish for scholars working on constructional analyses of other languages. The volume thus addresses both scholars in Spanish and Romance linguistics, as it builds connections between more traditional approaches and constructionist approaches, and construction grammarians generally, especially scholars interested in comparative work.

This book describes an approach to lexis and grammar based on the concept of phraseology and of language patterning arising from work on large corpora. The notion of 'pattern' as a systematic way of dealing with the interface between lexis and grammar was used in Collins Cobuild English Dictionary (1995) and in the two books in the Collins Cobuild Grammar Patterns series (1996; 1998). This volume describes the research that led to these publications, and explores the theoretical and practical implications of the research. The first chapter sets the work in the context of work on phraseology. The next two chapters give several examples of patterns and how they are identified. Chapters 4 and 5 discuss and exemplify the association of pattern and meaning. Chapters 6, 7 and 8 relate the concept of pattern to traditional approaches to grammar and to discourse. Chapter 9 summarizes the book and adds to the theoretical discussion, as well as indicating the applications of this approach to language teaching. The volume is intended to contribute to the current debate concerning how corpora challenge existing linguistic theories, and as such will be of interest to researchers in the fields of grammar, lexis, discourse and corpus linguistics. It is written in an accessible style, however, and will be equally suitable for students taking courses in those areas.

The book develops a Theory of the Figurative Lexicon. Units of the figurative lexicon (conventional figurative units, CFUs for short) differ from all other elements of the language in two points: Firstly, they are conventionalized. That is, they are elements of the mental lexicon – in contrast to freely created figurative expressions. Secondly, they consist of two conceptual levels: they can be interpreted at the level of their literal reading and at the level of their figurative meaning – which both can be activated simultaneously. New insights into the Theory of Figurative Lexicon relate, on the one hand, to the metaphor theory. Over time, it became increasingly clear that the Conceptual Metaphor Theory in the sense of Lakoff can only partly explain the conventional figurativeness. On the other hand, it became clear that “intertextuality” plays a far greater role in the CFUs of Western cultures than previously assumed. The book’s main target audience will be linguists, researchers in phraseology, paremiology and metaphor, and cultural studies. The data and explanations of the idioms will provide a welcome textbook in courses on linguistics, culture history, phraseology research and phraseodidactics.