Pedagogical Linguistics - Volume 7, Issue 1, 2026

This paper provides a short introduction to Construction Grammar (CxG). It first very briefly outlines how linguistic theory has developed over time. Then it describes similarities and differences between the usage-based approach of CxG and Chomsky’s generative approach to the study of language. After that different types of constructions are described in order to explain the concept of constructions as ‘conventionalized form-meaning pairings’. Next, eight different reasons are discussed for why CxG may last and not share the fate of other linguistic models that only ‘survived’ for a more or less short period of time. In this context, important characteristics of different approaches to the description and analysis of language are described that can all be subsumed under the umbrella term ‘Construction Grammar’. Finally. this paper explains why CxG provides an ideal framework for foreign language teaching and learning and it provides a few concrete examples showing how a constructionist approach to language pedagogy could be used in the classroom to deal with different lexicogrammatical phenomena.

A Comprehensive Grammar of Spoken and Written French (CGSWF) is a novel academic grammar informed by the Corpus de référence du français contemporain (CRFC, Siepmann, Bürgel, and Diwersy, 2015) and other mega corpora. Designed for university-level learners of French as a Foreign Language (FFL), this work identifies and resolves gaps found in existing grammars. The present article outlines the guiding principles behind the grammar’s development and illustrates its distinctive approach with examples of specific grammar points, including time adverbials, the preposition en, adverbial adjectives, nominal constructions, and the adjectives maint and moult. Comparison is made with the Grande Grammaire du français (GGF, Abeillé & Godard, 2021) to bring out CGSWF’s originality and relevance for non-native learners at an advanced level.

This article addresses the usefulness of constructicons, and of the Swedish Constructicon (SweCcn) in particular, in application to (additional) language teaching. We present a number of small case studies on pedagogical application of SweCcn: some of which are classroom studies of construction-based teaching of Swedish as an additional language, and others concerned with identification of pedagogically relevant constructions by text analyses of teaching aids. The combined overall outcome of these case studies is one of mutual benefit: constructicons may, indeed, be a valuable resource for construction-oriented language pedagogy, and the experiences from teaching application, in turn, feed back into further development of the resource. The text analyses also highlight the importance of not only treating individual constructions, but also addressing the interplay between constructions in combination.

This study investigates how cross-linguistic correspondence affects the interpretation of idioms in unfamiliar languages. Using a categorization framework inspired by construction grammar principles, we categorize idioms based on their form-meaning correspondences across Persian and German: those sharing both form and meaning (SI), only formal features (SL), or only meaning components (SM). In an experimental study, 30 adult German L1 speakers chose between figurative, literal, and non-canonical figurative interpretations for literally-translated Persian idioms from these categories alongside German control idioms. The statistical analyses did not find a significant difference between idioms with both formal and semantic correspondence (SI) and the control German idioms. However, our results indicated a significant decline in figurative interpretation rates for idioms that share only formal characteristics (SL) or meaning components (SM). Multinomial analysis revealed that as cross-linguistic correspondence decreased, the judgments of the participants changed from confident figurative interpretations to more distributed response patterns across literal, figurative, and non-canonical figurative interpretations. These findings suggest that the cross-linguistic correspondence in the form and meaning of idioms between the L1 of the participants and an unfamiliar language can facilitate the understanding of idioms. However, partial correspondence may impede understanding by creating misleading guesses about the meaning of idioms, with participants mainly selecting literal interpretations.

Controlled experiments demonstrate that increased input variability in the intervener-slot of non-adjacent dependencies (NADs) improves children’s inductive generalization of the dependency (Gómez, 2002). Experiments targeting different linguistic structures show that variability benefits not only children’s inductive generalization but also their productive extension of those generalizations to novel contexts (Wonnacott et al., 2012). Combined, these findings motivated our investigation into applying variability benefits to NAD learning in classrooms, considering their ubiquity in natural language.

We present a two-week quasi-experimental teaching intervention with two British Year 2 German as a foreign language classes (age 6; 20 students/class). This proof-of-concept trial, comprising a high and low input variability condition, focused on three sets of NADs, realized by German subordinate clauses (“Subj [intervener prepositional phrase] Verb”), featuring 30 or 5 ‘interveners’, respectively. Post-tests showed ambiguous results regarding the effect of increased input variability on the generalization of NADs and the ability to extend the generalization to novel contexts (i.e., unknown interveners). Nonetheless, the findings across conditions demonstrate a positive role for targeted input flooding of particular constructions in instructed FL development suggesting young learners can pick up large linguistic units after minimal exposure. We discuss the ambiguous results and highlight methodological and pedagogical implications.

This paper offers some observations on the learning of argument structure constructions as well as recommendations for teaching argument structure constructions to intermediate to advanced learners, notably argument structure constructions that could be considered to alternate such as the intransitive non-causative construction (INCCx) and the transitive causative construction (TCCx). Our aim is to show that for such schematic argument constructions, generalisations emerge from the interaction between the verb, its arguments and the construction(s) they occur in. Through a distributional semantics analysis of the themes (the argument in subject position in the INCCx and object position in the TCCx), we start by identifying constructional meaning for each construction. Then, through computational simulations of learning we identify which elements in the constructions are the most reliable cues for learners to choose one or the other construction. This work is inspired by constructional approaches to language (e.g., Goldberg, 1995) and learning theory (for linguistics, e.g., Skinner, 1957). Through our constructional approach and learning simulations, we identify characteristics for each construction that can be used to teach learners the use of each construction generally. We also observe that the TCCx appears easier to learn and potentially more productive than the INCCx and provide examples of pedagogical materials.

This contribution focuses on how abstract relations are expressed using the German preposition auf in the pattern NP1 + auf + NP2 (e.g. die Hoffnung auf etwas) and compares these expressions with their equivalents in English, Polish and Ukrainian. The qualitative analysis of the dictionary and corpus data identified 71 abstract nouns governing the preposition auf and their cross-linguistic equivalents, which revealed both convergence and divergence in the metaphorical extension of spatial prepositions to abstract domains. About 22% of the data revealed common patterns across the four languages in semantic domains such as aggression, cognition/communication, control and shopping behaviour. These shared expressions imply a shared reliance on common image schemas.

However, significant variability emerges in prepositional usage, with Polish and Ukrainian often omitting prepositions in favor of genitive case marking, which reflects alternative morphosyntactic strategies. The findings support Langacker’s (1984, 2008) view that meaning is conceptualization shaped by linguistic convention.

By highlighting cross-linguistic similarities and differences in prepositional usage, the study offers theoretical implications for language pedagogy, particularly in teaching spatial and abstract prepositional meanings across languages.