Review of A. Goldberg (2005) Constructions at work. The nature of generalization in language (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

in The LINGUIST List (2007), 17

The main goal of Goldberg's new book 'Constructions at work' is the establishment of a psychologically and cross-linguistically realistic model of our knowledge of language within the framework of ... [more ▼]

The main goal of Goldberg's new book 'Constructions at work' is the establishment of a psychologically and cross-linguistically realistic model of our knowledge of language within the framework of construction grammar (CxG; see Goldberg 1995, Croft 2001). The main claim is that our language system consists of a series of generalizations, which are CONSTRUCTED on the basis of input similarities and general cognitive mechanisms. [less ▲]