ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the empirical motivation for a constructional model of grammar. It compares a constructional account with the 'words and rules' account assumed in most generative models of language. The chapter looks at idiomatic expressions, linguistic units that display idiosyncratic as well as regular properties and cannot therefore be fully accounted for by a model of language that focuses on accounting for what is 'regular'. It explores the empirical motivation for a constructional approach to grammar, sketches out the theory of Construction Grammar proposed by Kay and Fillmore, and compare and contrast this approach with both generative and cognitive approaches to language. The chapter considers Construction Grammar in the light of the 'Generalisation Commitment'. In according idiomatic expressions a central place in a model of grammar, the Construction Grammar approach goes some way towards meeting the Generalisation Commitment, despite the fact that Construction Grammar is strictly characterised as a formal rather than a cognitive approach.
