Why Construction Grammar Catches the Worm and Corpus Data can Drive you Crazy: Accounting for Idiomatic and Non-Idiomatic Idiomaticity

Abstract

This article outlines why the treatment of idiomatic elements in language in terms of constructions can be considered a real step forward in the understanding of the character of language. It is argued that construction grammar provides a theoretical basis for accommodating insights into the phraseological character of language that were gained in a number of fields such as corpus linguistics, foreign language teaching and traditional phraseology and lexicography.