“Construction Grammar has become progressively more influential in linguistics and psychology over the last two decades. But to date, it hasn’t been systematically applied to the Romance languages. This volume, for the first time, lays the groundwork. It show by example how grammatical form-meaning pairings are fleshed out in languages from Latin to French and Spanish, and how they compare both across languages and over time.”

“We think we know Romance languages, but do we really? The papers in this innovative volume target some of the toughest grammatical problems that linguists have encountered – from complex prepositions to parenthetical phrases to fragmentary expressions – and provide a testament to our ability as language users to adapt linguistic routines to communicative needs. Along the way, the authors illuminate the distinct linguistic solutions that users of Romance languages have evolved – solutions that reflect both the common heritage and divergent histories of these languages. The case studies collected here demonstrate that by embracing idiosyncrasy, usage factors and meaningful syntactic patterns, we gain descriptive precision and breadth. This engaging volume offers insights to any scholar of Romance syntax and the lexicon. It also richly illustrates the way in which Construction Grammar captures the continuum of generality in language – from fixed expressions to highly schematic (and potentially universal) combinatoric patterns.”

“All things considered, Romance Perspectives on Construction Grammar is a valuable contribution to the study of Romance Languages Grammar within the Construction Grammar framework.”