Making the most of Construction Grammar: Accounting for nativization in second language varieties of English

Second language varieties of English (e.g. Indian English, Nigerian English) undergo nativization, i.e. they develop new conventions and are thus marked by a number of innovations. The lexis-grammar interface has often taken center stage in the study of nativization as it has been argued to be particularly prone to innovation (Schneider, 2007). Construction Grammar (CxG) is particularly well suited to study lexico-grammar, as it captures the lexis-grammar interface by positing a continuum in degree of abstraction of constructions that range from substantive to schematic constructions (Goldberg, 2006: 5). Unsurprisingly, therefore, a number of studies of nativization have rooted their analysis in CxG. However, most such studies have focused on one particular level of abstraction, such as the schematic constructions that a verb enters (e.g. Mukherjee & Hoffmann, 2006) or the verbs that enter the verb-slot of schematic constructions (e.g. Mukherjee & Gries, 2009). Against this backdrop, this contribution hence takes full advantage of the continuum of abstraction inherent in CxG by offering an analysis of the schematic to substantive patterning of the high-frequency verb make in Hong Kong, Indian, Singapore and British English. The data come from the International Corpus of English and represent a total of 7,554 instances of make. In a three-pronged approach, this study analyzes features of nativization found in (1) the distribution of make across schematic constructions; (2) the different formal realizations of these schematic constructions; and (3) the collocates of make in certain slots of the most frequent constructions. In so doing, this study will not only offer a constructional analysis of lexico-grammatical nativization in varieties of English, but hopefully also show how CxG can be usefully exploited to provide a unified account of nativization at different levels of abstraction. References Goldberg, A. E. (2006). Constructions at Work: The Nature of Generalizations in English. Oxford: OUP. .