Operational grammar vs. construction grammar (on the example of quasi-tautologies and repetitions)

Abstract

In this article, the two linguistic approaches are confronted: the first is Construction Grammar, which has been intensively developed in recent years, mainly in cognitive linguistics, and is represented by numerous researchers of Polish, European, and world linguistics; the second is the less known, author’s methodological proposal by Andrzej Bogusławski (the so-called Operational Grammar, presented in the article Bogusławski 1978). On the example of the description of selected types of repetitive constructions (of Polish and several other languages), significant differences in the effects of applying both research approaches are shown. The main thesis is the claim that, in contrast to the fashionable and willingly practiced CG, the Polish linguist’s methodological proposal (OG), based on the fundamental idea of proportionality in language, does give tools to effectively distinguish amongst repetitive constructs: 1) the real operational units of a given language; 2) predictable and generally comprehensible constructs with tautologically filled items (intended essentially for different elements); and 3) repetitions resulting from more general, perhaps supra-linguistic rules of speech activity. Despite the diversity of the many currents of CG, it seems that it does not provide the tools to properly separate these three essentially different types of textual phenomena (and at least this is not indicated by the practice of research on repetitions influenced by CG).