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This introductory paper outlines the different trends and movements that have in recent years led to a marked increase in the number of linguistic studies that combine a construction-based theoretical outlook on grammar with a dedicated interest in issues of synchronic and/or diachronic language variation. In addition, it gives an overview of the papers included in this thematic issue and links them with broader tendencies in the fields of cognitive linguistics and construction grammar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dependent verb-first clauses have received a fair amount of interest from a functionalist perspective. In this paper, I argue that their conceived unity as a grammatical construction might be overstated. I do so on the basis of both categorical and probabilistic differences in the distributions of the various types that I discern. The shared functional properties of the various dependent verb-first clauses are best seen as non-conventional tendencies rather than as a conventional symbolic function, that may have driven the development historically, but is not a part of the inventory of linguistic knowledge of a language user synchronically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Dutch aan-construction (e.g. Hij gaf een bos bloemen aan zijn vrouw 'He gave a bouquet to his wife'), the prepositional alternative for the double object construction (Hij gaf zijn vrouw een bos bloemen 'He gave his wife a bouquet'), is a post Middle Dutch innovation (i.e. after 1500 AD). The precise details of the rise of the aan-construction remain, however, understudied. It is for example unclear whether the construction really breaks through in the 17th century, as Weijnen and Gordijn (1970) argue on the basis of a small corpus of farces, and what its semantic range was in those early days. In this paper we try to shed more light on these issues. On the basis of a selfcompiled corpus of literary Dutch, we firstly show that the construction was not only already frequently attested in the language use in the 17th century, but also covered a remarkably wide semantic range at that time. Next, via a detailed comparison with data for the 20th century, we show that there have been interesting changes concerning the semantic evolution of the aanconstruction. The structural weight of a cluster of 'do'- and 'send'-verbs for example declines over time and at more general level there seems to be a trend towards more abstract uses of the aan-construction. A diachronic collostructional analysis (Hilpert, 2006) and Configural Frequency Analysis (von Eye, 2002) lends a statistical underpinning to our observations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates 'syntactic phoenixes': obsolete or obsolescent constructions that unexpectedly regain currency in language use. Four case studies are investigated to gain insight in the reasons for the revival of these old constructions: (i) transparent free relatives, (ii) the complex prepositionlike combination wat betreft, (iii) accusativus and nominativus cum infinitivo (ACI/NCI) and (iv) bare infinitive with the young modal hoeven. In all cases, the (temporary) reversal of the diachronic trends in the internal syntax of these constructions is argued to be driven by an analogical pull by cognate constructions. As such, the phoenixes are in fact illusions: the revival only affects a particular corner of the whole construction, namely where it borders on the neighbouring construction. The diachronic developments underscore the need to take into account the impact of the broad grammatical environment in which syntactic changes take place in grammaticalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]