The Slot in the System: An empirical case study of the entrenchment of a construct

In Construction Grammar, many units are depicted as semi-schematic objects, with a fixed part and a slot to be filled by another language unit, leading to the utterance of a construct. These slots are highly structured organizations, obeying a Zipf-Mandelbrot distribution over the frequency of the filler units. Through use, it may nonetheless happen that a filler becomes so favored in the construction that the resulting construct becomes entrenched on its own, leading to a frozen unit that no longer results from the paradigmatic variation of a constructional schema. In this paper, I argue that we can empirically detect these entrenchment events, based on two criteria: structurally, from a deviation of the filler’s frequency to the Zipf-Mandelbrot distribution; diachronically, from a significant increase in frequency share over time. I apply these notions to the edge-based constructional system of complex prepositions, showing that on the edge of town has become a frozen construct. The question arises of the slot from which this construct originated. To answer this question, I fully flesh out the system, concluding that the construct has likely become entrenched thanks to its use at the intersection of several constructional schemas.