PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

This paper focuses on the solutions that speakers find when they are faced with a grammatical gap, i.e. a complication that occurs within the production of an utterance for which no conven- tionalised solution is available to the speaker. I introduce the term ad hoc construction for these solutions and analyse them as instances of linguistic (more specifically, grammatical) creativity. Section 1 introduces the topic of this paper, section 2 discusses and rejects a psy- cholinguistic account of ad hoc constructions in terms of grammatical illusions (Haider 2011) for a kind of infinitival verbal complexes in German that have been subject to a controversy (Reis 1979, Vogel 2009, Haider 2011, a.o.). An alternative in terms of grammatical creativity is proposed. Section 3 sketches the concept of linguistic creativity in a more general way, based on a neo-Saussurean conception of language. Section 4 highlights a number of insights for the study of grammatical gaps.