Relacja między systemem językowym i jego realizacjami w gramatyce konstrukcji

Aiming to illustrate how the relationship between the language system and its actualisations in usage is envisaged in contemporary linguistic models that draw from and modify de Saussure’s idea of langue and parole, the paper presents the vision of this relationship in Construction Grammar (a model developed in various variants by C.J. Fillmore, A. Goldberg, P. Kay, M. Fried and others), belonging to the widelyunderstood cognitive trend in linguistics. The focus is on the distinction between the concept of construction, a conventionalised pairing of form and meaning/function, being an element of the system, and the concept of construct, a real utterance used in communication, being an actualisation of many constructions. Construction Grammar is a usage-based model, assuming that language system generalisations emerge from frequent usage. Therefore, the article also discusses the phenomenon of coercion, i.e. “stretching” constructions to combine with “unfitting” lexemes, seen not as a breach of the system but as one of the mechanisms of its creative use to construct new meanings, which may lead to changes in constructions, to the emergence of new ones, and hence to the modification of the system.