Form and function in usage-based construction grammar: A semantic/pragmatic analysis of clause-internal irrelevance marking in German.

German W-immer/auch-connectives occur in universal concessive conditionals, nonspecific free relatives, and elliptical constructions. By analyzing both formal and semantic/pragmatic differences between these constructions, I will demonstrate that a more precise characterization of a construction’s function is required in order to distinguish formally similar constructions in the constructional network and explain subtle differences between them.