Construction Grammar and typology share many assumptions and each approach can fruitfully inform the other. Both fields start from a pairing of form and function and treat lexicon, morphology, and syntax as a continuum of varying strategies to express function. Cross-linguistic comparison leads to a distinction between language-particular categories and structures, determined by distributional analysis, and comparative concepts that are cross-linguistically valid. Strategies are morphosyntactic formal structures that are defined language-independently and constructions are comparative concepts; as such, constructions and their components can be aligned across languages, and strategies allow the alignment of morphosyntactic structures used for constructions across languages. Typologists have also developed representations of the conceptual relations between the functions of different constructions in terms of conceptual spaces. Typological diversity also suggests that the only universal syntactic structure is the part–whole relation between a construction and its constituents. Both Construction Grammar and typology give a prominent role to diachrony, seeing constructions as lineages.

Morphosyntax describes the form and function of grammatical constructions in the world’s languages. The form of constructions includes both syntactic structure and relevant morphology. The function of constructions includes both information content (semantics) and information packaging of the content. The same semantic content can be packaged in different ways. The approach in this textbook is crosslinguistic and empirical: we compare grammatical constructions across languages and describe patterns of variation, universals constraining variation, and diachronic processes that give rise to the variation. Crosslinguistic comparison is done using crosslinguistically valid concepts (comparative concepts). Crosslinguistic constructions are defined as all grammatical forms expressing a particular function. Strategies are crosslinguistically defined formal means for expressing a function. The analysis of grammatical structure in a particular language is the categorization of constructions in the language by their form and their function. Language-particular analysis of constructions and crosslinguistic analysis of constructions can be united via the function of the construction.