Abstract
This paper examines the multi-layered nature of speakers' linguistic knowledge and its manifestation in the emergence of new linguistic structure. In particular, the emergence of certain discourse-sensitive grammatical patterns can be systematically captured by appealing to an intricate interaction between fairly abstract constructional meanings based on metonymic transfer, lexical meanings of words ('semantic' frames), and particular discourse-pragmatic functions ('discourse' frames).
The theoretical issues are demonstrated on a subset of discourse-functional and modal uses of the word jestli 'if/whether' in conversational Czech.