I conduct my research within the STL (Savoirs, Textes, Langage) research unit (UMR 8163, CNRS). My work falls within the laboratory’s first research area, entitled Languages and Language.
My research is structured around two areas of interest that I view as complementary. The first focuses on the relationships between form, meaning, and context, through an investigation of the semantics–pragmatics interface and the socio-pragmatic framework of Construction Grammar. The second concerns the study of modality in English and, more recently, post-modality. These two strands of research have informed one another and have gradually led to the development of a research strand devoted to the relationships between modality, post-modality, and context of use.

Research area 1
1.1. Semantics-pragmatics interface
Part of my research seeks to clarify the relationships between semantics, pragmatics, and context of use, focusing in particular on the respective contributions of linguistic knowledge and interpretive processes to meaning construction. This line of inquiry was initially developed through studies of coercion (Leclercq 2019) and ad hoc concepts (Leclercq 2023), and was subsequently explored in greater depth in the book Linguistic Knowledge and Language Use (Leclercq 2024), which brings Construction Grammar into dialogue with Relevance Theory. This research was then extended to the study of the relationships between constructions and context in a special issue of Cognitextes, which I edited with Guillaume Desagulier and Dylan Glynn (Leclercq et al 2024). More recent work has further developed this line of inquiry by focusing on the dynamic processes involved in meaning construction: on the one hand, an encyclopaedia entry provides an overview of the main issues surrounding this interface within a constructionist framework (Leclercq 2026; see also Leclercq 2020) ; on the other hand, a paper presented at ICMC explores Good-enough languaging, extending the discussion to the dynamic processes involved in meaning production (Leclercq 2026). Taken together, these studies have led to an account of meaning that brings linguistic properties, context, and language-use practices into a unified framework.

1.2. The socio-pragmatic framework of Construction Grammar & Isomorphism
A second strand of my research examines the relationship between form and meaning within Construction Grammar, focusing more specifically on isomorphism and optionality in the linguistic system. The article “No Equivalence: A New Principle of No Synonymy” (Leclercq & Morin 2023) proposes a reconsideration of the principle of no-synonymy, with particular attention to the notions of competition and social meaning. This proposal was subsequently tested using a computational approach (Leclercq, Morin & Pijpops 2025), which made it possible to develop further conceptual distinctions concerning speakers’ expressive possibilities. The Cambridge Element "The Meaning of Constructions" (Leclercq & Morin 2025) synthesises and extends this line of inquiry by proposing an account of constructional meaning that integrates linguistic, cognitive, and socio-pragmatic dimensions. This work is currently being pursued through the preparation, with Cameron Morin, of the special issue “Isomorphism and Optionality in the Linguistic System” for Language and Cognition, which grew out of a workshop organised at SLE 2025. Our introductory article broadens the discussion to include phenomena of optionality and free variation, introducing the notion of attunement as a proposed new principle of optionality (Leclercq & Morin, accepted). These studies contribute to the development of a socio-pragmatic approach to Construction Grammar, in which formal variation and optionality are viewed not as peripheral phenomena but as central properties of the linguistic system in use.

Research area 2
2.1. Modality
A third strand of my research investigates modality in English, considering its semantic, pragmatic, and constructional dimensions. My studies of be able to (Leclercq & Depraetere 2022) and my n-gram analysis of can, could, and be able to (Leclercq 2022) have made it possible to bring qualitative analysis and quantitative approaches to modal usage together. This research subsequently developed through a project devoted to modal constructions and the collective volume Models of Modals (Depraetere et al 2023), to which I contributed several chapters. These chapters address, in particular, the theoretical modelling of modality; the role of the “source of modality” and its pragmatic properties in the interpretation of necessity verbs; and possibility verbs. Another chapter explores the contribution of natural language processing, showing how patterns of modal usage can help distinguish between different levels of English proficiency. More recently, this work has expanded to include an investigation of variation and change in English modality in the article “The Shifting Landscape of Modality in English: Meaning, Variation and Change”, co-authored with Alessandro Basile and Cameron Morin and submitted to Language and Linguistics Compass. Taken together, these studies have enabled me to approach modality at several levels, from the theoretical characterisation of its properties to the analysis of its use in corpora and its computational processing.

2.2. Post-modality
The fourth strand of my research has gradually developed from the study of modality towards that of post-modality. It originated in my article on the concessive uses of may and might ​​​​​​​(Leclercq 2024), which examines the status of these uses and their relationship to the original modal meanings of these forms. This line of inquiry was pursued through an analysis of may and might in collocation with well (Leclercq & Trousdale 2025) and extended to other phenomena for which the distinction between modality and post-modality is a key issue. This distinction is explored, in particular, in an article accepted for publication in English World-Wide (Basile & Leclercq, accepted), which examines models of variation in English, as well as in ongoing work with Graeme Trousdale on modal interrogative-negative constructions and with Alessandro Basile on might want to. During an invited seminar at Sorbonne Université (Leclercq 2025), I also presented an overview of recent developments in the study of modality, examining, among other things, the trajectories through which certain forms develop post-modal uses. These studies reflect the gradual emergence of a research strand devoted to post-modality. The aim is now to move beyond the study of a limited number of individual forms and to investigate more broadly the mechanisms, contexts, and developmental trajectories through which forms shift from modality to post-modality.