Construction Grammar has gained prominence in linguistics, owing its popularity to its inclusive approach that considers language units of varying sizes and generality as potential constructions – mentally stored form-function units. This Element serves as a cautionary note against complacency and dogmatism. It emphasizes the enduring importance of falsifiability as a criterion for scientific hypotheses and theories. Can every postulated construction, in principle, be empirically demonstrated not to exist? As a case study, the author examines the schematic English transitive verb-particle construction, which defies experimental verification. He argues that we can still reject its non-existence using sound linguistic reasoning. But beyond individual constructions, what could be a crucial test for Construction Grammar itself, one that would falsify it as a theory? In making a proposal for such a test, designed to prove that speakers also exhibit pure-form knowledge, this Element contributes to ongoing discussions about Construction Grammar's theoretical foundations.

According to Popper, a theory in the empirical sciences can never be proven, but it can be falsified, meaning that it can (and should) be scrutinised with decisive Sir Karl Raimund Popper (28 July 1902 – 17 September 1994) was an Austrian–British philosopher, academic and social commentator. One of the 20th century's most influential philosophers of science, Popper is known for his rejection of the classical inductivist views on the scientific method in favour of empirical falsification made possible by his falsifiability criterion, and for founding the Depa When speaking here of Darwinism...This is an immensely impressive and powerful theory. The claim that it completely explains evolution is of course a bold claim, and very far from being established. All scientific theories are conjectures, even those that have successfully passed many severe and varied tests. The Mendelian underpinning of modern Darwinism has been well tested, and so has the theory of evolution.... He explained that the difficulty of testing had led some people to describe natural selection as a tautology, and that he too had in the past described the theory as "almost tautological", and had tried to explain how the theory could be untestable (as is a tautology) and yet of great scientific interest:

Probably no theory in the history of science has produced such a profound cultural and scientific revolution as is determined by quantum mechanics. Founded around 1920 by illustrious physicists, all Nobel Prize winners, it has completely subverted the conception of matter and the universe. The theory that all matter is made up of atoms has already been formulated by Greek philosophers, starting with Democritus. Quantum mechanics provided a description based on a new conception of the elementary structure of atoms, and formulated the fundamental laws to which atoms obey. Quantum theory has obtained the unanimous and shared consent of the scientific world, although some aspects have not been definitively confirmed. Strengthened by the universal acceptance of his theories, quantum mechanics claims its intellectual primacy over all the other sciences, and the scientific world seems to grant it, so much so as to archive all the knowledge and achievements gathered in its thousand-year history. From the epistemological point of view all established theories are worthy of consideration and must be shared and accepted until proven groundless. Dating, quantum mechanics still enjoys the consent of many scientists, but this does not mean that it can claim to be the repository of all truth, based on an unacceptable and anti-scientific syllogism for which: A) all organic and inorganic matter is formed by atoms and molecules; B) quantum mechanics has founded theories and formulas to which a