Academia.eduAcademia.edu

Outline

Title
Abstract
Figures
Introduction 1
Conclusion
References
All Topics
Languages and Linguistics
Syntax

Making the Case for Construction Grammar

Profile image of Laura A MichaelisLaura A Michaelis

2012, Sign Based Construction Grammar

Abstract

Few published articles in Construction Grammar (CxG) actually talk about the theory, and fewer still about its formal and logical foundations. This information vacuum has allowed misconceptions about CxG to thrive, including the claim that it is designed only to model minor idiomatic phenomena. In this chapter, I try to remedy this situation by laying out the case for CxG, or, more specifically, the formal version of CxG known as Sign- Based Construction Grammar (SBCG; Sag this volume, 2010). In doing so, I will touch on four major topics: foundations, functionality, facts and falsehoods. In describing the foundations of CxG, I will explain what it means to adopt a licensing-based view of syntax rather than one based on negative constraints (Zwicky 1994, Malouf 2003). The focus on functionality arises from the recognition that working syntacticians need a robust and elegant formalism. I will argue that SBCG provides such a formalism, by describing three benefits that it offers to practitioners of construction-based syntax: it is localist, it allows for variable-grain description and it captures shared properties of constructions without requiring stipulations about constructional inheritance relations. The facts include three major lines of evidence for construction- based syntax: the constructional basis of meaning composition, the role of constructions in the licensing of complements and the interleaving of core and periphery during production. Finally, I will attempt to counter six entrenched falsehoods about CxG: that it is nonrigorous, that it does not offer generalizations, that it is a theory of linguistic marginalia, that it is opposed to compositional semantics, that it is not constrained and that it does not provide a universal framework for syntax.

Figures (5)
Figure 3. The Subject-Predicate combinatory construction (Sag, this volume, (84b)) The Applicative construction, shown in Figure 2, describes the lexeme class to which the verbs fill and cover belong (as in, e.g., She filled the bathtub with champagne and They covered the wall with a sheet): this lexeme class is a subtype of the transitive-lexeme class, as indicated by the typing of the feature structure to the right of the arrow. As shown by the ARG-ST list, verbs of this lexeme class express the theme argument as a PP headed by with. The semantic constraints associated with this lexeme class are as indicated by the frame labeled saturation-fr in the FRAMES list. This frame is intended to capture the resultant-state entailment that the theme occupies a critical mass of points in a planar region (Michaelis and Ruppenhofer 2001). The Applicative construction also describes one of the classes to which the verbs spray and load belong: the lexical entries of these verbs lack an ARG-ST list, making them compatible with both the Applicative and Oblique-Goal lexical-class constructions. Figure 2. The Applicative lexical-class construction (based on Sag, this volume, (48b))
Figure 3. The Subject-Predicate combinatory construction (Sag, this volume, (84b)) The Applicative construction, shown in Figure 2, describes the lexeme class to which the verbs fill and cover belong (as in, e.g., She filled the bathtub with champagne and They covered the wall with a sheet): this lexeme class is a subtype of the transitive-lexeme class, as indicated by the typing of the feature structure to the right of the arrow. As shown by the ARG-ST list, verbs of this lexeme class express the theme argument as a PP headed by with. The semantic constraints associated with this lexeme class are as indicated by the frame labeled saturation-fr in the FRAMES list. This frame is intended to capture the resultant-state entailment that the theme occupies a critical mass of points in a planar region (Michaelis and Ruppenhofer 2001). The Applicative construction also describes one of the classes to which the verbs spray and load belong: the lexical entries of these verbs lack an ARG-ST list, making them compatible with both the Applicative and Oblique-Goal lexical-class constructions. Figure 2. The Applicative lexical-class construction (based on Sag, this volume, (48b))
How does SBCG avoid overgeneration? It treats nodes, and in particular the MTR nodes of constructs, as feature structures—not category labels.* A description of a feature structure is a set of properties. As property sets, feature-structure descriptions follow the logic of set inclusion: the more properties in the description, the smaller the class of language objects that description picks out. For example, the feature set that describes an IC exclamative (e.g., What fools!) includes that which defines the filler-head construction, shown in Figure 4. Inclusion relations among feature-structure descriptions allow us to model constructs at each step along the idiomaticity continuum, with an array of constructions of correspondingly graded generality. 3.3. Inheritance without Stipulation
How does SBCG avoid overgeneration? It treats nodes, and in particular the MTR nodes of constructs, as feature structures—not category labels.* A description of a feature structure is a set of properties. As property sets, feature-structure descriptions follow the logic of set inclusion: the more properties in the description, the smaller the class of language objects that description picks out. For example, the feature set that describes an IC exclamative (e.g., What fools!) includes that which defines the filler-head construction, shown in Figure 4. Inclusion relations among feature-structure descriptions allow us to model constructs at each step along the idiomaticity continuum, with an array of constructions of correspondingly graded generality. 3.3. Inheritance without Stipulation
According to the construction in Figure 6, an Auxiliary-Initial construct is a headed construct that qualifies as clause (i.e., a phrase whose head daughter is a verb and whose valence set is empty). The head daughter of this headed construct is a verb that appears in initial position (as indicated by its place in the DTRS list) and is marked by the feature [INV+]. Because the Inverted Exclamative construct described in Figure 5 is of the type Auxiliary-Initial construct, the former will inherit all of the properties of the feature structure (a type of construct) described in Figure 6, as well as additional properties represented by the ellipses in Figure 5.
According to the construction in Figure 6, an Auxiliary-Initial construct is a headed construct that qualifies as clause (i.e., a phrase whose head daughter is a verb and whose valence set is empty). The head daughter of this headed construct is a verb that appears in initial position (as indicated by its place in the DTRS list) and is marked by the feature [INV+]. Because the Inverted Exclamative construct described in Figure 5 is of the type Auxiliary-Initial construct, the former will inherit all of the properties of the feature structure (a type of construct) described in Figure 6, as well as additional properties represented by the ellipses in Figure 5.
Figure 7. The Inverted Negative Adverb Preposing construction
Figure 7. The Inverted Negative Adverb Preposing construction
The null-complementation construction is a type of derivational construction. A derivational construction builds a new lexeme from one or more lexical signs: the mother of a derivational construct is of the type lexeme; the daughter(s) of a derivational construct are lexical signs, i.e., words or lexemes (Sag this volume). The null- complementation construction builds a lexeme with a covert valence member from a lexeme with an optionally covert valence member. A construct licensed by the null- complementation construction is shown in Figure 8. In the construct shown in Figure 8, the DTR lexeme is the verb eat, which licenses two
The null-complementation construction is a type of derivational construction. A derivational construction builds a new lexeme from one or more lexical signs: the mother of a derivational construct is of the type lexeme; the daughter(s) of a derivational construct are lexical signs, i.e., words or lexemes (Sag this volume). The null- complementation construction builds a lexeme with a covert valence member from a lexeme with an optionally covert valence member. A construct licensed by the null- complementation construction is shown in Figure 8. In the construct shown in Figure 8, the DTR lexeme is the verb eat, which licenses two

Related papers

The Oxford Handbook of Construction Grammar
Laura A Michaelis

2015

This chapter discusses the concept of Sign-Based Construction Grammar (SBCG), which evolved out of ideas from Berkeley Construction Grammar and construction-based Head-Driven Phrase-Structure Grammar (HPSG). The leading insight of SBCG is that the lexicon provides a model for the syntax-semantics interface. The chapter explains that though SBCG cannot be divorced from the formal conventions it uses to represent lexemes, constructions, and the hierarchical relations among types, it offers insights to construction grammarians whose work is not primarily formal. It also considers the strict locality constraint of SBCG, the avoidance of overgeneralization, inheritance, as well as the treatment of inflectional and derivation processes.

View PDFchevron_right
<i>Construction grammars: Cognitive grounding and theoretical extensions</i> (review)
Mirjam Fried

Language, 2008

View PDFchevron_right
Semantics and pragmatics in Construction Grammar
Benoît Leclercq

Belgian Journal of Linguistics, 2020

This squib provides a theoretical discussion on the use of the terms semantics and pragmatics in Construction Grammar. In the literature, the difference between semantics and pragmatics is often conceptualized either in terms of conventionality or in terms of truth-conditionality (Huang 2014, 299). It will be shown that, even though constructionists claim that there is no semantics-pragmatics distinction, both these underlying concepts are central to the study of constructions. Therefore, the aim is twofold. First, in keeping with Cappelle (2017), it will be argued that constructionists should make more explicit the distinction between the two types of (encoded) meaning. Second, it will be shown that constructionists need to be more terminologically consistent and agree on how to use the terms semantics and pragmatics. Following Depraetere (2019), I will argue that the terms semantics and pragmatics are most explanatory when defined in truth-conditional terms. In this way, finer-grained understanding of the meaning of constructions can be achieved.

View PDFchevron_right
Unifying Everything: Some Remarks on Simpler Syntax, Construction Grammar, Minimalism and HPSG
Stefan Müller

2013

This paper compares several current linguistic theories: at the extreme ends of the current views are Minimalist theories, which restrict themselves to the binary branching operations Move and Merge, and Simpler Syntax, which assumes flat structures and a surface oriented mapping between syntactic structures and grammatical functions. I show that purely surface-oriented theories have problems in accounting for the relatedness of syntactic and morphological structures and for the iteration of valence changing processes and argue for a lexical analysis, as it can be found in current Minimalist theories, HPSG, and Categorial Grammar. I furthermore show that the Chomskian view on label computation is problematic for several reasons and should be given up in favour of explicit accounts like the one used in HPSG. I discuss problems for the analysis of complements and specifiers in Minimalist theories with special focus on Stabler's Minimalist Grammars. I argue that once all problems are fixed the resulting combinatorial rules are rather similar to what HPSG does. As various proponents of more surface-oriented theories like Construction Grammar, Simpler Syntax, and HPSG pointed out, two types of binary branching, headed rules are not sufficient to account for the entirety of language, which leads to the conclusion that both research directions are right to a certain extend: there is need for (constraint-based versions of) Move and Merge and there is need for special phrasal constructions.

View PDFchevron_right
9. Constructional meaning and compositionality
Laura A Michaelis

De Gruyter eBooks, 2019

View PDFchevron_right
Cognitive Construction Grammar works An interview with Adele E. Goldberg
FRANCISCO GONZÁLVEZ-GARCÍA

Annual Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 2008

View PDFchevron_right
Construction grammars: Cognitive grounding and theoretical extensions (review)
Mirjam Fried

Language, 2008

View PDFchevron_right
Towards a Reconsideration of Constructional Schemas in RRG:: Are All Constructions Driven by �Constructions�?
Elke Diedrichsen

International Conference on Role and Reference Grammar 2004 Pags 52 79, 2004

Lexical theories of argument realization generally seek to explain the syntax of sentences on the basis of the meaning of the verb. There has to be a "mapping" of the lexical-semantic properties of the verb with the syntax. One important question is, then, what facets of the meaning of verbs are relevant for the mapping from lexical semantics to syntax. In the RRG approach to the syntax/semantics interface, the syntax of a construction is proposed to be based on certain aspects of the semantics of the verb, which include the distinctions between classes of verbs on the basis of features like telicity, punctuality, stativity and dynamicity. RRG distinguishes six classes, all of which have additional causative counterparts. The assignment of verbs to the classes is to be done by tests which are denominated "independent criteria" (Van Valin 2005:59), while it is admitted that some of the tests are either language-specific, do not apply in certain circumstances, or are misleading if different readings of verbs are involved. Thus, even though the author admits that the tests are "not perfect" (Van Valin 2005:40), these tests are supposed to be the basis of the entire RRG approach to argument realization and syntactic organization. Logical Structure State predicate´ (x) or (x, y) Activity do´(x, [predicate´ (x) or (x, y)]) Achievement INGR predicate´ (x) or (x, y) Semelfactive SEML predicate´(x) or (x, y) SEML do´ (x, [predicate´ (x) or (x, y)]) Accomplishment BECOME predicate´ (x) or (x, y) BECOME do´ (x, [predicate´ (x) or (x, y)]) Active Accomplishment do´(x, [predicate 1 ´(x, (y))]) & INGR predicate 2 ´(z, x) or (y) Causative α CAUSE β; α and β are logical structures of any type. The thematic relations continuum (Fig. .3 in Van Valin 2005:58) lists the thematic relations that are possibly placed in the logical structure argument positions of the basic predicates. Agent and patient are presented as the endpoints of the continuum. As thematic relations are posited according to logical structure positions of single verbs, it may seem that there are a lot of thematic relations. In fact, there are only five "relevant distinctions". These are the distinctions that fall out of the five possible argument positions in the logical structures of "activity" and "state" predicates, which are assumed to be basic. "Agent" is added as one of the thematic relations. It is ascribed only to verbs that lexicalize agency; for example murder as opposed to kill. DO signals agency in the logical structure.

View PDFchevron_right
Coconstrual and Narrow Syntax
Ken Safir

Syntax, 2008

This essay explores the place of coconstrual relations, such as antecedent-anaphor relations, in a theory of grammar informed by minimalist architecture. It has been argued that the logical space created by minimalist theorizing should favor an account of coconstrual derived from the tree-building operations of narrow syntax (Agree, feature theory, Merge and its subcase, Remerge), dispensing with rules or conditions that evaluate constructed trees. On such an account, it is argued, the explanatory power of narrow syntax is enhanced and the role of the interpretive component can be circumscribed. However, if coconstrual cannot be reduced to the derivational relations of narrow syntax, then we must be prepared to reevaluate the role of syntax-sensitive interpretive rules, balancing the need for such rules against any complication of narrow syntax mechanisms just to account for coconstrual. It will be argued that dependent identity relations, the form of coconstrual that is sensitive to syntactic configurations, must be interpreted from the output of narrow syntax and are not expressed within narrow syntax at all. This result unburdens narrow syntax of a class of relations that bring theoretical and empirical complications, while providing a more elegant account of coconstrual in a broader conception of the interpretive interface.

View PDFchevron_right
Current Approaches to Syntax. A Comparative Handbook
Csilla Rákosi

Acta Linguistica Academica, 2020

View PDFchevron_right

References (72)

  1. Aissen, Judith. 1999. Agent Focus and Inverse in Tzotzil. Language 75: 451-485.
  2. Baldwin, Timothy, John Beavers, Emily M. Bender, Dan Flickinger, Ara Kim and Stephan Oepen. 2004. Beauty and the Beast: What Running a Broad-coverage Precision Grammar over the BNC taught us about the Grammar-and the Corpus. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Linguistic Evidence: Empirical, Theoretical, and Computational Perspectives. Tübingen, Germany.
  3. Bender, Emily and Andreas Kathol. to appear. Constructional Effects of Just Because…doesn't Mean... Berkeley Linguistics Society Proceedings 27.
  4. Bencini, Giulia and Virgina Valian, 2008. Abstract Sentence Representation in Three- Year-Olds: Evidence from Comprehension and Production. Journal of Memory and Language 59: 97-113.
  5. Boyd, Jeremy K., Erin Gottschalk and Adele Goldberg. 2009. Linking Rule Acquisition in Novel Phrasal Constructions. Language Learning 93: 418-429.
  6. Bybee, Joan. 2001. Phonology and Language Use. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  7. Bybee, Joan. 2007. Frequency of Use and the Organization of Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  8. Chomsky, Noam. 1989. Some Notes on Economy of Derivation and Representation. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 10: 43-74.
  9. Chomsky, Noam. 1995. The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  10. Croft, William and D.A. Cruse. 2002. Cognitive Grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  11. Culicover, Peter and Ray Jackendoff. 2005. Simpler Syntax. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  12. Diessel, Holger and Michael Tomasello. 2000. The Development of Relative Clauses in Spontaneous Child Speech. Cognitive Linguistics 11: 131-51.
  13. Duffield, Jill and Laura A. Michaelis. 2009. Why Subject Relatives Prevail. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Linguistics Society of America. San Francisco, CA. January 2009.
  14. Evans, Nicholas and Stephen Levinson. In press. The Myth of Language Universals: Language Diversity and its Importance for Cognitive Science. Brain and Behavioral Sciences.
  15. Feldman, Jerome. 2006. From Molecule to Metaphor: A Neural Theory of Language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  16. Fillmore, Charles J., Paul Kay and Mary C. O'Connor. 1988. Regularity and Idiomaticity in Grammatical Constructions: The Case of Let Alone. Language 64: 501-538.
  17. Fillmore, Charles J. and Paul Kay. 1995. Construction Grammar Coursebook. Unpublished ms., Department of Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley.
  18. Fox, Barbara and Sandra Thompson. 1990. A Discourse Explanation for the Grammar of Relative Clauses in English Conversation. Language 66: 297-316.
  19. Gahl, Susanne. 2002. The Role of Lexical Biases in Aphasic Sentence Comprehension. Aphasiology 16: 1173-1198.
  20. Geisler, Christer. 1998. Infinitival Relative Clauses in Spoken Discourse. Language Variation and Change 10: 23-41.
  21. Goldberg, Adele. 1995. Constructions: A Construction Grammar Approach to Argument Structure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  22. Goldberg, Adele. 2005. Constructions, Lexical Semantics and the Correspondence Principle: Accounting for Generalizations and Subregularities in the Realization of Arguments. In N. Erteschik-Shir and T. Rapoport, (eds.), The Syntax of Aspect. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 212-236.
  23. Goldberg, Adele. 2006. Constructions at Work. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  24. Goldberg, Adele and Giulia Bencini. 2005. Support from Processing for a Constructional Approach to Grammar. In A. Tyler, M. Takada, Y. Kim, and D. Marinova, (eds.), Language in Use: Cognitive and Discourse Perspectives on Language and Language Learning. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. 3-18.
  25. Hawkins, John. 1999. Processing Complexity and Filler-Gap Dependencies across Grammars. Language 75: 244-285.
  26. Heine, Bernd and Tania Kuteva. 2007. The Genesis of Grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  27. Homer, Kristin. 2000. A Discourse Constraint on Subject Information Questions. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Department of Linguistics, University of Colorado at Boulder.
  28. Jackendoff, Ray. 1997. The Architecture of the Language Faculty. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  29. Jackendoff, Ray. 1999. Possible Stages in the Evolution of the Language Capacity. Trends in the Cognitive Sciences 3: 272-279.
  30. Jackendoff, Ray. 2002. Foundations of Language: Brain, Meaning, Grammar, Evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  31. Kaschak, Michael and Arthur Glenberg. 2000. The Role of Affordances and Grammatical Constructions in Language Comprehension. Journal of Memory and Language 43: 508-529.
  32. Kay, Paul and Charles J. Fillmore. 1999. Grammatical Constructions and Linguistic Generalizations: The 'what's X doing Y' Construction. Language 75: 1-33.
  33. Kay, Paul. 2002. English Subjectless Tag Sentences. Language 78: 453-81
  34. Kay, Paul. 2004. Null Complementation Constructions. Unpublished ms., University of California, Berkeley.
  35. Kay, Paul and Laura A. Michaelis. forthcoming. Constructional Meaning and Compositionality. In C. Maienborn, K. von Heusinger and P. Portner, (eds.), Semantics: An International Handbook of Natural Language Meaning. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
  36. Kay, Paul and Ivan Sag. forthcoming. How Hard a Problem would this be to Solve? Proceedings of the Ninth Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar.
  37. Keenan, Edward and Bernard Comrie 1977. Noun Phrase Accessibility and Universal Grammar. Linguistic Inquiry 8: 63-69.
  38. Lakoff, George. 1987. Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  39. Lambrecht, Knud. 1987. Presentational Cleft Constructions in Spoken French. In J. Haiman and S. Thompson, (eds.), Clause Combining in Grammar and Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 135-179.
  40. Lambrecht, Knud. 1988. There was a Farmer had a Dog: Syntactic Amalgams Revisited. Berkeley Linguistics Society Proceedings 14: 319-339.
  41. Lambrecht, Knud. 1990. What, me, worry? Mad magazine sentences revisited. Berkeley Linguistics Society Proceedings 16: 215-228.
  42. Lambrecht, Knud. 2002. Topic, Focus, and Secondary Predication: The French Presentational Relative Construction. In C. Beyssade, R. Bok-Bennema, F. Drijkoningen, and P. Monachesi, (eds.), Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2000. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 171-212.
  43. Legendre, Géraldine, Jane Grimshaw and Sten Vikner, (eds.). 2000. Optimality-Theoretic Syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  44. Linnebo, Øystein. 2004. Compositionality and Frege's Context Principle. Unpublished ms., University of Bristol.
  45. Mak, Willem, Wietske Vonk and Herbert Schrieffers. 2008. Discourse Structure and Relative Clause Processing. Memory and Cognition 36: 170-181.
  46. Malouf, Robert. 2003. Cooperating Constructions. In E. Francis and L. Michaelis (eds.), Mismatch: Form-Function Incongruity and the Architecture of Grammar. Stanford: CSLI Publications. Stanford. 403-424.
  47. McCawley, James. 1981. The Syntax and Semantics of English Relative Clauses. Lingua 53: 99-149.
  48. Michaelis, Laura A. and Knud Lambrecht. 1996. Toward a Construction-Based Model of Language Function: The Case of Nominal Extraposition. Language 72: 215-247.
  49. Michaelis, Laura A. 2001. Exclamative Constructions. In M. Haspelmath, E. König, W. Österreicher and W. Raible, (eds.), Language Universals and Language Typology: An International Handbook. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. 1038-1050.
  50. Michaelis, Laura A. and Hartwell S. Francis. 2007. Lexical Subjects and the Conflation Strategy. In N. Hedberg and R. Zacharski, (eds.), Topics in the Grammar- Pragmatics Interface: Papers in Honor of Jeanette K. Gundel. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 19-48.
  51. Michaelis, Laura A. and Josef Ruppenhofer. 2001. Beyond Alternations: A Constructional Account of the Applicative Pattern in German. Stanford: CSLI Publications.
  52. Mithun, Marianne. 1991. The Role of Motivation in the Emergence of Grammatical Categories: The Grammaticization of Subjects. In E. C. Traugott and B. Heine (eds), Approaches to Grammaticalization, Volume 2. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 159-184.
  53. Pollard, Carl and Ivan Sag. 1987. Information-based Syntax and Semantics. Volume 1: Fundamentals. Stanford: CSLI Publications.
  54. Pollard, Carl and Ivan Sag. 1994. Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
  55. Pesetsky, David. 1997. Optimality Theory and Syntax: Movement and Pronunciation. In D. Archangeli and D.T. Langendoen, (eds.), Optimality Theory: An Overview. Oxford: Blackwell. 134-170.
  56. Pullum, Geoffrey and Arnold Zwicky. 1991. Condition Duplication, Paradigm Homonymy and Transconstructional Constraints. Berkeley Linguistics Society Proeedings 17: 252-266.
  57. Pinker, Steven. 1989. Learnability and Cognition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press Rappaport Hovav, Malka and Beth Levin. 1998. Building Verb Meanings. In M. Butt and W. Geuder, eds., The Projection of Arguments. Stanford: CSLI Publications. 97- 134.
  58. Reali, Florencia and Morten Christiansen. 2007. Processing of Relative Clauses is Made Easier by Frequency of Occurrence. Journal of Memory and Language 53: 1-23.
  59. Ruppenhofer, Josef. 2004. The Interaction of Valence and Information Structure. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Department of Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley.
  60. Sag, Ivan A. forthcoming. English Filler-Gap Constructions. Language.
  61. Sag, Ivan A. in press. Feature Geometry and Predictions of Locality. In G. Corbett and A. Kibort, (eds.), Features: Perspectives on a Key Notion in Linguistics. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
  62. Sag, Ivan A. this volume. Sign-Based Construction Grammar: An Informal Synopsis.
  63. Sag, Ivan. A 2007. Remarks on Locality. In S. Müller, (ed.), Proceedings of the HPSG07 Conference, Stanford University. Stanford: CSLI Publications.
  64. Sells, Peter. 2001. Formal and Empirical Issues in Optimality Theoretic Syntax. Stanford: CSLI Publications.
  65. Spivey, Michael. 2007. The Continuity of Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  66. Stefanowitsch, Anatol and Stefan Th. Gries. 2005. Co-varying Collexemes. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 1: 1-43.
  67. Steels, Luc and Joachim de Beule. 2006. Unify and Merge in Fluid Construction Grammar. In P. Vogt, Y. Sugita, E. Tuci and C. Nehaniv, (eds.), Symbol Grounding and Beyond: Proceedings of the Third International Workshop on the Emergence and Evolution of Linguistic Communication. Berlin: Springer. 197- 223.
  68. Szabó, Zoltán. 2007. Compositionality. In E. Zalta, (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Spring 2007 edition. <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2007/entries/compositionality/>.
  69. Tomasello, Michael. 2003. Constructing a Language: A Usage-Based Theory of Language Acquisition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  70. Traxler, Matthew Robin Morris and Rachel Seely. 2002. Processing Subject and Object Relative clauses: Evidence from Eye Movements. Journal of Memory and Language 47: 69-90.
  71. Van Valin, Robert D. and Randy J. LaPolla. 1997. Syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  72. Zwicky, Arnold. 1994. Dealing out Meaning: Fundamentals of Grammatical Constructions. Berkeley Linguistics Society Proceedings 20: 611-25.

Related papers

Construction Grammars
Thomas Hoffmann

To appear in: Barbara Dancygier, ed. The Cambridge Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press., 2017

To appear in: Barbara Dancygier, ed. The Cambridge Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. The previous chapter gave an overview of the renaissance of constructions in grammatical theory and the rise of Construction Grammar approaches. Yet, while all constructionist approaches share many important tenets concerning the nature of human language, the various individual approaches nevertheless differ from each other in non-trivial ways. In this chapter, I will first provide the common theoretical assumptions shared by all constructionist approaches. After that, I will outline the major differences between non-usage-based (such as Berkley Construction Grammar and Sign-Based Construction Grammar) and usage-based approaches (Cognitive Construction Grammar, Embodied Construction Grammar, Fluid Construction Grammar and Radical Construction Grammar). Moreover, I will discuss the controversial issue of what counts as a construction (from Kay's conservative competence-based notion to the usage-based interpretation of constructions as exemplar-based clouds) and the ontological status of meaningless constructions. In addition to that, I will also touch upon the nature of the structured inventory of constructions, the constructicon, and explore the advantage and limits of constructional inheritance in taxonomic networks. Finally, the chapter will also address the question as to how the meaning pole of constructions is analysed in the various approaches (which ranges from semantic paraphrases (Cognitive Construction Grammar) over first-order predicate logic (Fluid Construction Grammar) to Frame-based approaches (Sign-based Construction Grammar)).

View PDFchevron_right
Approaching German syntax from a constructionist perspective
Alexander Ziem

2018

Over the last decade or so, Construction Grammar (CxG) has evolved into an influential paradigm in linguistic research. CxG subsumes a family of related constructional approaches to language including Cognitive Construction Grammar (Lakoff 1987, Goldberg 1995, Boas 2013), Berkeley Construction Grammar (Fillmore et al. 1988, Kay and Fillmore 1999, Fillmore 2013), Sign-based Construction Grammar (SBCG; Sag 2011, Boas and Sag 2012, Michaelis 2013), Radical Construction Grammar (Croft 2001, 2013), and Cognitive Grammar (Langacker 1987, 2008; Broccias 2013), among others (for an overview see Hoffmann/Trousdale 2013, Ziem and Lasch 2013, and Lasch and Ziem 2014). Although such approaches differ not only in methodological terms but also with respect to the types of linguistic phenomena addressed, they all embrace the view that both lexicon and grammar essentially consist of constructions, i.e. non-compositional (and compositional) formmeaning pairings of varying abstractness and syntagmati...

View PDFchevron_right
Review of "The Oxford Handbook of Construction Grammar" ed. by Thomas Hoffmann & Graeme Trousdale.
Ben Lyngfelt

Nordic Journal of Linguistics 36(3): 381-387., 2013

View PDFchevron_right
Construction Grammar and the Syntax-Semantics Interface
Laura A Michaelis

The Bloomsbury Companion to Syntax, 2013

A foundational assumption of traditional generative grammar is that a grammar is organized in the mind of the speaker as a number of hermetically sealed modules, which in the course of a derivation hand off data one to the other. Sign-Based Construction Grammar (SBCG) assumes that the grammar contains no such modules, but rather that grammar is an inventory of signs, complexes of linguistic constraints that contain information about form, meaning, and use, and that constructions are the means by which simpler signs are combined into more complex signs. The notion of construction, on this view, is a formaliza- tion, in a constraint-based architecture, of the notion of construction in traditional grammar.

View PDFchevron_right
Constructionist views on Construction Grammar
Ben Lyngfelt

Constructions and Frames, 2024

Since its inception at UC Berkeley in the 1980s, Construction Grammar (C×G) has come a long way. It has spread from English to a wealth of different languages, and from lexicogrammar to a great variety of different language phenomena, ranging from phonology to discourse. It is being applied to different research areas such as computational linguistics, language pedagogy, sociolinguistics, and psycholinguistics, and is employed to explore a wide range of perspectives on language, including language acquisition, language change, language processing, multilingualism, and, not least, language use. It has also grown into a quite diverse field, including different constructionist approaches such as Berkeley C×G, Cognitive C×G, Radical C×G, Fluid C×G, Sign-Based C×G, etc. (for an overview, see Hoffmann & Trousdale 2013; Fried & Nikiforidou in press). Hence, almost four decades later seems to be an opportune time for metareflection: to take stock of the field and ask where we are, where we are going, and where we wish to be going as construction grammarians. To this end, the present theme issue consists of five papers in which leading C×G researchers in different areas present their respective views on the current state and future prospects of C×G. These authors are William Croft, Adele E. Goldberg, Martin Hilpert, Laura A. Michaelis, and Remi van Trijp. There are a few questions that all of them have been asked to address (see Section 6 below), but apart from that they have been given free hands to present their views of the status and potential of C×G in whatever way they find suitable. Other recent meta-theoretically oriented papers on C×G include Ungerer & Hartmann (2023) and a special issue of the online journal Constructions (Sommerer & Hartmann 2023). In spring 2021, we conducted an online questionnaire among construction grammarians about their views and opinions about C×G, followed by a roundtable discussion at ICCG11 in Antwerp in August 2021.

View PDFchevron_right

Related topics

  • Cognitive Linguistics
  • Construction Grammar
  • Constructional Grammar
  • Construction Grammars
    • 580 California St., Suite 400
    San Francisco, CA, 94104
    © 2025 Academia. All rights reserved