Approaching German syntax from a constructionist perspective

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)).

Sign Based Construction Grammar, 2012

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.

Language, 2008

ENGLISH LINGUISTICS, 2003

Cognitive Grammar claims that grammatical structure is symbolic in nature and that constructions are the primary objects of description. A construction is an assembly of symbolic structures (form-meaning pairings) linked by correspondences. While constructions have certain characteristic features, various kinds of departure from this prototype are also common. Grammatical patterns are captured by constructional schemas (schematic symbolic assemblies). Grammatical dependencies reside in correspondences between semantic elements, with the consequence that constituency is non-essential and often variable. The symbolic view of grammar offers a viable alternative to the autonomy thesis.

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

Draft chapter to appear in: Barbara Dancygier, ed. The Cambridge Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. For a long time, constructions played an important role in traditional grammar. During the 20 th century, however, focus in Mainstream Generative Grammar shifted to a universal mentalistic view of language that relegated constructions to the status of mere epiphenomena. The present chapter outlines the historical renaissance of constructions in cognitive linguistics. It discusses various major linguistic phenomena that led some researchers to claim that form-meaning pairings, i.e. constructions, are, in fact, the fundamental units of the human language capacity – a view of language that is now known as Construction Grammar. The various Construction Grammar approaches, their shared assumptions as well as differences are then the topic of the next chapter.