Remi van Trijp gives LingCircle talk on Construction Grammar
The Department of Linguistics is pleased to announce the following talk by听, who is visiting us from Sony Computer Science Laboratories in听Paris.听
"What Are Constructions and What Can They Do?"
Wednesday, February 20
4:00-5:30pm
Clare Small 209鈥嬧嬧嬧嬧嬧嬧
Abstract:
Construction grammar grew out of the need to model the whole of language听instead of distinguishing core linguistic expressions from peripheral ones (Fillmore听et al., 1988; Kay and Fillmore, 1999), and has since then established itself听as the grammatical embodiment of cognitive-functional linguistics (Croft and听Cruse, 2004). Its central claim that all linguistic knowledge can be represented听as form-meaning mappings 鈥 called constructions 鈥 has been embraced in both听data-oriented and experiment-driven subdisciplines such as language acquisition听(Dabrowska et al., 2009; Diessel, 2004; Tomasello, 2003), corpus linguistics (Hilpert,听2015; Stefanowitsch and Gries, 2003; Zeschel, 2012), historical linguistics (Bardalet al., 2015; Colleman, 2016; Couss茅 et al., 2018; Fried, 2009; Van de Velde et al.,听2013; Van Goethem, 2017), sociolinguistics (H枚der, 2014; Hollmann and Siewierska,听2007), psycho- and neurolinguistics (Barr猫s, 2017; Dominey et al., 2006; Perek听and Goldberg, 2017), computational and formal linguistics (Bergen and Chang,听2005; Boas and Sag, 2012; Michaelis, 2004; Steels, 2011) and artificial intelligence听(Beuls and Steels, 2013; Steels, 2004; Van Eecke and Beuls, 2017).听
As is often the case, however, it takes time before the potential of an innovation听is fully explored and understood. Early movies, for example, strongly mimicked听theater and used long and static shots before film makers developed their own听cinematic 鈥済rammar鈥. A similar process happens in science, and while construction听grammar is already too mature to be directly compared to early cinema, the formal听and computational properties of its most important data structure are not yet听completely worked out. As a result, construction grammar has become an umbrella听term for all linguistic studies that roughly agree on what Bill Croft (2005) dubbed听vanilla construction grammar, but more precision is needed in order to prevent听a babelesque confusion from installing itself in the field and thereby impeding听much-needed breakthroughs.
In this presentation, I will try to offer a more precise perspective on what constructions听are and what they can do. More specifically, I will look at the representational听and algorithmic properties of constructions. The goal of the presentation is therefore not to favor one or the other analysis, but simply to elicit more clarity听about which analyses are possible and which criticisms on constructional analyses听are valid concerns and which are not. In order to substantiate my claims, all听analyses are accompanied by a concrete computational implementation in Fluid听Construction Grammar (FCG; Steels, 2011), an open-source computational platform听for exploring issues in constructional language processing and learning.