Determining the structure of lexical entries and grammatical constructions in Construction Grammar

Abstract

Research in Construction Grammar assumes no strict separation between syntax and the lexicon. However, recent work by Goldberg (1995Goldberg ( , 2006 shows that there is indeed a separation between lexical entries and grammatical constructions, including constraints regulating the fusion of grammatical constructions with verbs. This paper argues that Goldberg's characterization of the interactions between lexical entries and grammatical constructions faces some of the same difficulties as the interactions between lexical entries and transformational rules in the Chomskyan framework (Chomsky, 1965(Chomsky, , 1981(Chomsky, , 1995. Drawing on a variety of corpus data this paper presents specific proposals that should be considered in order to arrive at a solution that overcomes difficulties inherent to Goldberg's approach. Based on a discussion of the concepts of analogy, collocational restrictions, frequency, and productivity this paper proposes to encode different types of semantic, pragmatic, and syntactic information in such a way that it is possible to account for a given utterance from a comprehension perspective, as well as a production perspective.

Semantic profiles of antonymic adjectives in discourse

“…All these constructs represent presupposed information available to speakers in the act of communication, and meanings emerge as linguistic communication unfolds. It is important to note that meanings are thus not inherent in the lexical items as such, but they are evoked by lexical items and their contextual frames (Fillmore 1982;Boas 2008;Paradis 2012). In order to portray meaning in language, Cruse (2002) makes use of a spatial metaphor, describing all readings as groupings separated by boundaries in conceptual space.…”

A Character-Based Constructional Approach to Chinese Imperfective Aspect Markers 在Zai and 着Zhe

“…This idea was further demonstrated by Bybee (2006) by positing there is no unitary "grammar" of language but rather a continuum of categories and constructions ranging from low frequency, highly specific, and lexical to high frequency, highly abstract, and general. Boas (2008) also points out the importance of the lexiconsyntax continuum. Langacker (2008) stated clearly that there is no clear border between lexicon and grammar.…”

“…However, what is innovative about the character-based constructional approach is systematically incorporating constructional grammar with character-based method, including the fundamental tenet of lexicon-syntax continuum as well as the emphasis on the bottom-up corpusbased research method. Boas (2008) discusses how construction grammar is supposed to deal with the interactions between lexical entries and grammatical constructions, and points out that further research should be done with a bottom-up corpus-based approach. The present study is carried out along this line.…”

Enhancing a Role and Reference Grammar approach to English motion constructions in a Natural Language Processing environment

“…This type of fine-grained approach is in fact similar to the one put forward here. That is, instead of positing broad general constructions à la Goldberg (1995), we put forward more specific sub-constructions, or mini-constructions -in Boas' terminology (Boas 2003(Boas , 2008(Boas , 2011)-, i.e. pairings of a particular function with a very specific syntactic frame.…”