The Contribution of Argument Structure Constructions to Sentence Meaning

Bencini, Giulia; Goldberg, Adele Ε.

doi:10.1006/jmla.2000.2757

Cited by 189 publications

(137 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Very recently, Valenzuela and Rojo (2008) have replicated the sorting study by Bencini and Goldberg (2000) described in Section 3 above. Following the trend initiated by Liang (2002) and pursued by Gries and Wulff (2005), who analyze the behavior of non-native speakers of English, their study uses Spanish learners of English as subjects.…”

Section: Constructions and Second Language Learningmentioning

confidence: 86%

“…Our discussion of the linguistic regularities in examples in (1) and (2) points to the need to take constructional meaning seriously if we want to have a better understanding of the intricacies of meaning construction. Note that Bencini and Goldberg (2000) do not deny the importance of verbal semantics in figuring out the meaning of a given construct. In fact, it is readily acknowledged that on some occasions verbal meaning is much more powerful than constructional semantics (e.g.…”

Section: Constructionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Hare and Goldberg 1999;Bencini and Goldberg 2000;Goldberg and Bencini 2005). Let us take an example.…”

Section: Syntax-based or Construction-based Processing?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Let us take an example. Bencini and Goldberg (2000) report experimental evidence of two sorting experiments designed to find out whether argument constructions play a role in determining sentence meaning. Participants were required to sort four sets of sentences in terms of their overall meaning.…”

Section: Syntax-based or Construction-based Processing?mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Argument constructions and language processing: Evidence from a priming Experiment and pedagogical implications

Eddington¹,

Mendoza²,

Knop³

et al. 2010

Fostering Language Teaching Efficiency Through Cognitive Linguistics

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The notion of argument construction is widely accepted in Cognitive Linguistics circles as a highly explanatory theoretical construct. It has recently been incorporated into the Lexical-Constructional Model (LCM; Ruiz de Mairal 2007, 2008), a theoretical approach to meaning construction that integrates argument constructions into a broader model that incorporates meaning dimensions traditionally dealt with in the domain of pragmatics and discourse analysis. The LCM has an argument level of description, in the form of constructional templates, which are in general equivalent to the argument constructions postulated in Goldberg's (1995Goldberg's ( , 2006 Construction Grammar, although there are crucial differences in the descriptive metalanguage and the principles used to explain their linguistic behavior. Since the LCM is geared to have psychological adequacy, like all cognitive (cf. Lakoff 1990) and some functional approaches to language (e.g. Dik 1997), it is essential to find to what extent the notion of argument construction is a real processing mechanism. This paper presents a priming experiment measuring reaction times to sentences that had the same formal configurations but were based on different argument constructions, and to sentences that were formally similar and embodied the same argument construction. Subjects responded significantly faster to target sentences that shared the same construction as the previously viewed sentences. Thus, constructions appear to be psychological entities that play an important role in linguistic processing. If this is correct, then it has potentially important consequences for planning adequate L2 teaching strategies.

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Section: Constructions and Second Language Learningmentioning

confidence: 86%

Section: Constructionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Hare and Goldberg 1999;Bencini and Goldberg 2000;Goldberg and Bencini 2005). Let us take an example.…”

Section: Syntax-based or Construction-based Processing?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Syntax-based or Construction-based Processing?mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Argument constructions and language processing: Evidence from a priming Experiment and pedagogical implications

Eddington¹,

Mendoza²,

Knop³

et al. 2010

Fostering Language Teaching Efficiency Through Cognitive Linguistics

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show abstract

“…Constructional approaches argue that there are generalizations about thematic role arrays that are not associated with particular lexical items, but with structural configurations (e.g. Bencini & Goldberg, 2000). For example, suppose there is a new kind of squirt-gun called a purt.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Can thematic roles leave traces of their places?

2003

Self Cite

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An important question in the study of language production is the nature of the semantic information that speakers use to create syntactic structures. A common answer to this question assumes that thematic roles help to mediate the mapping from messages to syntax. However, research using structural priming has suggested that the construction of syntactic frames may be insensitive to variations in thematic roles within messages (Cognition 35 (1990) 1; Psychological Review 99 (1992) 150). Because these studies involved structural alternations whose syntax covaries with the order of thematic roles, it is difficult to assess any independent contribution that role information may make to the positioning of phrases. In this study, we primed the order of the roles without changing the syntactic structure of the sentences produced, and found that the order of the roles was influenced by the priming manipulation. This implies that thematic roles or the features that differentiate them are active within the mapping between messages and sentence structures. q

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Construction Grammar

Goldberg

2006

Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science

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The Contribution of Argument Structure Constructions to Sentence Meaning

Cited by 189 publications

References 22 publications

Argument constructions and language processing: Evidence from a priming Experiment and pedagogical implications

Argument constructions and language processing: Evidence from a priming Experiment and pedagogical implications

Can thematic roles leave traces of their places?

Construction Grammar

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