1. 35 years of Cognitive Linguistics Session 9: Construction Grammar Martin Hilpert

2. your questions

3. Some constructions are very abstract, some are very specific. Can we call all of these constructions IDIOMATIC? If not, where does idiomaticity start and where does it end?

4. Where do we draw the line between constructions and constructs? Do some constructs change into constructions?

5. Is coercion involved in the formation of neologisms? Example: sauce (n.) -> sauced (v.)

6. Could Construction Grammar explain why it is easier to acquire a language than to learn it?

7. How does the dictionary and grammar model defend its position against the arguments of construction grammar?

8. Are Construction Grammar and Generative Grammar really that different?

9. How many constructions are there in English?

10. Are there Construction Grammar approaches to historical linguistics?

11. How are corpora used in the detection and identification of constructions?

12. Construction Grammar

13. What do speakers know when they know a language?

14. What speakers have to know: must know words – dog, submarine, probably, you, should, etc. – what they mean, how they sound must know that there are different kinds of words – red is an adjective, tasty is an adjective as well, lobster is a noun, etc. must know how to put words together – red can be combined with ball – many cannot be combined with milk – John saw Mary is ok, John Mary saw is not, but It’s John Mary saw is ok must be able to put the right endings on words – John walk-s, two dog-s must be able to understand newly coined words – festive-ness, under-whelm must know that sometimes more is meant than is said – General Motors were able to increase production in the second quarter. – I don’t know if that is a good idea. must know idiomatic expressions – I'm all ears, let’s take a break, we really hit it off, …

15. The dictionary-and-grammar model

16. The totality of our knowledge of language is captured by a network of constructions: a ‘construct-i-con.’ Goldberg 2003: 219 […] the network of constructions captures our grammatical knowledge of language in toto, i.e. it’s constructions all the way down. Goldberg 2006: 18

17. Constructions words: cat, philosophy, sparkling, run,... collocations: I don’t know, you bet, see you,... semi-fixed phrases: keep V-ing, could you please VP syntactic patterns: SUBJ BE V-ed, SUBJ V OBJ1 OBJ2 abstract phrase structures: PREP DET NOUN Speakers’ knowledge of language = an associative network that connects all of these constructions

18. argument structure constructions

19. Goldberg 1995 sentence patterns that involve a verb and several nominal structures idea: these patterns have meaning their meanings reflect basic recurrent types of everyday experience

20. argument structure also called valency yawn send

21. Valency defined The set of participants is called the verb’s valency. –devour has a valency of two (transitive) –hand has a valency of three (ditransitive) –exist has a valency of one (intransitive) The participants are called the arguments of the verb.

22. Traditional idea of valency It’s in the lexicon! Each verb is listed in the mental lexicon. In the entry it is specifies with what syntactic contexts the verb can occur. – SWEEP intransitive transitive transitive plus resultant state adjective transitive plus path

23. problems with lexically specified valency speakers use verbs ‘creatively’, in syntactic contexts in which they have not heard a verb before: – John played the piano to pieces. – He pulled himself free, one leg at a time. – No matter how carefully you lick a spoon clean, some goo will cling to it. Are there entries such as the following? – ‘play: acting on an object in a violent manner that triggers a change of state in that object’

24. alternative explanation The syntactic context dictates a certain interpretation of the verb. coercion: – If a lexical item is semantically incompatible with its morphosyntactic context, the meaning of the lexical item conforms to the meaning of the structure in which it is embedded. John plays the piano. John plays the piano to pieces.

25. coercion at work intransitive verbs: run, sneeze, worry resultative uses: – John ran his feet sore. – Fred sneezed his cat soaking wet. – Bob’s mother worried herself sick.

26. the ditransitive construction SUBJ V OBJ1 OBJ2

27. the ditransitive construction central sense of the construction: – transfer of an object between a volitional agent and a willing recipient: John gave Mary a book – several other senses John denied Mary a cookie (blocked transfer) John bequeathed Mary a gold watch (future transfer) – several metaphorical meaning extensions: John gave Mary a kiss. John gave Mary an idea.

29. Why call this a construction? C is a CONSTRUCTION iff def C is a form-meaning pair such that some aspect of F i or some aspect of S i is not strictly predictable from C’s component parts or from other previously established constructions. (Goldberg 1995: 4) John baked Mary a cake. – Not predictable from the individual word meanings?

30. ‘implausible’ verb senses John baked Mary a cake. – bake: intend to cause someone else to receive the product of applying hot air to an edible substance John sneezed the napkin off the table. – sneeze: move something by means of exhaling in a burst from the nose John talked himself blue in the face. – talk: cause someone to become X by means of uttering words

31. positing constructional meaning instead of ad-hoc verb senses SUBJ V OBJ1 OBJ2 John baked Mary a cake DITRANSITIVE CX: MEANING = TRANSFER BAKE: MEANING = APPLY HOT AIR

32. Semantics of the ditransitive a volitional agent – the agent needs to carry out the transfer willingly – John kicked Mary the soccer ball. – John threw the squirrels some peanuts. – John painted Mary a picture. troublesome data – John gave me the flu. – The medicine brought me relief.

33. explanation: CAUSES ARE TRANSFERS Situations of cause and effect are understood metaphorically as situations in which the cause ‘brings’ the effect to a recipient: – The report furnished them with all the information they needed. – The new legislation brought new controversies. – The accident presented us with a large number of injured workers. – Nothing good ever came from smoking.

34. Semantics of the ditransitive a willing recipient – the recipient needs to accept the transfer willingly – John kicked Mary the soccer ball. – John threw the squirrels some peanuts. – * John burned Mary some rice. – * John threw the unconscious patient a blanket. troublesome data – John gave me the flu. – The tabasco sauce gave the dish a spicy flavor. – Again, explanation is the CAUSES ARE TRANSFERS metaphor

35. further metaphorical extensions the conduit metaphor (COMMUNICATION IS TRANSFER OF INFORMATION) – John told Mary a joke. – John gave Mary his thoughts on the subject. DIRECTED ACTIONS ARE TRANSFERRED OBJECTS – John gave Mary a wink. – Mary gave John a kick.

36. further metaphorical extensions FACTS ARE GIVEN OBJECTS – I’ll give you that assumption – I’ll grant you that much of your argument BENEFICIAL ACTIONS ARE TRANSFERRED OBJECTS – John offered Mary a ride to the airport – John owes me many favors

37. Constructions = meaningful symbolic units

38. meaningful units Clear for words and idioms – spill the beans Some analysis reveals non-compositional meanings of argument structure constructions. – SUBJ VERB OBJ1 OBJ2 But very general syntactic patterns such as the plan for a noun phrase? – DET ADJ NOUN

39. Do all syntactic forms carry meaning?

40. meaningful constructions? John sings. Bob heard a noise. One sock lay on the sofa, the other one under it. *One sock lay on the sofa, the other one under.

41. Do all constructions carry meaning? No, there are semantically empty constructions! All constructions carry meaning.

42. meaningless constructions 1.formal generalizations with fully compositional meanings – SUBJECT-PREDICATE CX (John sings) – MODIFIER-HEAD CX (red ball, completely full)

43. meaningless constructions 2.formal generalizations associated with a heterogeneous set of meanings – SUBJECT-AUX INVERSION Will you come to the party? Had I known this, I would have stayed at home. Am I ever hungry! – FILLER-GAP CXNS What kind of sandwich did you eat? How many sandwiches he ate! I couldn’t count all the sandwiches that he ate. The more sandwiches you eat, the hungrier you get.

44. meaningless constructions 3.ellipsis constructions – GAPPING One sock lay on the sofa, the other one under it. – STRIPPING John washed the dishes, and the silverware, too. – SHARED COMPLETION The South remains distinct from and independent of the North.

45. If we would like to maintain that linguistic knowlege is knowledge of symbolic units, what do we do?

46. two ways out? There are two ways in which this issue can be approached […]: by a prototype analysis that takes one [meaning, MH] as basic and finds a principled way of accounting for all other [meanings] as extensions from this basic prototype; or by a schematic analysis that finds an abstract characterization. Stefanowitsch (2003: 420)

47. solution 1: a prototype approach Would you do that? Never would I leave you. Neither would I. So would I. May he burn in hell! Why would you do that? Does this hurt! Had I known this… He has read more articles than have his classmates. Goldberg 2006: 177

48. solution 2: a schematic approach Langacker 1991: 156

49. The construct-i-con: a network of interlinked constructions

50. the construct-i-con a large inventory of form-meaning pairs, representing speakers’ knowledge of language important addendum – no chaotic ‘bag of constructions’, but instead: – hierarchically structured – links between constructions In what ways can constructions be linked?

51. inheritance relation between more abstract constructions and more concrete constructions complete inheritance: lower-level construction do not redundantly represent information that is inherited full entry: low-level constructions have ‘rich’ representations

52. formal inheritance in prison, at school, on vacation, under water the PREP - BARE NOUN construction inherits the linear order of P and N from the prepositional phrase construction PP Cxn: PREP NOMINAL the PREP - BARE NOUN construction has idiosyncratic constraints that are not inherited from the PP Cxn: – PP Cxn: on a sunny day – Prep – bare noun cxn: *on sunny vacation

53. meaning inheritance The time he takes! The amount of plastic waste! >> the Metonymic NP construction NP refers to an extreme point on a scale This meaning is inherited by NPs in more specialized constructions, for instance in the NP- complement exclamative cxn: – I can’t believe the time he takes! – It’s ridiculous the amount of plastic waste!

54. Kinds of inheritance links

55. kinds of inheritance links instantiation links polysemy links metaphor links subpart links

56. instance links

57. instance links (X IS A Y - relationship) VEHICLE TRAIN CAR BUS BIKE PLANE SEDAN SPORTS CAR CONVERTIBLE JEEP PICKUP

58. instance links (X IS A Y - relationship) Verb Phrase intransitive transitive ditransitive spill the beans face the music give a hoot

59. polysemy links

60. polysemy = one form mapping onto several, conceptually related meanings Polysemy in the ditransitive construction – John gave Mary the book. – The doctor allowed me a full meal. – I promise you a rose garden. – They denied Bob tenure.

61. actual transfer intended transfer future transfer enabled transfer blocked transfer

62. polysemy links The s-genitive construction John’s book John’s office John’s train the country’s president yesterday’s events inflation’s consequences

63. metaphor links

64. the caused motion construction – John kicked the ball over the fence. the resultative construction – Anne tied her hair into a bun. Same syntactic form Metaphor accounts for the link between the respective meanings – STATES ARE LOCATIONS

65. metaphor links You must be home by ten! You must be David’s brother! You may now kiss the bride! He may have escaped through the window. I can’t open the door. That can’t possibly be true.

66. subpart links

67. relate cxns with either semantic or formal overlap do not classify cxns as instances of one another John wrote a letter. John wrote Mary a letter.

68. subpart links VP: take the train NP: the train N: train

69. syntactic amalgams John invited you’ll never guess how many people to the party.

70. syntactic amalgams John invited you’ll never guess how many people to the party. You’ll never guess how many people John invited to the party. John invited very many people to the party.

71. syntactic amalgams The Smiths felt it was an important enough song to put it on their single. It was an important song. It was important enough to put it on their single. attributive adjective cxn: – an important song, a red ball enough-to-infinitive cxn: – old enough to know better, sick enough to stay at home

72. syntactic amalgams It’s unbelievable what he can do with the piano! The things he can do with the piano! It’s unbelievable the things he can do with the piano!

73. it-extraposition It BE PREDICATE THAT-CLAUSE bare complement question SUBJ V COMP WH-INTERROGATIVE metonymy construction NP (scalar interpretation) extraposed exclamative construction It BE PREDICATE WH-INTERROGATIVE nominal extraposition It BE PREDICATE NP (scalar interpretation) multiple inheritance

74. normal syntax in CxG

75. noun phrases milk an old donkey the big one with the two horns all my personal belongings my friend Amy, who recently moved to Italy

76. cxns vs. phrase structure rules NP PS rule: – blueprint for putting together noun phrases – presupposes part-of-speech categories NP Cxn – generalization over different nominal cxns – emerges from speakers’ perceiving similarities across those nominal cxns – >> parts-of-speech are not basic, they are the result of a process of abstraction!

77. Croft (2001) on syntactic categories « No schematic syntactic category is ever an independent unit of grammatical representation. » SUBJECT is an abstraction over the agentive roles that occur in the transitive construction, the ditransitive construction, and in other clausal constructions. Speakers do not necessarily perceive these as the same.

78. POS categories do not exhibit uniform behavior NP >> DET ADJ N – works fine for red, hot, big, complicated, etc. – * the awake child – * the ready food – * the on computer – * the fond of children lady

79. summing up

80. Construction Grammar speakers’ knowledge of language = an associative network of constructions constructions carry meaning and can change the meaning of lexical elements the more schematic the form of a construction, the more abstract and polysemous its meaning constructions are linked through instance links, polysemy links, metaphor links, and subpart links constructions are the basis for part-of-speech categories and phrase structure rules

81. See you next time! martin.hilpert@unine.ch