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Research on syntactic ambiguity resolution in language comprehension has shown that subjects' processing decisions are influenced by a variety of heterogeneous factors such as e.g., syntactic complexity, semantic fit and the discourse frequency of the competing structures. The present paper investigates a further potentially relevant factor in such processes: effects of syntagmatic lexical chunking (or matching to a complex memorized prefab) whose occurrence would be predicted from usage-based assumptions about linguistic categorisation. Focusing on the widely studied so-called DO/SC-ambiguity in which a post-verbal NP is syntactically ambiguous between a direct object and the subject of an embedded clause, potentially biasing collocational chunks of the relevant type are identified in a number of corpus-linguistic pretests and then investigated in a self-paced reading experiment. The results show a significant increase in processing difficulty from a collocationally neutral over a lexically biasing to a strongly biasing condition. This suggests that syntagmatically complex and partially schematic templates of the kind envisioned in usage-based Construction Grammar may impinge on speakers' online processing decisions during sentence comprehension.
Introduction
(2008)
In usage-based Construction Grammar, grammatical structure is assumed to ‘sedimenl’ from concrete linguistic experience as an automatic by-product o f repeated similar categorisation judgments (a process known as schematisation). At the same time, there is functional pressure on prospective inputs to such schematisations to retain or develop specialised properties that differentiate them from their near neighbours, i.e. other stored units in the constructicon (Goldberg: 1995). Moreover, Speakers are not assumed to necessarily extract all possible generalisations from their input. Using the example o f a group of German support verb constructions, the present study outlines a corpus-linguistic approach to identifying those Schemas that really seem to be formed by Speakers, and how they can be kept apart from mere potential generalisations.
In spite of the obvious importance that is accorded to the notion grammatical construction in any approach that sees itself as a construction grammar (CxG), there is as yet no generally accepted definition of the term across different variants of the framework. In particular, there are different assumptions about which additional requirements a given structure has to meet in order to be recognized as a construction besides being a ‘form-meaning pair’. Since the choice of a particular definition will determine the range of both relevant phenomena and concrete observations to be considered in empirical research within the framework, the issue is not just a mere terminological quibble but has important methodological repercussions especially for quantitative research in areas such as corpus linguistics. The present study illustrates some problems in identifying and delimiting such patterns in naturally occurring text and presents arguments for a usage-based interpretation of the term grammatical construction.
How (and when) do speakers generalise from memorised exemplars of a construction to a productive schema? The present paper presents a novel take on this issue by offering a corpus-based approach to semantic extension processes. Focusing on clusters of German ADJ N expressions involving the heavily polysemous adjective tief ‚deep’, it is shown that type frequency (a commonly used measure of productivity) needs to be relativised to distinct semantic classes within the overall usage spectrum of a given construction in order to predict the occurrence of novel types within a particular region of this spectrum. Some methodological and theoretical implications for usage-based linguistic model building are considered.
Within cognitive linguistics, there is an increasing awareness that the study of linguistic phenomena needs to be grounded in usage. Ideally, research in cognitive linguistics should be based on authentic language use, its results should be replicable, and its claims falsifiable. Consequently, more and more studies now turn to corpora as a source of data. While corpus-based methodologies have increased in sophistication, the use of corpus data is also associated with a number of unresolved problems. The study of cognition through off-line linguistic data is, arguably, indirect, even if such data fulfils desirable qualities such as being natural, representative and plentiful. Several topics in this context stand out as particularly pressing issues. This discussion note addresses (1) converging evidence from corpora and experimentation, (2) whether corpora mirror psychological reality, (3) the theoretical value of corpus linguistic studies of ‘alternations’, (4) the relation of corpus linguistics and grammaticality judgments, and, lastly, (5) the nature of explanations in cognitive corpus linguistics. We do not claim to resolve these issues nor to cover all possible angles; instead, we strongly encourage reactions and further discussion.
Den Wald vor lauter Bäumen sehen - und andersherum: zum Verhältnis von 'Mustern' und 'Regeln'
(2011)
Die Konstruktionsgrammatik setzt dem Begriff der konstruktiven Regel den des komplexen Musters entgegen, das in syntaktischen Generalisierungsprozessen analogisch erweitert wird. Der vorliegende Beitrag präsentiert eine solche musterbasierte Analyse von deutschen Konstruktionen mit lokativem Subjekt (Wiesen und Wälder wuchern vor Blumen und Kräutern) als Extension einer Reihe verwandter Konstruktionen mit kausaler und intensivierender Funktion, aus denen die lokative Variante mutmaßlich hervorgegangen ist. Die Analyse argumentiert, dass der umgebenden ,Ökologie‘ der Zielkonstruktion im sprachlichen Wissen der Sprecher eine zentrale Rolle für die Erklärung der attestierten Varianten zukommt, die in regelbasierten Zugängen als unmotivierte ,Ausnahmen‘ von allgemeinen Linkingprinzipien gelten müssen.
Much language-related research in cognitive robotics appeals to usage-based models of language as proposed in cognitive linguistics and developmental psychology [1, 2] that emphasise the significance of learning, embodiment and general cognitive development for human language acquisition. Over and above these issues, however, what takes centre stage in these theories are social-cognitive skills of “intention-reading” that are seen as “primary in the language acquisition process” [1] – and also as difficult to incorporate into computational models of language acquisition. The present paper addresses these concerns: we describe work in progress on a series of experiments that take steps towards closing the gap between ‘solipsistic’ symbol grounding in individual robotic agents and socially framed embodied language acquisition in learners that attend to common ground [3] with changing interlocutors.
We taught a humanoid robot a number of different actions involving a number of different objects (e.g., touching a green object, moving a red object etc.) alongside a number of simplified linguistic labels for these behaviours (e.g., ‘touch-green’, ‘move-red’ etc.). The robot managed to learn the associations between the behaviours and their linguistic labels, and it succeeded in recognising the compositional structure of the behaviours and their associated linguistic descriptions (ACTION/VERB+OBJECT/NOUN). Moreover, it was able to generalise the learned instructions to novel, previously untrained action+object-combinations (e.g., touch-red). This corresponds to the task of learning and decomposing so-called ‘holophrases’ in early child language acquisition.