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The Department of Linguistics is pleased to announce the following talk by��, who is visiting us from Sony Computer Science Laboratories in��Paris.��

"What Are Constructions and What Can They Do?"
Wednesday, February 20
4:00-5:30pm
Clare Small 209​​​​​​​

Abstract:

Construction grammar grew out of the need to model the whole of language��instead of distinguishing core linguistic expressions from peripheral ones (Fillmore��et al., 1988; Kay and Fillmore, 1999), and has since then established itself��as the grammatical embodiment of cognitive-functional linguistics (Croft and��Cruse, 2004). Its central claim that all linguistic knowledge can be represented��as form-meaning mappings – called constructions – has been embraced in both��data-oriented and experiment-driven subdisciplines such as language acquisition��(Dabrowska et al., 2009; Diessel, 2004; Tomasello, 2003), corpus linguistics (Hilpert,��2015; Stefanowitsch and Gries, 2003; Zeschel, 2012), historical linguistics (Bardalet al., 2015; Colleman, 2016; Coussé et al., 2018; Fried, 2009; Van de Velde et al.,��2013; Van Goethem, 2017), sociolinguistics (Höder, 2014; Hollmann and Siewierska,��2007), psycho- and neurolinguistics (Barrès, 2017; Dominey et al., 2006; Perek��and Goldberg, 2017), computational and formal linguistics (Bergen and Chang,��2005; Boas and Sag, 2012; Michaelis, 2004; Steels, 2011) and artificial intelligence��(Beuls and Steels, 2013; Steels, 2004; Van Eecke and Beuls, 2017).��

As is often the case, however, it takes time before the potential of an innovation��is fully explored and understood. Early movies, for example, strongly mimicked��theater and used long and static shots before film makers developed their own��cinematic “grammar”. A similar process happens in science, and while construction��grammar is already too mature to be directly compared to early cinema, the formal��and computational properties of its most important data structure are not yet��completely worked out. As a result, construction grammar has become an umbrella��term for all linguistic studies that roughly agree on what Bill Croft (2005) dubbed��vanilla construction grammar, but more precision is needed in order to prevent��a babelesque confusion from installing itself in the field and thereby impeding��much-needed breakthroughs.

In this presentation, I will try to offer a more precise perspective on what constructions��are and what they can do. More specifically, I will look at the representational��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��about which analyses are possible and which criticisms on constructional analyses��are valid concerns and which are not. In order to substantiate my claims, all��analyses are accompanied by a concrete computational implementation in Fluid��Construction Grammar (FCG; Steels, 2011), an open-source computational platform��for exploring issues in constructional language processing and learning.