Constructions: A new theoretical approach to language

Constructions: A new theoretical approach to language

Adele E. Goldberg

Linguistics Department

University of Illinois

Urbana, IL 61801-0168

agoldbrg@uiuc.edu

Summary A new theoretical approach to language has emerged that allows linguistic observations about form-meaning pairings—constructions–to be stated directly. Constructionists aim to account for the full range of facts about language, without assuming that a particular subset of the data is part of a privileged “core”. Researchers argue that unusual constructions shed light on more general issues, and serve to illuminate what is required for a complete account of language.

Short summary A new theoretical approach to language has emerged that allows linguistic observations about form-meaning pairings—constructions–to be stated directly.

Constructions–form and meaning pairings–have been the basis of virtually every major advance in linguistics since the days of Aristotle. From traditional grammars to theoretical paradigm shifts, observations about passive, relative clause formation, questions, and transitivity have shaped our understanding of both particular languages and the nature of Language itself. But only recently has a new theoretical approach emerged that allows observations about constructions to be stated directly, providing long-standing traditions with a framework that allows both broad generalizations and subregularities to be analyzed and accounted for fully.

The constructional approach to language contrasts sharply with the “generative” view that has held sway for the past several decades. Beginning with Chomsky (1957) [1] and continuing today, many generativists have held that the nature of language can best be revealed by studying formal structures independently of their functions. Ever increasing layers of abstractness have characterized their formal representations. Meaning is claimed to derive from the mental dictionary of words, with functional differences between formal patterns being largely ignored. Semi-regular patterns and cross-linguistically unusual patterns are viewed as “peripheral,” with a narrowing band of data seen as relevant to the “core” of language. Mainstream generative grammarians argue further that the complexity of core language cannot be learned inductively by general cognitive mechanisms and therefore learners must be hard-wired with language-specific principles or “universal grammar.”

Recently, however, many generative linguists in addition to the majority of functional/cognitive linguists have begun to argue for key aspects of an alternative approach [2-22]. There is a striking, recent convergence on many of the following key tenets, each of which outlines a major divergence from mainstream generative grammar and a return in many ways to a more traditional view of language:

1) All levels of description are understood to involve form—function pairings, including morphemes or words, idioms, partially lexically filled and fully abstract phrasal patterns.

2) An emphasis is placed on subtle aspects of the way we conceive of events and states of affairs.

3) A “what you see is what you get” approach to syntactic form is adopted.

4) Constructions are understood to be learned on the basis of the input and general cognitive mechanisms, and are expected to vary cross linguistically.

5) Cross-linguistic generalizations are explained by appeal to general cognitive constraints together with the functions of the constructions involved.

6) Language-specific generalizations across constructions are captured via inheritance networks much like those that have long been posited to capture our non-linguistic knowledge.

7) The totality of our knowledge of language is captured by a network of constructions: a “construct-i-con.”

Constructions: what they are

Constructions are stored pairings of form and function, including morphemes or words, idioms, partially lexically filled and fully general linguistic patterns. Examples are given in Table 1.