Radical Construction Grammar - hu-berlin.deamor.cms.hu-berlin.de/~robertsw/files/RC-Grammar.pdf · “Heather sings” is an instance of an Intransitive construction. ... Radical

IntroductionRadical Construction Grammar

Conclusion

Radical Construction Grammar

Will [email protected]

Wednesday, 7 May, 2008

1/21 Will Roberts Radical Construction Grammar


Conclusion

Componential GrammarIdiomsConstruction Grammar

1 IntroductionComponential GrammarIdiomsConstruction Grammar

2 Radical Construction GrammarTypologyNon-reductionismNo Universal GrammarNo syntactic relations

3 ConclusionSumming UpLiterature



Conclusion


Componential Models of Grammar



Conclusion


But: Idioms

Idioms: Linguistic expressions which are idiosyncratic in some way.

Lexical

kith and kin

Syntactic or extragrammatical

all of a suddenby and largewine and dine

Semantic

tickle the ivorieskick the bucketspill the beans

Since these expressions are larger than single words, there aredifficulties storing this information in the lexicon.



Conclusion


Schematic Idioms

Some idioms are not completely lexically specific (substantive).

The X-er, the Y-er. (The higher you fly, the farther you fall.)

Pull NP’s leg. (Come on, don’t pull my leg.)

These follow normal syntactic rules, or have their own regularities,but they are semantically idiosyncratic.



Conclusion


Constructions



Conclusion


Constructions

Regular syntactic rules can also be represented as constructions;this leads to a continuum from atomic and specific to complex andschematic constructions.

Construction type Traditional name ExampleComplex and (mostly) schematic syntax SUBJ be VERB-en by OBJComplex and (mostly) specific idiom pull NP-’s legComplex but bound morphology NOUN-sAtomic and schematic syntactic category ADJAtomic and specific word green

Thus, construction grammars can provide a uniform representationof all types of grammatical structures.



Conclusion


Comparison

Generative Grammar: [ [Heather]NP [sings]VP ]S

Construction Grammar:



Conclusion


Similarities

Both the generative grammar and construction grammarversions share a part-whole or meronomic structure ofsyntactic units:

The sentence is made up of two parts: Heather and sings



Conclusion


Differences

However, the generative grammar analysis is built up fromsyntactic atoms—words belonging to syntactic categories; themeaning of the sentence is derived using linking rules totranslate the syntactic structure to the semanticrepresentation.

The construction grammar treats the component units asfundamentally symbolic, that is, there are symbolic relationsbetween the form and the meaning of the construction.

“Heather sings” is an instance of an Intransitive construction.



Conclusion


Comparison

Generative Grammar: [ [Heather]NP [sings]VP ]S

Construction Grammar:



Conclusion

TypologyNon-reductionismNo Universal GrammarNo syntactic relations

Why “Radical”?

Radical Construction Grammar approaches syntactic theoryfrom a typological perspective.

Radical Construction Grammar is non-reductionist.

Almost all aspects of grammatical structure arelanguage-particular.

Syntactic relations between elements (i.e., words,constituents) do not exist.



Conclusion


Typology

Language is diverse. Variation is normal in language. There isboth cross-linguistic variation and language-internal variation.

Language is arbitrary. Not everything in language can beexplained in terms of formal principles or generalizations.

Language is dynamic. Because language is arbitrary, it canchange over time, and it does.



Conclusion


The Radical Construction Grammar approach

Grammatical categories are discovered using the distributionalmethod.

Constructions are the basic units of syntactic representation,and syntactic categories are derived from the constructions inwhich they appear.

Constructions have properties which identify them; finding theconstructions in a language is a categorization problem, similarto the problem of trying to identify part of speech categories.

Constructions are organized in a structured inventory,representing a speaker’s linguistic knowledge. So kick thebucket, SUBJ kick OBJ, and the general TransitiveConstruction are separate constructions, but they are chainedtogether in a hierarchy.



Conclusion


Non-reductionism

Reductionist theories have fundamental theoretical primitiveconstructs that are atomic—they cannot be broken down intosmaller parts in the theory.

The primitive construct of Radical Construction Grammar isthe construction, which is complex.

Constructions contain categories and relations, but these aredefined by the constructions they appear in, and are nottheoretical primitives.

Gestalt paradigm: the whole is greater than the sum of itsparts

That is, the parts of a construction (syntactic categories andrelations) do not have an independent existence outside of thewhole construction.



Conclusion


No Universal Grammar

Syntactic categories, and the properties that identify them, aredefined by the constructions in which they appear. While there aresimilarities between constructions in the same language, and evenbetween constructions in different languages, it is misleading toconclude that the syntactic categories are identical betweenlanguages.

Any set of syntactic properties only isolates a subset ofconstructions in the world’s languages, so constructions arelanguage-specific. Since Radical Construction Grammar posits thatconstructions are the basic unit of syntax, this means that syntaxis also language-specific.

Primitive syntactic categories such as noun, verb, adjective do notexist in a universal sense.



Conclusion


Evidence for syntactic relations

Falls into two categories:

Coded Dependencies

Sheila sells seashells.Manifested by some aspect of the grammatical structure of theutterance (e.g., Subject-Verb Agreement, Subject in preverbalposition, etc.).

Collocational Dependencies

The cherry trees burst into bloom.A constraint on the choice of words: cannot say ... burst intobicycles.



Conclusion


Coded Dependencies

Linear order does not always predict categorization (e.g.,English there constructions).

Languages with discontinuous constituents: “Constituency isnot an abstract global structure for the syntax ofconstructions.”

Overtly coded dependences (e.g., case agreement,head-marking, etc.). Mismatches between different overtlycoded dependencies in a single language. “Each type ofstructure that defines a coded dependency defines its own setof coded dependencies”.

Coded dependencies are formal properties of construction types,and are not manifestations of abstract syntactic relations. Thesedependencies are due to symbolic relations.



Conclusion


Collocational Dependencies

Tom pulled strings to get the job.

*Tom pulled ropes to get the job.

Strings refers metaphorically to personal connections when usedwith pull, and pull refers to exploiting when used with strings.

These meanings are attached to the words in question, but onlywhen these two words occur together. Actually, the meaning of theidiom is due to the semantic relation between strings and pulling.



Conclusion

Summing UpLiterature

Conclusion

Grammatical structure are language-particular.

Radical Construction Grammar is non-reductionist.

Primitive syntactic categories such as noun, verb, adjective donot exist.

Syntactic relations between elements (words, constituents) donot exist.



Conclusion

Summing UpLiterature

Literature

Croft, W. (2001).Radical Construction Grammar: Syntactic Theory inTypological PerspectiveOxford: Oxford University Press.


Documents

Radical Construction Grammar - hu-berlin.deamor.cms.hu-berlin.de/~robertsw/files/RC-Grammar.pdf · “Heather sings” is an instance of an Intransitive construction. ... Radical