Construction Grammar

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Many theories of compositionality posit strict separation between the lexicon on the one hand, and abstract procedural rules for grammatical combination on the other. In contrast, Construction Grammar cohesively accounts for the forms and meanings of morphemes, words, sentence patterns, and even “fringe” phenomena such as the Caused-Motion construction: She blinked the snow off of her eyelashes. This course provides an overview of several variant approaches to Construction Grammar. The course will begin with a survey of readings representing differing Construction Grammar approaches, including work from Fillmore, Lambrecht, Michaelis, Goldberg, Croft, and Bergen. As we examine the different flavors of Construction Grammar, we will explore the validity, advantages, and disadvantages of Construction Grammar. In this exploration, you will be asked to consider and debate questions at the crux of grammar, such as: How does syntax fit into the big picture of language in general? How are generalizations over utterances represented? How are an indefinite variety of utterances producible from a finite system of grammatical knowledge? Finally, you will select and apply a construction grammar approach of your choice to a theoretical problem (e.g., how are light verb constructions extended, and what makes a novel combination acceptable or unacceptable?) or application area (e.g., language learning or multi-word expression detection) of interest to you in any language you are studying, comparing with other approaches to this problem.