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Construction Grammar 73 Construction Grammar 73 Blakemore D (2000). ‘Indicators and procedures: neverthe- Lee H -K (2002). ‘Towards a new typology of connnectives less and but.’ Journal of Linguistics 36, 463–486. with special reference to conjunction in English and Blakemore D (2002). Relevance and linguistic meaning: Korean.’ Journal of Pragmatics 34, 851–866. The semantics and pragmatics of discourse markers. Levinson S C (1987). ‘Minimization and conversational Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. inference.’ In Verschueren J & Bertuccelli-Papi M (eds.) Blutner R (2000). ‘Some aspects of optimality in natural The pragmatic perspective: Selected papers from the language interpretation.’ Journal of Semantics 17, 1985 International Pragmatics Conference. Amsterdam: 189–216. J. Benjamins. 61–129. Blutner R & Zeevat H (eds.) (2003). Optimality theory and Levinson S C (2000). Presumptive meanings: The theory of pragmatics. London: Palgrave. generalized conversational implicature. Cambridge, Horn L R (1984). ‘Toward a new taxonomy for pragmatic Mass: MIT Press. inference: Q-based and R-based implicature.’ In Schiffrin Wilson D & Sperber D (1993). ‘Linguistic form and D (ed.) Georgetown University Round Table on relevance.’ Lingua 90, 1–25. Languages and Linguistics 1984. Washington, D.C.: Zeevat H (2000). ‘The asymmetry of optimality theoretic Georgetown University Press. 11–42. syntax and semantics.’ Journal of Semantics 17, 243–262. Construction Grammar L A Michaelis, University of Colorado at Boulder, of principles of [universal grammar], and traditional Boulder, CO, USA grammatical constructions are perhaps best regarded as taxonomic epiphenomena – collections of structures ß 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. with properties resulting from the interaction of fixed principles with parameters set one way or another Introduction (Chomsky, 1989: 43). Theories of sentence meaning describe the relation- On this view, the syntactic patterns of a language ship between the meaning of a sentence and the mean- are not licensed by the grammar of that language; ings of the words of that sentence. In compositional they are simply artifacts of the interaction between theories of sentence meaning, the semantic and syntac- universal and language-particular constraints. Con- tic requirements of the word (its argument structure) struction Grammar (CxG) was devised in part to can be used to predict the semantic and syntactic type counteract the reductionist views of syntax and se- of a phrase in which that word is the syntactic head. mantics described above, but at the same time it According to this view, known as the principle of lexi- represented a return to a traditional, ‘taxonomic’ cal projection, words constrain potential sisterhood mode of grammatical analysis. Proponents of CxG relations by specifying the types of complements, have sought to show that there are constraints on adjuncts, and determiners that they either require or form and interpretation that cannot be explained welcome (Zwicky, 1995; Jackendoff, 1997: Chap. 3; except as the products of grammatical constructions, Sag et al., 2003: Chap. 4). In projection-based models form-meaning pairings of varying degrees of produc- of sentence meaning, concepts – like entities, events, tivity and internal complexity. In CxG, grammar is and properties – are expressed exclusively by words viewed as a structured inventory of such pairings. (Jackendoff, 1997: 48). Rules of syntactic combination Extensive discussion of the implications of this assemble words and their dependent elements into view for syntactic theory can be found in Fillmore phrases, and the phrases denote complex concepts et al., 1988; Kay and Fillmore, 1999; Kay, 2002; like predicates and propositions. The rules of combi- Zwicky and Pullum, 1991; Zwicky, 1994, 1995; nation do not add conceptual content to that contrib- Goldberg, 1995, 2002; Michaelis and Lambrecht, uted by the words and therefore do not alter the 1996; Michaelis and Ruppenhofer, 2001; Goldberg combinatory potential of words. Thus, on the and Jackendoff, 2004; Fillmore et al. (in press). projection-based view, sentences have meaning but Grammatical constructions have been a fundamen- sentence patterns do not. tal tool of linguistic description since ancient times The projection-based view of sentence meaning (Harris and Taylor, 1997), and for most of that histo- articulates closely with models of syntax based on ry they have been treated no differently from words – principles and parameters. In such models: forms with specific meanings and functions. It was [a] language [is not] a system of rules, but a set of only with the advent of generative grammar that con- specifications for parameters in an invariant system structions fell into disrepute. It is easy to understand 74 Construction Grammar why: the idea that patterns of word combination (Bresnan, 2001), Head-Driven Phrase Structure could be intrinsically meaningful simply cannot be Grammar (Pollard and Sag, 1994), and Role and accommodated within the logical structure of the Reference Grammar (Van Valin and LaPolla, 1997), projection-based view. If, for example, we change tend to focus on verbal argument structure, and the associations within an arithmetic sequence like for good reason: the relationship between a verb’s 2x(3þ 4) so as to create the sequence (2 x 3) þ 4, semantic requirements and the meaning of the clause we change what the sequence denotes (from 14 to built around that verb appears highly transparent. 10), but not what the numbers denote. If we apply For example, (1) denotes an event of transfer – the same logic to syntax, we conclude that changing involving an agent, a ‘gift,’ and a recipient – because the syntactic associations in a string of words changes the verb give denotes a scene of transfer, and likewise only what the word string means, not what the words requires the presence of these three participants: in that string mean. While this conclusion is well (1) We gave the account to her. founded, proponents of CxG have argued that it is based on an inappropriate analogy: content words Models of sentence meaning based on lexical (like nouns and verbs) do not designate in the way projection provide a straightforward picture of the that numbers do, because syntactic context deter- syntax–semantics interface: while the verb determines mines what kind of event, property, or entity the what the sentence means, syntactic rules determine word denotes and, in turn, what the combinatory how it means. For example, in (1) the verb and the behavior of that word is (Goldberg, 1995; Michaelis two arguments that follow it are grouped together and Ruppenhofer, 2001; Goldberg and Jackendoff, into a verb phrase (the predicate), which then com- 2004). We will refer to this effect of syntactic context bines with a noun phrase (the subject) to form a as type shifting. sentence. In addition to constituent-building rules, In the second section, we will look at the treatment syntacticians have proposed realization rules, called of type shifting in a construction-based model of linking rules, that assign each of the verb’s thematic syntax, with particular attention to verbal argument roles (e.g., agent or patient) to a unique grammatical structure and nominal syntax. As we will see, the role (e.g., subject or object). Linking rules, which are CxG model of semantic composition is integrative typically assumed to have crosslinguistic validity rather than projection-based: like words, construc- (Bresnan, 1994; Van Valin and LaPolla, 1997), are tions denote semantic types (e.g., events and entities) used to represent the fact that there is usually more and, like words, constructions license syntactic and than one way to express the semantic arguments of a semantic dependents; therefore, the interpretation of given verb. For example, the verb give, in addition to a phrase involves combining the interpretive and allowing realization of its recipient argument as a combinatoric constraints of the phrasal pattern with prepositional phrase (e.g., to her), as in (1), it allows those of the word that is the head of the phrase. In the that recipient argument to be realized as a direct course of this discussion, we will explore the formal object, as in (2): representation of these constraints and the procedure (2) We gave her the account. used to combine them. In the third section, we will discuss additional argu- Thus, a given verb may be subject to several (mutually ments in favor of construction-based grammar; these incompatible) linking rules. These linking rules are arguments involve idiomatic patterns, functional assumed to add syntactic–realization constraints to oppositions in grammar, exceptions to ‘transcon- verb entries in which ‘‘[a]rgument roles are lexically structional filters’ and deficiencies of rule-based underspecified for the possible surface syntactic func- grammatical generalizations. A concluding section tions they can assume’’ (Bresnan, 1994: 91). These will suggest connections between construction-based rules do not add to, subtract from, or alter the array grammar and usage-based theories of language acqui- of thematic roles associated with the verb. For exam- sition and processing. ple, Bresnan (1994) represents locative inversion, a presentational construction found in both English and the Bantu language Chichewa, as one linking Type Shifting as Evidence for possibility for verbs like stand, which license both a Construction-Based Meaning location argument and a theme argument. Such verbs are subject
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