cognitive linguistics and language structure

8/13/2019 Cognitive Linguistics and Language Structure

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Cognitive linguistics and language structure

Abstract

Cognitive linguists agree that language is handled mentally by general cognitivestructures and processes rather than by a dedicated mental module. However, in spiteof remarkable progress in some areas, cognitive linguists have generally paid littleattention to the possible implications of this cognitive assumption for the theory oflanguage structure how language is organised and what structures we assign toutterances. Cognitive Grammar has avoided formaliation, and the various versions ofconstruction grammar have adopted rather conservative views on grammaticalstructure. !he e"ception is #ord Grammar, which offers a radical alternative view oflanguage structure. !his paper defends the structural claims of #ord Grammar on thegrounds that most of them follow logically from the cognitive assumption $though afew need to be revised%. !he paper starts by breaking this assumption into a number of

more specific tenets relating to learning, network structures, recycling, inheritance,relations, activation and chunking. &t then shows how these tenets support variousclaims that distinguish #ord Grammar in cognitive linguistics. 'ccording to thisargument, morphology and synta" are distinct levels, so language cannot consist ofnothing but symbols or constructions. (oreover, in synta" the main units and

possibly the only units must be words, not phrases, so the basic relation of synta" isthe dependency between two words, not the relation between a phrase and its part. &nother words, sentence structure is dependency structure, not phrase structure anetwork, as e"pected in cognition, not a tree. )ne of the benefits of this analyticalmachinery is in the treatment of the various patterns that have been calledconstructions, which benefit from the fle"ibility of a network structure. !his kind of

structure is also very appropriate for semantic analysis, illustrated here by twoe"amples* the distinction between universal and e"istential +uantifiers, and a detailedstructural analysis of the meaning of the how about X?construction, covering itsillocutionary force as well as deictic binding. inally, the paper discusses a formal

property, the order of words, morphs and so on, arguing that the constraints on orderare e"pressed in terms of the landmark relation of Cognitive Grammar, while theactual ordering re+uires the more primitive relation found in any ordered string, herecalled ne"t. !he paper e"plains how landmark relations can be derived from word-word dependencies in both simple and comple" syntactic patterns, and why the wordsin a phrase normally stay together.

1. Introductionow that cognitive linguistics $C/% has established itself as a valid and productiveapproach to the study of language, it is reasonable to ask what progress it has made onone of the traditional +uestions of linguistic theory* how language is structured. &n

particular, how is the answer to this +uestion affected, if at all, by what we might callthe Cognitive Assumptionin $0%1$0% !he only cognitive skills used in language are domain-general skills which are

also used outside language.!his unifying belief of all cognitive linguists has been e"pressed more or less pithily

by others* knowledge of language is knowledge $Goldberg 0223*3%, we shouldderive language from non-language $/indblom and others 0245*046, +uoted in


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7ybee 8909*08%, language is not an autonomous cognitive faculty $Croft and Cruse8995*0%. #hat difference does the Cognitive 'ssumption make to our ideas abouthow language is organised, compared with the alternative views in which language isseen either as having nothing to do with cognition, or as a separate module ofcognition1

!he natural place to look for an answer is in the theoretical packages thataddress this +uestion directly. !he )"ford Handbook of Cognitive /inguistics liststhree models of grammar $Geeraerts and Cuyckens 8996%* Cognitive Grammar,construction grammar $without capitals% and #ord Grammar.

Cognitive Grammar has not yet been developed into a sufficiently formalsystem because the cost of the re+uisite simplifications and distortions would greatlyoutweigh any putative benefits $/angacker 8996* 58:%. #hatever the merits of thisstrategic decision, it means that we cannot e"pect a precise account of how languageis organised, comparable to the accounts that we find in non-cognitive theoretical

packages.#hen written without capitals, construction grammar has sometimes been

identified simply with the cognitive linguistics approach to synta" $Croft and Cruse8995*883%. &n his 8996 survey, Croft divides construction grammar into four versions$including Cognitive Grammar%. !he illmore;


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... we should assume that there is nodifference between linguistic and non-linguistic knowledge, beyond the fact that one is to do with words and theother is not $Hudson 0245*:A-6%

!o reinforce the link to early cognitive linguistics, this is coupled with an approvingreference to /akoffs view*

or me, the most interesting results in linguistics would be those showing howlanguage is related to other aspects of our being human. $/akoff 0266%

7y 0229, cognitive linguistics e"isted as such and is cited with approval in the ne"tbook about #ord Grammar $Hudson 0229*4% in connection with cognitivism, one ofthe theorys main tenets. 7y 8996 it was possible to write of cognitive linguistics that#ord Grammar fits very comfortably in this new tradition $Hudson 8996*8%, and in8909* /ike other cognitive linguists, & believe that language is very similar to otherkinds of thinking $Hudson 8909*0%.

)n the one hand, then, #ord Grammar incorporates the same Cognitive'ssumption as other cognitive theories. (oreover, it has been heavily influenced bythe work of other cognitive linguists, such as /akoffs work $mentioned earlier% on

prototypes, /angackers analyses of construal in languages such as Cora $Casad and/angacker 0243%, illmores analyses of English le"ical fields such as commercialtransactions and risk $illmore 0248, illmore and 'tkins 0228% and his oint work onconstructions $illmore and others 0244,


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the immediate +uestion is what they know that might have conse+uences for thetheory of language structure. (ost of the following tenets are recognised in anyundergraduate course on cognitive psychology or '& as reasonably mainstreamviews, even if they are also disputed@ so & support them by reference to te"tbooks oncognitive psychology $Beisberg 8996% and '& $/uger and ?tubblefield 022:%. !hese

tenets are also very familiar to any reader of this ournal, so little e"planation orustification is needed.

!he first relevant tenet of cognitive psychology might be called the learningtenet and consists of a truism*$8% !he learning tenet* #e learn concepts from individual e"periences, or

e"emplars.)ne conclusion that can be drawn from e"perimental results is that we learn by

building prototype schemas on the remembered e"emplars, but without deleting thelatter from memory $Beisberg 8996*:80%@ and another is that schemas have statistical

properties that reflect the +uantity and +uality of the e"periences on which they arebased. !hus it is not ust language learning, but all learning, that is usage-based.

!he network tenet, also called the network notion $Beisberg 8996*838%, isthis claim*$:% !he network tenet* !he properties of one concept consist of nothing but links to

other concepts, rather than features drawn from some separate vocabulary.&n this view, concepts are atoms, not bundles or bo"es with an internal structure. 'concept is simply the meeting point of a collection of links to other concepts.Conse+uently, the best way to present an analysis of some area of conceptualstructure is by drawing a network for it. (oreover, since a concepts content iscarried entirely by its links to other concepts, labels carry no additional informationand are simply mnemonics to help researchers to keep track of the network modelsthey build@ so in principle, we could remove all the labels from a network withoutlosing any information $/amb 0224*32%.

'n important corollary of the network tenet is that when we learn a newconcept, we define it as far as we can in terms of e"isting concepts. !his is such animportant idea that we can treat it as a separate tenet*$5% !he recycling tenet* E"isting concepts are recycled wherever possible as

properties of other concepts.!he recycling tenet e"plains the often observed fact that social and conceptualnetworks tend to be scale-free, meaning that they have more densely-linked nodesthan would be e"pected if links were distributed randomly $7arabasi 8992%. &t alsohas important implications for the formal structure of language which we shall

consider in relation to morphology $section:% and semantics $section A%.e"t, we have the inheritancetenet:$3% !he inheritance tenet* #e build ta"onomies of concepts linked to one another

by the special relation isa, which allow generalisations to spread down theta"onomy from more general to more specific concepts.

!he isa relation is widely recognised as a basic relation $$Beisberg 8996*869%, andat least in '&, this process of generalisation is called inheritance $e.g. /uger and?tubblefield 022:* :4A%, so that more specific concepts can inherit properties frommore general ones. (any '& researchers accept the need for inheritance to allowe"ceptions, so that properties are inherited only by default. !his logic is variouslycalled default inheritance, normal inheritance or normal mode inheritance, in

contrast with complete inheritance which forbids e"ceptions. &f our basic logic is


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default inheritance, this e"plains one part of the learning tenet above* how we canaccommodate both prototypical and e"ceptional members in the same category.

!he fifth relevant claim of cognitive psychology and '& concerns theclassification of relations, so we can call call it the relationtenet*$A% !he relation tenet* (ost relations are themselves concepts which we learn from

e"perience.)n the one hand it is obvious that the links in a network are of different types@ forinstance, the links from the concept dog to animal, tail and bark arefundamentally different from each other. )n the other hand, we cannot assume thatthese different types are all built in, part of our inherited conceptual apparatus$Beisberg 8996* 869%. ' few of them must be built in, because they underlie our most

basic logical operations, the clearest e"ample being the isa relation mentionedabove@ but most of them must be learned from e"perience ust like ordinary concepts.)ne solution to this dilemma is to recognise these learned relations as a sub-type ofconcept* relation, contrasted with entity.

!he si"th tenet that is relevant to language structure is the activation tenet*

$6% !he activation tenet* Betrieval is guided by activation spreading from node tonode.

&ndeed, the strongest evidence for the network tenet is the evidence for spreadingactivation, notably the evidence from priming e"periments and from speech errors$Beisberg 8996*835%. &n any search, the winner is the most active relevant node, and,all being well, this will also turn out to be the target node. ' nodes activation level isinfluenced in part by previous e"perience hence the statistical differences betweenschemas noted earlier but partly by the immediately current situation to which the

person concerned is paying attention.inally, we note the chunking tenet*

$4% !he chunking tenet* #e understand e"perience by recognising chunks andstoring these in memory as distinct concepts $Beisberg 8996*06:%.

or present purposes, the most important part of this claim is that we create newconcepts for new e"periences@ so given a series of digits to memorie, we create anew concept for each digit-token as well as for each chunk of digits. !his isevidence for node-creation on a massive scale, though of course most of the nodescreated in this way have a very short life. !hose that survive in our memoriesconstitute the e"emplars of the learning tenet, and once in memory they are used infuture e"perience as a guide to further node-creation.

!hese seven elementary tenets of cognitive science are closely interconnected.!ake, for e"ample, the temporary e"emplar nodes that are created under the chunking

tenet. #hat the network tenet predicts is that these temporary nodes must be part ofthe conceptual network, since that is all there is in conceptual structure@ so $by therecycling tenet% the only way in which we can understand an e"perience is by linkingit to pre-e"isting nodes of the conceptual network. !he activation tenet predicts thatthese nodes are highly active because they are the focus of attention. (oreover, theinheritance tenet predicts an isa relation between each temporary node and some

pre-e"isting node in the network from which it can inherit properties@ this followsbecause the aim of classifying e"emplar nodes is to inherit unobservable properties,and isa is the relation that allows inheritance. 's for the e"emplars observable

properties, these must also consist of links to pre-e"isting concepts@ but according tothe relation tenet, these links must themselves be classified, so we distinguish the very

general isa relation from much more specific relational concepts.


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!o make these rather abstract ideas more concrete before we turn tospecifically linguistic structures, consider a scene in which you see an obect andrecognise it as a cat. 'lthough recognition is almost instantaneous, it must consist of aseries of interconnected steps, with considerable feedback from logically later steps toearlier ones*

node-creation* you create highly active temporary nodes for all the obects youcan see, including not only the cats parts but also the chunk that willeventually turn out to be a cat.

classification* you link each temporary node to the most active pre-e"istingnode in the network which classifies it as a paw, a tail, a cat and so on.

enrichment* you enrich your knowledge of the cat by inheriting from catthrough highly active relation nodes@ for e"ample, if you want to knowwhether to stroke it, this is how you guess an answer.

Each of these processes is covered by some of the seven tenets* node-creation by thelearning, activation and chunking tenets@ classification by the learning, recycling,

network, relation and activation tenets, and enrichment by the learning andinheritance tenets.!he rest of the paper will e"plore the conse+uences of these rather elementary

ideas about general cognition for the theory of language structure, following much thesame logical route as /angackers $/angacker 0246% but starting from generalcognitive psychology rather than Gestalt psychology and ending up with morespecific claims about language structure. #hether or not similar bridges can be builtfrom psychology to other theories of language structure & leave to the e"perts in thosetheories.

3. Morphology and syntax)ne of the issues that divides grammatical theories concerns the fundamental +uestionof how the patterning of language can be divided into levels or strata, such as

phonology, grammar and semantics. !he basic idea of recognising distinct levels isuncontroversial* to take an e"treme case, everyone accepts that a phonologicalanalysis is different from a semantic analysis. Each level is autonomous in the sensethat it has its own units consonants, vowels, syllables and so on for phonology, and

people, events and so on for semantics and its own organisation@ but of course theyare also closely related so that variation on one level can be related in detail tovariation on the other by correspondence or realisation rules.

' much more controversial +uestion concerns the number of levels that shouldbe distinguished between phonology and semantics. !wo answers dominate cognitivelinguistics* none $Cognitive Grammar%, and one $construction grammar%. CognitiveGrammar recognises only phonology, semantics and the symbolic links betweenthem $/angacker 8996*586%, while construction grammar recognises onlyconstructions, which constitute a single continuum which includes all the units ofsynta", the le"icon and morphology $Evans and Green 899A*63:, Croft and Cruse8995*833%. &n contrast, many theoretical linguists distinguish two intervening levels*morphology and synta" $'ronoff 0225, ?adock 0220, ?tump 8990%@ and even withincognitive linguistics this view is represented by both eurocognitive /inguistics$/amb 0224% and #ord Grammar. & shall now argue that the Cognitive 'ssumption in

$0%supports the distinction between morphology and synta".


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Consider first the chunking tenet $4%.!his effectively rules out reductionistanalyses which reduce the units of analysis too far@ so a reductionist analysis of these+uence 02538908 recognises nothing but the individual digits, ignoring thesignificant dates embedded in it $0253, 8908%. >sychological memory e"perimentshave shown that human subects are looking for significant higher units and it is

these units, rather than the obective string, that they recognise in memorye"periments. !he higher units are the chunks which we actively seek, and whichcreate a higher level of representation by representational redescription$


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phonological analysis pays attention to completely different +ualities fromgrammatical analysis.

&n short, chunking creates mental nodes which are only indirectly related tophonological structure@ so we must recognise units corresponding not only to syllablessuch as ;kat;, but also to se+uences of syllables such as ;kat gri; $ category% or parts of

syllables such as the vowel +uality of ; *; $ youre%. !hese more abstract units, like thedates discussed earlier, are mapped onto more concrete units by properties@ so ust as0254 is mapped onto 0 and so on, symbolic units can be mapped onto

phonological structures such as ;kat;, ;kat gri; or ; *;. 7ut this is very different fromsaying that the chunk isa phonological structure.

&n fact, this view is ust the same as the traditional view that words mediatebetween phonology and meaning. !he chunk is the word, and it e"ists preciselybecause it serves this mediating function* it brings together a recognisable stretch ofphonology and a recognisable bit of meaning which systematically cooccur. 'nd itbrings sound and meaning together by having both of them as its properties@ so intraditional terms, the word catis pronounced ;kat; and means cat. 7ut of course once

we have recognised the category of words, and allowed them to have two properties a pronunciation and a meaning there is nothing to stop us from treating them ustlike any other type of concept, with multiple properties. ?o ust as linguists have beensaying for centuries, words can be categoried $as nouns, verbs and so on%, wordshave a language $such as English or rench%, words have a spelling, they can beclassified as naughty or high-fallutin, and they even have a history and an etymology.!his view of words as collecting points for multiple properties is an automaticconse+uence of chunking combined with the network principle.

one of this is possible if a symbolic unit is simply a link between a semanticpole and a phonological pole. ' link is a property, but it cannot itself have properties@so even if there is a link between ;kat; and cat, it cannot be e"tended to include, say,a spelling link@ the only way to accommodate spelling in this model would be to addanother symbolic link between cat and the spelling cat, as though ;kat; and catwere mere synonyms. &n contrast, recognising words allows us to treat spellings and

pronunciations, correctly, as alternative realisations of the same unit. (oreover, ifmeanings and pronunciations belong to a much larger set of properties, we can e"pectother properties to be more important in defining some words or word classes. Bathersurprisingly, perhaps, /angacker himself accepts that some grammatical classes mayhave no semantic pole*

't the other end of the scale Ifrom basic grammatical classesJ are idiosyncraticclasses reflecting a single language-specific phenomenon $e.g. the class of

verbs instantiating a particular minor pattern of past-tense formation%.?emantically the members of such a class may be totally arbitrary. $/angacker8996*5:2%

>resumably such a class is a symbolic unit $albeit a schematic one%, but how can asymbolic unit have no semantic pole, given that a unit without a semantic pole is bydefinition a phonological unit $ibid* 586%1

(y conclusion, therefore, is that /angackers symbolic units are much morethan a mere link between meaning and sound* they are units with properties concepts, defined like all other concepts by their links to other concepts. ollowingthe network tenet that structures can be represented as networks of atomic nodes, thisconclusion can be presented as a reection of the first diagram in igure 0 in favour of

the second*


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Figure 1: Symbolic units as concepts rather than links

?uppose, then, that symbolic units are like the unit labelled C'!. &f so, theyare indistinguishable from constructions as defined by construction grammar. !his

brings us to the second issue of this section* how well does the notion ofconstruction accommodate the traditional distinction between morphology and

synta"1 's mentioned earlier, one of the claims of construction grammar is thatconstructions comprise a single continuum which includes all the units of synta", thele"icon and morphology. Croft describes this as one of the fundamental hypothesesof construction grammar* there is a uniform representation of all grammaticalknowledge in the speakerss mind in the form of generalied constructions $Croft8996*560%. 'ccording to Croft, the synta"-le"icon continuum includes synta",idioms, morphology, syntactic categories and words. !his generalisation applies toCognitive Grammar as well as construction grammar* the only difference betweenmorphology and synta" resides in whether the composite phonological structure ... issmaller or larger than a word. $/angacker 0229*82:%.

/ike other cognitive linguists & fully accept the idea of a continuum of

generality from very general grammar to a very specific le"icon@ but the claim thatsynta" and morphology are part of the same continuum is a different matter. !o makeit clear what the issue is, here is a diagram showing an analysis of the sentence Catsmiaowin the spirit of construction grammar. !he diagram uses the standard bo"notation of construction grammar, but departs from it trivially in showing meaningabove form, rather than the other way round.

cat

;kat;

cat

;kat;

C'!


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Figure 2: Cats miaow: a construction analysis in box notation

#e must be careful not to give too much importance to matters of merenotation. 'ccording to the network tenet$:%, all conceptual knowledge can berepresented as a network consisting of nothing but links and atomic nodes@ this rulesout networks whose nodes are bo"es with internal structure, such as the one in igure8. However, a bo" is ust a notation for part-whole relations, so it will be helpful toremind ourselves of this by translating this diagram into pure-network notation, withstraight arrows pointing from wholes to their parts. 7earing this convention in mind,the ne"t figure presents e"actly the same analysis as igure 8*

Figure 3: Cats miaow: a construction analysis in network notation

's before, the vertical lines show the symbolic link between each form andits meaning, and the diagram illustrates Crofts generalisation about constructions

providing a single homogeneous analysis for the whole of grammar, including the

morphology inside catsas well as the synta" that links catsto miaow. His claim fitswell with the plain vanilla 'merican ?tructuralist tradition in which morphology is

cats miaow

cats

cat plural miaow

cats miaow

cats

cat s miaow

cats miaow

cats

cat plural

miaow

cats miaow

cats

cat s

miaow

Cats miaow.


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simply synta" within the word a tradition represented not only by pre-Chomskyans$Harris 0230, Hockett 0234% but also by Chomsky himself in his famous analysis ofEnglish au"iliaries as two morphemes $e.g. beKing%, and by =istributed (orphology$Halle and (arant 022:%. 7ut how well does it mesh with the Cognitive 'ssumption$and indeed, with the linguistic facts%1 & shall now present an obection to it based on

the prevalence of homonymy.!he argument from homonymy is based on the recycling tenet $5%and goes

like this. #hen we first meet a homonym of a word that we already know, we donttreat it as a completely unfamiliar word because we do know its form, even though wedont know its meaning. or instance, if we already know the adective B)F= $asin a round table%, its form is already stored as a morph a form which is on a higherabstraction level than phonology@ so when we hear o round the corner, we recognisethis form, but find that the e"pected meaning doesnt fit the conte"t. 's a result, whencreating a new word-concept for the preposition B)F= we are not starting fromscratch. 'll we have to do is to link the e"isting form to a new word. 7ut that meansthat the e"isting form must be conceptually distinct from the word in other words,

the morph LroundM is different from the words that we might write as B)F=adandB)F=prep. #herever homonymy occurs, the same argument must apply* the normal

processes of learning force us to start by recognising a familiar form, which we mustthen map onto a new word, thereby reinforcing a structural distinction between thetwo levels of morphology $for forms% and synta" $for words%, both of which aredifferent from phonology and semantics. !he proposed analysis for the homonymy ofroundis sketched in igure 5.

Figure : !omonymy an" the levels o# language

&t might be thought that this conclusion could be avoided simply by linking theform LroundM directly to its two different meanings. 7ut this wont do for purelylinguistic reasons* because the different meanings are also associated with verydifferent syntactic properties, so distinct concepts are needed to show these

LroundM

;r; ;au; ;n; ;d;

B)F=ad B)F=prep

rotund aroundsemantics

synta"

morphology

phonology


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correlations. !he problem is especially acute in the case of bilingual individuals, whomay link the same meaning to words from different languages where the syntactic andmorphological differences are even greater. !he fact is that roundis not mere

phonology, because it is a listed, and recognised, English word i.e. a word-form.7ut this word-form is actually shared by $at least% two distinct words, each with its

different syntactic properties and each distinct from the meaning that it e"presses. &nshort, we need to distinguish the forms of morphology from the words of synta".(oreover, the relation between a word and its form is different from the part-wholerelations that are recognised within both morphology and synta". &t makes no sense tosay that LroundM is a part of B)F= for the simple reason that, if we can measuresie at all, they are both the same sie at least in the sense that they both map ontothe same number of phonological segments. Bather, the relation between form andword is the traditional relation called realiation, where the form realies the word$by making it more real, or more concrete%.

!he psychological reality of morphological form is evident in another area oflanguage-learning* folk etymology, where we try to force a new form into an

e"isting pattern, regardless of evidence to the contrary. or instance, our wordbridegroomdeveloped out of )ld English bryd!gumawhen the wordgymaman fellout of use, leaving thegumaform isolated. !he formgroomhad the wrong meaningas well as the wrong phonology, but it had the great virtue of familiarity i.e. italready e"isted in everybodys mind as an independent concept so it was pressedinto service $recycled% for lack of a better alternative. !he fact that folk etymologyhas affected so much of our vocabulary, and continues to do so, is clear evidence ofour enthusiasm for recycling e"isting forms so that every word consists of familiarforms, regardless of whether this analysis helps to e"plain their meaning.

!his conclusion about morphology and synta" undermines the main distinctiveclaim of construction grammar. 'ccording to the construction-based analysis of Catsmiaowin igure :, the relation of the morphs catandsto the word catsis ust thesame as the latters relation to the entire sentence, namely a part-whole relation. 7ut ifthe argument from homonymy is correct, the morphs LcatM and LsM e"ist on a differentlevel of analysis from the word cats$which we might write, to avoid ambiguity, asC'!*plural%@ and the morphs relation to the word is different from the wordsrelation to the rest of the sentence. &n short, grammatical structure within the word isnot merely a downwards e"tension of grammatical structure above the word@ as hasoften been pointed out by morphologists since Bobins $Bobins 8990%, morphology isnot ust synta" within the word.

&t could be obected that languages vary much more than we might e"pect $if

morphology and synta" are fundamentally different% in the sheer amount ofmorphology that they have, with analytical languages such as Nietnamese showingvirtually none. How can a language have no inflectional morphology at all ifmorphology is a logical necessity in any language1 !his obection misses the point ofthe argument, where there was no mention of the morphological processes or patternsthat we associate with inflectional morphology $or, for that matter, with derivationalmorphology%. !he only claim is that if a language has homonyms, then it will alsodistinguish words from the forms that realie them, however simple or comple" thoserealiation relations may be.

#e can push the argument a step further by +uestioning the constructionalclaim that every unit of grammar has a meaning. !his claim is e"plicit in igure :,

where the formsmeans plural. &n contrast, the two-level analysis of igure 5has nodirect link between the morph LroundM and either meaning, and a similar analysis of


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catswould only link LsM to plural via the word C'!*plural. !his separation of formfrom meaning follows from the homonymy argument* if meanings are correlated $asthey are% with syntactic behaviour, they must be a property of words, not forms@ sohomonyms must be words that share the same form, not meanings that $directly% sharethe same form.

?o far, then, the argument seems to support a rather traditional four-levelanalysis of language in which semantic structures relate to words, which relate tomorphs, which relate to phones $or whatever the units of phonological structure may

be%. However, one of the weaknesses of the traditional view of language architectureis its restrictiveness@ it not only claims that meanings are related to words, but it alsoclaims that they cannot be related to morphs or to phones. !his is psychologicallyvery implausible, for the simple reason that we learn by recording correlated patterns,so if a morph correlates with a particular meaning, there is nothing to prevent us fromlearning the correlation as a link between the two. ?o if the morph LunM correlateswith the meaning not, it seems likely that we will record this link in addition to anymore specific link that we may establish between not and words such as F!&=O.

!here is no reason to believe that we avoid redundancy in fact, redundancy is to bee"pected in any adaptive system - so we can assume considerable direct linkage

between morphs and meanings. (oreover, one of the continuing embarrassments forthe traditional model has always been the e"istence of phonesthemes and other kindsof sound symbolism, such as the meaning indolence or carelessness shared by wordssuch asslac"# slattern# slea$y# slob# slut$Beay 899A%. ?uch e"amples seem to show adirect connection between phonological patterns and meanings a connection whichis even more obvious in the case of intonation, where neither morphs nor words areavailable to mediate the link to meaning.

!he conclusion of this argument, then, is that homonymy automatically pusheslearners to create separate mental representations for morphs and for words.!ypically, it is words that are directly linked to meanings, while morphs only havemeanings indirectly by virtue of the words that they help to realie, and phones areeven more indirectly related to meanings via morphs and words@ but e"ceptions can

be found in which morphs, or even phones, have meanings. !his is a very differentmodel from construction grammar, in which a construction is by definition a pairingof a meaning with a form, and words and morphs co-e"ist on the same level asforms. or, on the other hand, is it +uite the same as published versions of #ordGrammar $Hudson 8996, Hudson 8909%, which all assume that only words can havemeanings.

Encouragingly, the argument from homonymy takes us to e"actly the same

conclusion that many linguists reached in the 0239s by simply looking at the facts oflanguage. &n those days the choice was between the 'merican ?tructuralist approachcalled &tem and 'rrangement $with its process-based alternative called &tem and>rocess% and the European approach called #ord and >aradigm $Bobins 8990%. !heargument centred round the place of the word in grammatical analysis, with the'mericans tending to deny it any special place and the Europeans making it central@for the 'mericans, the grammar within the word is simply a downwards e"tension ofsynta", whereas for the Europeans it was different. !he European argument centredon languages such as /atin in which it is very easy to show that morphs have no director simple relation to meanings@ for e"ample, in the /atin verb amo, & love, the suffi"LoM e"presses person, number and tense all bundled up together. !he conclusion is

that, unlike words, morphs have no meaning in themselves@ instead, they help torealise word-classes $such as first person singular present tense%, and it is these that


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have meaning. )f course this is no longer a debate between Europe and 'merica, asmany leading 'merican morphologists accept the same conclusion $'ronoff 0225,?adock 0220, ?tump 8990%@ but it is very noticeable that the literature of constructiongrammar follows the 'merican ?tructuralist path rather than engaging with thedebate.

E+ually encouragingly, the separation of phonology, morphology and synta"is confirmed by psycholinguistic priming e"periments, which offer a tried and testedway to e"plore mental network structures $Beisberg 8996*836%. &n a priminge"periment, the dependent variable is the time $in milliseconds% taken by a person torecognise a word that appears on a screen in front of them, and to make some decisionabout it which depends on this recognition@ for e"ample, as soon as the word doctorappears, the subect may have to decide whether or not it is an English word and then

press one of two buttons. !he independent variable is the immediately precedingword, which may or may not be related to the current word@ for instance, doctormightfollow nurse$related% or lorry $unrelated%. #hat such e"periments show is that arelated word primes the current word by making its retrieval easier, and therefore

faster@ and crucially, they allow us to distinguish the effects of different kinds ofpriming*

semantic $nurse doctor* 7olte and Coenen 8998, Hutchison 899:%

le"ical $doctor doctor@ (arslen-#ilson 899A%

morphological $factor doctor@ rost and others 8999%

phonological $nurse verse@ rost and others 899:%)nce again, therefore, we have evidence for a three-level analysis which breaks downthe general notion of form into three kinds of structure, each with its own distinctiveunits* phonology, morphology and synta" $whose units are words%. !his is thearchitecture claimed in #ord Grammar $and many other theories of grammar%, but it

conflicts with construction grammar and even more so with Cognitive Grammar.)ne possible obection to this line of argument is that it could be the thin end

of a very large wedge which would ultimately reduce the argument to absurdity. #hystop at ust the three formal levels of phonology, morphology and synta"1 #hy notrecognise four or five levels, or, for that matter, forty or fifty1 !his +uestion re+uires aclear understanding of how levels are differentiated* in terms of abstractness, and notin terms of either sie or specificity. or instance, the only difference between theword =)G, the morph LdogM and the syllable ;d g; is their abstractness, because theyall have the same sie and the same degree of specificity. =)G has properties such asits meaning and its word-class which are more abstract than those of LdogM, which inturn are more abstract than those of ;d g;. !he +uestion, therefore, is whether three

levels of abstractness is in some way natural or normal. &n relation to English, mightwe argue for further levels1 're there other languages where the evidence points tomany more levels1 (aybe, but it seems unlikely given that we already have evidencefrom massively complicated morphological systems that a single level of morphologyis enough even for them $?adock 0220%.

4. hrases or dependencies'nother structural issue which has received very little attention in the cognitivelinguistics literature is the choice between two different views of synta". )nce again,cognitive linguistics is firmly located in the tradition of 'merican ?tructuralism rather

than in its European rival. !he 'merican tradition dates from the introduction ofimmediate constituent analysis, which inspired modern >hrase ?tructure Grammar


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$>?G@ 7loomfield 02::, >ercival 026A%. &n contrast, the European tradition of=ependency Grammar $=G% dates back a great deal further, and certainly at least tothe 'rabic grammarians of the 4thcentury $>ercival 0229, )wens 0244%, and providedthe basis for a great deal of school grammar on both sides of the 'tlantic. 'mong thetheories of grammar that are aligned with cognitive linguistics, #ord Grammar is the

only one that even considers =ependency Grammar as a possible basis for synta".!he essential difference between the two approaches lies in their assumptions

about what relations can be recognised in synta". or >?G, the only possibility is thevery elementary relation of meronymy* the relation between a whole and its parts.!his restriction follows automatically from the definition of a phrase-structure tree ase+uivalent to a bracketed string. 7rackets are very elementary devices whose purposeis simply to distinguish parts from non-parts@ for instance, the brackets in a Ib cJshow that b and c are both parts of the larger unit b c, but a is not. ' bracketed stringis inherently incapable of giving information about the relations between parts andnon-parts $e.g. between a and b%. &n contrast, =G focuses on the relations betweenindividual words, recognising traditional relations such as subect, complement

and modifier. !o take a very simple e"ample, consider Small birds sing. >?Grecognises the phrasesmall birdsas well as the whole sentence, but it recognises nodirect relation at all betweensmalland birds, or between birdsandsing. &n contrast,the individual words and their direct relations are all that a =G recognises, althoughthe phrasesmall birdsis implicit in the link betweensmalland birds.

)f course, there are versions of >?G which include the traditional relations asan enrichment of the basic part-whole relation, so thatsmall birdsis recognisede"plicitly as the subect of the sentence. !his is true in /e"ical unctional Grammarand Head-=riven >hrase ?tructure Grammar, as well as in other functional theoriessuch as Belational Grammar and ?ystemic unctional Grammar. (ore relevantlyhere, it is also a characteristic of construction grammar $e"cept Badical ConstructionGrammar%. 7ut this compromise should not obscure the fact that the relationsconcerned are still basically part-whole relations. 'll these versions of >?G, includingthose found in C/, still e"clude direct relations between words, such as those between

smalland birdsand between birds andsing.!o clarify the issues it will again help to consider concrete diagrammatic

structures, so here are three diagrams for the syntactic structure of Small birds sing.$'% is pure >?G, without function labels@ $7% is a compromise analysis which is atleast within the spirit of construction grammar in terms of the information conveyed,even if tree notation is not popular in the cognitive linguistics literature@ and $C% is ane"ample of =G enriched with function labels. !he stemma notation in $C% was

introduced by the first =G theorist $!esniPre 0232% and is widely used in =G circles.&t has the advantage of comparability with the tree notation of >?G, but & shall suggesta better notation for dependencies below. 'll three diagrams show synta" withoutsemantics, but this is simply because the present topic is syntactic relations. !his isalso why the nodes are unclassified.


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Figure $: %hrase structure or &epen"ency structure

!he issue can be put in concrete terms as two related +uestions about thee"ample Small birds %ly* #hat is the subect, and what is it the subect of1 &n theEuropean dependency tradition, the subect is birds, and it is the subect of%ly. &ncontrast, the 'merican >?G tradition takessmall birdsas the subect of the sentenceSmall birds %ly. !he >?G tradition has had such an impact on grammatical theory thatmost of its followers take it as obviously true, but it has serious weaknesses, andespecially so if we start from the Cognitive 'ssumption, so it is especially

problematic for cognitive linguistics. !his is already recognised in CognitiveGrammar*

?ymbolic assemblies e"hibit constituencywhen a composite structure ... alsofunctions as component structure at another level of organiation. &n CognitiveGrammar, however, grammatical constituency is seen as being variable,nonessential and nonfundamental. $/angacker 8996*558%

& shall start with the specifically cognitive weaknesses, before turning to morefamiliar purely linguistic weaknesses.

rom a cognitive point of view, >?G has two weaknesses, to do with relationsand with tokens. !he first weakness is the e"treme poverty of its assumptions about

possible relations, in contrast with the assumption accepted by almost everypsychologist that cognitive structure is an associative network $erreira 8993%. 7ye"cluding all relations e"cept that between a whole and its parts, it e"cludes a greatdeal of normal cognitive structure and not least, the whole of social structure, basedas it is entirely on relations such as mother and friend. !he relation tenet $A% assertsthat relations of many different types can be learned and distinguished from oneanother, so there is no reason to prioritise the part-whole relation. 'nd if otherrelations are possible, then we can freely relate any obect to any other obect. ?o ustas we can relate one human to another in our social world, in the realm of synta" wecan relate one word directly to another. 'lthough 7loomfieldian &mmediateConstituent 'nalysis had roots in German psychology, Chomskys formalisation interms of bracketed strings and rewrite rules removed any semblance of psychological

plausibility.

!he second cognitive weakness of >?G is its assumption about tokens, i.e.about the sentences that a grammar generates. !he symbols in a sentence structure are

small birds sing small birds sing

small birds sing

small birds

small birds sing

small birds

subect

modifier

sing

birds

small

subect

modifier

$' % $7% $C%


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seen as mere copies of those used in the grammar@ so if the sentence structurecontains, say, the symbol $for noun%, this is the same symbol as the in thegrammar@ and the symbol birdsin the sentence is the same as the one in the grammar.)nce again we find a very impoverished view of cognitive capacity, in which the onlyoperation that we can perform is to copy symbols and structures from the grammar

onto the sentence structure. &n contrast, the chunking tenet $4%says that when weencounter a new e"perience, we build a new node for it, and use relevant parts of ourstored knowledge to enrich this node. &n this view, the nodes for tokens are muchmore than mere copies of those in the grammar for the relevant types@ although thetokens inherit most of the properties of the types, they also have a great many other

properties, reflecting the particularities of their conte"t. &f the sentence contains theword birds, this is not ust the stored word birds, less still the le"eme 7&B= or thecategory plural@ instead, it is a distinct concept from all these, with properties thatinclude the other words in the sentence.

?uppose, then, that we take the relation and chunking tenets seriously. #hatmental structure would we e"pect for the sentence Small birds sing1 irst,smalland

birdsare clearly related, so we e"pect a direct relation between these words@ e+uallyclearly, the relation betweensmalland birdsis asymmetrical becausesmallmodifiesthe meaning of birds, rather than the other way round. &n traditional terminology,

smallis the modifier and depends on birds, which is the implied phrases head. 7utif the meaning of birdsis modified bysmall, it follows that birds i.e. this particulartoken of birds does not mean birds, but means small birds@ so there is no need to

postulate a larger unitsmall birdsto carry this meaning. &n other words, the meaningof a phrase is carried by its head word, so the phrase itself is redundant. urthermore,the link betweensmalland birdse"plains why they have to be positioned ne"t to eachother and in that order. #e return to +uestions of word order in section 6, but we canalready see that direct word-word links will play an important part in e"plaining wordorder.


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?imilar arguments apply to the subect link. )nce again, this is a directasymmetrical link between two single word-tokens* birds$not*small birds% andsing,

bearing in mind that birdsactually means small birds. 's in the first e"ample, thedependent modifies the heads meaning, though in this case the kind of modificationis controlled by the specifics of the dependency, traditionally called subect. Given,

then, that birdsis the subect ofsing#and that birdsmeans small birds, it followsthat the word-tokensingdoesnt ust mean sing, but means small birds sing. ?oonce again, the head word $sing% carries the meaning of the whole phrase, and noseparate phrasal node is needed. &n this case, the phrase is the entire sentence, so weconclude that the sentence, as such, is not needed. !he proposed analysis is presentedin igure A.

Figure ':Small birds sing: syntax an" semantics

!his diagram includes the earlier stemma notation for syntactic relationsalongside a more obvious notation for the meaning relation. !his is inconsistent, asthe meaning relation and the syntactic dependency relations look more different thanthey should. 'fter all, part of the argument above in favour of dependency analysis isthat our conceptual apparatus already contains plenty of relations of various kinds indomains outside language, so the same apparatus can be applied to synta". !hetrouble with stemma notation is that it is specially designed for synta", so itobscures similarities to other domains. &n contrast, the notation for the meaningrelation is simply a general-purpose notation for relations as defined by the relationtenet of $A%.!his general-purpose notation works fine for synta", and indeed avoids

problems raised by the rather rigid stemma notation, so we now move to standard#ord Grammar syntactic notation, as inigure 6, with arrows pointing from a wordto its dependents.

sing

birds

small

subect

modifier

small birds

small birds sing

meaning

meaning


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Figure (:Small birds sing: )or" *rammar notation

!his notation should appeal to cognitive linguists looking for an analysiswhich treats synta" as an e"ample of ordinary conceptual structures. 'fter all, itmakes synta" look like a network, which $according to the network tenet of $:%% iswhat ordinary conceptual structure is like@ in contrast, the notation used for synta" inthe cognitive linguistics literature is hard to relate to general conceptual structure.'dmittedly, the structure in igure 6may not look obviously like a network, but morecomplicated e"amples certainly do. !he sentence in igure 4makes the point, sinceevery arrow in this diagram is needed in order to show well-know syntactic patternssuch as complementation, raising or e"traction. !his is not the place to ustify theanalysis $Hudson 8996, Hudson 8909%, but it is worth pointing to one feature* themutual dependency between whichand do. &f this is indeed the correct analysis, then

the case for dependency structure is proven, because mutual dependency is impossiblein >?G. $'nd even assuming dependency structure, it is impossible in stemmanotation.% &n the diagram, s and c stand for subect and complement. !henotational convention of drawing some arrows above the words and others below will

be e"plained in the discussion of word order in section 6.

Figure +: A complex syntactic network

'nother way to bring out the network-like nature of syntactic structure is to gobeyond the structure of the current tokens in order to show how this structure isderived from the underlying grammar. Beturning to the simpler e"ample, Small birds

sing, we know that birdscan be the subect ofsingbecause the latter re+uires a

subect, a fact which is inherited from the verb node in the grammar@ and similarly,smallcan be the dependent of birdsbecause it is an adective, and adectives are

Small birds sing.

small birds

small birds sing

modifier subect

meaning

meaning

&hich birds do you thin" sing best?

cc

e"tractee

s

s

predicativeobect adunct

e"tractee e"tractee Q s


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allowed to modify nouns. !he word tokens inherit these properties precisely becausethey are part of the grammar, thanks to isa links to selected word types. !his is all as

predicted by the inheritance tenet $3%, and can be visualised in the diagram below,where the small triangle is the #ord Grammar notation for the isa relation. &nwords, because the tokensmallisa the le"eme ?('// which isa adective, and

because an adective is typically the modifier of a noun $represented by the left-handdot, which isa noun%, it can be predicted $by inheritance% thatsmallis also themodifier of a noun, which $after some processing% must be birds. ' similar logice"plains the subect link fromsingto birds. !he main point is that the syntacticstructure for the sentence is a small part of a much larger network, so it must itself bea network.

Figure ,:Small birds singan" its un"erlying grammar

!he main conclusion of this section is that synta" looks much more likegeneral conceptual structure if we allow words to relate directly to one another, as independency analysis, than if we apply a rigid >?G analysis. =ependency structure isvery similar to many other areas of conceptual structure, such as social structure,whereas it is hard to think of any other area of cognition which allows nothing but

part-whole relations. !o make a rather obvious point, it is arguably >?G that hasencouraged so many of our colleagues to accept the idea that language is uni+ue@ but>?G is simply a method of analysis, not a demonstrated property of language. !heonly way to prove that >?G is in fact correct is to compare it with the alternatives,especially dependency analysis@ but this has hardly happened in the general literature,let alone in the cognitive linguistics literature.

Ruite apart from the cognitive arguments for direct dependencies betweenwords. it is easy to find purely linguistic evidence@ for e"ample, most le"icalselection relations involve individual words rather than phrases. !hus the verb=E>E= selects the preposition ), so there must be a direct relation between thesetwo words which is impossible to show, as a direct relation, in >?G. &n the ne"tsection & shall show how this advantage of dependency structure applies in handlingconstructions.

However, it is important once again not to lurch from one e"treme position to

its opposite. & have obected to >?G on the grounds that it rules out direct linksbetween words, a limitation which is arbitrary from a cognitive point of view@ but it

?('// 7&B= >lural ?&G

adective noun verbS S

subect

Small birds sing.

modifier


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would be e+ually arbitrary to rule out chunking in synta". &n our simple e"ample,maybe we recognisesmall birdsas a chunk as well as recognising the relations

between its parts. Given that we clearly do recognise part-whole relations in otherareas of cognition, it would be strange if we were incapable of recognising them insynta". Even in the area of social relations, we can recognise collectivities such as

families or departments as well as relations among individuals. 'nd in synta" there doseem to be some phenomena which at least seem at first sight to be sensitive to phrase

boundaries. )ne such is mutation in #elsh $!allerman 8992% which seems to betriggered by the presence of a phrase boundary and cannot be e"plained satisfactorilyin terms of dependencies. 's we have already seen, there is no reason to think thatcognition avoids redundancies@ indeed, it is possible that gross redundancy is e"actlywhat we need for fast and efficient thinking. !his being so, we cannot rule out the

possibility that, even if syntactic structure includes direct word-word dependencies, italso includes e"tra nodes for the phrases that these dependencies imply $Bosta 0226,Bosta 8993%.

!. Idioms and constructions& have argued for a rather traditional view of language structure in which words arecentral both by virtue of being the units that define a level of language which isdistinct from phonology and morphology, and also as the main $and perhaps only%units on that level. (y main argument was based on the Cognitive 'ssumption and itstenets, but & also showed that the conclusion is re+uired by more traditional types ofevidence. #e now consider how this model of structure accommodates thegrammatical patterns that are so familiar from the constructional literature* idioms $2%,$09%, clichTs or formulaic language $00%,meaning-bearing constructions$08%, and

non-canonical constructions $0:%.$2% He kicked the bucket.$09% He pulled strings.$00% &t all depends what you mean.$08% rank sneeed the tissue off the table.$0:% How about a cup of tea1

'll such e"amples show some kind of irregularity or detail that supports the idea ofusage-based learning $rather than mere triggering of an inbuilt propensity%, which inturn is predicted by the learning tenet $8% and the inheritance tenet $3%. 7ut if the

proposed view of language structure makes these patterns relatively easy toaccommodate, this will also count as further purely linguistic evidence for this view.

!he following comments build on a number of earlier discussions of how #ordGrammar might handle constructions $Gisborne 8992, Gisborne 8900, Holmes andHudson 8993, Hudson 8994, ?ugayama 8998%.

)ne unifying feature of all the patterns illustrated in these e"amples is thatthey involve individual words rather than phrases. !his is obvious in most of thee"amples@ for instance, the meaning die is only available if the verb is


22/44

the syntactic pattern and its meaning revolves around one word, the verb. &f this is so,then individual words play a crucial role in every pattern that has been claimed tore+uire constructions@ and crucially, phrase structure, as such, plays no such role.

#e shall now work through the various types of construction listed above,starting with idioms. !he main challenge of idioms is that the idiomatic meaning

overrides the e"pected literal meaning, so we need an analysis that includes the literalmeaning as well as the idiomatic one, while also showing that the literal meaning ismerely potential. ' system that generated only one analysis would miss the point asmuch as an analysis of a pun which showed only one of the two interpretations. !hisview is supported by the psycholinguistic evidence that literal word meanings becomeactive during idiom production $?prenger and others 899A%, and that the syntacticanalysis of an idiom proceeds as normal $>eterson and others 8990%. or e"ample, in

processing'e "ic"ed the buc"et, we activate all the normal syntactic and semanticstructures for


23/44

shared properties such as irregular morphology, but its transitive and intransitive usescombine different syntactic patterns with different meanings, so each re+uires adifferent sub-le"eme of GB)#. !his analysis reveals the similarities of morphologyas well as the differences of synta" and meaning. !he same apparatus seems wellsuited to the analysis of idioms, which combine special synta" and meaning with a

close link to the literal pattern.Fnfortunately, Uackendoff thinks otherwise.

'nother solution would be to say that "ic"has a second meaning, die, thatonly can be used in the conte"t of the buc"et. Coincidentally, in ust thisconte"t, theand buc"etmust also have second meanings that happen to benull. !hen the meaning of the idiom can in fact be introduced with a singleword. !he difficulty with this solution is its arbitrariness. !here is no non-theory-internal reason to concentrate the meaning in ust one of themorphemes. $Uackendoff 8994%

His obection is strange, given the rather obvious fact that the idioms meaning dieis the literal meaning of a verb, so the verb is the obvious word to receive the idiomsmeaning. (oreover, the analysis that he himself offered ten years earlier didconcentrate the meaning in ust one of the morphemes by linking the meaning diedirectly to the verb "ic"$Uackendoff 0226*0A2%.

!he apparatus of sub-le"emes and default inheritance allows us to modeldifferent degrees of irregularity in idioms. !he classic discussion of idioms $unbergand others 0225% distinguished ust two types* idiomatic phrases such as "ic" thebuc"etand idiomatically combining e"pressions such aspull strings, which allow agreat deal more syntactic fle"ibility $e.g. Strings have been pulled@ Strings are easy to

pull@'e pulled a lot o% strings.% However, the historical development of idioms arguesagainst such a clear division. !odays metaphors tend to turn into tomorrows idioms,which become increasingly opa+ue as the original metaphor vanishes from sight. &tseems much more likely that there is a continuum of irregularity, with "ic" the buc"etat one end andpull stringsnear the other end. #hereas "ic" the buc"etoverrides theentire meaning of


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disappear within seconds. !hat is the normal fate of word tokens, but sometimes thetokens are memorable and are remembered which means that they are available ifthe same tokens occur again. !his process is logically re+uired by any theory whichaccounts for the effects of fre+uency*

#hile the effects of fre+uency are often not noted until some degree of

fre+uency has accumulated, there is no way for fre+uency to matter unlesseven the first occurrence of an item is noted in memory. )therwise, howwould fre+uency accumulate1 $7ybee 8909*04%

&n short, formulaic language is e"actly what we e"pect to find, in large +uantities, inthe language network@ and it is represented in e"actly the same way as the utterancesfrom which it is derived.

(eaning-bearing constructions such as the caused-motion construction aremore challenging precisely because they go beyond normal usage. &f anyone actuallysaid+ran" snee$ed the tissue o%% the table, they would certainly be aware of breakingnew linguistic ground, which is the e"act opposite of the situation with idioms andformulaic language. !he standard constructional analysis of such cases was presented

by Goldberg $Goldberg 0223*038-62%, so we can take this analysis as our startingpoint. igure 00shows Goldbergs diagram $from page 35% for the transitive use of?EEDE. !his diagram is the result of unifying two others* the one in the middle linefor ordinary intransitive ?EEDE, and the one for the caused-motion construction$which accounts for the top and botom lines%. !he letter B stands for the relation

between these two patterns, which at the start of the middle line is e"plained asmeans, e"pressing the idea that sneeing is the means of the motion $rather than,say, its cause or manner%.

Figure 11: Cause" motion in constructional notation

!he constructional notation is unhelpful in a number of respects, but the mostimportant is its semantic rigidity. !he trouble is that it re+uires a one-one match

between words and semantic units, so one verb can only e"press one semantic unit,whose arguments are e"pressed by the verbs various dependents. !his is a problem

because the sentence+ran" snee$ed the tissue o%% the tableactually describes twoseparate events* rank sneeing, and the tissue moving off the table. rank is thesneeer, but only in relation to the sneeing@ and the tissue is the theme of themoving, but not of the sneeing. ?imilarly, if rank $rather than the sneee% is a cause,it is in relation to the moving, and not the sneeing@ and o%% the table describes thedirection of the moving, and not of the sneeing. Collapsing these two events into asingle semantic structure is at best confusing, and arguably simply wrong.

?em C'F?E-()NE cause goal theme B

B* means ?EEDE snee.er

?yn N ?F7U )7/ )7U


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&n contrast, the network notation of #ord Grammar in igure 08provideswhatever fle"ibility is needed. !he analysis keeps as close as possible to Goldbergs,and the e"ample is simplified, in order to focus on the benefits of fle"ibility in thesemantic structure. !he dotted lines link the words to their meanings, and as usual thelittle triangles show isa relations. !he main benefit of this network notation is the

possibility of separating the node labelled rank sneee it off from the one labelledit off. !he former is the meaning of the verb tokensnee$ed, which, as usual, showsthe effects of all the dependents that modify the verb. !he latter is a single semanticentity which is contributed ointly by the obect and directional adunct $Goldbergsobli+ue%. &n itself it isa motion, with a theme and a direction, but in relation to thesneeing, it is the result of the verbs action. otice how the two-event analysisavoids all the problems noted above@ so rank is the sneeer, but plays no role at all inthe movement, and contrariwise it and off define the movement but have nothingdirectly to do with the sneeing.

Figure 12: Cause" motion in )or" *rammar notation

!he last kind of construction is represented here by'ow about a cup o% tea??uche"amples have always been central to #ord Grammar $Hudson 0229*3-A%, where &call them non-canonical, but they also play an important part in the literature ofconstructions where the classic discussion calls &hats X doing Ya non-coreconstruction because the normal core rules are suspended $


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$Holmes and Hudson 8993%. !he diagram in igure 0:shows how the sub-le"emesH)#"and '7)F!" relate to each other and to their super-le"emes, and hints at asemantic analysis paired with the syntactic one. $ote how the notation allows us toignore the vertical dimension when this is convenient@ in this case, the isa trianglesface upwards, reversing the normal direction.% !his semantic sketch will be developed

in the ne"t section as an e"ample of what is possible in a network-based analysis ofmeaning.

Figure 13: !ow about x/ &epen"ency syntax

!his section has shown how easily #ord Grammar accommodates theidiosyncratic patterns that lie at the heart of what & have called constructionalanalyses* idioms such as "ic" the buc"etandpull strings, clichTs or formulaiclanguage such as(t all depends what you mean, meaning-bearing constructions suchas the caused-motion construction, and non-canonical constructions such as howabout X?. !he key pieces of theoretical apparatus are sub-le"emes, defaultinheritance, token-based learning, fle"ible networks with classified relations and, ofcourse, dependency structure in synta". 7ut how does this argument leave the notionof construction1

&t all depends what you mean by construction $and construction grammar%,and as we have already seen, this varies a great deal from theory to theory, and from

person to person. &f construction grammar is simply the same as cognitivelinguistics, then nothing changes. ?ince #ord Grammar is definitely part ofcognitive linguistics, it must also be an e"ample of construction grammar $though itis hard to see what is gained by this double naming%. ?imilar conclusions follow ifconstruction grammar is a grammatical theory that reects the distinction betweengrammar and le"icon, and recognises very specific grammatical patterns alongsidethe very general ones. Here too #ord Grammar is an ordinary e"ample ofconstruction grammar $Gisborne 8994%.

However, the debate becomes more interesting if we give construction amore precise meaning, and define construction grammar as a grammar that

H)#" '7)F!

" ,

H)# '7)F!

how about "1 "

c c


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recognises nothing but constructions. or many authors, a construction is bydefinition a pairing of a form $some kind of formal pattern, whether phonological,morphological or syntactic% with a meaning* !he crucial idea behind the constructionis that it is a direct form-meaning pairing that has se+uential structure and mayinclude positions that are fi"ed as well as positions that are open. $7ybee 8909*2%.

!his definition implies a very strong claim indeed* that every pattern that can berecognised at the levels of synta" or morphology can be paired with a single meaning.#e have already seen $in section :% that this claim is untenable if morphology andsynta" are recognised as distinct levels, because $in this view% morphologicalstructures are typically not directly linked to meaning. ?ince #ord Grammar doesrecognise morphology and synta", the grammatical patterns that it recognises cannot

be described as constructions. 'nd yet #ord Grammar can accommodate all theidiosyncratic patterns that are often +uoted as evidence for constructions.

&n this sense, then, #ord Grammar is a radical departure from constructiongrammar, as radical as Crofts Badical Construction Grammar, which departs ine"actly the opposite direction. or #ord Grammar, the basic units of synta" are

words and the dependency relations between them. &n contrast, Croft believes that thebasic units are meaning-bearing constructions*

Badical Construction Grammar ... proposes that constructions are the basic orprimitive elements of syntactic representation and defines categories in termsof the constructions they occur in. or e"ample, the elements of the&ntransitive construction are defined as &ntransitive ?ubect and &ntransitiveNerb, and the categories are defined as those words or phrases that occur inthe relevant role in the &ntransitive construction. $Croft and Cruse 8995*845,repeated as Croft 8996* 52A%.

Crofts e"ample of a non-construction that would not be recognised is verb.urthermore, the term &ntransitive ?ubect is presumably merely shorthand forsomething more abstract such as the noun that e"presses the actor, or less abstract,such as the noun before the verb, because there are no syntactic relations in BadicalConstruction Grammar because such relations are redundant if morphosyntactic cluesare related directly to semantic relations $ibid*526%.

's & commented earlier, the claims of Badical Construction Grammar are notderived from the Cognitive 'ssumption@ indeed, they conflict directly with some ofthe tenets, including the principle for learning that Croft himself e"pressed so well. &ndiscussing the choice between fully general analyses without redundancy and fullyredundant listing of specific e"amples of general patterns, he concludes* grammaticaland semantic generality is not a priori evidence for e"cluding the more specific

models $Croft 0224%. !his is generally accepted as one of the characteristics ofusage-based learning, so we can assume that any construction is stored not only as asingle general pattern, but also as a collection of individual e"emplars that illustratethe pattern. &ndeed, the learning tenet re+uires the e"emplars to be learned before thegeneral pattern, because these are the material from which the general pattern islearned. 7ut if e"emplars can be mentally represented separately from the generalconstruction, and if they are even represented before the construction, how can theconstruction be more basic1 &n short, the basic tenets of the Cognitive 'ssumptionsupport the more traditional approach which Croft criticies as reductionist, inwhich more abstract and general patterns are built out of more concrete and specific

patterns.


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". #emantic$encyclopedic structures&f the Cognitive 'ssumption $0%is right, it follows that there can be no boundary

between linguistic meaning and general conceptual structure, and therefore noboundary between dictionary meaning and encyclopedic information. !he typical

meaning of a word or a sentence is simply the part of general conceptual structure thatis activated in the mind of the speaker and hearer. !his view of meaning is one of thetenets of cognitive linguistics $including #ord Grammar% in contrast with the moreclassical or obectivist approaches to semantics that have dominated linguisticsemantics. Cognitive linguistics cannot match the massive apparatus of formal logicthat these approaches bring to bear on the analysis of meaning, but once again theCognitive 'ssumption may be able to guide us towards somewhat more formalanalyses than have been possible so far.

!he most relevant conse+uence of the Cognitive 'ssumption is the recyclingtenet $5%,the idea that each new concept is defined in terms of e"isting concepts. !hisimmediately rules out any boundary between dictionary and encyclopedia, because

any dictionary entry is bound to recycle an encyclopedic entry. or e"ample, take achild learning the word C'! and its meaning* the child stores the word and looks fora potential meaning in general memory, where the $encyclopedic% concept cat is theobvious candidate. Becycling guarantees that this concept is the one that the childuses as the meaning of C'!.

Becycling also rules out a popular approach to le"ical semantics in whichle"ical meanings are defined in terms of a pre-e"isting metalanguage such as theatural ?emantic (etalanguage suggested by #ierbicka $#ierbicka 022A%. !heargument goes like this $Hudson and Holmes 8999%* )nce a concept has been created,it is available as a property of other concepts, and should be recycled in this waywhenever it is relevant. 7ut new concepts cannot be used in this way if the only

elements permitted in a definition are drawn from the elementary semanticmetalanguage. !o take a concrete e"ample, consider #ierbickas definition of a

bicycle $#ierbicka 0243*008%, which refers to the pedals in at least three places* as apart of the structure, as the source of power, and as the place for the riders feet. !heproblem is that pedal is not part of the metalanguage, so a circumlocution $parts forthe feet% has to be used, obscuring the fact that each reference is to the same obect.&n contrast, the recycling tenet re+uires us to recognise the concept pedal and toname this concept whenever it is relevant@ but this of course is totally incompatiblewith any attempt to define every concept soleley in terms of a fi"ed list of primitives.

'nother tenet highly relevant to semantic structure is the network tenet $:%,which re+uires every scrap of information to be e"pressed in terms of network

structures. !his means that network notation has to be available for every analysis thatcan be e"pressed in other notations such as the predicate calculus. !ake, for e"ample,the universal and e"istential +uantifiers which distinguish semantically betweensentences such as the following*$05% Everyone left.

", person$"% V left$"% $or every ", if " is a person then " left%$03% ?omeone left.

", person$"%, left$"% $!here is an " such that " is a person and " left%!he sentences undeniably have different meanings, and the linear notation of formalsemantics distinguishes them successfully, but the challenge is to translate the linear

notation into a network. !hanks to the inheritance tenet$3%, the solution issurprisingly easy $Hudson 8996*::-5%. Fniversal +uantification is simply inheritance,


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because any instance of a category automatically inherits all of that categorysproperties $unless of course they are overridden%. Conse+uently, we can represent themeaning of-veryone le%tas shown in the first diagram of igure 05.'ccording tothis diagram, the typical person left, so one of the properties to be inherited by anye"ample of person is that they left. &n contrast, the diagram for Someone le%tshows

that some particular person $represented by the dot% left, so leaving is not a propertyof person and therefore cannot be inherited by other people.

Figure 1: 0veryone le#t an" someone le#t

!his simple and natural analysis of universal and e"istential +uantificationshows the benefit of starting from the Cognitive 'ssumption@ and of course thisassumption also leads to an analysis which is cognitively more plausible thantraditional logic because default inheritance allows e"ceptions. 's in ordinaryconversation, the generalisation that everyone left is not, in fact, overturnedcompletely if it turns out that a few people did not leave@ e"ceptions are to be

e"pected in human reasoning.#ord Grammar offers structural analyses for many other areas of semantics$Gisborne 8909, Hudson 0245*0:0-809@ Hudson 0229*08:-0AA@ Hudson 8996*800-854@ Hudson 8909*889-850%, all of which are informed by the Cognitive 'ssumption.!he e"ample of universal and e"istential +uantification illustrates a generalcharacteristic of these analyses* patterns that other theories treat as special tosemantics turn out to be particular cases of much more general cognitive patterns thatare therefore found in other areas of language structure. #e shall consider anothere"ample in the discussion of word order $section6%, where & argue that word orderrules build on two relations also found in semantics* the landmark relation e"pressed

by spatio-temporal prepositions, and the temporal relations e"pressed by tense. !his

sharing of patterns across linguistic levels is e"actly as e"pected given the Cognitive'ssumption, but it is rarely discussed in other theories.

!his article is not the place to summarise all the possibilities of #ordGrammar semantics, but it may be helpful to illustrate them through the analysis ofone concrete e"ample. &n the previous section & gave a syntactic analysis of howabout,? in igure 0:as an e"ample of a non-canonical construction, with a promiseof a fuller semantic analysis which & can now redeem. !he meaning of the syntactic

pattern how about ,?is given as a node labelled how about ", an analysis whichdoes at least show that " is defined by the complement of about, though it leaves therest of the meaning completely unanalyed and undefined. 7ut how might we define anotion like this1 Constructional analyses generally leave semantic elements withoutdefinition@ for e"ample,


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pragmatically-identified udge called prag about the entity defined by the " word.!hat is as far as the semantic analysis goes. 7ut according to the network tenet $:%,concepts are defined by their links to other concepts, so any semantic element can bedefined by links to other concepts.

!he first challenge in the analysis of how about X?is its illocutionary force. &f

& say'ow about a cup o% tea?, & am asking a yes-no +uestion, ust as in(s it raining?!he only oddity is that this yes-no +uestion is introduced by a wh-word, how$orwhat%. Even if the construction originated in a wh-+uestion such as &hat do you thin"about ..., the meaning has now changed as much as the synta" $ust as it has in howcome ....?%. How, then, can a semantic network indicate illocutionary force1 !his is arather fundamental +uestion for any model, but especially for a usage-based model inwhich all the conte"tual features of utterances are part of the total analysis@ butcognitive linguistics has so far produced few answers. &n contrast, #ord Grammar hasalways had some suggestions for the structural analysis of illocutionary force. !heearliest idea was that it might be defined in terms of how knowledge was distributedamong participants $Hudson 0245*04A-026%, and knowledge is clearly part of the

analysis.However, & now believe that the recycling principle $5%points to a simpler first

step* linking to the notions ask and tell, which are already needed as the meaningsof the le"emes '?< and !E//. !his is ust like the performative hypothesis ofGenerative ?emantics $Boss 0269% e"cept that the performative structure is firmly inthe semantics rather than in synta" $however deep%. 'nd as in the performativeanalysis, the speaker is the asker or teller, the addressee is the askee or the tellee,and the content of the sentence is what we can call the theme the informationtransferred from one person to the other. or most theories, this analysis would bevery hard to integrate into a linguistic structure because of the deictic semanticsinvolved in speaker and addressee which link a word token to a person, thereby

bridging the normal gulf between language and non-language@ but for #ordGrammar there is no problem because the Cognitive 'ssumption reects any boundary

between language and non-language. !he analysis of a word token is a rich packagewhich includes a wide range of deictic information specific to the token its speaker,its addressee, its time and place, and its purpose* what the speaker was trying toachieve by uttering it. &n the case of the sentence-root, which carries the meaning ofthe entire sentence, its purpose may be to give information or to re+uest it in otherwords, the tokens purpose is its illocutionary force $Gisborne 8909%.

!his treatment of illocutionary force is applied to'ow about X1 in igure 03,which is based in turn on igure 0:above. !he one relation which is not labelled in

this diagram is that between how about "1 and ". #e might be tempted to label ittheme, but we should resist this temptation because " is not in fact the thingre+uested@ for e"ample,'ow about ohn?is not a re+uest for Uohn. & develop this

point below.


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Figure 1$: he meaning o#How about x? illocutionary #orce

!he ne"t challenge, therefore, is to decide what the theme of the +uestion is.&f, for e"ample,'ow about ohn?is not a re+uest for Uohn, what does it want as ananswer1 Clearly, it is a re+uest for either yes or no, information about the truth ofsome proposition which we can call simply p@ but what is p1 !his varies with thesituation as illustrated by the following scenarios*$0A% #e need someone strict as e"aminer for that thesis, so how about Uohn1$06% Oou say you dont know any linguists, but how about Uohn1$04% &f you think (ary is cray, how about Uohn1

?imilar variation applies to'ow about a cup o% tea?, but this is so entrenched andconventional that it needs no linguistic conte"t. &n every case, then, the " of'owabout ,?is suggested as a possible answer to a currently relevant +uestion of identity

the identity of a possible e"aminer in $0A%, of a linguist in$06%and of someonecray in $04%.#hat is needed in the structural analysis of'ow about ,?, therefore, isan e"tra sub-network representing this identity-+uestion, combined with arepresentation of " as a possible answer and the truth value of the answer.

!his supplementary network has two parts* one part which relates p to thetheme of the +uery, the choice between true and false, and another part which relates

p to ". ?tarting with the choice, this involves the #ord Grammar treatment of truth interms of the primitive relation +uantity, whose values range over numbers such as 9and 0 $Hudson 8996*885-4%. ' nodes +uantity indicates how many e"amples of it areto be e"pected in e"perience@ so 0 indicates precisely one, and 9 none. !his contrastapplies to nouns as e"pected@ so a boo"has a referent with +uantity 0, while thereferent of no boo"has +uantity 9@ but it also applies to finite verbs, where it can beinterpreted in terms of truth. or e"ample, the verbsnowedin(t snowedrefers to asituation with +uantity 0, meaning that there was indeed a situation where it snowed@whereas the root-word in(t did not snowhas a referent with +uantity 9, meaning thatno such situation e"isted. ?een in this light, a yes;no +uestion presents a choice

between 0 $true% and 9 $false% and asks the addressee to choose one of them. !he+uantity relation is labelled X in diagrams, so igure 0A shows that the propositionp has three +uantities* 1, 0 and 9.

H)#" '7)F!

" ,

how about "1 "

c cmeaning

meaningpurpose

asking

y

speaker

addressee

asker askee


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Figure 1': he meaning o#How about x?4 content

!he mechanics of choice in #ord Grammar are somewhat complicated becausethey involve two further primitive relations called or and binding@ these have aspecial status alongside isa and a small handful of other relations. ' choice isdefined by a set that includes the alternatives in the mutually e"clusive or relation,and a variable labelled 1 which is simply a member $Hudson 8909*55-56%. #henapplied to the choice between 0 and 9, we recognise a set L0, 9, 1M which contains 0and 9 as its mutually-e"clusive or members as well as an ordinary member called 1which can bind to either of them. !he or relation is shown by an arrow with adiamond at its base while binding is represented by a double arrow@ so the sub-network at the top of igure 0Ashows that 1, the theme of how about ", is either 0or 9.

#e now have an analysis which shows that'ow about ,means & am asking you

whether p is true, where p has some relation to ". !he remaining challenge is toe"plain how p relates to ". &t will be recalled that p is a proposition $which may betrue or false%, but of course everything in this network must be a concept $because thatis all we find in conceptual networks%, so propositions must be a particular kind ofconcept. &n this case, the proposition is the state of affairs $>ollard and ?ag 0225*02%in which two arguments, labelled simply a and b, are identical* the proposition a Y

b. or instance, in $0A% the proposition p is the e"aminer we need Y Uohn. !heidentity is once again shown by the primitive binding relation introduced above,which is shown in igure 0Aas binding a concept + to ". )f these two concepts, wealready know " as the referent of word,@ for e"ample, in'ow about ohn?, " is Uohn.

!he other concept, +, is more challenging because it is the variable concept,

the hypothetical e"aminer, linguist or cray person in $0A%, $06%and $04%.#hat theseconcepts have in common is that they have some currently active relationship to some

H)#" '7)F!

" ,

how about "1 "

c c

meaning meaningpurpose

asking

y

speakeraddressee

asker askee

p a

b

+

e

rS

0 91

L0, 9, 1M

X XX

member

theme


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other currently active entity. !he entity and relationship may be e"plicit, as in $0A%$e"aminer of that thesis%, but'ow about a cup o% tea? shows that they need not be.!he analysis in igure 0Ashows the connection to currently active structures bymeans of the binding procedure $which triggers a search for the currently most activerelevant node%@ so node e at the top of the diagram needs to be bound to some active

entity node, illustrating how the permanent network can direct processes that are oftenconsidered to be merely pragmatic. (ost importantly, however, the same processapplies to the relationship node labelled r, binding it to an active relationship@ sorelationships and entities have similar status in the network and are subect to similarmental operations. !his similarity of relationships and entities is e"actly as re+uired

by the relation tenet $A%, which recognises relationships $other than primitives% as aparticular kind of concept@ and it is built into the formal apparatus of #ord Grammar.& am not aware of any other theory that treats relationships in this way.

!his completes the semantic analysis of &hat about ,?, showing that it meanssomething like* & am asking you whether it is true that " is relevantly related to therelevant entity, where relevance is defined in terms of activation levels. !he main

point, of course, is not the correctness of this particular analysis, but the formalapparatus that is needed, and that #ord Grammar provides. !he main facilities were

binding, relational concepts, +uantities, mutually e"clusive or-relations and networknotation $with the possibility of adding activation levels%. E"actly as we might e"pectgiven the Cognitive 'ssumption, none of these facilities is uni+ue to semantics.

%. &rder o' (ords) morphs etc.&n this s

cognitive linguistics and language structure

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