Constructions and Frames - Volume 4, Issue 2, 2012

The paper presents a novel approach to formalization of linking information in the FrameNet lexicon and to acquisition of a principled syntax-semantics interface, suitable for generalizing over combinatorial properties (valences) of predicators. Focusing on verbs that denote ‘notions’, it adopts an entailment-based view of the concept of semantic role, proposing representations of verbal arguments based on semantically primitive, grammatically relevant properties, entailed by the meaning of predicators (lexical entailments). Such generic meaning components abstract over various semantic relations which humans tend to express systematically through language. A limited set of prototypical role-like concepts can be used for modeling the linking properties of a wide range of verbs, in a well-ordered fashion.In a preliminary study, frame-semantic representations of a set of notion verbs are mapped onto lexical entailment representations, in a portion of the FrameNet corpora. From the annotated data set, associations of semantic and grammatical categories are extracted and are formally rendered in entailment-based classes called Lexicalization Types (L-Types). L-Types are specified in terms of combinations of entailed properties, encoding distinctive predicate-argument structure patterns. A small number of L-Types is shown to readily abstract over the valence patterns of verbs classified in a variety of FrameNet frames. The latter are not systematically connected for purposes of linking. Valence generalizations in the FrameNet lexicon are acquired through appropriate frame-to-frame relations forming the frame hierarchy. L-Types can be represented as abstract, non-lexicalized frames specifying linking constraints. Mappings between L-Types and more specific frames can be encoded by means of a new frame relation modeling the syntax-semantics interface. Such a relation would simplify the current picture of the frame hierarchy by essentially decoupling purely lexical semantic information from information pertaining to linking.

Since the Korean firsthand evidential marker -te- shows unexpected semantics such as implicating psychological distance and restricted deictic accessibility as well as standard evidential semantics, Korean linguists have disagreed considerably about the analysis of the marker, each citing evidence for distinct analyses. The aim of this paper is to argue that the marker -te- can be given a unified treatment as an evidential marker. The alleged incompatibility between the functions of -te- is a consequence of the combination of semantic primes encoding firsthand evidentiality and past tense at the same time. To better explain the marker’s multiple functions and its subjective semantics, I employ Mental Spaces Theory (Fauconnier 1997; Fauconnier & Sweetser 1996; Dancygier & Sweetser 2005): the marker sets up a subjective experience mental space, where the speaker can have access from the Base space to his/her firsthand perception space. Specifically, I propose a notion of backgrounded information accommodation to represent a situation where the addressee immediately accesses backgrounded knowledge that the speaker has obtained information of the linguistic content, when the marker is used. Furthermore, we can explain why the -te- construction does not allow direct attribution of another person’s mental state, exploring how the marker restricts (non-)1st person subjects’ co-occurrence with particular types of predicates (i.e. action and experiential).

Issues concerning the nature of so-called ‘filler-gap’ constructions and the constraints on their acceptability in different languages have for a long time been at the center of the linguistic debate. In more recent years, claims have often been made that many or all constraints on such constructions can be explained in terms of processing restrictions, properties of information structure, or limits to attention. However, in the present paper I will argue that at least some of these constraints cannot be explained by such factors. Instead, I will claim that speakers’ judgements of acceptability could be negatively affected if the syntactic structure of a productively formed instance of a schematic construction is not sufficiently similar to the prototypical entrenched structure of the same construction. Importantly, this might happen whether the relevant form is a phonological pattern, or a pattern of schematic syntactic categories. I will show how the proposed principles have the potential to explain a number of well-known constraints which have generally not been regarded as related. More specifically, I will show how the principles can account for some striking similarities between filler-gap constraints in English and Swedish, as well as some unexpected differences. I will also argue that the filler-gap constraint referred to as the complementizer-gap effect can be explained by the same principles that are involved in phenomena such as restrictions on wanna-contraction in English and adjective defectiveness in Swedish. The analysis will be based on the constructional approaches of Croft (2001) and Verhagen (2009), and some crucial issues will concern the relationship between syntactic and phonological structure in a construction, and the notions of non-iconic constituency and gradient syntactic attachment.

Although often a painful and prolonged process, conjugating verbs correctly is essential when you try to master a foreign language. Verbs that exhibit an irregular conjugation paradigm, however, are often the verbs that occur most frequently in a language. The nature of inflectional morphemes and the mechanism for conjugating verbs have been the topic of debate for 25 years now. This has led to many different accounts of the problem, both in the field of descriptive linguistics as well as in a range of modeling approaches. The field of Construction Grammar has recently witnessed the theoretical work on Construction Morphology by Geert Booij (2010), but there has been no computational implementation that could test the theory on a large scale.Using the framework of Fluid Construction Grammar (FCG), I investigate the grammar and morphological constructions that are needed to automatically conjugate the full paradigms of the 600 most frequently used verbs in Spanish. This paper reports a fully operational rule-based implementation of such a grammar and goes into the details of the constructions that support it. The results also show that morphological constructions are exemplary constructions since they combine two (or more) units (a stem and a suffix(es)) into a single meaningful unit (a conjugated verb form) that can be picked up by other discourse elements. Extensions towards embedding the conjugation constructions into a bigger grammar or automatically learning new morphological constructions remain the focus of future work.