Beyond the sentence: Constructions, frames and spoken interaction (original) (raw)
2010, Constructions and Frames
Construction grammarians are still quite reluctant to extend their descriptions to units beyond the sentence. However, the theoretical premises of construction grammar and frame semantics are particularly suited to cover spoken interaction from a cognitive perspective. Furthermore, as construction grammar is anchored in the cognitive linguistics paradigm and as such subscribes to meaning being grounded in experience, it needs to consider interaction since grammatical structures may be grounded not only in sensory-motor, but also in social-interactive experience. The example of grounded language learning experiments demonstrates the anchoring of grammatical mood in interaction. Finally, phenomena peculiar to spoken dialogue, such as pragmatic markers, may be best accounted for as constructions, drawing on frame semantics. The two cognitive linguistic notions, frames and constructions, are therefore particularly useful to account for generalisation in spoken interaction.
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Perspectives on Linguistic Structure and Context, 2014
Construction grammarians analyze grammar in terms of conventional pairings of form and meaning that are largely limited to the sentence . Recently, construction grammarians have moved beyond sentential boundaries to consider grammatical structures in terms of interaction and discourse (Fried and Östman 2005; Fischer 2010; Fried 2010a, 2010b). Following Fleischman (1990), we argue that interactive frames are key to linking the concerns of grammarians with those of anthropological linguists, sociolinguists, and text linguists who call for richer analyses of the communicative context (Cook-Gumperz and Gumperz 2011; Park and Takanashi 2011). A frames-based approach to grammatical description situates language within a communicative context that includes factors such as the backgrounds of the speakers and hearers and the frames within which each participant places the interaction. Such contextualized descriptions demonstrate how interactive frames and grammatical constructions are implicated in the interpersonal function of language and the dynamics of meaning making.
Constructions and frames as interpretive clues
Belgian Journal of Linguistics, 2010
Drawing attention to a rather neglected domain in Construction Grammar analyses, this paper examines the multi-layered nature of speakers’ linguistic knowledge and its manifestation in the emergence of new linguistic structure. In particular, I show that the emergence of certain discourse-sensitive grammatical patterns can be systematically captured by appealing to an intricate interaction between fairly abstract constructional meanings based on metonymic transfer, lexical meanings of words (‘semantic’ frames), and particular discourse-pragmatic functions (‘discourse’ frames, understood as pragmatically grounded schematizations of communicative and discourse-structure conventions). It is the knowledge of all three dimensions that aids speakers in their interpretive tasks. The theoretical issues are demonstrated on a subset of discourse-functional and modal uses of the wordjestli‘if/whether’ in conversational Czech, as attested in the Czech National Corpus.
Introduction: Approaches to grammar for interactional linguistics
others. Most recently, linguists have become interested in embodied interaction and its implications for what might be called Multimodal Grammar. This special issue focuses on ways of studying grammar in interaction in the light of these new developments. It presents case studies of grammar in interaction, in a variety of different languages, exemplifying the application of a selection of these grammatical theories and thus furnishing a state-of-the-art view of grammar-in-interaction research today. The articles touch on some of the most central questions facing grammarians who study conversational talk, and conversation analysts who are interested in grammar: What is the role of language, and more specifically of grammar, in interaction? How do theories of grammar relate to the study of language-in-interaction? What does the study of interaction have to offer for theories of grammar? While we do not pretend to offer exhaustive answers to these questions, the papers in this special issue represent an effort to begin answering them.
Construction Grammar and spoken language: The case of pragmatic particles
2005
There has been growing interest in studying the relation between how the notion of ‘construction’ is used in Construction Grammar (CxG) and other constructional approaches to grammar, and how it is used in Conversation Analysis and other interactional, dialogic approaches to language and communication. In this study we show that CxG is well equipped to address the complexities of spoken
Pragmatic Methods for Construction Grammar
method, namely Conversation Analysis (Sacks, Schegloff, Jefferson 1974, Sacks 1992), is well suited to support Construction Grammar accounts of linguistic phenomena in a number of different ways. First of all, investigating a particular construction by means of conversation analytic methods may result in the pragmatic function of this construction, which is what we expect of a pragmatic method. Secondly, however, it may also yield a precise definition of the structural contexts in which the respective item occurs. This definition comprises a description of the semantics of the construction as a generalisation over different structural contexts and a generalisation over the surface properties of this structural context. Finally, up to a certain extent, Conversation Analysis is also suited to determine aspects of lexical meaning, for instance, for items like discourse particles (cf., for instance, Heritage 1984).
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Constructions as grammatical objects
This is a contribution from Linking Constructions into Functional Linguistics. The role of constructions in grammar. Edited by Brian Nolan and Elke Diedrichsen. ©. John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2013