Constructions at Work: The Nature of Generalization in Language
Adele Goldberg
Abstract
This book investigates the nature of generalizations in language, drawing parallels between our linguistic knowledge and more general conceptual knowledge. The book combines theoretical, corpus, and experimental methodology to provide a constructionist account of how linguistic generalizations are learned, and how cross-linguistic and language-internal generalizations can be explained. Part I argues that broad generalizations involve the surface forms in language, and that much of our knowledge of language consists of a delicate balance of specific items and generalizations over those items. P ... More
This book investigates the nature of generalizations in language, drawing parallels between our linguistic knowledge and more general conceptual knowledge. The book combines theoretical, corpus, and experimental methodology to provide a constructionist account of how linguistic generalizations are learned, and how cross-linguistic and language-internal generalizations can be explained. Part I argues that broad generalizations involve the surface forms in language, and that much of our knowledge of language consists of a delicate balance of specific items and generalizations over those items. Part II addresses issues surrounding how and why generalizations are learned and how they are constrained. Part III demonstrates how independently needed pragmatic and cognitive processes can account for language-internal and cross-linguistic generalizations, without appeal to stipulations that are specific to language.
Keywords:
generalizations,
theoretical methodology,
corpus methodology,
experimental methodology,
cross-linguistic generalizations,
language-internal generalizations
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2005 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780199268511 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2007 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199268511.001.0001 |
