• Corpus ID: 16544757

Construction Driven Language Processing

@inproceedings{Ball2005ConstructionDL,
  title={Construction Driven Language Processing},
  author={Jerry T. Ball},
  year={2005}
}

• J. Ball
• Published 2005
• Linguistics

Construction Driven Language Processing Jerry T. Ball ([e-mail]) Human Effectiveness Directorate, Air Force Research Laboratory www.DoubleRTheory.com A basic mechanism of language comprehension that involves the activation, selection and integration of constructions corresponding to the linguistic input is put forward. During the processing of the sentence He is kicking the ball the following constructions are likely to be accessed: he AE [ he 3-sing-male-human-pron ] nominal is AE [ be 3-pres-sing ] verb he is AE [ Ref-Pt comp be spec Predn head ] clause kicking AE [ kick v-ing ] verb kicking AE [ Subj comp kick head Obj comp ] proposition kicking AE [ V head Obj comp ] predication is kicking AE [ be spec V-ing head ] predicator the AE [ the spec Head ] nominal the ball AE [ the spec ball head ] nominal The [he 3-sing-male-human-pron ] nominal construction encodes the knowledge that pronouns like “he” (3 rd person, singular, male, human) function as full nominals, encoding both a referential specifier function and an objective head function (see Ball, 2005, “A Bi-Polar Theory of Nominal and Clause Structure and Function”, this proceedings). The [be 3-pres- rd sing ] verb construction encodes the status of “is” as the 3 person, present tense, singular form of the verb “be”. The [Ref-Pt comp be spec Predn head ] clause construction captures the use of a reference point complement and a referential specifier (be spec ) to tie a predication functioning as head of a clause to the larger discourse situation via the reference point and referential specifier. This construction is related to the basic subject-predicate form of a clause with be spec and Predn head together constituting the predicate (which is not a distinct functional element in this construction) and Predn head alone constituting a predication (i.e. head, and post-head complements—syntactically a VP when the head is a verb). In the case of a tensed verb without a separate auxiliary (e.g. “kicked”), the construction has the form [Ref- Pt comp Pred head ] clause where Pred head constitutes a predicate (and distinct constituent) which encodes the tensed verb and post-head complements and Ref-Pt comp corresponds to the subject. The [kick v-ing ] verb construction captures the “V-ing” (i.e. progressive) verb form of “kicking”. The [Subj comp kick head Obj comp ] proposition construction captures the basic relational meaning of the verb “kick” which combines with a subject and object complement to form a proposition. This construction is closely related to the basic SVO form of a clause. The [V head Obj comp ] predication construction captures the combining of a tenseless verb head with an object complement to form a predication that functions as the head of the [Ref-Pt comp be spec Predn head ] clause construction. The [be spec V-ing head ] predicator construction captures the combining of the auxiliary verb “be” functioning as a specifier with the progressive form of a verb functioning as the head in forming a predicator. The [the spec Head] nominal construction captures the encoding of a referential specifier and objective head to form a nominal. The [the spec ball head ] nominal construction captures the encoding of “ball” as the head of the [the spec Head] nominal construction. Assuming the activation, selection and integration of these constructions during the processing of this linguistic input, the following linguistic representation is suggested: [ref-pt comp be spec predn head ] Predicator Proposition Predication Clause [be spec v-ing head ] [subj comp kick head obj comp ] [v head obj comp ] Nominal Nominal [he 3-sing-male-human ] pron [be 3-pres-sing ] verb he is [kick v-ing ] verb kicking [the spec ball head ] the ball