Meaning construction, meaning interpretation and formal expression in the Lexical Constructional Model
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Francisco José Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez
Abstract
This paper discusses how the Lexical Constructional Model (LCM) contributes to our understanding of meaning is constructed, interpreted and expressed. It especially addresses the role of constructional meaning in this complex process, while making critical revisions of other constructionist accounts of language, whether cognitivist or functionalist. It includes the notion of replicability into the definition of construction. According to this notion, a form-meaning pairing can be considered a construction, even if the pairing is not frequent, provided that it can be felt by competent native speakers as being ‘potentially replicable’, i.e. as being naturally meaningful without doing any violence to the nature of the language to which the construction belongs. The paper further argues that constructional structure mediates the syntactic realization of verbal meaning. In this view, meaning is not composed by assembling concepts, as postulated in Cognitive Grammar, but rather by making use of the conceptual scaffolding provided by constructions. Then, the paper relates the architecture of the LCM to a taxonomy of cognitive models and addresses meaning construction from the point of view of the descriptive and explanatory tools of the LCM. These tools include the definition of several central processes: subsumption, amalgamation, and saturation of variables. The role of each process is assessed at the various descriptive levels of the LCM. Finally, the paper relates formal expression to meaning representation in terms of idiomatic and non-idiomatic constructions. In this connection it specifies the requirements for full formal expression and relates such requirements to the format of constructional templates in the LCM.
Abstract
This paper discusses how the Lexical Constructional Model (LCM) contributes to our understanding of meaning is constructed, interpreted and expressed. It especially addresses the role of constructional meaning in this complex process, while making critical revisions of other constructionist accounts of language, whether cognitivist or functionalist. It includes the notion of replicability into the definition of construction. According to this notion, a form-meaning pairing can be considered a construction, even if the pairing is not frequent, provided that it can be felt by competent native speakers as being ‘potentially replicable’, i.e. as being naturally meaningful without doing any violence to the nature of the language to which the construction belongs. The paper further argues that constructional structure mediates the syntactic realization of verbal meaning. In this view, meaning is not composed by assembling concepts, as postulated in Cognitive Grammar, but rather by making use of the conceptual scaffolding provided by constructions. Then, the paper relates the architecture of the LCM to a taxonomy of cognitive models and addresses meaning construction from the point of view of the descriptive and explanatory tools of the LCM. These tools include the definition of several central processes: subsumption, amalgamation, and saturation of variables. The role of each process is assessed at the various descriptive levels of the LCM. Finally, the paper relates formal expression to meaning representation in terms of idiomatic and non-idiomatic constructions. In this connection it specifies the requirements for full formal expression and relates such requirements to the format of constructional templates in the LCM.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction vii
- Controller-controllee relations in purposive constructions 1
- Transitivity, constructions, and the projection of argument structure in RRG 23
- Constructions in RRG 41
- A constructional perspective on clefting in Persian 67
- Radical Role and Reference Grammar (RRRG) 103
- Constructions as grammatical objects 143
- Constructions in Role and Reference Grammar 179
- Towards a model of constructional meaning for natural language understanding 205
- Meaning construction, meaning interpretation and formal expression in the Lexical Constructional Model 231
- Constructions in the Lexical Constructional Model 271
- From idioms to sentence structures and beyond 295
- Index 331
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction vii
- Controller-controllee relations in purposive constructions 1
- Transitivity, constructions, and the projection of argument structure in RRG 23
- Constructions in RRG 41
- A constructional perspective on clefting in Persian 67
- Radical Role and Reference Grammar (RRRG) 103
- Constructions as grammatical objects 143
- Constructions in Role and Reference Grammar 179
- Towards a model of constructional meaning for natural language understanding 205
- Meaning construction, meaning interpretation and formal expression in the Lexical Constructional Model 231
- Constructions in the Lexical Constructional Model 271
- From idioms to sentence structures and beyond 295
- Index 331
