Construction sets and unmarked forms
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Katrien Beuls
Abstract
Construction application can be made more efficient by organizing constructions into sets and by imposing an ordering on when a construction set should be considered. This technique gives us moreover a way to handle unmarked cases, which are abundant in all the world’s languages. This paper presents a non-trivial case study to introduce and illustrate the utility of construction sets, namely Hungarian verbal agreement, which is part of the Hungarian system for expressing argument structure. Hungarian verbal agreement is interesting because it has a dual conjugation system with mono-personal and poly-personal agreement, i.e. agreement with subject only or with subject and object. The choice which system is chosen depends on complex syntactic and semantic considerations. Moreover the morphemes chosen to express agreement and case marking depend on many factors, including the phonological properties of the stem. This chapter therefore illustrates not only how construction sets are useful but also how construction grammar can take multiple linguistic levels into account.
Abstract
Construction application can be made more efficient by organizing constructions into sets and by imposing an ordering on when a construction set should be considered. This technique gives us moreover a way to handle unmarked cases, which are abundant in all the world’s languages. This paper presents a non-trivial case study to introduce and illustrate the utility of construction sets, namely Hungarian verbal agreement, which is part of the Hungarian system for expressing argument structure. Hungarian verbal agreement is interesting because it has a dual conjugation system with mono-personal and poly-personal agreement, i.e. agreement with subject only or with subject and object. The choice which system is chosen depends on complex syntactic and semantic considerations. Moreover the morphemes chosen to express agreement and case marking depend on many factors, including the phonological properties of the stem. This chapter therefore illustrates not only how construction sets are useful but also how construction grammar can take multiple linguistic levels into account.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Foreword vii
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Part I. Introduction
- Introducing Fluid Construction Grammar 3
- A first encounter with Fluid Construction Grammar 31
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Part II. Grammatical structures
- A design pattern for phrasal constructions 71
- A design pattern for argument structure constructions 115
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Part III. Managing processing
- Search in linguistic processing 149
- Organizing constructions in networks 181
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Part IV. Case studies
- Feature matrices and agreement 205
- Construction sets and unmarked forms 237
- Syntactic indeterminacy and semantic ambiguity 265
-
Part V. Fluidity and robustness
- How to make construction grammars fluid and robust 301
- Index 331
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Foreword vii
-
Part I. Introduction
- Introducing Fluid Construction Grammar 3
- A first encounter with Fluid Construction Grammar 31
-
Part II. Grammatical structures
- A design pattern for phrasal constructions 71
- A design pattern for argument structure constructions 115
-
Part III. Managing processing
- Search in linguistic processing 149
- Organizing constructions in networks 181
-
Part IV. Case studies
- Feature matrices and agreement 205
- Construction sets and unmarked forms 237
- Syntactic indeterminacy and semantic ambiguity 265
-
Part V. Fluidity and robustness
- How to make construction grammars fluid and robust 301
- Index 331
