Home The case of the missing generalizations
Article
Licensed
Unlicensed Requires Authentication

The case of the missing generalizations

  • Stephen Crain , Rosalind Thornton and Drew Khlentzos
Published/Copyright: February 10, 2009
Cognitive Linguistics
From the journal Volume 20 Issue 1

Abstract

This review discusses several kinds of linguistic generalizations that pose a challenge for the constructionist approach to linguistic generalizations advocated by Adele Goldberg. It is difficult to see, for example, how such an account can explain the wide-ranging linguistic phenomena governed by structural properties, such as c-command, or semantic properties, such as downward entailment. We also argue against Goldberg's rejection of formal semantics in favour of an account of meaning based primarily on information structure and discourse function.

Keywords:: language acquisition; innateness; semantics; first order logic
Author's e-mail: 〈〉.
Received: 2007-08-30
Revised: 2008-01-24
Published Online: 2009-02-10
Published in Print: 2009-February

© 2009 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, D-10785 Berlin

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Cognitive Linguistics comes of age
  2. ‘Caused motion’? The semantics of the English to-dative and the Dutch aan-dative
  3. Fictive dynamicity, nominal aspect, and the Finnish copulative construction
  4. The role of gesture in crossmodal typological studies
  5. The nature of generalization in language
  6. Constructions at work or at rest?
  7. On Subject-Auxiliary Inversion and the notion “purely formal generalization”
  8. The case of the missing generalizations
  9. Constructions and generalizations
  10. Cognitive (Construction) Grammar
  11. Constructions on holiday
  12. Developing constructions
  13. Constructions work
https://doi.org/10.1515/COGL.2009.008
Keywords for this article
language acquisition; innateness; semantics; first order logic

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Cognitive Linguistics comes of age
  2. ‘Caused motion’? The semantics of the English to-dative and the Dutch aan-dative
  3. Fictive dynamicity, nominal aspect, and the Finnish copulative construction
  4. The role of gesture in crossmodal typological studies
  5. The nature of generalization in language
  6. Constructions at work or at rest?
  7. On Subject-Auxiliary Inversion and the notion “purely formal generalization”
  8. The case of the missing generalizations
  9. Constructions and generalizations
  10. Cognitive (Construction) Grammar
  11. Constructions on holiday
  12. Developing constructions
  13. Constructions work
Sign up now to receive a 20% welcome discount
Institutional Access
How does access work?
Have an idea on how to improve our website?
Please write us.
© 2025 De Gruyter Brill
Downloaded on 2.12.2025 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/COGL.2009.008/html?lang=en
Scroll to top button