1 Bologna Seminar on Construction Morphology Department of Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures - LILEC 20-21 May 2013 Construction Morphology: A welcome Jenny Audring University of Amsterdam J.Audring@uva.nl Francesca Masini University of Bologna francesca.masini@unibo.it 1. Basic facts about Construction Morphology • Construction Morphology is a MORPHOLOGICAL THEORY recently developed by Geert Booij in a number of works since the first years of this century (cf. Booij 2002a,b, 2003, 2004, 2005a,b,c, 2007a,b, 2008a,b,c, 2009a,b,c,d, 2010a,b,c, 2013, to appear a,b). The label “Construction Morphology” (henceforth CxM), however, appears for the first time in Booij (2005a). - Largely based on word-formation, (still) little work on inflection. - Special attention to phenomena that fall somewhere in between syntax and morphology/lexicon. • The way to CxM has been paved by FOUR MAJOR THEORETICAL DEVELOPMENTS. - Lexicalism → Word-based morphology (Aronoff 1976, 1994; Scalise 1984) In CxM, the lexicon contains two sorts of entities: words and schemas of varying generality or specificity. - Construction Grammar → Schema-based, non-modular representations CxM is a version of Construction Grammar (e.g. Fillmore, Kay & O’Connor 1988; Kay & Fillmore 1999; Goldberg 1995, 2006), because it utilizes the notion of the construction (form-meaning pairs of various complexity) and assumes that both the building blocks of language and the regularities for combining them are represented together in a hierarchical lexicon. - - Usage-based / Exemplar-based (Bybee 1985, 2010; Tomasello 2003) Usage- or exemplar-based accounts assume that in language acquisition, grammar is construed bottom-up from encountered exemplars. These exemplars can be generalized over, however, this does not delete the exemplars from memory. In CxG/M, the lexicon contains everything from individual words or phrases to the most abstract schemas such as the Subject-Verb schema, and various layers of subschemas in between. - - Parallel Architecture → Jackendoff (2002, 2009, 2010, 2013) CxM is very similar to Ray Jackendoff’s Parallel Architecture, at least as regards the treatment of lexical/morphological aspects. Both models: a) allow multiword expressions to be part of the lexicon; b) make use of partially lexically specified or lexically unspecified schemas and subschemas (cf. constructional idioms); c) employ redundancy rules and allow for full entries in the lexicon. 2 2. The general architecture of the grammar • CxM can be viewed as a theory that deals with morphological constructions within the larger framework of Construction Grammar (CxG). - Construction Grammar is not a unitary theory, but rather a family of models (see Fried & Östman 2004), such as: “Berkeley” Construction Grammar (Fillmore, Kay & O’Connor 1988; Kay & Fillmore 1999); Cognitive Construction Grammar (Goldberg 1995, 2006; Boas 2013); Radical Construction Grammar (Croft 2001); Fluid Construction Grammar (Steels 2011); Sign-Based Construction Grammar (cf. Sag 2012; Michaelis 2013). • The CONSTRUCTION – intended as signs, i.e. as conventionalized association of a form and a meaning/function (where both form and meaning/function are complex bundles of properties) – is the basic unit of linguistic analysis. (1) “Any linguistic pattern is recognized as a construction as long as some aspect of its form or function is not strictly predictable from its component parts or from other constructions recognized to exist. In addition, patterns are stored as constructions even if they are fully predictable as long as they occur with sufficient frequency” (Goldberg 2006: 5) • CxG is a non-modular approach: there is no completely autonomous syntax/morphology/semantics: all the relevant information is encoded within the construction and linked by convention (cf. (2)). (2) FORM Phonological information (PHON) Morphological information (MORPH) Syntactic information (SYN) MEANING Semantic information (SEM) Pragmatic information (PRAG) Discourse information (DISC) • The grammar is seen as a structured network of constructions,which is also known as constructicon and is built by means of the following mechanisms: - CONSTRUCTIONS OF DIFFERENT INTERNAL COMPLEXITY (→ “lexicon-syntax continuum”), as illustrated in (3) (adapted from Goldberg 2006: 5). (3) a. Complex word [daredevil] b. English ditransitive construction [SUBJ [V OBJ1 OBJ2]] - CONSTRUCTIONS OF DIFFERENT DEGREES OF SCHEMATICITY / SPECIFICITY, see (4) (adapted from Goldberg 2006: 5, Croft 2001: 17, Booij 2010a: 17). (4) a. Very specific : [green], [go great guns] b. Semi-specific/schematic [the Xer the Yer], [pull POSS leg] c. Very schematic [SUBJ [V OBJ1 OBJ2]], [[X] [Y]]Z [=compounds]