Adele Goldberg: Argument structure constructions: Lexical or Phrasal?

This presentation suggested several advantages of constructions as against lexical rules including the following:

1. Implausible verb senses are avoided;
2. The possibility of representing a distinction between mismatches and matches of verb and constructional meaning is allowed for;
3. The possibility of morphemes that have semantic scope only over the lexical verb is allowed for;
4. Broader generalizations are captured without lexical rules (or derivations);
5. The constructionist approach extends to a natural treatment of idioms.

The presentation additionally addressed several possible concerns that a phrasal constructional account might raise (cf. Kay 2005; Müller 2006). The possible concerns that were countered included the following:

1. there is no reason to assume that linear order be prespecified, which would lead to massive proliferation of constructions; instead linear order is underspecified;
2. relation changing passive, middle constructions do require additional constructions to capture the relevant linking; however, instead of being a drawback, it was argued that this is motivated because these constructions often involve some non-predictable aspect;
3. Complex predicate behavior is acknowledged, but it was argued that such behavior does not entail that argument structure patterns are lexical;
4. Morphological markers are naturally captured in argument structure constructions by relaxing the constraint of locality (which must, it was argued, be relaxed on the lexical account as well, particularly for the treatment of idioms);
5. while linking rules look more general than construction-specific form-function pairings, accurate linking rules turn out to be quite construction specific.

Toc of the proceedings and download