PDF #3 – Goldberg, Adele – Constructions A new theoretical approach
This is a new theoretical approach to language has emerged in the past 10–15 years that allows linguistic observations about form–meaning pairings, known as ‘constructions’, to be stated directly. Constructionist approaches aim to account for the full range of facts about language, without assuming that a particular subset of the data is part of a privileged ‘core’. Researchers in this field argue that unusual constructions shed light on more general issues, and can illuminate what is required for a complete account of language.
Constructions – form and meaning pairings – have been the basis of major advances in the study of grammar since the days of Aristotle. Observations about specific linguistic constructions have shaped our understanding of both
particular languages and the nature of language itself. But only recently has a new theoretical approach emerged that allows observations about constructions to be stated directly, providing long-standing traditions with a framework that allows both broad generalizations and more limited patterns to be analyzed and accounted for fully. This is in contrast to the mainstream ‘generative’ approach to language, which has held sway for the past several decades, beginning with Chomsky in 1957
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