Constructional%20Profiles%20as%20the%20Basis%20of%20Semantic%20Analysis

1
Constructional Profiles as theBasis of Semantic
Analysis

• Suzanne Kemmer
• Rice University
• kemmer_at_rice.edu

2
Introduction

• Construction Grammar defines constructions as
  linguistic units that necessarily have some
  non-compositional semantics
• Constructions have some aspect of meaning that is
  not reducible to (or predictable from) its
  component parts (or other constructions)
• And, constructions are argued to be necessary as
  a construct in any theory of grammar.

3
Why do we need constructions?

• One argument for the indispensability of
  constructions in grammatical analysis comes from
  Coercion Effects (Michaelis 2002)

4
Constructions and Coercion

• Constructions explain how certain expected
  semantic anomalies do not materialize.
• Give me some pillow!
• Elements in some sentences are expected to clash
  by virtue of their incompatible semantics, based
  on their distribution outside the construction.

5
Constructions override lexical meaning

• Constructions fill in semantic substance and
  overcome semantic incompatibility of component
  parts through override
• I slept my way across the Atlantic.
• Sleep -- lack of motion specification
• Sentence as a whole -- describes motion with
  concomitant sleeping
• pit the cherries, dust the furniture, bone the
  filet
• conventionalized semantic elements added
  motion, directionality

6
Investigating constructional semantics

• We can investigate the semantics of constructions
  in various ways. Most relevant here
• 1. Observation of distributional properties at
  sentence level contrasts
• Syntactic properties are diagnostics or clues to
  semantics (as per assumption of close nature of
  the syntax-semantics relation of CL) via
  acceptability patterns in arrays of minimally
  contrasting examples.
• Semantics can be investigated by observing
  lexical items in mainly clause level contexts and
  observing anomalies and compatibilities that make
  such utterances less or more acceptable.
• Lakoff (1987) and Langacker (1987, 1991) inter
  alia analyze constructions (also lexical items)
  using this methodology.
• 2. Observation of distributions of recurring
  elements in a construction in large samples of
  language use

7
Investigating constructional semantics

• We should employ any methodologies that prove
  useful
• Ideal convergence of multiple sources of
  evidence gathered via different methodologies
• Second method gives insight into some semantic
  properties otherwise inaccessible (on assumption
  that frequency is a reflection of degree of
  entrenchment, which is itself a part of the
  system).

8
What else can we get?

• Observing constructions also contributes to an
  understanding of the important mechanism of
  coercion
• How does it work?
• How and to what extent can it forestall anomaly?

9
Who uses corpora?

• Who uses large corpora for the cognitive semantic
  analysis of constructions? Consider
• British, Scandinavian, and American schools
• Sinclair, Stubbs, Stig Johanson, Hunston and
  Francis, Biber. Corpora yes, cognitive semantic
  analysis of constructions, no or minimal
• Construction Grammarians
• Fillmore, Kay, Michaelis, Croft, Goldberg, and
  their students
• Corpora, no or not primarily semantic analysis
  is largely done by the first method above
• Corpus-construction grammarians
• Boas, Fried, Gries, Lambrecht, Michaelis, Östman,
  Stefanowitsch, and students.
• Corpora yes, cognitive semantic analyses, yes
• Corpus-cognitive linguists
• Barlow, Geeraerts, Kemmer, Verhagen and students
• Corpora yes, cognitive semantic analysis yes

10
Results and ongoing research

• The Corpus-CG and Corpus-CL groups have in
  common
• Bottom-up analyses of particular constructions.
  Visual inspection for patterns via keywords in
  context and sorting typically statistical data
• Analysis of constructional semantics,
  identification of theoretical issues in CL/CG
• Inclusion of units at varying levels of
  specificity
• See Rohde 2001 Boas 2002, Gries and
  Stefanowitsch 2002 Stefanowitsch and Gries 2003,
  Fried 2004 studies appearing in Achard and
  Kemmer 2004 and Oestman and Fried 2005 Hilpert
  (to appear a, to appear b) Taylor (to appear)

11
Diachrony

• Several diachronic studies in Cognitive
  Linguistics and, more recently,Construction
  Grammar, using corpora
• Carey 1994, Israel 1995, Ziegler 2002, Diewald,
  Gilquain 2004, Kemmer and Hilpert (forthcoming)

12
Two perspectives

• Focus on individual lexemes
• many analyses of 1980s and 1990s still current
• polysemy networks containing linked senses of
  prepositions, cases, etc.
• Kemmer (1993) added links to conceptually
  neighboring concepts in a multidimensional
  semantic/conceptual space (constructions not
  foregrounded)
• Focus on the construction as the unit of
  observation
• Integration of lexical semantic information with
  constructional specifications

13
Item-based vs. construction-based

• Lexical perspective continues a venerable
  tradition of focus on words
• Words (more precisely lexical roots) are
  certainly salient cognitive units
• Speakers access word meaning much more easily
  than meaning of linguistic units of other sizes
  or greater schematicity
• sublexical morphemes, constructions, sentences
• BUT there are some very good reasons for the
  switch to viewing linguistic knowledge from a
  constructional perspective.

14
Motivating the constructional view

• Traditional polysemy networks, although focusing
  on lexical items, actually require observation of
  lexemes in larger chunks of language
• Linked senses are structured by relative
  closeness of senses as determined by the
  closeness of the relations of the contextualized
  examples (representing types of uses)
• The standard methodology for distinguishing word
  senses is to posit different linguistic contexts
  in which the senses become clearly disambiguated
• Example the ring on my finger vs. he was knocked
  right out of the ring
• the desired sense is the only one compatible with
  the surrounding material.
• Thus Distribution of lexical items in larger
  structures is how we can tell the range of
  senses/uses of a lexical item

15
Senses often correlate with constructions

• For relational units, the various senses of a
  given lexical unit are actually associated with
  constructions.
• Static vs. dynamic senses of the English
  prepositions are parts of constructions that
  express static and dynamic spatial senses
• over (the hill) hovered over the hill, flew
  over the hill
• Prep NP V-static over NP, V-motion over NP
• Senses of verbs are in most cases correlated with
  different constructions (e.g. roll (tr., caused
  motion) vs. roll (intr., autonomous motion)
• Following Goldberg (1995), Construction
  Grammarians reject positing extra verb senses
• an extra sense for sneeze in she sneezed the
  napkin off the table seems absurd

16
Bidirectional links

• But Langacker (2003) points out there are many
  verbs that have a strong associative link to a
  particular construction.
• give is extremely frequent in the ditransitive
  compared to other verbs
• The ditransitive construction is extremely
  frequent with give.
• The usage-based model predicts, based on
  frequency, that there is a highly
  conventionalized link to the ditransitive that is
  part of our knowledge of give.
• If so, give is an access point to the
  ditransitive construction and its associated
  frame
• Hypothesis The links between lexical item and
  constructions reach in both directions
• We posit both nodes as units if both are
  conventionalized. Give may activate the
  ditransitive just as the construction primes the
  word.

17
The usage-based model

• In the usage-based model, links in a linguistic
  knowledge network are viewed as activation
  pathways with potentially bidirectional
  activation flows (cf. Lamb 2000)
• Predicts that strongly entrenched links could
  potentially go in either direction.
• Converges with findings from neurology suggesting
  that links between neurons and between cortical
  columns have physically distinct pathways that
  can have differential activation strength.

18
Predictions

• Viewing the links as potentially bidirectional
  makes some predictions
• It should be possible for there to be
  dissociation between the relative strengths of an
  activation path directed from a lexical item to a
  construction, and another in the opposite
  direction.
• Evidence from distributional studies show that
  some individual verbs occur very frequently in a
  particular construction, like wriggle in the way
  construction (the baby wriggled its way out of
  the playpen) and not at all often, relatively
  speaking, outside the construction. Other
  examples in Gries and Stefanowitsch 2005.

19
The usage-based model

• Conversely, a verb like make occurs frequently in
  the construction, but only as a function of its
  high overall frequency.
• Thus, affinity to the way construction not as
  tight
• Prediction wriggle should have a stronger
  priming effect on the construction than make.
• Psycholinguistic evidence Goldberg 2004 for give
  and ditransitive
• Still, the way construction does have a strong
  link to make.
• Prediction
• The construction allows a wide range of verbs,
  but given no special semantic properties the
  speaker desires to convey, the speaker is likely
  to choose make over other possibilities because
  s/he has a great deal of experience of that
  choice, which effectively increases, by repeated
  memory, the likelihood of activation of make
  --unless there is some overriding reason to make
  another choice (desire to express manner of
  motion, for example).
• I think of this as long-term priming.

20
More on preference for constructions
Constructions and events

• Argument structure constructions are used to form
  more event-sized conceptualizations than single
  words.
• Such constructions are likely to be rather
  crucial units relied on by speakers to make an
  intial chunking of reality into a manageable and
  manipulable portion of conceptual structure, as
  suggested by Talmy 2000.
• If this is true, then starting from the
  construction and investigating it with regard to
  what smaller units occur in it habitually/conventi
  onally is more likely to result in an analysis
  that is something like what the speaker knows
  about how words are used.
• The speakers main experience with word usage, in
  fact, even from the earliest childhood, is in the
  context of larger utterances that the adult uses
  before child can even talk generally speaking,
  constructions.

21
Constructions and events

• The constructional perspective puts us into the
  realm of meaning which is much more like the
  kinds of meanings that speakers deal more
  normally with in language use.
• It is difficult for speakers to define either
  words or constructions
• When they do try to define words, they have to
  activate memories of contexts similar to those in
  which they heard the word used, i.e. they have to
  try to come up with an imagined context similar
  to one they experienced, or an actual remembered
  context for the usage.
• Novice linguists sometimes try to imagine a
  situational context without a linguistic context,
  which gives them much more trouble coming up with
  accurate usage generalizations.
• They have to be trained to think of specific
  linguistic utterances that will allow them to
  more precisely explore the word in something more
  like the typical contexts in which they have
  heard it, and in which it contributes to an
  overall semantically integrated
  conceptualization.
• It is an empirical fact that speakers most
  typically process constructions in usage, and not
  isolated words, given that most conversation
  occurs in construction-like chunks and not in
  isolated words.

22
Constructions and processing

• Constructions have more utility to speakers for
  choosing compatible lexical items to use with the
  construction than vice versa.
• But by hypothesis, lexical elements which hardly
  occur outside the construction can trigger it, so
  that the effects might go the other way.
• In the process of arguing for the necessity of
  constructions in grammatical theory, some
  important empirical findings about constructions
  have emerged (Goldberg 2004)
• Speakers use constructions to interpret lexical
  items
• Argument structure constructions aid children to
  learn new words
• These findings make perfect sense if we accept
  the view that constructions are extremely
  important in language processing, even if they
  are below the level of consciousness (like most
  grammatical units).
• For purposes of guiding the precise activation
  links that will allow instantaneous accessing of
  appropriate lexical items, constructions, on this
  view, would be crucial processing units.

23
Rohde 2001

• Study of the relations between lexical items and
  constructions that used substantial corpora as a
  basis for drawing cognitive semantic conclusions
  about those relations
• Rohde investigated a large range of English
  motion verbs and their co-occurrence patterns
  with a range of prepositions in a motion verb
  preposition NP schematic construction frame.
• Found strong distributional correlations between
  motion verbs and particular prepositions and in
  fact with particular senses of the prepositions,
  essentially corresponding to particular
  constructions.
• Results showed that particular verbs have
  affinities for particular prepositions and vice
  versa (and--links have different strengths as
  measured by frequency.)

24
Rohde 2001

• Patterns of affinity were also found at a more
  general level, involving verb classes defined by
  particular semantic properties.
• Affinity patterns reflect entrenched semantic
  properties of particular units
• Heightened compatibility makes the lexical items
  more likely to be used in the constructions
  reduced compatibility reduces the frequency of
  the less compatible item.
• Compatibility has a strong effect on frequency.
• For example, the verb escape occurs extremely
  frequently with source prepositions like from.
  Most other motion verbs in English prefer goal
  prepositions, with varying degrees of preference.
  Rohde concluded that a source (rather than
  goal) image schema is strongly conventionally
  linked with the lexical item escape.
• We can also take the constructional point of view
  of the same phenomenon and say that the
  semi-specified construction X escape PREP N is
  strongly conventionally linked with source
  prepositions, whereas a similar construction with
  go is linked with goal prepositions.

25
Coercion in action

• Evidence for the key role of constructions in
  constructing meaning comes from acceptability
  judgments.
• It has been demonstrated that constructions
  coerce lexical items interpretations (Michaelis
  2002 and refs.), whereas the opposite has not
  been demonstrated.
• Example of semantic incompatibility
• I walked into the room.
  
• I squinted into the room.
• supposed to be badand is if one is thinking of
  the caused motion construction

26
Coercion

• Now consider
• (1) She looked into the room.
• (2) She squinted into the room.
• (3) She squinted through the window.
• (4) She squinted through her glasses.
• (5) She peered through her glasses.
• (1) expresses an event of directed vision. (2)
  has a context involving a somewhat similar visual
  event for squint. Its better than it was on
  previous slide.
• Subsequent sentences get better and better. Why?

27
Coercion explained

• The frame semantics of squinting are associated
  with a typical purpose of squinting to make ones
  vision better temporarily by deforming the cornea
  with the surrounding eye muscles.
• Squinting, then, often occurs to improve vision
  that is somehow impaired, possibly in part due to
  a barrier to vision such as intervening dirty
  window glass. The more overtly we add a barrier
  to visibility to the context, the more we improve
  semantic compatibility and thus the better the
  sentence sounds.
• Claim these sorts of acceptability judgments tap
  into some speaker knowledge relating knowledge of
  lexical items to constructions. (That knowledge
  itself was originally derived from experience
  using those lexical items in larger
  constructions).
• If true, we would expect that speaker knowledge
  to be also reflected in frequency patterns. In
  fact we predict the following

28
Predictions (requiring testing)

• An increasing degree of semantic distance of a
  lexical item (i.e. it contains some
  incompatibility) from a conventional construction
  type will
• increase unacceptability of the particular
  lexical item in the construction
• increase need for additional linguistic context
  with additional elements that highlight some
  compatible semantic feature of the target item,
  if that item is to be produced or interpreted as
  acceptable.
• This is the implicit basis of many linguistic
  arguments for semantics of particular elements.

29
More predictions

• If an utterance is ambiguous, increasing
  distance/incompatibility should decrease the
  likelihood that the reading with greater semantic
  incompatibility will be chosen.
• Decrease likelihood of production (compared with
  more compatible units)
• Decrease frequency of production (compared with
  more compatible units)
• Extra contextual information (linguistic or just
  situational) needed for production.
• I gave it a little kick.
• I gave the lever (on the handlebar) a little kick
  with my thumb.

30
Problems

• How to quantify, or at least operationalize how
  to judge, degree of semantic similarity/difference
  , closeness/distance, compatibility/incompatibilit
  y.
• How to corroborate Linguists interested in
  semantics can usually come up with an analysis
  that is intuitively satisfying, but little
  psycholinguistic experimentation has been done
• Productivity When is coercion OK, when not?
• Individual variation
• Relation of innovation of an extension and its
  spread

31
Testability

• Unfortunately, the last two predictions, about
  the decreasing likelihood of production (and
  hence decreasing frequency) are rarely examined.
• The subtle contrasts used by linguists to test
  the boundaries of a construction are rarely
  present in corpora, because as phenomena near the
  boundary there are not likely to be many
  instances, if any.
• However, we can still make the prediction and
  with a large enough corpus, it should be borne
  out if the assumptions about the relation of
  usage and linguistic knowledge are correct.

32
Potential problems

• Why dont Construction Grammarians in general try
  to determine the semantics of constructions they
  work on by examining the lexical items that
  occur in them most often? Why is this left to a
  few Corpus-construction people?
• Possible reasons
• Not all constructions occur with specific
  recurrent lexical items (or classes of items).
• (but even some surprisingly , general argument
  structure constructions do, like the passive)

33
Potential problems

• Or, it might be more serious
• Construction Grammarians (unlike Cognitive
  Linguistics) often do not take the usage-based
  model to heart and concern themselves with
  mechanisms of production and interpretation.
• Construction grammar analyses and theoretical
  descriptions simply do not bring processing
  considerations into the picture.
• Possibly this is because Construction Grammarians
  are agnostic about what exactly happens when
  language is used.
• Backgrounding of processing aspects to CG may be
  the real reason that it is so rare to encounter
  investigations which use frequency data by most
  Construction Grammarians.

34
Corpus-Construction Grammarians and Corpus
Cognitive Linguists

• The small community of Corpus-Construction
  Grammarians also are by and large strong
  cognitivists familiar with the implications of
  the usage-based model for the theoretical side of
  the model, and not just for selection of data.
• So they, along with Corpus Cognitive Linguists,
  are prepared to use corpora seriously to discover
  the cognitive semantics associated with
  constructions.

35
The make-causative

• The make-causative shows strongly marked
  distributional asymmetries suggesting it is not a
  generalized causative construction, but instead
  has specific semantic properties.
• 3 senses of the make causative construction in
  English
• mechanical action we need to make it work
• emotional reaction it made me feel good
• compulsion make you cant make me marry him
• Frequency patterns of animacy of causer and
  causee shows clusterings of 3 senses. (Kemmer
  2001 2005)

36
The make-causative

• The make causative has its own unique
  constructional profile of elements that
  typically occur with it and which relate to its
  function as a construction.
• These characteristic distribution patterns are
  found with many constructions
• (e.g. English passive Dutch laten and doen
  causatives German lassen causative English let
  and have causatives into causative, split
  infinitives, Swedish future)
• Also, distributional observation of the predicate
  complements of make causative show a relatively
  narrow range of complements.
• The set of verbs with the widest range of
  predicates, correlating semantically with the
  compulsion use, is the least frequent in type
  frequency and overall token frequency.
• But most predicates are far more restricted,
  falling into a number of semantic subclasses, but
  grouping into just 2 main classes (mechanical
  action emotional reaction). These also correlate
  with the clusterings of animacy causer/causee
  types. Thus we have two pieces of formal,
  distributional evidence that fingerprint the
  construction their interpretation results in a
  unique semantic profile the constructional
  semantics of the make causative.

37
The make-causative

• Moreover, the make causative shows some
  interactional effects between the predicates
  selected in it, and the senses of those
  predicates.
• The make causative effectively constrains the
  interpretation of the predicates, where they are
  polysemous.
• For example,
• In
• I worked
• And
• It worked
• The default readings are senses of work that
  respectively correlate with the animate and
  inanimate subjects in the examples.

38
The make-causative

• However, in the make causative, the sense of work
  that occurs cannot be predicted from the animacy
  of the causee
• It really made it work.
• It really made him work.
• In the causative construction, the second example
  is at best ambiguous, but more likely to be
  interpreted as mechanical action make rather than
  social compulsion make.

39
The make-causative

• Such coercion effects reveal the nature of make
  OBJ INF as a conventionalized construction
• specifically support the analysis of the make
  causative as being primarily about mechanical
  action causation, and secondarily its extension
  emotive reaction causation.
• the least motivated (entrenched) sense of the
  make causative is one which a human is acting on
  another human to socially compel him/her to do
  what the causer wishes to be done.
• The normal sense of work (voluntarily perform
  labor) is suspended here because the entrenched
  constructional semantics induce a reading of
  involuntary, mechanical action. The sentence
  could perhaps be used that way, but it would take
  some supporting semantic factors that were
  coherent with a social frame of strong social
  force.
• This would be required to overcome the slight
  semantic incompatibility of the construction with
  the normal sense of work that is found with human
  subjects.

40
The historical dimension

• We can also observe the history of the make
  causative. In this history we find support for
  the 3 senses of the current construction, and
  find their progressive emergence as distinct
  senses.
• When we examine the history of the construction,
  we find that the construction did not always
  occur with its current constructional profile.
• In fact, in the earliest days in our data, make
  was primarily a main verb taking nominal and
  adjectival predicates.
• It began to take infinitives in early middle
  English (the do-causative was fading by then),
  but as an early causative construction it was
  principally (most frequently in type and token
  frequency) used with the Mechanical Action type
  of predicates.
• Although all 3 senses were apparently attested,
  the primary use as attested by frequency was the
  Mechanical action.
• As time went on, emotion predicates began to
  dominate, as they still do today, but the number
  of compulsion predicates began to move past the
  one or two found in the earlier periods.
• Furthermore, we find the beginnings of coercion
  effects as the construtcion begins to exert an
  interpretational effect on the senses of verbs
  like work and look.
• Effectively, it begins to coerce its component
  elements to become more compatible with its own
  developing semantics.

41
The historical dimension
42
The historical dimension

• Observing the history of make in this way allows
  us to see for the first time how a construction
  emerges by gradual extension by speakers until we
  can see the construction exert a coercion effect
  which itself motivates the analysis of the make
  causative as a full-fledged construction.
• The development followed a trajectory of a
  changing constructional profile in terms of
  preferred predicates and predicate types.
• The changing constructional profile is itself
  both a symptom and a mechanism of change, because
  speakers are sensitive to frequency and the
  changing frequency will have the effect of
  inducing them to reorganize the construction into
  one increasingly resembling the modern make
  causative in its constructional profile and its
  semantic characteristics, including coercive
  force.

43
Conclusions--Utility of Constructional Profiles

• Observing constructional profiles from large sets
  of usage data allows us to draw conclusions about
  the semantics of a construction
• Examining diachronic changes in constructional
  profile shed light on the emergence of the
  construction

44
Conclusions Coercion diachrony

• We can find early evidence for the
  conventionalization of a construction by
  pinpointing the first visible instances of
  coercion.
• These show that the construction has acquired
  some semantics of its own that can override
  semantic anomalies.
• Constructions are a fruitful perspective for not
  only synchronic, but diachronic investigation.

45
Acknowledgments

• Thanks to Martin Hilpert Michael Barlow

46
References

• Achard, Michel, and Suzanne Kemmer, eds. 2004.
  Language, culture and mind. Stanford CSLI
  Publications.
• Barlow, Michael, and Suzanne Kemmer, eds. 2000.
  Usage Based Models of Language. Stanford CSLI
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• Hilpert, Martin. To appear (a). On Swedish future
  constructions. Proceedings of the High Desert
  Linguistic Society Meeting. Albuquerque HDLS.
• Hilpert, Martin. To appear (b). Collograms in the
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• Kemmer, Suzanne. 2001. Causative constructions
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  First Seoul International Conference on Discourse
  and Cognitive Linguistics Perspectives for the
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• Kemmer, Suzanne and Martin Hilpert. 2005.
  Constructional grammaticalization in the English
  make-causative. Presented at ICHL in Madison,
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• Kemmer, Suzanne and Arie Verhagen. 1994. The
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• Lakoff, George. 1987. Women, fire and dangerous
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• Langacker, Ronald. 1987,1991. Foundations of
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47
References, cont.

• Michaelis, Laura A. 2005. Entity and event
  coercion in a symbolic theory of syntax. In
  Jan-Ola Oestman and Miriam Fried, eds.,
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  45-88.
• Stefanowitsch, Anatol, and Stefan Gries. 2003.
  Collostructions Investigating the interaction of
  words and constructions. International Journal of
  Corpus Linguistics 8, 209-243.
• Taylor, Christopher. To appear. The X to where Y
  construction. Proceedings of the 31st Meeting of
  the Berkeley Linguistic Society (BLS 31, 2005).
  Berkeley BLS.