Beyond the sentence

Abstract

Construction grammarians are still quite reluctant to extend their descriptions to units beyond the sentence. However, the theoretical premises of construction grammar and frame semantics are particularly suited to cover spoken interaction from a cognitive perspective. Furthermore, as construction grammar is anchored in the cognitive linguistics paradigm and as such subscribes to meaning being grounded in experience, it needs to consider interaction since grammatical structures may be grounded not only in sensory-motor, but also in social-interactive experience. The example of grounded language learning experiments demonstrates the anchoring of grammatical mood in interaction. Finally, phenomena peculiar to spoken dialogue, such as pragmatic markers, may be best accounted for as constructions, drawing on frame semantics. The two cognitive linguistic notions, frames and constructions, are therefore particularly useful to account for generalisation in spoken interaction.