Theoretical and computational considerations of linking constructions in Role and Reference Grammar

Abstract

This paper proposes a view of the linguistic construction in Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) in which constructions are posited to be structured grammatical objects with a unique constructional signature that uniquely identifies them. We argue that the construction has an input and an output, and that it contains a local workspace in which the processing of the various lexical and grammatical rules applies, according to the constraints within the constructional object. In recent years there has been a growing recognition that the RRG account of constructions is an under-utilised resource that deserves a wider application to problems in cross-linguistic analysis (Nolan & Diedrichsen, 2013; Nolan & Periñán, 2014). As a functional grammar with strong claims of adequacy, RRG has however had several challenges from Construction Grammar (Butler & Martín Arista, 2009; Goldberg, 2006; Michaelis, 2006, 2010). This paper addresses a number of these challenges. In the view of constructions presented here, the linking over the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic interfaces resides in the body of the construction, and the construction interacts with the lexicon which provides lexical information relevant to the construction. The constructions reside in a construction repository. This model of constructions delivers a means to address the challenges posed to the RRG account of the role and place of constructions within a lexicalist functionalist model of grammar.