Constructions at Work

The Nature of Generalization in Language

By: Adele Goldberg, Inderjeet Mani (Editor), James Pustejovsky (Editor)

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Hardcover | 5 January 2006

At a Glance

Hardcover
292 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
23.39 x 15.6 x 1.75

Hardcover

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This book investigates the nature of generalization in language and examines how language is known by adults and acquired by children. It looks at how and why constructions are learned, the relation between their forms and functions, and how cross-linguistic and language-internal
generalizations about them can be explained.

Constructions at Work is divided into three parts: in the first Professor Goldberg provides an overview of constructionist approaches, including the constructionist approach to argument structure, and argues for a usage-based model of grammar. In Part II she addresses issues concerning how
generalizations are constrained and constructional generalizations are learned. In Part III the author shows that a combination of function and processing accounts for a wide range of language-internal and cross-linguistic generalizations. She then considers the degree to which the function of
constructions explains their distribution and examines cross-linguistic tendencies in argument realization. She demonstrates that pragmatic and cognitive processes account for the data without appeal to stipulations that are language-specific.

This book is an important contribution to the study of how language operates in the mind and in the world and how these operations relate. It is of central interest for scholars and graduate-level students in all branches of theoretical linguistics and psycholinguistics. It will also appeal to
cognitive scientists and philosophers concerned with language and its acquisition.

Industry Reviews

Its value lies in the engagement with many important theoretical issues in syntactic and acquisition research and in the empirical support marshaled, especially with respect to acquisition. Robert D. Van Valin, Journal of Linguistics I have found Ionstructions at WorkR a must-have book. The author's elegance and clarity of vision, her knowledge of research beyond linguistics proper, as well as her empathy with the reader and her honesty about the not-so-clear cases, are engaging. J. Carlos Acuna-Farina, University of Santiago de Compostela, Folia Linguistica Constructions at Work sets an important agenda for linguistic and psycho-linguistic study. ...valuable [and] very readable. Child Language, Volume 23/3

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