122226 SE Linguistics Seminar / BA Paper (2017S)

For centuries linguists have had different points of views on what grammar is and how to model and formalize linguistic knowledge best. Moreover, they have different visions of how language is acquired and why it changes. For decades, there have been two opposing camps: functionalism and formalism. Additionally, in the 80ies, a third major school of linguistic thought emerged, which is rooted in the advances of cognitive science: a cognitive approach to grammar. The aim of this course is to introduce the participants to one specific model: namely Usage-based Cognitive Construction Grammar.
During the last two decades, the constructionist approach has definitely been the fastest growing linguistic and interdisciplinary cognitive-functional approach to language. In Usage-based Cognitive Construction Grammar, which shares many of its assumptions with Cognitive Grammar and many functional models, language is an emergent ‘Complex Adaptive System’ that is shaped by domain-general cognitive processes. Language is grounded in language-independent cognitive processes such as association, automatization, schematization and categorization. Structure emerges through repetition, analogization, and categorization rather than resulting from a pre-existent matrix. In other words, constructionalists subscribe to a non-nativist approach which does not assume the existence of a universal grammar. Everything about language is learned and grammar is usage-based. Grammatical code is meaningful and functional but constantly changing. Categories are fuzzy and linguistic knowledge is organized in networks of constructional nodes. By reading and discussing seminal literature together, we will find out what is meant by the statements above and what construction grammar, for example, has to say about first and second language acquisition, diachronic change, morphology, phraseology and idioms or abstract categories.
In short, the course introduces the ‘Westcoast- Eastcoast’ (nature vs. nurture) debate, the ‘cognitive usage-based turn’ in grammar description (Cognitive Linguistics /Cognitive Grammar) and basic tenets and commitments of Construction Grammar.