Fall 2008

Embodied Construction Grammar

Linguistics 750X

Tu, Th 3:00-4:15; Moore 224

Ben Bergen

 

Course description

 

This course is an introduction to Embodied Construction Grammar (ECG). ECG is theory of grammar, which includes a computationally precise formalism that has been implemented to model language acquisition and sentence processing. Unlike other formal models, however, ECG is also cognitively oriented in a number of ways.

 

  1. Like other Construction and Cognitive Grammars, semantics is tightly integrated with linguistic form in the grammar
  2. Linguistic semantics is grounded in cognitive processes
  3. Meaning, context, discourse function, and domain-general cognitive mechanisms such as metaphor and metonymy are fully integrated into the grammar

 

This course will begin by introducing Construction Grammars in general as well as Cognitive Grammar, which form the foundation for ECG. We then learn about the details of ECG and cover a number of linguistic issues from an ECG perspective, including argument structure, agreement, reference, acquisition of grammatical constructions, information structure, prosody, morphological paradigms, and case. We will also use and learn how to build new constructions in an implemented ECG parser.

 

Students will have the opportunity to produce novel research in this framework, and will present their work in the course.

 

Prerequisites

 

All students who have taken at least one semester of syntax and one semester of morphology are welcome. Others require instructor approval. A prior graduate course in syntax, morphology, or cognitive linguistics will help, but is not required.

 

Requirements

 

·      Participation (30% of course grade).

 

The idea of a 700-level seminar is to encourage independent research and thinking on the part of graduate students. One important component of being an independent researcher is developing the skill to read technical work carefully and critically.

 

To this end, each week, each class participant, including registered students and auditors, will be expected to generate two content-related questions based on assigned readings, and submit them before class. Reading questions should not be simple clarificational questions, like “what did the author mean by this?” but rather substantive questions, like “why did this author use this methodology, rather than this other one, which could have given these different results?” or “doesn't the author’s observation that x imply y about this other thing?”

 

In addition, each registered student will run one class meeting together with the instructor. The student's task will be to summarize and present the reading assigned for that meeting, compile and select from the submitted reading questions, and help lead discussion about the topic at hand.

 

All participants will also be expected to contribute to class discussion.

 

·      Research paper (60% of course grade).

 

Students will write a research paper 10-20 pages in length on a topic of their choice related to the course content, due on or before December 12th. This will most likely be a paper either addressing some previously unexplored aspect of ECG, or addressing a grammatical phenomenon that has not previously been documented using ECG. (There are many of these!). Alternatively, students might wish to present a comparative study of some grammatical phenomenon, using ECG and some other theory or theories. Or, more technically oriented students might choose to work on parsing, learning, or machine translation.

 

·      Research paper proposal (10% of course grade).

 

In the middle of the semester, students will hand in a one-to-three-page research paper proposal, and will schedule a meeting with the instructor to discuss it.

 

Consultation

Please take full advantage of my office hours, at times to be determined, in Moore Hall 581. You can also email me: bergen@hawaii.edu.

 

Lecture notes, an up-to-date course schedule, links to online versions of course readings, and links to relevant resources will appear through the semester at: http://www2.hawaii.edu/~bergen/ling750X

Lecture, reading, and assignment schedule (provisional)

Part I. Construction Grammar and Cognitive Grammar

Date

Topic

Reading

Work

8.26

Introduction to the course and ECG

 

 

8.28

Construction Grammar I

[1]

 

9.2

Construction Grammar II

[2]§1-6

 

9.4

Construction Grammar III

[2]§7-11

 

9.9

Construction Grammar IV

[3]

 

9.11

Cognitive Grammar I

[4]

 

9.16

Cognitive Grammar II

 

 

 

 

 

 
Part II: ECG

9.18

ECG Fundamentals I

[5]

 

9.23

ECG Fundamentals II

 

 

9.25

ECG Fundamentals III

 

 

9.30

ECG Fundamentals IV

 

 

10.2

ECG Fundamentals V

[6]

 

10.7

ECG in language understanding I

[7]

 

10.9

ECG in language understanding II

[8]

 
 
Part III: Applications

10.14

Parsing with ECG I

[9], [10]ch.1 ([10] ch 3)

 

10.16

Parsing with ECG II

[10]ch.6

 

10.21

Parsing with ECG III

[10]ch.7

 

10.23

Parsing with ECG IV

[11]

 

10.28

Learning with ECG I

[12]

 

10.30

Learning with ECG II

[13]

 

11.4

Election Day – no class

 

 

11.6

Learning with ECG III

 

Term Paper Prop Due

11.11

Veterans' day - no class

 

 

11.13

Learning with ECG IV

 

 

11.18

Learning and parsing Chinese I

[14]

 

11.20

Learning and parsing Chinese II

[15]

 

 

Part IV: Case Studies

11.25

Morphology

[16]

 

11.27

Thanksgiving – no class

 

 

12.2

Measure phrases

[17]

 

12.4

Conditionals

[18]

 

12.9

TBA

 

 

12.11

Summing up

 

 
 

12.12

Student mini-conference

 

Term Paper Due

Readings (Some papers require a login and password, available from the instructor.)

[1]     Goldberg, Adele. 2003. Constructions: A new theoretical approach to language.  Trends in Cognitive Science. http://www2.hawaii.edu/~bergen/ling750X/papers/goldberg-tics.pdf

[2]    Adele Goldberg.  to appear. The Nature of Generalization in Language. Cognitive Linguistics. http://www.princeton.edu/~adele/Princeton_Construction_Site/Publications_files/CaWCogLing-target%20article.pdf

[3]     Adele E. Goldberg and Ray Jackendoff. 2004. The English Resultative as a Family of Constructions. Language 80 532-568. http://www.princeton.edu/~adele/Princeton_Construction_Site/Publications_files/RESULTAGRJ7.doc

[4]     Langacker, Ronald. 1986. An Introduction to Cognitive Grammar. Cognitive Science  10:1-40. http://www2.hawaii.edu/~bergen/ling750X/papers/langacker-intro.PDF

[5]     Bergen, Benjamin and Nancy Chang. 2005. Embodied Construction Grammar in Simulation-Based Language Understanding. In Jan-Ola Östman and Miriam Fried (Eds.), Construction Grammars: Cognitive Grounding and Theoretical Extensions. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. http://www2.hawaii.edu/~bergen/ECG.pdf

[6]     Chang, Nancy, Jerome Feldman, Robert Porzel and Keith Sanders. (2002). Scaling Cognitive Linguistics: Formalisms for Language Understanding. Paper presented at SCANALU 2002. http://www.ICSI.Berkeley.EDU/~nchang/research/pubs/scaling.pdf

[7]     Bergen, Benjamin, Nancy Chang, and Shweta Narayan. 2004. Simulated Action in an Embodied Construction Grammar. Proceedings of the Twenty-Fifth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. http://www2.hawaii.edu/~bergen/papers/BCN04.pdf

[8]     Bergen, Benjamin and Kathryn Wheeler. Submitted. Aspect and mental simulation. http://www2.hawaii.edu/~bergen/papers/aspectsim-cogsci-resub.doc

[9]     Bryant, John. 2004. Scalable Construction-Based Parsing and Semantic Analysis. Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Scalable Natural Language Understanding. http://acl.ldc.upenn.edu/hlt-naacl2004/ScaNaLU/pdf/bryant.pdf

[10]  Bryant, John. 2008. Best-fit constructional analysis. Ph.D. Thesis. U.C. Berkeley, Department of Computer Science. http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/~jbryant/dissertation.pdf

[11]  A brief introduction to ECG Workbench. http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/~lucag/ECG-Workbench-HOWTO.pdf

[12]  Chang, Nancy. 2004. A computational model of comprehension-based construction acquisition. Child Language Research Forum. Stanford, CA. http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/~nchang/pubs/Chang04-CLRF.pdf

[13]  Chang, Nancy. 2008. Constructing Grammar: A computational model of the acquisition of early constructions. U.C. Berkeley Ph.D. Dissertation. To Be Available.

[14]  Mok, Eva and John Bryant. 2006. A best-fit approach to productive omission of arguments. Proceedings of the Berkeley Linguistics Society. BLS. http://www.evamok.com/docs/Mok%20and%20Bryant%20(2006)%20(BLS).pdf

[15]  Mok, Eva. 2008. Ph.D. Dissertation on Learning and Parsing Mandarin. Chapter 2.http://www2.hawaii.edu/~bergen/ling750X/papers/Mok-Chapter2.pdf

[16]  Bergen, Benjamin. 2003. Towards morphology and agreement in Embodied Construction Grammar. ICSI Technical Report.. http://www2.hawaii.edu/~bergen/papers/ECGmorph.pdf

[17]  Dodge, Ellen, and Abby Wright. 2002. Herds of Wildebeest, Flasks of Vodka, Heaps of Trouble: An ECG Approach to English Measure Phrases. Proceedings of the 28th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society. http://www2.hawaii.edu/~bergen/ling750X/papers/herds.doc

[18]  Bryant, John and Eva Mok ms. Constructing English Conditionals: Building Mental Spaces in ECG http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/~jbryant/BryantMok290.pdf