Usage-Based Construction Selection
7 Pages Posted: 20 May 2011
Date Written: March 23, 2011
Abstract
Broadly, the cognitive linguistic enterprise seeks to identify an emergentist approach to language that investigates the motivation of language use, considers the effects of distributed cognition in situated communication, views complex systems of form-meaning pairings as primitives, and views online processing as dynamic. Within this tradition, this essay takes the position that language use is a manifestation of construal operations in the selection process of utilizing appropriate constructions which encode speaker perspective in a situated common ground. What follows is a usage-based treatment of the situated nature of construction selection in adult language informed by research in child language acquisition, discourse studies of communication, and construction grammar.
Keywords: Usage-Based Grammar, Construal, Construction Grammar, Cultural Meaning Systems, Common Ground
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