Jim, yours was a super argument and very gratifying reading. Would you
please let me know where the paper you referred to:

`Robert DeBeaugrande, in his 1984 paper, "Forward to the basics," suggests a
number of criteria for writing learner grammars'

was published?

Sophie Johnson
at ENGLISH  GRAMMAR TUTOR
http://www.englishgrammartutor.com/
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----- Original Message -----
From: Kenkel, Jim <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, August 11, 2001 2:28 AM
Subject: constructions and learnability


> I apologize if this posting has gone out to the list twice.  Jim Kenkel
>
> ***************************************
>
> I thank Johanna for her helpful reply and for providing the information
from
> Goldberg's site.
>
>           The description/definition of a construction from Goldberg seems
> to have weaker criteria than Croft applies.  Although Goldberg's notion of
> "predictability" is easier to follow than Croft's notion of "wholeness," I
> still have reservations. My biggest difficulty with "go Xing" as a
> "construction" was that I didn't see it as a "whole." Its interpretation
> depends crucially on analysis into semantic categories, as the discussion
> has made clear. I suppose that Croft's goal is to minimize syntactic
> analysis, but explaining the interpretation and acquisition of these
> structures does involve hypothesizing distinct semantic categories and
then
> labeling them.  Thus, it seems to me that these expressions also have a
> level of predictability to them. The learner, with little exposure, by
> applying his semantic analysis of 'activity types' into 'leisure
activities'
> and 'non-leisure activities,' which presumably reflects our cognitive
> organization, can predict the meaning of a whole class of expressions -
> which can't be done with "kick the bucket"  type expressions. Is it unfair
> to ask if the "semantics is unpredictable," why does everyone agree so
> readily on the intepretation of these expressions?
>
>           Constructions are claimed to be learned as complex  lexical
items
> - all of a piece. However, it seems that some kind of formal analysis is
> necessary for the acquisition of at least some lexical items - for
instance,
> compounds. Pinker points out the children produce both 'mouse catcher' and
> mice catcher' but don't produce 'rats catcher,' saying only 'rat catcher.'
>
>
>           Describing reflexive structures as 'constructions' is much more
> problematic. I don't think that it is plausible that the interpretation of
> the reflexive sentences we've been considering can be accounted for
without
> considerable formal analysis.
>
>   If through frequent exposure to sentences like
>
>                   1. Mary wants to help herself
>
>   the learner figures out that 'herself' is coreferential with the first
> noun phrase/person/"grounded thing" mentioned, how would that learner not
> misinterpret this sentence without access to some kind of formal analysis:
>
>                   2. Alice wonders who Mary wants to help herself.
>
>           To my mind, construction grammar's challenge is to explain how
the
> learner knows that, in spite of surface distributions, 'Mary wants to help
> herself' is one kind of construction in the first sentence but is a
> different construction in the second case - and how this is done without
> some kind of formal analysis. Moreover, in the learning account sketched
by
> Johanna, what kind of input would the learner get which tells her that
> contraryto surface distributions, 'herself' receives different
> interpretations in the two sentences? Is this something learners are
taught
> in school? Wouldn't we expect some people to misinterpret the antecedent
of
> 'herself.' Although some may find the sentence to be inelegant, they don't
> misinterpret the  coreference.
>
>           Johanna asks about the importance of 'learnability' to
discussions
> on this list.  I think that important goals of the ATEG list are to try to
> understand something of the nature of language and to relate that
> understanding to problems of language use for students. Linguists have
> observed not  only that much of our knowledge of language is both very
> complex but that it is also not consciously learned. We might say that
much
> of our  complex linguistic knowledge comes for free. The accounts of
> learning attributed to "construction grammar" place a heavy burden on the
> learner without providing an account of how learners get the needed
negative
> input or corrections from others. I don't know how such an approach would
> explain the acquisition of reflexives, for instance.
>
>            Grammatical descriptions which aren't constrained by plausible
> accounts of language acquisition are more likely to be artifacts of the
> grammarian's taxonomy than reflections of the grammar which the learner
has
> tacit knowledge of. I think that presenting these kinds of descriptions to
> learners adds to their burden, a situation a teacher would like to avoid.
At
> this summer's ATEG conference, Bob Yates and I argued this point with
> regard to "sentence patterns." We claimed that what students "know" is
> argument structures of verbs. This is what they learned when they acquired
> the  language.  Sentence patterns are taxonomical  artifacts but are not
> reflective of the learner's grammar and therefore present the students
with
> an unnecessary learning burden.
>
>           A second goal of teaching grammar to native speakers is to help
> them apply their conscious knowledge of grammar to problems of language
use.
> Robert DeBeaugrande, in his 1984 paper, "Forward to the basics," suggests
a
> number of criteria for writing learner grammars. One of these is that
> grammatical accounts should mesh with what learners know. For the reasons
> given above, I am not convinced that anyone "knows" that "Mary want  to
help
> herself" is a construction in the sense discussed here. I don't know how
> conceiving of the whole grammar as "constructions" would help  learners
> trying to apply their conscious knowledge of grammar to challenges of
> language use.
>
>           I am not claiming that all aspects of language are learned in
the
> same way. I think that the 'go Xing' are not learned the same way as
> reflexives.  I know that issues of acquisition and learnability are
> controversial, but I believe that we need to keep these issues in mind
when
> we offer grammatical  descriptions to our students.
>
>                   Jim Kenkel, Eastern Kentucky University
>
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