Lexical/constructional agnosticism (p. 17) [via PaperHive@docloop]

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This book argues that both phrasal constructions in the sense of Construction Grammar and abstract schemata in the sense of Categorial Grammar, HPSG and Minimalism are needed.

Ash Asudeh wrote:

You refer here for the need for both phrasal constructions and abstract schemata (and, at least implicitly, rich lexical information). This is in effect exactly what we argue for in both ADT (2013) and AGT (2014). In the end, I don't think your objection to our theory is at the general level --- you've in effect made the same high-level assumption but implemented in a different way --- but rather to our use of a phrase structure configuration (construction) *specifically* for the benefactive. Of course, we are in no way committed to *all* argument structure alternations being encoded constructionally (contra CxG, I believe), as you note at the bottom of page 8. However, we believed in AGT that the English benefactive was sufficiently configurational to benefit (pun intended) from such a treatment. If we accept your arguments, all that would be required is to move @BENEFACTIVE to the (relevant) lexical entries instead.

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Stefan Müller wrote:

> In the end, I don't think your objection to our theory is at the general level --- you've in effect made the same high-level assumption but implemented in a different way --- but rather to our use of a phrase structure configuration (construction) specifically for the benefactive. Yes, exactly. In the whole discussion process I often had the impression that LFG people thought I wanted to prove LFG wrong. This was not my intention. It is just this little detail of where to attach the information. I would be careful with calling phrase structure configurations constructions. This is a cause of a lot of misunderstandings. The term "construction" is not reserved to phrasal constructions. Lexical rules (when seen as templates) can be constructions too (Goldberg, 2013). > If we accept your arguments, all that would be required is to move @BENEFACTIVE to the (relevant) lexical entries instead. Yes, it is a small step for LFG but a big one for mankind. --- - Goldberg, Adele E. 2013. Argument structure Constructions vs. lexical rules or derivational verb templates. Mind and Language 28(4). 435–465. https://doi.org/10.1111/mila.12026.

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Ash Asudeh wrote:

Yes, I understand your point about where to attach the information much better after reading this book than before. I hadn't so much thought you were out to prove LFG wrong (LFG and HPSG after all have a "special relationship" to use the term from Anglo-American diplomacy [sorry, Brexit is on my mind]), but rather that you hadn't appreciated the availability of this move, which essentially makes us rather agnostic about the lexical/construction debate (in fact, I think of even our approach with BENEFACTIVE attached to the PS rule as a "hybrid approach", as it allows for both lexicalism and (limited) constructionism). Your point about not conflating phrase structure rules with constructions is well-taken -- I was speaking loosely. Of course, construction grammar normally actually obliterates the lexicon/grammar distinction (at least the Goldberg/Jackendoff variety). This has the curious result that CxG and Distributed Morphology are actually weird sisters. Or to use Chomsky's infuriating term, "notational variants".

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Stefan Müller wrote:

> This has the curious result that CxG and Distributed Morphology are actually weird sisters. Yes, indeed. Neither of them likes this. =:-) By the way: You can quote be prefixing a ">". (Just click on Markdown below the window to get further inspiration)

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