ALEXANDER ZIEM

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Productivity, schematicity and idiomaticity in the lexicon-grammar continuum

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One of the major challenges in phraseology, construction grammar and also in machine-learning is to address the wealth of multiword expressions (MWE), including pattern-like structures, in the lexicon-grammar continuum in such way that varying degrees of productivity, schematicity and idiomaticity are captured adequately for each MWE. Even though more or less fixed MWE make up a considerable part of the inventory of a language (“the constructicon”), they still remain largely understudied, particularly, if it comes to issues such as identifying (a) expression-specific constraints, (b) degrees of compositionality and (c) semantic relations holding between MWE within and across families of related expressions. 

However, if phraseology and Construction Grammar (CxG) join forces, there is a glimmer of hope: While, in phraseology, there is a long tradition in collecting and systematizing MWE, CxG offers a methodological framework to capture rules licensing expressions in a language (at a certain time within a speech community). Building on a joint constructionist and phraseological effort, my talk sets out to illustrate the diversity of MWE in the lexicon-grammar continuum. On this basis, it is shown how the German Constructicon (GCon) currently developed in Düsseldorf may serve as a structured online-repository for collecting and storing constructions in a unified way. To illustrate, I report on several case studies on (families of) partially schematic MWE, such as comparison constructions (as ADJ as, ADJ-er than, etc.), exclamative constructions (Such a NP!, What a NP!, etc.) and negating_connectives constructions (let alone, neither…nor etc.), focusing specifically on varying degrees of productivity, schematicity, and idiomaticity of each construction.