Understanding Relative Clauses: A Usage-Based View on the Processing of Complex Constructions

Description

The book offers a usage-based account of how humans comprehend complex linguistic structures. The author proposes a theory of constructional access, which treats syntactic patterns as complex and abstract signs. In this view, syntactic processing is subject to the very same dynamics as lexical processing and should yield the same type of frequency effects. Contents List of figures and tables 1 Introduction 1.1 Why relative clause constructions 1.2 Characterizing English relative clause constructions 1.3 Overture: Some precursors and some prerequisites 1.3.1 Symbolization and mental states 1.3.2 Linguistic units as processing instructions I: Form to meaning 1.3.3 Linguistic units as processing instructions II: Form to form 1.3.4 Conventional patterns as routinized instructions 1.4 Chapter summary 2 Towards a theoretical framework of the right kind 2.1 The merits of being sign-based 2.1.1 Regularity in language: Rules and schemas 2.1.2 Constructions and the uniform representation of linguistic knowledge 2.2 The merits of being usage-based 2.2.1 Effects of frequency 2.3 Construction-driven exemplar-based language processing 2.3.1 Exemplar-based language processing 2.3.2 Categorizing complex constructions 2.4 Chapter summary 3 Describing English RCCs: Methods and data 3.1 Corpus and data used in the analysis 3.1.1 Variables investigated in this study 3.1.2 Language processing and distributional differences across modalities 3.2 Head features 3.2.1 Morphosyntactic realization of the head 3.2.2 Definiteness of the head 3.2.3 Contentfulness of the head 3.2.4 Animacy of the head 3.2.5 Concreteness of the head 3.3 Features of the relative clause 3.3.1 Finiteness of the relative clause 3.3.2 Transitivity of the relative clause 3.3.3 Relativized (internal) grammatical role 3.3.4 Cross-corpus comparison 3.4 Features of the main clause 3.4.1 Transitivity of the main clause 3.4.2 External role and type of embedding 3.4.3 Interlude: Some words on working memory, connectionism, constraint-satisfaction, and analogy 3.4.4 Center versus right embedding 3.4.5 Grammatical role of modified MC element 3.5 Cross-clausal features 3.5.1 Cross-clausal features: Transitivity configurations 3.5.2 Cross-clausal features: Syntactic parallelism 3.5.3 Cross-clausal features: Thematic parallelism 3.5.4 Head versus RC-subject: Interferences 4 Expanding horizons: RCC in ambient configuration space 4.1 Non-finite RCCs (bivariate prelude) 4.2 A configural perspective on non-finite RCCs 4.2.1 Association rule mining: K-optimal patterns analysis 4.2.1.1 Method and Results: Association rule mining 4.2.1.2 Discussion: Association rule mining 4.2.2 Configural frequency analysis 4.2.2.1 Methods and Results: Configural frequency analysis 4.2.2.2 Discussion: Configural frequency analysis 4.2.3 Identifying exemplar clusters: RCC-similarity in configural space 4.2.3.1 Relating patterns by similarity 4.2.3.2 Method and results: Clustering non-finite RCCs 4.3 Finite RCC 4.3.1 Finite subject RCCs 4.3.1.1 Association rule mining: Finite subject RCCs 4.3.1.2 CFA: Finite subject RCCs 4.3.1.3 Interlude: Variability in typical patterning: Gains and pains of hCFA 4.3.1.4 Results: Finite subject RCC across modalities 4.3.2 Finite non-subject RCCs 4.3.2.1 ARM: Finite non-subject RCCs 4.3.2.2 (h)CFA: Finite non-subject RCCs 5 Psycholinguistic integration 5.1 Constructional schemas and relativizer omission 5.2 General discussion 6 Conclusion References Index