Nick Ellis
Construction learning as category learning – a cognitive analysis
25.05.2009 14:00 Uhr – 18:00 Uhr
Workshop: 16-18 Uhr, Raum 156 RG, Schellingstr. 3
This paper presents an analysis of construction learning following the general cognitive and associative processes of the induction of categories from experience of exemplars in usage. In a longitudinal corpus of ESL leaner language and native-speaker interlocutors, it demonstrates effects of the frequency and Zipfian type/token frequency distribution of exemplars within verb and other islands of verb-argument constructions, their prototypicality, their generic coverage, and their contingency of form-function mapping. It also describes computational (connectionist) models of these various factors as they play out in the emergence of constructions as generalized linguistic schemata.