Word Grammar in Theory
Dick Hudson
Cardiff, May 2013
History
• 1963: PhD on Beja grammar at SOAS
• Halliday or Chomsky?
– Halliday was more convincing
• 1964-71: worked with Halliday
–
–
–
–
64-67 with Huddleston on a corpus study
66-67 met Terry Winograd (AI)
read about Lamb's network theory
wrote first generative Systemic Grammar book
Systemic Grammar
Dependency theory
• 1976: why no wordword dependencies?
• Systemic +
Dependency =
Daughter-Dependency
Grammar
Psychological reality
• AI (e.g. Winograd, Schank,
Anderson)
• Mental networks (Lamb,
Halliday)
• Linguists (Bresnan, Chomsky)
• Sociolinguistics (e.g. Labov,
Gumperz)
Word Grammar 1984
• Why recognise phrases?
• Daughter-Dependency
Grammar
+ psychological reality
– phrases
= WG
What am I?
• a lapsed systemicist
• a dependency
grammarian
• a cognitive linguist
• a sociolinguist
• a descriptive linguist
• a theoretical linguist
• an educational linguist
What do I believe?
•
•
•
•
•
•
Theory matters and can be improved
Truth matters and can be aimed at.
Minds matter and can be modelled
Texts matter and can be explained
Education matters and needs linguistics
Neighbouring disciplines matter, and can
be learned from.
A nice quote
One has to ask … whether a particular claim or
assumption in one domain can really be true,
given what we know about another domain.
Wray 2009
What don't I believe in?
•
•
•
•
macrofunctions in structure
system networks
the rank scale
constructions as signs
Macrofunctions in structure
• Many artefacts have multiple functions
• But the functions are all 'realized' by the
same structure.
– e.g. chair:
•
•
•
•
comfortable for sitting
strong, durable
good-looking
affordable
Why
'interpersonal'?
For instance
What does 'theme'
mean?
Hearer is part of
the meaning of
'question', but not
otherwise.
Why is this the
first choice?
System networks
How might we
organise
knowledge so
tidily? And why?
The rank scale
objections
sentence
unary
branching
Headedness
Hurry!
clause
hurry
group
hurry
word
hurry
Classification
of mother is
always
predictable
from its head
daughter
Constructions
• CxG: a language consists of nothing but
constructions.
• A construction is a form-meaning pair.
– So: every 'form' has a meaning
• But some forms have no meaning, e.g.
– extraposition
– (arguably) all of morphology, e.g. {z}, {ing}
What does WG actually claim?
• Language is just ordinary knowledge
applied to words. So:
• Language is a mental network.
• The network nodes (concepts) are atoms.
• Concepts are defined solely by their links to
other concepts.
• Concepts are organised in 'isa' hierarchies.
labels are NOT
part of the
analysis
For instance …
{on}
on
{a}
aground
{round}
around
round
isa hierarchy
around1
around2
… all around were …
… messing around
… looked around
… the soil around the base of the plant …
Tokens and types
• Tokens are created ad hoc, types are stored.
• The type-token ratio = types/tokens
– e.g. for The cat sat on the mat TTR = 5/6
• Tokens have distinct properties, so they
isa
must be distinct concepts.
around1
• Each token isa at least one type.
– e.g. He wandered around
• Tokens show modifying effects of context.
An utterance as part of the grammar
word
noun
CAT
verb
preposition
MAT THE SIT past
ON
SIT, past
The
cat
sat
on
the
mat.
Tokens and syntax
• Each word token is distinct from its type:
• It shows the effects of its syntactic context.
–
–
–
–
the/1 means 'the cat'
on means 'on the mat'
sat means 'sat on the mat'
but also 'the cat sat on the mat'
• So phrases aren't needed.
Tokens of tokens …
'the cat sat on the mat'
'sat on the mat'
'on the mat'
'the cat'
'cat'
'the mat'
'mat'
sat2
the11
The1
sat1
cat
sat
on1
on
the21
the2
mat.
Usage
• The network is 'usage based'
– built out of episodic memories
• It contains 'ex-tokens': words plus context
– so formulae
– and socially constrained
• So any properties may be generalised
– 'linguistic' – relations to other words
– 'non-linguistic' – relations to social constructs
Processing
•
•
•
•
Node creation: one node per token
Default inheritance to enrich token nodes
Binding tokens to existing nodes
Spreading activation
– activation guides inheritance and binding
– super-active tokens become permanent types
An utterance as part of the grammar
word
noun
CAT
verb
preposition
MAT THE SIT past
ON
SIT, past
The
cat
?
sat
on
the
mat
Summary
• Mentalist – just cognitive structures
• Just a network of atoms
– Declarative network
– Organised round an isa hierarchy
• Procedures:
– node creation
– node enrichment (inheritance, binding)
– spreading activation