veranstalter: Prof. Dr. Holger Diessel (University of Jena)
ansprechpartner: Heike Behrens
email: heike.behrens@unibas.ch
web:
institution: HPSL
language: Englisch
location institution: Basel
date_raw: Mo. 8. April 2019, 16-18 Uhr
date_sort: 08.04.2019, 00:00:00

The Grammar Network 

Holger Diessel 

Cognitive linguists have often argued that language is best understood as an associative network, but while the network view of language has had a significant impact on the study of morphology and lexical semantics, few studies have taken an explicit network approach to the analysis of syntax.

In this paper, Holger Diessel will outline a dynamic network model of grammar (based on Diessel 2019) in which all aspects of linguistic structure, including core concepts of syntax (e.g. word classes, grammatical relations) are analyzed in terms of associative connections between different aspects of linguistic knowledge. These associations are shaped by domain-general learning processes that are operative in language use and sensitive to frequency of occurrence.

Drawing on research from various subfields of linguistics (e.g. construction grammar, historical linguistics, linguistic typology) and cognitive psychology (e.g. language acquisition, sentence processing, structural priming), the talk provides an overview of frequency effects in grammar and analyzes these effects in the framework of a dynamic network model.

Diessel, Holger. (Sept. 2019). The Grammar Network. How Linguistic Structure is Shaped by Language Use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.