Cover not available

In:Case Studies in Fluid Construction Grammar: The verb phrase
Edited by Luc Steels and Katrien Beuls
[Benjamins Current Topics 106] 2019
► pp. 5–52

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
authorization required

Basics of Fluid Construction Grammar

 | Institute for Evolutionary Biology Universitat Pompeu Fabra – CSIC
Published online: 9 October 2019
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/bct.106.cf.00002.ste
Abstract
Fluid Construction Grammar (FCG) is a fully operational computational platform for developing grammars from a constructional perspective. It contains mechanisms for representing grammars and for using them in computational experiments and applications in language understanding, production and learning. FCG can be used by grammar writers who want to test whether their grammar fragments are complete and coherent for the domain they are investigating (for example verb phrases) or who are working in a team and have to share grammar fragments with others. It can be used by computational linguists implementing practical language processing systems or exploring how machine learning algorithms can acquire grammars. This paper introduces some of the basic mechanisms of FCG, illustrated with examples.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The semiotic cycle
    • 2.1Components of the semiotic cycle
    • 2.2Linguistic pathways
  • 3.Transient structures
    • 3.1Feature structures
      • Units
      • Symbols
      • Values
      • Variables
  • 4.Construction schemas
    • 4.1Rewrite rules using feature structures
    • 4.2Representing construction schemas
    • 4.3Interfacing
  • 5.Constructional processing
    • 5.1Adding meaning
    • 5.2The formulation and comprehension lock
    • 5.3An example of comprehension
    • 5.4An example of formulation
  • 6.Argument structure constructions
    • 6.1The double object construction
    • 6.2A formulation example
    • 6.3A comprehension example
  • 7.Other grammatical perspectives
  • 8.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
  • Appendix
References (34)
References
Barres, V., & Lee, J. (2014). Template construction grammar: From visual scene description to language comprehension and agrammatism. Neuroinformatics, 12(1), 181–208. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bergen, B. K., & Chang, N. C. (2003). Embodied construction grammar in simulation-based language understanding. In J-O. Östman & M. Fried (Eds.), Construction Grammar(s): Cognitive and cross-language dimensions (pp. 147–190). Amsterdam: John Benjamin.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Beuls, K., van Trijp, R., & Wellens, P. (2012). Diagnostics and repairs in Fluid Construction Grammar. In L. Steels & M. Hild (Eds.), Language grounding in robots (pp. 215–234). New York: Springer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Beul, K., & Steels, L. (2013). Agent-based models of strategies for the emergence and evolution of arammatical Agreement. Plos One, 8(3), e58960.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Boas, H., & Sag, I. (Eds.) (2012). Sign-Based Construction Grammar. Stanford: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bresnan, J. (2001). Lexical Functional Syntax. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chang, N., De Beule, J. & Micelli, V. (2011) Computational Construction Grammar: Comparing ECG and FCG. In: Steels, L. (Ed.) Computational Issues in Fluid Construction Grammar. (pp. 259–288) Berlin: Springer Verlag.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
De Beule, J., Chang, N., & Micelli, V. (2011). Computational construction grammar: Comparing ecg and fcg. In L. Steels (Ed.), Design patterns in Fluid Construction Grammar (pp. 259–288). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dominey, P., & Boucher, J. (2011). Learning to talk about events from narrated video in a construction grammar framework. Artificial Intelligence 167(1–2), 243–259.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fillmore, C. J. (1988). The mechanisms of “Construction Grammar”. In Proceedings of the Fourteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (pp. 35–55). Berkeley CA: Berkeley Linguistics Society.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Garcia-Casademont, E., & Steels, L. (2016). Grammar learning as insight problem solving. The Journal of Cognitive Science, 5(17), 27–62. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goldberg, A. E. (1995). A Construction Grammar approach to argument structure. Chicago: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2014). Fitting a slim dime between the verb template and argument structure construction approaches. Theoretical Linguistics, 40(1–2), 113–135.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kay, M. (1984). Functional unification grammar: A formalism for machine translation. In Proceedings of the International Conference of Computational Linguistics (pp. 75–78). Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Knight, K. (1989). Unification: A multidisciplinary survey. ACM Computing Surveys 21(1), 93–124, 1989. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Levelt, W. (Ed.) (1989). Speaking: From intention to articulation. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Martelli, A. & Montanari, U. (1982). An efficient unification algorithm. Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems (TOPLAS), 4(2), 258–282. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pereira, F., & Warren, D. (1980). Definite clause grammars for language analysis – a survey of the formalism and a comparison with augmented transition networks. Artificial Intelligence, 13, 231–278. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sag, I., Wasow, T., & Bender, E. (2003). Syntactic theory: A formal introduction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Shieber, S. M. (1986). An introduction to unification-based approaches to grammar, volume 4 of CSLI Lecture Notes Series. Stanford, CA: CSLI.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Spranger, M., Pauw, S., Loetzsch, M., & Steels, L. (2012). Open-ended procedural semantics. In L. Steels & M. Hild (Eds.), Language grounding in robots (pp. 153–172). New York: Springer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Spranger, M., Pauw, S., & Loetzsch, M. (2010) Open-ended semantics co-evolving with spatial language. In A. D. M. Smith, M. Schouwstra, B. de Boer, & K. Smith (Eds.), The evolution of language ( EVOLANG 8 ) (pp. 297–304), Singapore: World Scientific. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Steels, L. (2004). Constructivist development of grounded construction grammars. In D. Scott, W. Daelemans, & M. Walker (Eds.), Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistic Conference (pp. 9–19). Barcelona.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(Ed.) (2012b). Computational issues in Fluid Construction Grammar, Volume 7249 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science. New York: Springer.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2015). The talking heads experiment. Origins of words and meanings, Volume 1 of Computational models of language evolution. Berlin: Language Science Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Steels, L., & De Beule, J. (2006). Unify and merge in Fluid Construction Grammar. In P. Vogt, Y. Sugita, E. Tuci, & C. Nehaniv (Eds.), Symbol grounding and beyond: Proceedings of the Third International Workshop on the Emergence and Evolution of Linguistic Communication, LNAI 4211 (pp. 197–223). Berlin: Springer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Steels, L., De Beule, J., Van Looveren, J., & Neubauer, N. (2004). Fluid Construction Grammars. Paper presented at 3rd International Conference on Construction Grammar , Marseille.
Steels, L., & Szathmáry, E. (2016). Fluid Construction Grammar as a biological system. Linguisics Vanguard, 2(1) 20150022.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
van Trijp, R. (2010). Argument realization in Fluid Construction Grammar. In H. C. Boas (Ed.), Computational approaches to Construction Grammar and Frame Semantics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2011). Feature matrices and agreement: A case study for German case. In L. Steels (Ed.), Design patterns in Fluid Construction Grammar (pp. 205–235). Amsterdam: John Benjamins, Amsterdam. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wellens, P. (2011). Organizing constructions in networks. In L. Steels (Ed.), Design patterns in Fluid Construction Grammar (pp. 181–201). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Cambier, Nicolas & Roman Miletitch
2025. Task-driven language evolution with swarm robotics. In The Oxford Handbook of Approaches to Language Evolution, ► pp. 371 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 19 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue