Reduplication and repetition from a constructionist perspective

In the typological literature, a distinction is often drawn between reduplication (as a morphological process) and repetition (as a syntactic process) (Gil 2005). This squib reconsiders this distinction from the perspective of Construction Morphology (Booij 2010, 2018; Masini and Audring 2019). Drawing upon previously understudied phenomena in Tagalog, an Austronesian language of the Philippines, this paper demonstrates that the Construction Morphology approach provides a suitable framework for analyzing reduplication and repetition. It makes it possible to account for both similarities and differences between reduplication and repetition: both processes create a lexical unit with an iterative form and a conventionalized meaning, although they differ in the size and complexity of the lexical unit they create. Furthermore, this paper makes a strong case for the basic tenets of constructionist approaches, including a hierarchical lexicon and a lexicon-grammar continuum.

Inheritance and motivation in Construction Morphology

The basic question to be addressed in this chapter is: what is the status of the notions ‘inheritance’ and ‘default inheritance’ in the theoretical framework of Construction Morphology (CM)? This framework, developed in Booij (2010), assumes a hierarchical lexicon with both abstract morphological schemas and stored complex words that instantiate these schemas. The lexicon of a language can be modelled in such a way that the abstract word formation schemas dominate their individual instantiations. Thus, the lexicon is partially conceived of as a hierarchical network in which lower nodes, the existing complex words, can be assumed to inherit information from dominating higher nodes. Advantages of a full-entry theory over an impoverished entry theory are outlined, and the chapter includes discussion of polysemy, allomorphy, and the class of items that fall between derivatives and compounds using ‘affixoids’.

A full-fledged hierarchical lexicon in LFG: the FrameNet approach

The aim of this paper is to propose a fully hierarchical organisation of valency information in Lexical Functional Grammar, inspired by recent LFG work on using templates to encode valency. The particular proposal rather closely follows FrameNet's inheritance hierarchy, makes heavy use of templates to encode multiple inheritance, and avoids the problem of multiple inheritance of semantic resources.

A constructional approach to transitional formatives

The noun head is commonly found in the second position of many English noun compounds. Typically, noun compounds with head in the right are endocentric formations, that is, composite forms which designate a more specific type of the concept denoted by head (e.g. pinhead). The noun head is also found in a significant number of so called ‘exocentric’ formations with a variety of interconnected meanings (e.g. airhead, acidhead, Potterhead). The different exocentric patterns where head participates raise questions about the grammatical status of this element, which is sometimes analysed as a suffixal element, illustrating the fuzzy boundaries between derivation and compounding. In the linguistic literature there is an extensive debate as to whether processes like this one are to be regarded as cases of grammaticalization or lexicalisation. In this paper it will be proposed that exocentric formations in -head are suitable for an analysis using a schema-based approach in Ryder’s (1994) fashion, or a constructional approach (Booij, 2010a) insofar as new creations arise by analogy with the patterns that can be extracted from existing cases. The different patterns of exocentric formations with head can be conveniently characterized by postulating a hierarchical lexicon with schemas or constructions of different degree of abstraction.