CONSTRUCTION GRAMMAR AND FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITON

Hi guys welcome back on my blog.

By the way, happy Eid Mubarak everyone!!

Why my lecturer still give me an assignment for this blog on holiday.
I don't know whenever my post have at least ten post or nor. I just update because this is one of my task at college.

Yeah, today I just wanna share to you all about Construction Grammar and First Language Acquisition. Grammar for students who study English at school is important subject, because without grammar we can not speak English well in formal situation. It is normal if you don't use grammar when you are talking with Indonesian people or native that has lived in Indonesia for a long time not one or two years. But, it will be disaster for you if you speak English without using grammar when you talk with native who never lived in Indonesia or never visit this country. You'll be like jerk or suck!

Hopefully, you will understand after read this e-book.

Thank you for visit my blog :)
There are two major theoretical approaches to the study of grammatical development in first
language acquisition. The nativist approach, which rests on central assumptions of generative
grammar (cf. Chomsky 1972), and the usage-based approach, which is closely associated with
construction grammar (cf. Tomasello 2003). The two grammatical theories make radically
different assumptions about the nature of grammatical elements and the overall organization
of the grammatical system.
Generative grammar is a formal syntactic theory that has crucially influenced research
on first language acquisition for several decades (see O’Grady 1997 for an overview). In this
approach, the core of grammar consists of invariable concepts and constraints that are
predetermined by an innate ‘language faculty’ (see Pinker and Jackendoff 2005 for a recent
discussion). There are two central assumptions that underlie the analysis of syntactic structure
in this approach.
First, generative grammar is based on the assumption that the language faculty consists
of modules. According to Chomsky (1965), (mental) grammar can be divided into three basic
components: syntax, semantics, and phonology. Each component (or module) has its own
categories and rules that are in principle independent of each other. On this account, syntactic
representations are autonomous in the sense that they can be analyzed without reference to
meaning.
Second, generative grammar is based on the assumption that syntactic representations
are derived from a universal set of syntactic categories. Although there is no general
consensus among generative grammarians as to which categories are universal (and innate),
researchers agree that grammatical categories have to be defined prior to and independently of
particular syntactic configurations. On this account, syntactic representations are formed from
syntactic primitives that provide the building blocks for the analysis of syntactic structure in
all languages.
Both assumptions, i.e. the assumption that syntax is autonomous and that syntactic
structures are derived from primitive categories, are based on the innateness hypothesis of
generative grammar. According to this hypothesis, children are born with a universal set of
formal syntactic categories, to which generative grammarians refer as ‘universal grammar
(UG)’ or the ‘language faculty’ (cf. Pinker and Jackendoff 2005). What children have to learn
in this approach is how words and structures of the ambient language are related to elements
of UG (cf. Pinker 1984). According to Chomsky (1999), grammatical development is a
particular cognitive phenomenon that must be distinguished from learning—a term that
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Chomsky considers inappropriate for the analysis of language acquisition (cf. Chomsky 1999:
43). Learning is a gradual process in which categories are acquired in a piecemeal fashion
from experience, whereas grammatical development is an instantaneous process whereby
elements of the ambient language are ‘hooked up’ to categories of UG. If the core inventory
of grammar is innate, a single linguistic ‘trigger’ in the input is in principle sufficient to
acquire a particular linguistic category (e.g. Meisel 1994:20).
Challenging the nativist account, usage-based researchers have developed a very
different framework for the analysis of grammatical development that is crucially influenced
by assumptions of construction grammar. In this approach, grammar is seen as a dynamic
system of conventionalized form-function units, i.e. constructions, that children acquire based
on domain-general learning mechanisms such as analogy, entrenchment, and automatization.
On this account, syntactic categories are fluid entities that emerge from processing large
amounts of linguistic data (cf. Bybee 2010; Dąbrowska 2004; Diessel 2004; Goldberg 2006;
Tomasello 2003).
Although usage-based linguists emphasize the importance of experience for language
acquisition, they do not generally deny the role of innate constraints for grammatical
development. According to Elman et al. (1996), we have to distinguish between different
types of innate knowledge. Specifically, Elman et al. suggested that assumptions about innate
representations must be distinguished from assumptions about the innate architecture of
grammar (or human cognition). Generative linguists emphasize the importance of innate
linguistic representations, i.e. the importance of innate categories such NP or CP for grammar
learning; whereas usage-based linguists emphasize the importance of the grammatical
architecture for syntactic development (and diachronic change). The architectural constraints
are commonly characterized by assumptions of construction grammar, which has crucially
influenced the development of the usage-based approach. In fact, usage-based linguists have
drawn so frequently on concepts of construction grammar that construction grammar is
commonly seen as an integral part of the usage-based approach (cf. Bybee 2010; Diessel
2004; Goldberg 2006; Langacker 2008; Tomasello 2003).
In what follows, I provide an overview of usage-based research in first language
acquisition that is based on assumptions of construction grammar. The chapter is divided into
four sections. Section 2 considers some basic assumptions of construction grammar that
underlie the usage-based approach to first language acquisition, Section 3 provides an
overview of research on children’s early item-based constructions, Section 4 is concerned
with the emergence of constructional schemas, and Section 5 considers the development of
complex sentence constructions.
2. Theoretical foundations
In contrast to generative grammar, construction grammar does not presuppose a predefined set
of grammatical categories. However, like all grammatical theories construction grammar
makes particular assumptions about the nature of grammatical entities and the overall
organization of the grammatical system. Two assumptions of construction grammar are
essential to understand the usage-based analysis of grammar learning.
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 First, construction grammar assumes that syntactic structures are symbolic units, i.e.
constructions, that combine a particular form with a particular meaning (cf. Goldberg
1995: 4).
 Second, construction grammar assumes that constructions are associated with each other
by various types of links that constitute a complex network of symbolic expressions (cf.
Langacker 1987).
If grammar consists of constructions there is no principled difference between words and
grammatical assemblies (cf. Goldberg 1995; Langacker 1987). Like words, constructions are
symbolic entities in which a particular meaning or function is mapped onto a particular form,
i.e. a particular configuration of structural and/or lexical elements. For instance, an imperative
sentence such as Open the door! can be seen as a construction, i.e. a complex linguistic sign,
in which a particular structural pattern is associated with a particular illocutionary force: An
imperative sentence consists of an uninflected verb form, it lacks on overt subject, and it
functions as a directive speech act. Figure 1 shows the parallel structures of words and
constructions that underlie the usage-based approach.
Figure 1. Examples of lexical and constructional symbols
The parallelism between lexical and grammatical symbols has led some researchers to apply
the notion of construction to all linguistic expressions including words and bound morphemes
(cf. Goldberg 1995: 4), or to characterize constructions as ‘big words’ (cf. Dąbrowska 2000).
However, in this article words and construction are kept separate. Although both can be seen
as symbols, the notion of construction is reserved for clause-level units such as imperative
sentences or subordinate clauses, which have played a key role in the usage-based analysis of
grammar and grammatical development (cf. Croft 2001; Goldberg 1995, 2006; Tomasello
2003).
The assumption that grammar consists of symbols is consistent with the usage-based
hypothesis that linguistic knowledge is domain-general. Cognitive psychologists have
emphasized the importance of symbols for reasoning and abstract thought. According to
Deacon (1997), symbols enable people to talk about entities that are not immediately present
in the speech situation, providing a cognitive foundation for higher-level cognitive processes.
Moreover, symbols encode particular perspectives on entities and situations, which Tomasello
(1999) relates to the uniquely human ability to understand that other people view the world
from a different perspective. No other species is able to consider the mental representations
and viewpoints of other beings, which is reflected in the fact that no other species is able to
deal with symbols—only humans are (cf. Tomasello 1999). Thus, if we assume that grammar
consists of symbols, i.e. constructions, we are not making far-reaching assumptions about
innate linguistic representations as in generative grammar; the only thing we claim is that
grammar is symbolic, which can be seen as a domain-general aspect of human thought.
[sun] Vbase [NPnon-subject]!
Directive speech act
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The second general assumption of construction grammar (i.e. that grammar constitutes a
network) is equally broad (i.e. domain-general). If grammar consists of constructions, i.e. of
complex linguistic signs, it is just consequent to assume that the grammatical system is
organized in a similar way as the mental lexicon (cf. Langacker 1987) or as non-linguistic
concepts in memory (cf. Harley 2001). There is abundant evidence from psycholinguistic
research that people associate words and morphemes with each other based on overlapping
and contrasting features, which has led psychologists to characterize the mental lexicon as a
network of symbols (cf. Collins and Loftus 1975). In analogy to the mental lexicon, grammar
can be seen as a network of complex linguistic signs that are associated with each other by
various types of links (cf. Bybee 2010; Goldberg 1995, 2006; Langacker 1987, 2008). Figure
2 shows an example of the network architecture of constructions which Goldberg (1995: 109)
used to characterize the semantic and structural relationships between verb-argument
constructions in English.