Compositionality, constructional meanings and the acquisition of English syntax

초록

The principle of compositionality is widely held by formal semanticists and is indeed a fundamental principle of Montague Grammar. Recently, Goldberg (1995) discusses quite interesting sets of data that O'Grady and Archibald (2000) believe to support the role of compositionality in the interpretation of sentences. These data involve so-called constructional meanings of some kind and are said to illustrate the form-meaning correspondence, which is supposed to be guaranteed by the lexical specifications of the verbs of the relevant sentences. What is of interest to the present context is the fact that the form-meaning correspondence in question is not always lexically ensured. The scrutiny of the so-called constructional meanings discussed in Goldberg (1995) and their implementation shows instead i) that they may not be supportive of compositionaly as far as this notion is defined in the Montagovian manner, ii) that the recognition of constructional meanings may cause much difficulty to L2 learners who are already in struggle with the acquisition of L2 vocabulary.