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Explain
Me This Creativity, Competition, and the Partial Productivity
of Constructions
Adele
E. Goldberg
Princeton: University Press, 2019 Hardcover. xii +195 pages. ISBN 978-0691174259. $80 / £66
Reviewed by Cameron Morin Université de Paris
Adele Goldberg’s new book Explain Me This is
an original contribution to the literature on Construction Grammar (CxG) in
linguistics: it is relatively short (just over 200 pages), its intended audience is
broader than the community of trained researchers by including students and
teachers, and its structure is based on a narrative of puzzle-solving, focusing
on what comes to be known as the “Explain-me-this puzzle”. Overall, the book is
conceived as an “accessible introduction” and an updated synthesis of usage-based
CxG, sometimes known elsewhere as Cognitive Construction Grammar (CCG);
although for the sake of unity and accessibility, the use of labels is wisely
avoided by the author. Given that
several reviews focusing on the content of the book have already been published
by specialists in the field, this review is specifically concerned with the
novelty of its structure and its audience, from the perspective of a student in
linguistics. In order to fully appreciate this book and benefit from reading it,
it does seem to be the case that a background in theoretical linguistics is
needed; an undergraduate level of familiarity will probably suffice. If this
requirement is met, a fascinating journey awaits the prospective reader. The premise of
the book is both straightforward and enticing: how is it that in standard
varieties of English, utterances such as Explain
me this are syntactically well-formed, but systematically judged as
unacceptable or at least odd by native speakers? As the author unpacks the
problem, she shows that on the one hand, we are capable of being very inventive
in our speech, while on the other, we constrain it in ways which may seem
arbitrary at first sight: an apparent paradox that sets the scene for an investigation
spanning eight chapters. Following an
introductory chapter, Goldberg takes us through foundational principles of
Cognitive Linguistics, via the stepping stone of word meanings. She presents
words as rich form-meaning pairs acquired by speakers through error-driven
learning, which determines their range of application both in terms of
extension and of restriction. The nature of language and cognition makes these
characteristics also apply to the higher level of grammatical constructions,
for instance Argument Structure Constructions (ASCs) such as Explain me this, the main case study at
hand. ASCs can be identified through constraints relating to form (e.g. morphology and syntax) and to
function (e.g. semantics and
information structure), but these are not enough to solve the Explain-me-this
puzzle. Although ASCs play the crucial role for human speech of expressing
relations between concrete or abstract entities, they display significant
variety across the languages of the world, which makes them even more
interesting to study. The following
chapters, 4 & 5, gradually provide pieces helping us make sense of partial
constructional productivity. The first piece is “coverage”, the extent to which
a creative utterance can be produced according to the emergent cluster of
exemplars for the relevant construction, and the amount of type frequency,
similarity, and variability that it features. The second piece, “statistical
pre-emption”, shows that simultaneously, the function of constructions is
specified so that their territory cannot be easily taken over by a competing
construction. Thus although the double object construction has a high degree of
coverage, Explain me this is perceived
as odd by native speakers of English, not only due to formal and semantic constraints,
but most importantly because it is functionally “blocked” or “pre-empted” by
the dative Explain this to me.
Goldberg argues that the partial productivity of constructions thus described
reveals important truths about language and its integration in general
cognition; one of them being that flexibility and rigidity are closely
intertwined in language use. Chapter 6
expands on these findings and discusses the differences between children and
adults in the acquisition and comprehension / production of grammatical constructions.
Children seem to take more time to master the subtle constraints on
constructional productivity, but end up having more complete knowledge than an
adult learning a second language, where “transfer effects” and related warping
phenomena take up some of the cognitive efforts necessary to handle these
subtle constraints. As in previous chapters, the author gives us accounts of
various experiments from recent times designed to test these ideas, some of which
she conducted herself; she thus grounds the discussion in evidence that makes
the reading experience lively and stimulating. Finally,
chapter 7 makes an even stronger case for the usage-based constructional
approach and the notion of statistical pre-emption by comparing it to other, more
or less similar perspectives: Goldberg argues that the stance adopted in the
book compensates several flaws identified in previous and contemporary analyses.
This may be the least accessible part of the whole. A slight shift of audience
towards more experienced readers seems to take place, and the style comes
nearer to that found in a specialized article or book section. That being said,
it is concise and rewarding if sufficiently grappled with. Chapter 8 concludes
and expresses enthusiasm for a growing body of research in a framework that is
still in its youth, with hopes that the reader will also be encouraged to
contribute to the ambitious enterprise of CxG. One interesting line of research
mentioned throughout the book is the social function of constructions, and the
variability which can lead to the emergence of dialectal constructions. Although it
preaches to the choir in my case, Explain
Me This is still likely to convince many students and language enthusiasts interested
in the discipline of cognitive linguistics. It strikes a well-maintained
balance between accessibility and precision, although it undoubtedly remains an
academic reading. It is also a very useful reference for the current state of
usage-based constructionist principles, while also being an entertaining and
playful read. The format adopted here is refreshing and commendable, as it is
more relaxed than in traditional handbooks, while keeping high standards of
informativeness and argumentation. The short passages dealing with advanced
probability theory and formal linguistic frameworks, which could have been
spelled out in more detail for newcomers, are the only spots that may detract slightly
from this otherwise successful presentation of Construction Grammar.
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