Chapter published in:
Constructicography: Constructicon development across languages
Edited by Benjamin Lyngfelt, Lars Borin, Kyoko Ohara and Tiago Timponi Torrent
[Constructional Approaches to Language 22] 2018
► pp. 41–106

Chapter 3
Constructicography at work

Theory meets practice in the Swedish constructicon

This chapter addresses central topics in constructicography from the viewpoint of the Swedish constructicon project (SweCcn), focusing on practical constructicon development. The full process of construction description is described and discussed, from selection via corpus analysis to finished constructicon entry and beyond, towards structuring the set of entries into a network. Particular attention is given to the description format and the treatment of constructional variation. A main theme in the chapter is the interdependence and alignment of SweCcn and related resources, on the one hand in the local context, notably the infrastructure of Språkbanken (the Swedish language bank), and on the other hand with respect to corresponding resources for other languages. Of key concern is the relation to FrameNet, both the Swedish and other framenets, and a major section is devoted to conditions for linking constructions and frames.
Keywords: constructicography, constructicon, construction, construction grammar, FrameNet, language technology, lexicography, Swedish
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Constructicon site: the local context
    • 2.1Språkbanken
    • 2.2SweFN++ – a richly structured lexical macroresource for Swedish
      • 2.2.1Results of the SweFN++ project: SweFN
      • 2.2.2Results of the SweFN++ project: The lexical macroresource
      • 2.2.3Results of the SweFN++ project: Karp
      • 2.2.4Spinoff from the SweFN++ project: Korp
  • 3.Building the constructicon
    • 3.1Some brief notes on the constructicon entries
    • 3.2Selection
      • 3.2.1Collecting constructions out of authentic language use
      • 3.2.2Collecting constructions from secondary sources
    • 3.3Construction analyses
    • 3.4Organizing the constructicon entries
  • 4.Idealization and variation
    • 4.1Descriptive adequacy: defining grammaticality or characterizing usage?
    • 4.2Accounting for constructional variation
  • 5.Constructions and frames
    • 5.1Linking constructions and frames
    • 5.2Frame-bearing constructions
      • 5.2.1Argument structure constructions
      • 5.2.2Formulas
      • 5.2.3Grading constructions
      • 5.2.4Figurative constructions/idioms
    • 5.3Some non frame-bearing constructions
  • 6.Description format
    • 6.1General description
      • 6.1.1Name and illustration
      • 6.1.2Definition
      • 6.1.3Structure sketch
      • 6.1.4Authentic examples
    • 6.2Elaborating the description
      • 6.2.1Category
      • 6.2.2Construction elements
      • 6.2.3Type
      • 6.2.4Keywords and common words
    • 6.3Relating and commenting on the constructions
      • 6.3.1Inheritance
      • 6.3.2Frame and Berkeley ID
      • 6.3.3Comment and reference
  • 7.Using the constructicon
    • 7.1Interface
    • 7.2On potential applications
  • 8.Discussion and outlook
    • 8.1Relations between constructicon and FrameNet
    • 8.2From construction dictionary to construction network
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 17 July 2018
https://doi.org/10.1075/cal.22.03lyn
References
Abrahamsson, N., & Hyltenstam, K.
(2009) Age of Onset and Nativelikeness in a Second Language: Listener Perception versus Linguistic Scrutiny. Language Learning, 59(2), 249–306. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ahlberg, M., Forsberg M., & Hulden, M.
(2014) Semi-supervised learning of morphological paradigms and lexicons. In Proceedings of EACL 2014 (pp.569–578). Gothenburg: ACL.Google Scholar
Allén, S.
(1970) Vocabulary data processing. In H. Benediktsson (Ed.), The Nordic languages and modern linguistics: Proceedings of the International conference of Nordic and general linguistics (pp.235–261). Reykjavík: Visindafélag íslendinga.
Andersson, P. & Ahlberg, M.
(2013) Towards automatic tracking of lexical change: linking historical lexical resources. In Proceedings of the workshop on computational historical linguistics at NODALIDA 2013. Oslo: NEALT.Google Scholar
Atkins, B. T. S., & Rundell, M.
(2008) The Oxford Guide to Practical Lexicography. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bäckström, L., Borin, L., Forsberg, M., Lyngfelt, B., Prentice, J., & Sköldberg, E.
(2013) Automatic identification of construction candidates for a Swedish constructicon. In Proceedings of the workshop on lexical semantic resources for NLP at NODALIDA 2013 (pp.2–11). Oslo: NEALT.Google Scholar
Bäckström, L., Lyngfelt, B., & Sköldberg, E.
(2014) Towards Interlingual Constructicography. On correspondence between constructicon resources for English and Swedish. Constructions and Frames, 6(1), 9–32. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bergen, B., & N. Chang
(2013) Embodied Construction Grammar. In Th. Hoffmann, & G. Trousdale (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Construction Grammar (pp.168–190). Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Blensenius, K.
(2015) Progressive constructions in Swedish. (Doctoral dissertation). Dept. of Swedish, University of Gothenburg.Google Scholar
Boas, H. C.
(2009) Semantic frames as interlingual representations for multilingual databases. In H. C. Boas (Ed.), Multilingual FrameNets in Computational Lexicography: Methods and Applications (pp.59–100). Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(Ed.) (2010) Contrastive Studies in Construction Grammar. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Borin, L.
(2010) Med Zipf mot framtiden – en integrerad lexikonresurs för svensk språkteknologi [‘With Zipf towards the future – an integrated lexical resource for Swedish language technology’]. LexicoNordica, 17, 35–54.Google Scholar
(2012) Core vocabulary: A useful but mystical concept in some kinds of linguistics. In D. Santos, K. Lindén, & W. Ng’ang’a (Eds.), Shall we play the Festschrift game? Essays on the occasion of Lauri Carlson’s 60th birthday (pp.53–65). Berlin: Springer. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Borin, L., Allwood, J., & de Melo, G.
(2014) Bring vs. MTRoget: Evaluating automatic thesaurus translation. In Proceedings of LREC 2014 (pp.2115–2121). Reykjavík: ELRA.Google Scholar
Borin, L., Comrie, B., & Saxena, A.
(2013) The Intercontinental Dictionary Series – a rich and principled database for language comparison. In L. Borin & A. Saxena (Eds.), Approaches to measuring linguistic differences (pp.285–302). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Borin, L., Dannélls, D., Forsberg, M., & McCrae, J. P.
(2014) Representing Swedish lexical resources in RDF with lemon. In Proceedings of the ISWC 2014 Posters & Demonstrations Track a track within the 13th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2014) (pp.329–332).
Borin, L., Dannélls, D., Forsberg, M., Toporowska Gronostaj, M., & Kokkinakis, D.
(2010) The past meets the present in Swedish FrameNet++. In 14th EURALEX International Congress (pp.269–281). Ljouwert: Fryske Akademy.Google Scholar
Borin, L., & Forsberg, M.
(2009) Something old, something new: A computational morphological description of Old Swedish. In LREC 2008 workshop on language technology for cultural heritage data (LaTeCH 2008) (pp.9–16). Marrakech: ELRA.Google Scholar
(2011) A diachronic computational lexical resource for 800 years of Swedish. In C. Sporleder, A. van den Bosch, & K. Zervanou (Eds.), Language technology for cultural heritage (pp.41–61). Berlin: Springer. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(2014) Swesaurus; or, The Frankenstein approach to wordnet construction. In Proceedings of the Seventh GlobalWordNet Conference (GWC 2014) (pp.315–223). Tartu: GWA.Google Scholar
Borin, L., Forsberg, M., & Lönngren, L.
(2013) Saldo: a touch of yin to WordNet’s yang. Language Resources and Evaluation, 47(4), 1191–1211. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Borin, L., Forsberg, M., & Lyngfelt, B.
(2013) Close encounters of the fifth kind: Some linguistic and computational aspects of the Swedish FrameNet++ project. Veredas, 17(1), 28–43.Google Scholar
Borin, L., Forsberg, M., Olsson, L. -J., Olsson, O.; & Uppström, J.
(2013) The lexical editing system of Karp. In Proceedings of the eLex 2013 Conference (pp.503–516). Tallin: Eesti Keele Instituut.Google Scholar
Borin, L., Forsberg, M., Olsson, L. -J., & Uppström, J.
(2012) The open lexical infrastructure of Språkbanken. In Proceedings of LREC 2012 (pp.3598–3602). Istanbul: ELRA.Google Scholar
Borin, L., Forsberg, M., & Roxendal, J.
(2012) Korp – the corpus infrastructure of Språkbanken. In Proceedings of LREC 2012 (pp.474–478). Istanbul: ELRAGoogle Scholar
Borin, L., Nieto Piña, L., & Johansson, R.
2015 Here be dragons? The perils and promises of inter-resource lexical-semantic mapping. Semantic resources and semantic annotation for Natural Language Processing and the Digital Humanities. Workshop at NODALIDA, May 11, 13–18 2015 (pp.1–11). Vilnius. Linköping: Linköping Electronic Conference Proceedings.
Bybee, J.
(2010) Language, Usage and Cognition. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Chomsky, N.
(1957) Syntactic Structures. Mouton: The Hague.Google Scholar
Croft, W.
(2001) Radical Construction Grammar. Syntactic theory in typological perspective. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Dooley, S.
(2014) The Swedish Comparative Correlative Construction: Ju … Desto … and Variations. Constructions 2014(4).Google Scholar
Dowty, D.
(1991) Thematic proto-roles and argument selection. Language, 67, 547–619. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ehrlemark, A.
(2014) Ramar och konstruktioner – en kärlekshistoria [‘Frames and constructions – a love story’]. (GU-ISS 2014-01) Dept. of Swedish, University of Gothenburg.Google Scholar
Fanselow, G., Féry, C., Vogel, R., & Schlesewsky, M.
(Eds.) (2006) Gradience in Grammar: Generative perspectives. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Fellbaum, C.
(Ed.) (1998) WordNet: An electronic lexical database. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Fillmore, C. J.
(1988) The mechanisms of ‘Construction Grammar’. Berkeley Linguistic Society, 14, 35–55.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(2003) Form and Meaning in Language: Volume 1, Papers on semantic roles. Stanford: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
(2008) Border Conflicts: FrameNet Meets Construction Grammar. In E. Bernal, & J. DeCesaris (Eds.), Proceedings of the XIII EURALEX International Congress (pp.49–68). Barcelona: Universitat Pompeu Fabra.Google Scholar
Fillmore, C. J., & Kay, P.
(1996) Construction Grammar Coursebook. Manuscript. Dept. of linguistics, University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Fillmore, C. J., Kay, P., & O’Connor, M. C.
(1988) Regularity and idiomaticity in grammatical constructions. The case of let alone . Language, 64, 501–538. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Fillmore, C. J., Lee-Goldman, R., & Rhomieux, R.
(2012) The FrameNet Constructicon. In H. C. Boas, & I. A. Sag (Eds.), Sign-Based Construction Grammar (pp.309–372). Stanford: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Forsberg, M., Johansson, R., Bäckström, L., Borin, L., Lyngfelt, B., Olofsson, J., & Prentice, J.
(2014) From construction candidates to constructicon entries. An experiment using semi-automatic methods for identifying constructions in corpora. Constructions and Frames, 6(1), 113–134. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Francopoulo, G.
(Ed.) (2013) LMF: Lexical Markup Framework. London/Hoboken, NJ: ISTE/Wiley. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Friberg Heppin, K., & Toporowska Gronostaj, M.
(2014) Exploiting FrameNet for Swedish: Mismatch? Constructions and Frames, 6(1), 52–72. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Goldberg, A. E.
(1995) Constructions. A Construction Grammar Approach to Argument Structure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
(2003) Constructions: A new theoretical approach to language. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7(5), 219–224. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(2013) Constructionist Approaches. In Th. Hoffmann, & G. Trousdale (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Construction Grammar (pp.15–31). Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Grūzītis, N., Dannélls, D., Lyngfelt, B., & Ranta, A.
(2015) Formalising the Swedish Constructicon in Grammatical Framework. In Proceedings of the Grammar Engineering Across Frameworks (GEAF) 2015 Workshop, (pp.49–56). Beijing, China. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hilpert, M.
(2015) From hand-carved to computer-based: Noun-participle compounding and the upward strengthening hypothesis. Cognitive Linguistics, 26, 113–147. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hoffmann, Th. & Trousdale, G.
(Eds.) (2013) The Oxford Handbook of Construction Grammar. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hovmark, H.
(2012) Betydningsbeskrivelse og prototypteori [‘Meaning description and prototype theory’]. LexicoNordica, 19, 59–78.Google Scholar
ISO
2008 Language resource management – Lexical markup framework (LMF). International Standard ISO 24613:2008.Google Scholar
Jackendoff, R.
(1997) Twistin’ the Night Away. Language 73, 534–559. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Jurafsky, D.
(1991) An On-line Computational Model of Human Sentence Interpretation: A Theory of the Representation and Use of Linguistic Knowledge. (Doctoral dissertation). Dept. of Electrical engineering and computer sciences, University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Kay, P.
(2013) The Limits of (Construction) Grammar. In Th. Hoffmann, & G. Trousdale (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Construction Grammar (pp.32–48). Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kay, P. & Fillmore, C. J.
(1999) Grammatical constructions and linguistic generalizations. The What’s X doing Y? construction. Language, 75, 1–34. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Lakoff, G.
(1987) Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What categories reveal about the mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Langacker, R. W.
(1987) Foundations of Cognitive Grammar: Theoretical Prerequisites (Vol. 1). Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Lau, J. H., Clark, A., & Lappin, S.
(2014) Measuring Gradience in Speakers’ Grammaticality Judgements. In Proceedings of the 36th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp.821–826).
Lindström, J. & Linell, P.
(2007) Roli å roli. X-och-x som samtalspraktik och grammatisk konstruktion [‘Fun ‘n fun. X-and-x as conversational practice and grammatical construction’]. In E. Engdahl, & A. -M. Londen (Eds.), Interaktion och kontext (pp.19–89). Lund: Studentlitteratur.Google Scholar
Linell, P. & Norén, K.
(2009) Vågar vågar ni väl men … – en reaktiv konstruktion i svenskan [’Dare dare you, but … – a reactive construction in Swedish’]. Språk och stil, 19, 72–104.Google Scholar
Loenheim, L., Lyngfelt, B., Olofsson, J., Prentice, J., & Tingsell, S.
(2016) Constructicography meets (second) language education. On constructions in teaching aids and the usefulness of a Swedish constructicon. In S. de Knop, & G. Gilquin (Eds.), Applied Construction Grammar (pp.327–355). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Lyngfelt, B.
(2007) Mellan polerna. Reflexiv- och deponenskonstruktioner i svenskan [‘Between the poles. Reflexive and deponent constructions in Swedish’]. Språk och Stil, 17, 86–134.Google Scholar
Lyngfelt, B., Borin, L., Forsberg, M., Prentice, J., Rydstedt, R., Sköldberg, E., & Tingsell, S.
(2012) Adding a Constructicon to the Swedish resource network of Språkbanken. In Proceedings of KONVENS 2012 (LexSem 2012 workshop) (pp.452–461). Vienna.Google Scholar
Lyngfelt, B, Magnusson Petzell, E., & Wide, C.
(2017) Forskning om språksystemet – olika traditioner med olika syften [‘Grammatical research – different traditions with different purposes’] In D. Håkansson, & A. -M. Karlsson (Eds.), Varför språkvetenskap? (pp.129–152). Lund: Studentlitteratur.Google Scholar
Lyngfelt, B., & Sköldberg, E.
(2013) Lexikon och konstruktikon – ett konstruktionsgrammatiskt perspektiv på lexikografi [‘Lexicon and constructicon – a constructionist perspective on lexicography’]. LexicoNordica, 20, 75–91.Google Scholar
Margolis, E., & Laurence, S.
(Eds.) (1999) Concepts: Core readings. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Murphy, G. L.
(2002) The big book of concepts. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Ohara K. H.
(2014) Relating Frames and Constructions in Japanese FrameNet. In Proceedings of LREC 2014 (pp.2474–2477). Reykjavík: ELRA.Google Scholar
Pedersen, B., Borin, L., Forsberg, M., Kahusk, N., Lindén, K., Niemi, J., Nisbeth, N., Nygaard, L., Orav, H., Rögnvaldsson, E., Seaton, M., Vider, K., & Voionmaa, K.
(2013) Nordic and Baltic wordnets aligned and compared through “WordTies”. In Proceedings of NODALIDA 2013 (pp.147–162). Oslo: NEALT.Google Scholar
Petruck, M. R. L. & Ziem, A.
(2014) Semantic Relations for Frames and Constructions: Perspective_on. Talk at the 8th International Conference on Construction Grammar (ICCG-8). September 3–6, 2014. Osnabrück University.
Pollard, C. & Sag, I. A.
(1994) Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Pustejovsky, J.
(1995) The Generative Lexicon. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Ranta, A.
(2011) Grammatical Framework. Programming with Multilingual Grammars. Stanford: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Ruppenhofer, J., Ellsworth, M., Petruck, M. R. L., Johnson, C. R., & Scheffczyk, J.
(2016) FrameNet II: extended theory and practice. Berkeley: ICSI. Retrieved from https://​framenet2​.icsi​.berkeley​.edu​/docs​/r1​.7​/book​.pdfGoogle Scholar
Ruppenhofer, J. & Michaelis, L. A.
(2010) A Constructional Account of Genre-Based Argument Omissions. Constructions and Frames, 2(2), 158–184. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Rydstedt, R.
(2012) En matchningsdriven semantisk modell. Mellan ordboken och den interna grammatiken [‘A match-driven semantic model. Between the dictionary and the internal grammar’]. (Doctoral Dissertation). (GNS 19). Dept. of Swedish, University of Gothenburg.Google Scholar
Sag, I. A.
(2012) Sign-Based Construction Grammar: An Informal Synopsis. In H. C. Boas, & I. A. Sag (Eds.), Sign-Based Construction Grammar (pp.39–170). Stanford: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Sag, I. A., Baldwin, T., Bond, F., Copestake, A., & Flickinger, D.
(2002) Multi-word expressions: A pain in the neck for NLP. In A. Gelbukh (Ed.), Computational Linguistics and Intelligent Text Processing. Proceedings of CICLING-2002 (pp.1–15). Berlin: Springer. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Sjögreen, C.
(2015) Kasta bort bollen och äta bort sin huvudvärk. En studie av argumentstrukturen i kausativa bort-konstruktioner [‘The argument structure of Swedish causative bort-constructions’]. (Doctoral dissertation.) Dept. of Scandinavian Languages, Uppsala University.Google Scholar
Sköldberg, E., Bäckström, L., Borin, L., Forsberg, M., Lyngfelt, B., Olsson, L. -J., Prentice, J. R., R. Rydstedt, S. Tingsell, & J. Uppström
(2013) Between Grammars and Dictionaries: a Swedish Constructicon. In Proceedings of eLex 2013 (pp.310–327). Tallinn: Eesti Keele Instituut.Google Scholar
Steels, L.
(2013) Fluid construction Grammar. In Th. Hoffmann, & G. Trousdale (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Construction Grammar (pp.153–167). Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Stefanowitsch, A.
(2013) Collostructional Analysis. In Th. Hoffmann, & G. Trousdale (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Construction Grammar (pp.290–306). Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Svensén, B.
(2009) A Handbook of Lexicography. The Theory and Practice of Dictionary-Making. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Teleman, U., Hellberg, S., & Andersson, E.
(1999) Svenska Akademiens grammatik [‘The Swedish Academy Grammar’]. Stockholm: Norstedts.Google Scholar
Torrent, T. T., Lage, L. M., Sampaio, T. F., da Silva Tavares, T., & da Silva Matos, E. E.
(2014) Revisiting border conflicts between FrameNet and Construction Grammar: Annotation policies for the Brazilian Portuguese Constructicon. Constructions and Frames, 6(1), 33–50.Google Scholar
van Trijp, R., & Steels, L.
(2012) Multilevel alignment maintains language systematicity. Advances in Complex Systems 15(3–4), 1–30.Google Scholar
Van de Velde, F.
(2012) Degeneracy: The maintenance of constructional networks. Leuven Working Papers in Linguistics 1(2), 24–61.Google Scholar
Van Valin, R. D., & LaPolla, R. J.
(1997) Syntax: Structure, Meaning, and Function. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Wray, A.
(2008) Formulaic language: Pushing the boundaries. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 5 other publications

Borin, Lars
2021.  In The Swedish FrameNet++ [Natural Language Processing, 14], ► pp. 221 ff. Crossref logo
Dannélls, Dana, Lars Borin, Markus Forsberg, Karin Friberg Heppin & Maria Toporowska Gronostaj
2021.  In The Swedish FrameNet++ [Natural Language Processing, 14], ► pp. 37 ff. Crossref logo
Herbst, Thomas
2020. Constructions, generalizations, and the unpredictability of language. Constructions and Frames 12:1 ► pp. 56 ff. Crossref logo
Janda, Laura A., Anna Endresen, Valentina Zhukova, Daria Mordashova & Ekaterina Rakhilina
2020. How to build a constructicon in five years. Belgian Journal of Linguistics 34 ► pp. 161 ff. Crossref logo
Prentice, Julia, Camilla Håkansson, Therese Lindström Tiedemann, Ildikó Pilán & Elena Volodina
2021.  In The Swedish FrameNet++ [Natural Language Processing, 14], ► pp. 303 ff. Crossref logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 31 march 2022. 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.