Full Title: Workshop: Experimental Approaches to Construction Grammar (LLcD 2025)

Date: 01-Sep-2025 - 03-Sep-2025
Location: Univ. Lille, France
Web Site: https://llcd2025.sciencesconf.org/data/pages/Experimental_Approaches_to_Construction_Grammar_Workshop.pdf

Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics; General Linguistics

Call Deadline: 30-Mar-2025

Call for Papers:

Convenors:
Mégane Lesuisse (Université Paris 8) - [email protected]
Benoît Leclercq (Université de Lille) - [email protected]

Full workshop description: https://llcd2025.sciencesconf.org/data/pages/Experimental_Approaches_to_Construction_Grammar_Workshop.pdf
Full details for abstract submission: https://llcd2025.sciencesconf.org/resource/page/id/7

Key words: experimental methods; construction grammar; usage-based models; applied cognitive linguistics; second language acquisition

This workshop aims to promote more systematic interactions between usage-based Construction Grammar and experimental approaches to linguistic modelling. Construction Grammar encompasses a range of theoretical models (Hoffmann and Trousdale 2013: 109-252) which share a number of core assumptions, including: constructions (i.e., form-meaning pairs) are the basic building blocks of language and they are organised in a structured network, linguistic knowledge emerges from domain-general processes and is non-modular, so a strict lexicon/syntax dichotomy is rejected, and there are no transformational or derivational rules (Goldberg 2013: 15). Construction Grammarians have been and remain very attentive to the ways in which these claims can be tested and potentially falsified (Cappelle 2024). To do so, corpus-based methods have been widely used and developed, to the point that we are now “drowning in an unmanageable number of interesting and methodologically extremely diverse studies” (Gries 2025: 173). By comparison though, experimental approaches have been drawn upon to a relatively lesser degree. Yet experimental methods offer crucial complementary insights into how constructions are processed, acquired, and represented in the mind, facilitating a more nuanced understanding of language as a cognitive and communicative system. With this workshop, we therefore hope to rekindle Kortmann's (2021: 1220) incentive to “use a dual-approach or multi-method design” when making claims about cognition.
Particular attention is taken not to focus on native speakers of English only. This workshop not only aims at discussing research questions that relate to monolingual cognition, it also expands to issues relevant to Second Language Acquisition (hence, SLA) with the consideration of Applied Cognitive Linguistics (Llopis-García 2024) and Applied/Pedagogical Construction grammar (De Knop & Gilquin 2016, Höder et al 2021, Boas 2022) and of what has been referred to as Diasystematic Construction Grammar (DCxG) (Höder 2018, 2019; i.e., the constructionist framework to SLA and multilingual practices). Experimental work on languages other than English will be particularly welcome.

- deadline for abstracts: 30 March 2025
- notification of acceptance/rejection: Early May 2025

Abstracts must clearly state the title, the research questions, approach, method, (expected) results as well as the name of the workshop. They must be anonymous: not only must they not contain the presenters' names, affiliations or addresses, but they must avoid any other information that might reveal their author(s). They should not exceed 500 words (including examples, but excluding bibliographical references).

For more information, please visit the conference website.