Keywords: A Summary of Teaching Methods of Architectural Grammar English
China Library Classification Number G642 Document Identification Number A1674-4810 (2012)16-0024-02.
An overview of construction grammar
The idea of construction grammar was first put forward by Fillmore, the founder of case grammar, and then gradually deepened under the research of experts and scholars such as Adele Goldberg and Paul Kay. Among them, Goldberg's research results are the most remarkable. Construction grammar holds that the constituent elements of semantics are not only words, but also a larger language unit, namely grammatical construction. What we call construction grammar usually refers to Goldberg's point of view. Goldberg believes that a sentence is not a simple pile of sentence components, but a gestalt process. When a verb appears in different constructions, the semantics of the constructions will be different. Goldberg believes that these differences can be attributed not only to the different meanings of verbs, but also to the construction itself.
Cognitive linguistics, functional grammar and application-based language models all believe that the basic unit of language representation is construction. According to construction grammar, construction is the combination of form and meaning or form and function. Studying the form of language is inseparable from the investigation of form, meaning and function.
Scholars at home and abroad mostly study construction grammar in theory and analyze specific constructions, including theoretical research on construction grammar (Goldberg, 1995, 2006; Croft, 20065438+0; Xiong Xueliang, 2009), A Study of English Construction (Fillmore, 1988), A Study of Chinese Construction (Zhang Yi, 2009); A Comparative Study of English and Chinese Constructions (Xiong Xueliang, 2007) and Construction Grammar and Language Teaching. The study of construction grammar and language teaching can be divided into two aspects: one is theoretical discussion (2007), and the other is the study of concrete construction acquisition (2004). The existing research has begun to develop from the perspective of construction grammar to the exploration of English grammar teaching methods.
Constructive grammar in cognitive linguistics can be divided into Kay&; Constructive grammar represented by fillmore; Take Leikauf &; Constructive grammar represented by Goldberg; Cognitive grammar represented by Langaker; Radical construction grammar represented by Croft. The definition of construction usually adopts the definition of Goldberg( 1995): a construction is a construction if and only if it is the counterpart of form and meaning, and some features of both form and meaning cannot be completely inferred from its components or other pre-existing constructions. Construction includes morphemes, words, idioms and phrases, and even sentence patterns. Constructions, whether simple or complex, have their own independent forms, semantics or functions. Some aspects of the form, meaning or function of construction are unpredictable, that is, the unpredictability of form, meaning and function cannot be explained by conventional grammar rules and meaning formation rules.
Some scholars in China also discuss translation according to construction grammar. For example, Yin Pi 'an and Ruan Fangfang tried to combine construction grammar with translation under the guidance of Gestalt Theory. Many scholars, while studying the role of construction in construction grammar in the process of English-Chinese translation and expanding the research field of construction grammar, expect to obtain higher quality translation results.
Feasibility of Binary Grammar as an English Teaching Method
Construction grammar consists of countless constructions, which are huge and abstract (Zhang Ren, 2006). According to the theory of construction grammar, grammar itself can also be regarded as a construction, that is, grammatical construction, which is also a combination of form and meaning (croft &; Cruise, 2004).
Construction grammar holds that construction is abstractly generalized by language learners in the process of acquiring language, that is, construction is acquired, not derived. Goldberg(2006) thinks that when learners learn to understand and produce sentences, because the number of sentences is infinite, learners can't remember all the sentences they hear. Therefore, in order to understand and produce new words, they must summarize the sentences they have heard. Language learners do not simply record the specific language they have used before, but summarize the sentences, thus forming a certain category.
Structure is a combination of form and meaning. The formal part includes the phonetic, morphological and syntactic features of the structure. The meaning part includes semantic features, pragmatic features and textual functional features. Therefore, teaching can be carried out according to the comparison of form and meaning between Chinese and English.
The guiding significance of ternary construction grammar to English teaching method
Constructive grammar holds that learners acquire abstract constructions by abstracting and generalizing the sentences they hear and see in language learning through cognitive ability (Goldberg, 2006). Traditional teaching grammar emphasizes rule learning, teachers pay attention to the explanation and teaching of grammar rules, and students are used to memorizing grammar rules. Therefore, using the teaching concept of contrastive construction between Chinese and English can realize the teaching guidance from concrete to general.
In English teaching under the guidance of construction grammar, we can make a proper comparison between mother tongue and English. For foreign language learners, when the mother tongue construction is consistent with the target language construction, the former will promote the acquisition of the latter; When the two are inconsistent, the former may hinder the latter's learning.
The similarities and differences between English and Chinese constructions exist objectively, which is a fact that cannot be ignored and avoided in language teaching. As foreign language learners, it is impossible for students to completely forget their mother tongue and learn a foreign language under the influence of mother tongue construction. In grammar teaching, teachers must face up to the similarities and differences between the grammatical structures of the two languages, pay attention to the comparison between different grammatical structures, and prevent students from mechanically copying English words into Chinese grammatical structures. One of the main reasons why students make grammatical mistakes when learning a foreign language is that they don't have enough grammatical structure in the target language, so they fill the vocabulary in the target language into the grammatical structure in their mother tongue (Lin, Liu Yongbing, 20 12).
Four summaries
English teaching under the guidance of construction grammar consists of two parts: form and meaning. The formal part includes the phonetic features, morphological features and syntactic features of the construction. The meaning part includes semantic features, pragmatic features and textual functional features. In the teaching process, teachers should show the structural forms and significance of all levels. According to the concept of construction grammar, the teaching of grammatical construction should follow the teaching methods from concrete construction to general construction and from simple construction to complex construction; Focus on the form and meaning of the structure. In foreign language grammar teaching, we should also strengthen the comparative teaching of mother tongue construction and target language construction to avoid the phenomenon that students apply target language vocabulary to mother tongue construction stiffly.
refer to
[1]Croft, William, radical construction grammar: syntactic theory from the perspective of typology [M]. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 200 1
[2] Croft, William & Cruise, Cognitive Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004
[3] Fillmore, Kay&O 'Connor, regularity and authenticity
Grammatical structure: let alone the situation [J]. Language, 1988(64)
[4]Goldberg Adele, Construction: Grammatical Method of Argument Structure [M]. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995
[5] Goldberg Adele, Construction at Work: The Essence of Language Generalization [M]. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006
[6] and beam. Approaching Construction Grammar [J]. Modern Foreign Languages, 2002(2)
[7] Lin, Liu Yongbing. English Grammar Teaching from the Perspective of Constructivist Grammar [J]. Foreign Language Teaching Theory and Practice, 20 12( 1)
[8] Ren Qingmei. Commentary on the Cognitive Psychological Mechanism of Construction Acquisition [J]. Foreign Languages, 2007(6)
[9] Xiong Xueliang. Analysis of English and Chinese Double Object Structure [J]. Foreign Language Teaching and Research, 2007(4)
[10] Xiong Xueliang. Cooperative Construction and Non-cooperative Construction —— From Goldberg's two definitions [J]. Foreign Language Teaching and Research, 2009(5)
[1 1] Zhang Ren. Cognitive psychological characteristics of construction and grammatical system [J]. China Foreign Languages, 2006( 1)
[12] Zhang Yi. A Study on the Cognitive Structure of Inverted Resultant [J]. Foreign Languages, 2009(4)
[Editor: Wang Yifu]