Learning Construction Grammars from Semantically Annotated Corpora or Situated Communicative Interactions

Project Details

Description

The primary aim of this project is to investigate how construction
grammars can be learned by a computational system, based on
either semantically annotated corpora or communicative interactions
in situated tutor-learner scenarios. If successful, the outcome of this
project will constitute a major breakthrough in the field of construction
grammar, as it would for the first time provide a computational model
of how conventionalised form-meaning pairings (constructions) that
support language comprehension and production can be constructed
in a usage-based fashion.

My hypothesis is that a broad spectrum of constructions, ranging from fully idiomatic to completely abstract, can be learned by a combination of storing linguistic observations as holophrase constructions, and generalising and specialising already
learned constructions with respect to novel linguistic observations. I
will design and implement a set of learning operators that facilitate
these learning processes and release them in the form of a
construction grammar learning toolkit. The outcome of this project
has the potential to significantly enhance the performance of a wide
variety of language technology applications and meaning-based AI
systems. It would also be highly valuable as a methodological tool for
usage-based linguistic research, as it would facilitate the automatic
annotation of constructions in text corpora, and provide novel insights
into the compositional and non-compositional aspects of language
use.
AcronymFWOTM1034
StatusFinished
Effective start/end date1/10/2030/09/23

Keywords

  • construction grammar

Flemish discipline codes in use since 2023

  • Grammar
  • Adaptive agents and intelligent robotics
  • Linguistics not elsewhere classified

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Explore the research topics touched on by this project. These labels are generated based on the underlying awards/grants. Together they form a unique fingerprint.
  • Construction Grammar and Artificial Intelligence

    Beuls, K. & Van Eecke, P., 2025, The Cambridge Handbook of Construction Grammar. Fried, M. & Nikiforidou, K. (eds.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 543-571 28 p. ( Cambridge Handbooks in Language and Linguistics).

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapterResearchpeer-review

    Open Access
    File
    93 Downloads (Pure)
  • The computational learning of construction grammars: State of the art and prospective roadmap

    Doumen, J., Schmalz, V. J., Beuls, K. & Van Eecke, P., 2 May 2025, In: Constructions and Frames. 17, 1, p. 141-174 34 p.

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    Open Access
    File
    17 Downloads (Pure)
  • A Benchmark for Recipe Understanding in Artificial Agents

    Nevens, J., De Haes, R., Ringe, R., Pomarlan, M., Porzel, R., Beuls, K. & Van Eecke, P., May 2024, Proceedings of the 2024 Joint International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC-COLING 2024). Calzolari, N., Kan, M-Y., Hoste, V., Lenci, A., Sakti, S. & Xue, N. (eds.). ELRA and ICCL, p. 22-42 21 p. (2024 Joint International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Language Resources and Evaluation, LREC-COLING 2024 - Main Conference Proceedings).

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference paper

    Open Access
    File
    2 Citations (Scopus)
    31 Downloads (Pure)