Lexicon and Grammar

Abstract

Over the past decades it has become generally acknowledged that lexicon and grammar are inseparably linked, constituting “a continuum of symbolic structures“ (Langacker 1990:2). Yet, a comprehensive integration of the two realms of knowledge appears to be a difficult task. The present article offers a unified psycholinguistic perspective, which is centred on the mental lexicon, considering grammatical knowledge as part of the information structure of lexical items. It aims to model the complexity of lexical knowledge such that its perceived psychological reality, including various levels of linguistic description, becomes discernible. 1. Lexical Information Structure In the light of recent research undertaken in different linguistics fields (cf., e.g., Bybee 1988, Ellis 1997, Langacker 1990, Singleton 1999), the mental lexicon can be described as that domain of language where the various dimensions of linguistic information meet. A comprehensive description of lexical knowledge must therefore take account not only of formal and semantic but also of grammatical knowledge. It follows that the elements of the lexicon need to be modelled as highly complex entities, including information on representational substance (conceptual, perceptual, and articulatory patterns) and combinatorial potential. Combinatorial knowledge relates to an item’s collocation and colligation, i.e., its valency structure (cf., e.g., Langacker 1987, Lutjeharms 1994, Singleton 1999). It has various facets and is relevant for phrasal construction. Combinatorial knowledge is associated with specific types of semantic and formal relations, which reflect the distributional properties of lexical elements (cf., e.g., Bybee 1988, Ellis 1997). The different knowledge components are mutually dependent and interact in our use of language. I will aim to integrate representational substance and combinatorial potential of lexical items in an all-embracing psycholinguistic component structure model, which coordinates the different levels of description. The model provides a framework for discussing grammatical processing with reference to lexical knowledge. It also draws a unified picture of lexical items, which provides the grounds for illustrating the perceived psychological reality of lexical networks. 1 For a more differentiated discussion of lexical information structure and applications of the proposed model cf. Herwig 1994.