The Tromsø Constructicon Lab is part of the CLEAR research group, bringing together researchers who work on constructions and construction-based digital resources, i.e. constructicons.
We understand constructions according to Construction Grammar theory (Fillmore et al. 1988, Croft 2001, Goldberg 2006) as recurrent pairings of form and meaning learned by speakers in the process of language use. Constructions are the central units of language structure and description.
The constructions of each language form a structured system, termed a construct-i-con, that accounts for the entirety of the language. The term “constructicon” designates both a system of constructions in a language and a thorough description of this system, usually in the form of a digital database.
A discipline that focuses on building constructicon resources is called constructicography and lies at the intersection of usage-based linguistics, computer science, and language technology.
- Anna Endresen: Russian, Ukrainian
- Laura A. Janda: Russian, Ukrainian, Persian
- Reza Soltani: Persian
- Valentina Zhukova: Russian
- Tore Nesset: Russian
- Yuliia Palii: Ukrainian
- Radovan Bast: programming
- Zoia Butenko: programming
- Constructicon for Russian (built in collaboration with HSE): https://constructicon.github.io/russian/
- Constructicon for Ukrainian: https://constructicon.github.io/ukrainian/
- Constructicon for Persian: https://constructicon.github.io/persian/
- Construxercise! for Russian: https://constructicon.github.io/construxercise-rus/
- RusCon YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@russianconstructicon7328
- Corpus-based research on constructions
- Relationships of constructions
- Constructicon-building: making code that is portable to other languages
- Constructicon-building: semantic and syntactic annotation of constructions
- Recording instructional videos
- Construction-based approach to language pedagogy
- Comparing constructions across languages
- Open-source code portable to other languages (available on GitHub; Bast et al. forthcoming)
- Multi-level semantic classification of Russian constructions (Janda et al. 2023)
- Identifying meaningful groupings of constructions in terms of families, clusters, and networks (Janda, Zhukova, Endresen forthcoming; Janda et al. 2020; Endresen & Janda 2022; Janda & Kopotev & Nesset 2022)
- Describing multi-level relationships among individual constructions (Janda et al. 2020; Endresen & Janda 2022; Janda & Nesset 2022; Janda & Zhukova fortcoming)
- Proposing strategies to build inventories of entries for constructicon resources (Endresen et al. forthcoming)
- Applications of constructionist approach to teaching L2 Russian (Endresen et al. 2022)
- Grant NCM-RU-2016/10025 from the Norwegian Centre for International Cooperation in Higher Education (SIU) for the project “Constructing a Russian Constructicon”, 2016;
- Grant CPRU-2017/10027 received from the Norwegian Directorate for Higher Education and Skills (HK-DIR, https://hkdir.no/, earlier – Diku), under the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research, in 2017-2021 for the project “TWIRLL: Targeting Wordforms in Russian Language Learning”;
- Grant UTFORSK 2020 (UTF-2020/10129) received from the Norwegian Directorate for Higher Education and Skills (HK-DIR, https://hkdir.no/) for the project “ConLab: The Tromsø-Moscow Constructicon Laboratorium”, 2021-2025;
- Funding from UiT The Arctic University of Norway for the project “The Ukrainian Constructicon” (a one-year-long Associate Professor position)
- Funding from UiT The Arctic University of Norway for postdoctoral position in Construction Grammar
- Funding from UiT The Arctic University of Norway for the project “ChatGPT meets the Russian Constructicon” (3+1 year PhD position)
Constructicon projects in other countries
- Тhe Berkeley FrameNet Constructicon for English, from FrameNet: https://framenet.icsi.berkeley.edu/fndrupal/
- The English Constructicon (University of Birmingham, UK) https://englishconstructicon.bham.ac.uk
- The English Constructicon (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany) https://mail.icame.info/index.php
- The Swedish Constructicon: https://spraakbanken.gu.se/konstruktikon
- The German Constructicon: https://gsw.phil.hhu.de/constructicon/
- The Brazilian Portuguese Constructicon (FN-Br Constructicon): http://webtool.framenetbr.ufjf.br/
- The Japanese FrameNet Constructicon, access from the Japanese FrameNet: http://jfn.st.hc.keio.ac.jp
- The Russian Pragmaticon (database of Russian discourse formulae): https://pragmaticon.ruscorpora.ru/
Key conferences on Construction Grammar
- International Conference on Construction Grammar (ICCG)
- Constructions in the Nordics (CxCG)
- Constructionist Approaches to Language Pedagogy (CALP)
- International Cognitive Linguistics Conference (ICLC)
Key journals on Construction Grammar
- Constructions and Frames https://benjamins.com/catalog/cf
- Constructions https://constructions.journals.hhu.de/about
- Cognitive Linguistics https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/cogl/html
- Review of Cognitive Linguistics https://www.benjamins.com/catalog/rcl
- “Constructional Approaches to Language” series of John Benjamins https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/series/1573594x
Other resources on Construction Grammar
