Constructicography: Advanced Topics in Construction Grammar

The course may be taken as a single course by doctoral students from Norway and other countries.

Constructicography is a new rapidly developing sub-discipline of Construction Grammar that lies at the intersection of usage-based constructionist approaches to language, computational linguistics, and language technology. The course will explore various theoretical, methodological, empirical, and practical issues of building an open-access electronic constructicon resource for a natural language. The course will provide an overview of the existing constructicon resources for German, Swedish, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese, (British) English, and Russian with the focus on the scope of each resource, organization and representation of constructions, electronic platform, etc. The lectures will also address how to explore, define and represent both hierarchical and lateral relationships of constructions that facilitate the structured inventory of constructions in a constructicon resource, how to promote constructicography as a field, and what research projects can support constructicon-building. The course will address the issues of open access data and code, archiving and licensing, portable architecture, and user-friendly interface design. Overall, the course will cover both broad-ranging issues of constructicography and Construction Grammar as well as research findings of the twelve instructors. Each instructor will hold a lecture, and the instructors from UiT and HSE will hold the tutoring sessions for the students. For more details see https://site.uit.no/clear/course-constructicography/

The target group of the course includes PhD students in languages and linguistics from Norway or other countries. Any PhD student with an interest in Construction Grammar and/or Constructicography is encouraged to attend. Prior knowledge of Construction Grammar is recommended, but not required. PhD students or holders of a Norwegian Master´s Degree of five years or 3+ 2 years (or equivalent) may be admitted. PhD students must upload a document from their university stating that they are registered PhD students. Holders of a Master´s Degree must upload a Master´s Diploma with Diploma Supplement / English translation of the diploma. Applicants from listed countries must document proficiency in English. To find out if this applies to you see the following list:

For more information on accepted English proficiency tests and scores, as well as exemptions from the English proficiency tests, please see the following document:

The course has a maximum of 25 seats. If the number of applicants exceeds the number of places available on the PhD course, applicants will be ranked from category 1 to 4.

Category 1: Students admitted to the PhD Programme at UiT

Category 2: Participants in the Associate Professor Programme that fulfil the educational requirements

Category 3: Doctoral students from other universities

Category 4: Applicants with a minimum of a Master´s Degree (or equivalent). (A Norwegian Master´s Degree of 5 years or 3 (Bachelor Degree) + 2 years (Master’s Degree).

By the end of the course the student has obtained the following:

Knowledge:

• knowledge about the similarities and differences between the existing constructicon resources built for German, Swedish, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese, (British) English, and Russian
• good understanding of the theoretical, methodological, empirical, and practical challenges of constructicon-building
• knowledge of how to address and successfully solve these challenges in practice.

Skills:

The student is able to:

• comprehend the scholarly literature on advanced topics and data in the field of Construction Grammar and Constructicography
• present their own findings & project;- write up a course paper.

Competence:

The student is able to

• analyze constructions in terms of the framework of Construction Grammar
• organize, start, and maintain the project of building their own constructicon resource for any natural language of their scholarly interest
• hold an academic discussion on unsolved issues of Construction Grammar and Constructicography.

Language of instruction and examination

PhD students apply by registering for class in Studentweb by 1 February. Other applicants apply in UiT Application Web by application deadline 1 December. Application code 9301.

More info about the coursework requirements

• attend 80% of teaching sessions
• make a short presentation of the project that will also serve as the topic of the course paper. The presentation can be delivered in Tromsø or digitally via zoom at one of the two tutoring sessions (powerpoint slides / handout required)

More info about the assignment

Re-sit examination