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date: 24 January 2021

Abstract and Keywords

This chapter discusses the Berkeley Construction Grammar (BCG), the framework through which grammatical phenomena of English were organized and described in that class. It explains the basic concepts of feature structures and unification, and introduces the valence requirements of predicating words and the devices for their satisfaction. The chapter also presents BCG analyses of various constructions, such as the Subject-Predicate construction, Head-Complement construction, and Inversion construction or Left-Isolation construction.

Keywords: Berkeley Construction Grammar, grammatical phenomena, valence requirements, Subject-Predicate construction, Head-Complement construction, Inversion construction

Charles J. Fillmore

Charles J. Fillmore is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley, and director of the FrameNet project at the International Computer Science Institute, also in Berkeley. His writings have included contributions to generative syntax (1963), the introduction of a grammatical framework in which semantic roles (‘deep cases’) were central (1968), the recognition of the importance of deictic elements in linguistic descriptions (1971/1997), suggestions for founding lexical meanings on ‘semantic frames’ (1982, 1985), and associated contributions to practical lexicography (1992, with B. T. S. Atkins), and contributions to a grammatical theory based on constructions (1988 and present volume), with several colleagues. He was named Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1984, and he served as President of the Linguistic Society of America in 1990.

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