constructionsdepends

Constructionsdepends is a term used in linguistics to describe a class of phenomena in which the interpretation, acceptance, or licensing of a given construction is conditioned by the presence or properties of other constructions within the same discourse or corpus. In this view, constructions do not act in isolation; their function can depend on the surrounding constructional environment, a relationship sometimes described as cross-construction dependency.

It draws on construction grammar and usage-based approaches, where language is seen as a repertoire of form-meaning pairings that are learned from data. The label constructionsdepends is not standard across all theoretical traditions, but is used in discussions of how constructions influence each other in discourse, particularly in large-scale corpus studies and in computational modeling of language use. The concept covers licensing, co-occurrence patterns, and conditional interpretations across multiple constructions.

Mechanisms include licensing relationships (one construction enabling another), alignment or accommodation in diachronic or synchronic style, and probabilistic dependency in statistical models. For example, the appearance of a discourse particle may alter the acceptability of a following clause type, or frequent use of a particular syntactic frame may increase its likelihood in subsequent clauses.

Researchers study constructionsdepends through corpus analysis, conditional probability models, and parsing or generation systems that incorporate cross-construction constraints. It has implications for language learning, where exposure to certain constructional environments may shape learners' production.

Critics caution that the concept can be too broad or difficult to operationalize, and that careful methodological controls are needed to distinguish true cross-construction dependencies from coincidental co-occurrence. See also construction grammar, usage-based linguistics, collostructions, dependency grammar.