This paper uses computational experiments to explore the role of exposure in the emergence of construction grammars. While usage-based grammars are hypothesized to depend on a learner’s exposure to actual language use, the mechanisms of such exposure have only been studied in a few constructions in isolation. This paper experiments with (i) the growth rate of the constructicon, (ii) the convergence rate of grammars exposed to independent registers, and (iii) the rate at which constructions are forgotten when they have not been recently observed. These experiments show that the lexicon grows more quickly than the grammar and that the growth rate of the grammar is not dependent on the growth rate of the lexicon. At the same time, register-specific grammars converge onto more similar constructions as the amount of exposure increases. This means that the influence of specific registers becomes less important as exposure increases. Finally, the rate at which constructions are forgotten when they have not been recently observed mirrors the growth rate of the constructicon. This paper thus presents a computational model of usage-based grammar that includes both the emergence and the unentrenchment of constructions.

中文翻译：

---

基于用法的语法的暴露和出现：35 种语言的计算实验

本文使用计算实验来探索暴露在构造语法出现中的作用。虽然基于用法的语法被假设为取决于学习者对实际语言使用的接触，但这种接触的机制仅在少数结构中被孤立地研究过。本文实验了 (i) 构造图标的增长率，(ii) 暴露于独立寄存器的语法的收敛速度，以及 (iii) 最近没有观察到的构造被遗忘的速度。这些实验表明，词典比语法增长得更快，并且语法的增长速度不依赖于词典的增长速度。同时，随着暴露量的增加，特定于语域的语法会收敛到更多相似的结构上。这意味着随着曝光度的增加，特定寄存器的影响变得不那么重要。最后，最近未观察到的构造被遗忘的速度反映了构造图标的增长率。因此，本文提出了一个基于用法的语法的计算模型，其中包括结构的出现和解除。