Explain Me This: Creativity, Competition, and the Partial Productivity of Constructions

Placeholder author icon
By Adele E. Goldberg

Published June 26, 2019

In this book, Adele E. Goldberg approaches a linguistic paradox and shows how cognitive mechanisms influence our language skills. Explain Me This: Creativity, Competition, and the Partial Productivity of Constructions (Princeton University Press) explains how memory and our implicit knowledge of language affect the learning mechanisms we use to create new language constructions.

Paw in print

Image
PAW's October 2026 cover, featuring a photo of a loaf of challah bread and the headline "The Braids That Bind."
The Latest Issue

October 2026

Holding on to Jewish life; Katy Anderson Keating ’08’s career in wine; Hollywood loves Princeton.