Fluid Construction Grammar as a Biological System

Mapping insights and frameworks from one scientific domain to another is often useful because it encourages communication between different scientific fields and acts as a conduit for the exchange of mathematical and com- putational tools. This paper introduces analogies between concepts and mechanisms from molecular biology and language processing. The main purpose is to find ways for understanding language as a ‘living’, dynamically evolving, self-organizing system. The analogies have been the main source of inspiration for a computational implementation of construction grammar, called Fluid Construction Grammar (FCG). The paper describes briefly the biological analogies underlying FCG and discusses the opportunities for further research that these analogies open up.LS gratefully acknowledges funding from ICREA at the Institut de Biologia Evolutiva (UPF/CSIC) in Barcelona and from the FP7 EU Project Insight (agreement no. 308943), the Marie Curie Integration Grant EVOLAN, and the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin. ES acknowledges support from the FP7 EU Project Insight (agreement no. 308943) and by the European Research Council project EvoEvo (grant agreement no. 294332).Peer reviewe