Replicator (evolution unit) in the context of Explanatory power

Frame semantics is a theory of linguistic meaning developed by Charles J. Fillmore that extends his earlier case grammar. It relates linguistic semantics to encyclopedic knowledge. The basic idea is that one cannot understand the meaning of a single word without access to all the essential knowledge that relates to that word. For example, one would not be able to understand the word "sell" without knowing anything about the situation of commercial transfer, which also involves, among other things, a seller, a buyer, goods, money, the relation between the money and the goods, the relations between the seller and the goods and the money, the relation between the buyer and the goods and the money and so on. Thus, a word activates, or evokes, a frame of semantic knowledge relating to the specific concept to which it refers (or highlights, in frame semantic terminology).

The idea of the encyclopedic organisation of knowledge itself is old and was discussed by Age of Enlightenment philosophers such as Denis Diderot and Giambattista Vico. Fillmore and other evolutionary and cognitive linguists like John Haiman and Adele Goldberg, however, make an argument against generative grammar and truth-conditional semantics. As is elementary for Lakoffian–Langackerian Cognitive Linguistics, it is claimed that knowledge of language is no different from other types of knowledge; therefore there is no grammar in the traditional sense, and language is not an independent cognitive function. Instead, the spreading and survival of linguistic units is directly comparable to that of other types of units of cultural evolution, like in memetics and other cultural replicator theories.

Construction grammar (often abbreviated CxG) is a family of theories within the field of cognitive linguistics which posit that constructions, or learned pairings of linguistic patterns with meanings, are the fundamental building blocks of human language. Constructions include words (aardvark, avocado), morphemes (anti-, -ing), fixed expressions and idioms (by and large, jog X's memory), and abstract grammatical rules such as the passive voice (The cat was hit by a car) or the ditransitive (Mary gave Alex the ball). Any linguistic pattern is considered to be a construction as long as some aspect of its form or its meaning cannot be predicted from its component parts, or from other constructions that are recognized to exist. In construction grammar, every utterance is understood to be a combination of multiple different constructions, which together specify its precise meaning and form.

Advocates of construction grammar argue that language and culture are not designed by people, but are 'emergent' or automatically constructed in a process which is comparable to natural selection in species or the formation of natural constructions such as nests made by social insects. Constructions correspond to replicators or memes in memetics and other cultural replicator theories. Construction grammar is associated with concepts from cognitive linguistics that aim to show in various ways how human rational and creative behaviour is automatic and not planned.