About Me

I am heading the Language Research unit at the Sony Computer Science Laboratories Paris and am one of the chief developers of Fluid Construction Grammar. Our mission is to shed new light on one of the most fascinating mysteries of humankind: language. How is it possible that children are able to master the complex structures of the world’s languages so fast, and how are we able to process these structures so rapidly? How can humans possibly cope with all the variation and the dynamic changes observed in language usage? Through an ‘understanding-by-building’ approach, we try to answer these questions by developing experiments that combine techniques from computational linguistics, artificial intelligence and robotics.

ORCID logo https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0475-8367

Software

Since 2005. I have been one of the chief developers of the open-source software suite Babel, which includes among other components Fluid Construction Grammar, a  special programming language for developing computational construction grammars. I have also created the first prototype of the FCG Editor, a free Integrated Development Environment for FCG,  which you can learn more about here.

If you are using Babel and are developing on a Mac with Lispworks, you can check out some of my video tutorials here for recent developer tools that I implemented:

Publications

Most of my publications are available as PDF. If not, feel free to send me an e-mail for a copy.

Books
Articles

DRAFTS / TO APPEAR

  • van Trijp, Remi (to appear). Different Constructional Approaches in Practice: A Comparative Study. In: Fried, Mirjam and Kiki Nikiforidou. Cambridge Handbook of Construction Grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Draft December 2022]
  • van Trijp, Remi (to appear). Language Games for Studying the Relations between Individual Linguistic Behavior and Community-Wide Conventions. In: Isabelle Buchstaller and Karen V. Baeman (eds.), Connecting the individual and the community: Contributions from sociolinguistic panel research. New York: Routledge.
  • van Trijp, Remi (to appear). Nostalgia for the Future of Construction Grammar. Constructions and Frames. Special Issue on the Future of Construction Grammar, ed. by Hans C. Boas, Jaakko Leino and Benjamin Lyngfelt. [Draft January 2023]

2022

  • Galletti, Martina and Michael Anslow and Francesca Bianchi and Manuela Calanca and Donatella Tomaiuoli and Remi van Trijp and Diletta Vedovelli and Eleonora Pasqua (2022).  Interactive concept-map based summaries for SEND children. In: Proceedings of the Thirty-First International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence
    AI for Good – Projects, pp. 5236-5243. https://doi.org/10.24963/ijcai.2022/727. [pdf]
  • Steels, Luc and Lara Verheyen and Remi van Trijp (2022). An Experiment in Measuring Understanding. In: Lise Stork, Katrien Beuls and Luc Steels (eds.), Proceedings of the Workshop on Semantic Techniques for Narrative-Based Understanding
    co-located with 31st International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence and the 25th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-ECAI 2022),     pp. 36-42. Vienna: CEUR Workshop Proceedings. [Official reference · pdf]
  • Steels, Luc and Lara Verheyen and Remi van Trijp (2022). An Experiment in Measuring Understanding. In: Stefan Schlobach, María Pérez-Ortiz, Myrthe Tielman (eds.), HHAI2022: Augmenting Human Intellect. Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications, Vol. 354. https://doi.org/10.3233/FAIA220203. [Long abstract, see reference above for full paper]
  • van Trijp, Remi (2022). On Scaling and Models of Language Evolution. In: Ravignani, A. and Asano, R. and Valente, D. and Ferretti, F. and Hartmann, S. and Hayashi, M. and Jadoul, Y. and Martins, M. and Oseki, Y. and Rodrigues, E. D. and Vasileva, O. and Wacewicz, S. (eds.), The evolution of language: Proceedings of the Joint Conference on Language Evolution (JCoLE). Nijmegen: Joint Conference on Language Evolution (JCoLE). [Official reference · pdf]
  • van Trijp, Remi (2022). Transient Narrative Networks and Information Lanscapes for Enhancing Human Understanding. In: Lise Stork, Katrien Beuls and Luc Steels (eds.), Proceedings of the Workshop on Semantic Techniques for Narrative-Based Understanding co-located with 31st International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence and the 25th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-ECAI 2022), pp. 43-47. Vienna: CEUR Workshop Proceedings. [Official reference · pdf]
  • van Trijp, Remi and Katrien Beuls and Paul Van Eecke (2022). The FCG Editor: An innovative environment for engineering computational construction grammars. PLoS ONE 17(6): e0269708. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269708. [pdf]
  • van Trijp, Remi and Inès Blin (2022). Narratives in Historical Sciences. In: Steels, Luc (ed.), Foundations for Meaning and Understanding in Human-centric AI, pp. 45-66. Venice: Venice International University. [Official reference · pdf]

2020

2019

  • van Trijp, Remi (2019). Review of Adele E. Goldberg: Explain me this. Creativity, competition, and the partial productivity of constructions. Folia Linguistica 53(2):553-559. https://doi.org/10.1515/flin-2019-2020. [pdf]

2018

  • van Trijp, Remi (2018). Transparency vs. Processing Efficiency: A Case Study on German Declension. In: Poibeau, Thierry and Villavicencio, Aline (eds.), Language, Cognition, and Computational Models (pp. 289–318). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316676974.011. [pdf]

2017

  • van Trijp, Remi (2017). A Computational Construction Grammar for English. The AAAI 2017 Spring Symposium on Computational Construction Grammar and Natural Language Understanding Technical Report, no. SS-17-02, pp. 266-273. Stanford: AAAI. [Official Ref · PDF]
  • van Trijp, Remi (2017). How a Construction Grammar Account Solves the Auxiliary Controversy. Constructions and Frames, 9(2):251–277. [Official ref · pdf]

2016

  • Beuls, Katrien and van Trijp, Remi (2016). Computational Construction Grammar and Constructional Change. Belgian Journal of Linguistics, 30:1-13. https://doi.org/10.1075/bjl.30.01beu. [pdf]
  • Cornudella, Miquel and Thierry Poibeau and Remi van Trijp (2016). The Role of Intrinsic Motivation in Artificial Language Emergence: a Case Study on Colour. In Proceedings of COLING 2016, the 26th International Conference on Computational Linguistics: Technical Papers, pp. 1646–1656. Osaka: The COLING 2016 Organizing Committee. [Official reference · pdf]
  • van Trijp, Remi (2016). Chopping Down the Syntax Tree: What Construction Can Do Instead. Belgian Journal of Linguistics, 30:15-38. https://doi.org/10.1075/bjl.30.02van. [pdf]
  • van Trijp, Remi (2016). Tijd om de Syntactische Boom om te Hakken. Nederlandse Taalkunde, 21(1):93-119. https://doi.org/10.5117/NEDTAA2016.1.TRIJ. [pdf]
  • van Trijp, Remi (2016). Verplaatsing is Geen Onschuldige Metafoor. Nederlandse Taalkunde, 21(1):93-119. https://doi.org/10.5117/NEDTAA2016.1.TRIJ.52969. [pdf]

2015

  • Cornudella, Miquel and Van Eecke, Paul and van Trijp, Remi (2015). How Intrinsic Motivation can Speed Up Language Emergence. In: Andrews, Paul and Caves, Leo and Doursat, Rene and Hickinbotham, Simon and Polack, Fiona and Stepney, Susan and Taylor, Tim (Eds.), Proceedings of the European Conference on Artificial Life 2015 (pp. 571-578). Cambridge MA: MIT Press. [Official reference · pdf]
  • van Trijp, Remi (2015). Cognitive vs. generative construction grammar: The case of coercion and argument structure. Cognitive Linguistics, 26(4):613-632. https://doi.org/10.1515/cog-2014-0074. [pdf]
  • van Trijp, Remi (2015). Towards Bidirectional Processing Models of Sign Language: A Constructional Approach in Fluid Construction Grammar. In: Airenti, Gabriella and Bara, Bruni G. and Sandini, Giulio (Eds.), Proceedings of the EuroAsianPacific Joint Conference on Cognitive Science ( pp. 668-673). , Turin: University of Torino. [pdf]

2014

  • van Trijp, Remi (2014). Fitness landscapes in cultural language evolution. In: Cartmill, Erica A.; et al. (Eds.), The Evolution of Language (EVOLANG-X) (pp. 334-341). Singapore: World Scientific Press. https://doi.org/10.1142/9789814603638_0044. [pdf]
  • van Trijp, Remi (2014). Long-Distance dependencies without filler-gaps: a cognitive-functional alternative in Fluid Construction Grammar. Language and Cognition, 6(2):242-270. https://doi.org/10.1017/langcog.2014.8. [pdf]

2013

  • van Trijp, Remi (2013). A comparison between Fluid Construction Grammar and Sign-Based Construction Grammar. Constructions and Frames, 5(1): 92-120. https://doi.org/10.1075/cf.5.1.04van. [pdf]
  • van Trijp, Remi (2013). Linguistic selection criteria for explaining language change: a case study on syncretism in German definite articles. Language Dynamics and Change, 3(1):105-132. https://doi.org/10.1163/22105832-13030106. [pdf]
  • Wellens, Pieter; van Trijp, Remi; Beuls, Katrien and Steels, Luc (2013). Fluid Construction Grammar for Historical and Evolutionary Linguistics. In: Proceedings of the 51st Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (pp. 127-132). Sofia: ACL. [Official reference · pdf]

2012

  • Beuls, Katrien; van Trijp, Remi and Wellens, Pieter (2012). Diagnostics and repairs in Fluid Construction Grammar. In: Steels, Luc and Hild, Manfred (eds.), Language Grounding in Robots (pp. 215-234). New York: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-3064-3_11. [pdf]
  • Steels, Luc; Spranger, Michael; van Trijp, Remi; Hoeffer, Sebastian and Hild, Manfred (2012). Emergent action language on real robots. In: Steels, Luc and Hild, Manfred (eds.), Language Grounding in Robots (pp. 255-276). New York: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-3064-3_13. [pdf]
  • van Trijp, Remi (2012). A reflective architecture for robust language processing and learning. In: Steels, Luc (ed.), Computational issues in Fluid Construction Grammar (pp. 51-74). Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-34120-5_3. [pdf]
  • van Trijp, Remi (2012). Not as awful as it seems: explaining German case through computational experiments in Fluid Construction Grammar. In: Proceedings of the 13th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (pp. 829-839). Avignon: ACL. [Official reference · pdf]
  • van Trijp, Remi (2012). Self-assessing agents for explaining language change: a case study in German. In: De Raedt, Luc; et al. (Eds.), ECAI2012: The 20th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, and Applications(pp. 798-803). Amsterdam: IOS Press. https://doi.org/10.3233/978-1-61499-098-7-798. [pdf]
  • van Trijp, Remi (2012). The emergence of morphosyntactic case systems. In: Scott-Philips, T.C.; et al. (Eds.), The Evolution of Language (EVOLANG 9) (pp. 360-368). Singapore: World Scientific Press. https://doi.org/10.1142/9789814401500_0047. [pdf]
  • van Trijp, Remi (2012). The evolution of case systems for marking event structure. In: Steels, Luc (ed.), Experiments in Cultural Language Evolution (pp. 169-205). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/ais.3.10tri. [pdf]
  • van Trijp, Remi and Steels, Luc (2012). Multilevel alignment maintains language systematicity. Advances in Complex Systems 15(3-4). https://doi.org/10.1142/S0219525912500397. [pdf]
  • van Trijp, Remi; Steels, Luc; Beuls, Katrien and Wellens, Pieter (2012). Fluid Construction Grammar: The new kid on the block. In: Proceedings of the 13th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (pp. 63-68). Avignon: ACL. [Official reference · pdf]
2011
  • Steels, Luc and van Trijp, Remi (2011). How to make construction grammars fluid and robust. In: Steels, Luc (ed.), Design Patterns in Fluid Construction Grammar (pp. 301-330). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/cal.11.16ste. [pdf]
  • van Trijp, Remi (2011). A design pattern for argument structure constructions. In: Steels, Luc (ed.), Design Patterns in Fluid Construction Grammar (pp. 115-145). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/cal.11.07tri. [pdf]
  • van Trijp, Remi (2011). Can Iterated Learning explain the emergence of case marking in language? In: De Causmaecker, P.; et al. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 23rd Benelux Conference on Artificial Intelligence (BNAIC 2011) (pp. 288-295). Ghent: KAHO Sint-Lieven. [pdf]
  • van Trijp, Remi (2011). Feature Matrices and Agreement: a case study for German case. In: Steels, Luc (ed.), Design Patterns in Fluid Construction Grammar (pp. 205-236). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/cal.11.12tri. [pdf]

2010

  • Beuls, Katrien; Gerasymova, Katja and van Trijp, Remi (2010). Situated learning through the use of language games: solving the Hungarian agreement puzzle. In: Proceedings of the 19th Annual Machine Learning Conference of Belgium and The Netherlands (BeNeLearn). [pdf]
  • van Trijp, Remi (2010). Cognitive mechanisms need to be operationalized. Comment on ‘Semantic maps and mental representation’ by Sonia Cristofaro. Linguistic Discovery, 8(1):61-63. https://doi.org/10.1349/PS1.1537-0852.A.363. [pdf]
  • van Trijp, Remi (2010). Grammaticalization and semantic maps: evidence from artificial language evolution. Linguistic Discovery, 8(1):310-326. https://doi.org/10.1349/PS1.1537-0852.A.355. [pdf]
  • van Trijp, Remi (2010). Analogy adapts to the structure of the world. Author’s reply to ‘Analogy is an implicit universal semantic map’ by Michael Cysouw. Linguistic Discovery, 8(1):329-330. https://doi.org/10.1349/PS1.1537-0852.A.380. [pdf]
  • van Trijp, Remi (2010). Strategy competition in the evolution of pronouns: a case study of Spanish Léismo, Laésmo and Loésmo. In: Smith, Andrew D.M.; et al. (Eds.), The Evolution of Language (EVOLANG 8) (pp. 336-343). Singapore: World Scientific Publishing. [pdf]
2009
  • Gerasymova, Katja; Steels, Luc and van Trijp, Remi (2009). Aspectual Morphology of Russian Verbs in Fluid Construction Grammar. In: Taatgen, N.A. and van Rijn, H. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 31th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 1370-1375). Amsterdam: Cognitive Science Society. [Official reference · pdf]
  • Micelli, Vanessa; van Trijp, Remi and De Beule, Joachim (2009). Framing Fluid Construction Grammar. In: Taatgen, N.A. and van Rijn, H. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 31th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 3023-3027). Amsterdam: Cognitive Science Society. [Official reference · pdf]
2008
  • Loetzsch, Martin, van Trijp, Remi and Steels, Luc (2008). Typological and Computational Investigations of Spatial Perspective. In: Wachsmuth, I. and Knoblich, G. (Eds.), editor, Modeling Communication with Robots and Virtual Humans , LNCS (vol. 4930), pages (pp. 125-142). Berlin: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-79037-2_7. [pdf]
  • van Trijp, Remi (2008). Argumentsstruktur in der Fluid Construction Grammar. In: Fischer, Kerstin and Stefanowitsch, Anatol (Eds.), Konstruktionsgrammatik II: Von der Konstruktion zur Grammatik. Tuebingen: Stauffenburg Verlag. [ Official reference · Draft in English]
  • van Trijp, Remi (2008). The Emergence of Semantic Roles in Fluid Construction Grammar. In Smith, Andrew D.M.; et al. (Eds.), The Evolution of Language. Proceedings of the 7th International Conference (EVOLANG 7) (pp. 346-353). Singapore: World Scientific Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1142/9789812776129_0044. [pdf]
2007
  • Steels, Luc; van Trijp, Remi and Wellens, Pieter (2007). Multi-Level Selection in the Emergence of Language Systematicity. In: Almeida e Costa, F.; et al. (Eds.), Proceedings of the Ninth European Conference on Artificial Life, LNAI 4648, Berlin, 2007 Berlin: Springer-Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-74913-4_43. [pdf]
PhD Dissertation
  • van Trijp, Remi (2008). Analogy and Multi-level Selection in the Formation of a Case Grammar. A Case Study in Fluid Construction Grammar. Doctoral dissertation. Antwerp: University of Antwerp, Antwerp, 2008.
Technical Reports and Reviews
  • Loetzsch, Martin; Wellens, Pieter; De Beule, Joachim; Bleys, Joris and van Trijp, Remi (2008). The Babel2 Manual. Brussels: VUB Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
  • van Trijp, Remi (2006). Book Review on Liesbet Heyvaert (2003) A Cognitive-Functional Approach to Nominalization in English. www.cognitivelinguistics.org.
  • van Trijp, Remi (2006). Book Review on Royal Skousen, Deryle Lonsdale and Dilworth B. Parkinson, eds. (2002) Analogical Modeling. http://www.cognitivelinguistics.org.