Composing or not composing?

Abstract Understanding how language comprehension works remains a central challenge. While meaning is traditionally viewed as incrementally constructed through compositional processes, numerous studies show that non-compositional mechanisms also play a crucial role. In this paper, we propose a unified framework grounded in Construction Grammar and Distributional Semantics that integrates both aspects. In this perspective, we extend Sign-Based Construction Grammar by formalizing meaning as the interaction of three semantic components: constructions, frames, and events, to which distributional information is integrated. We further introduce a processing mechanism in which meaning emerges through activation dynamics, evaluated and controlled via similarity and unification.