Abstract
This chapter describes a sorting paradigm was used to explore the possibility that the main determinant of sentence meaning is the argument structure construction: a pairing of form and meaning at the clausal level. Sixteen English sentences were used, obtained by crossing 4 verbs and 4 constructions. Participants sorted the sentences into four piles, each pile consisting of four sentences. They were asked to place sentences with the same overall meaning into the same pile. The chapter suggests that argument structure constructions are better predictors of overall sentence meaning than the morphological form of the verb. Participants in frequently sorted entirely by construction and never wholly by the morphological form of the verb; averaging across all subjects, sorts were significantly closer to a constructional sort than to a verb sort. The chapter provides a sufficiency proof for the fact that people recognize abstract relationships between formal phrasal patterns and meaning: i.e. constructions.
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