More on the as-predicative: Granularity issues in the description of construction networks

Abstract

AbstractUsage-based construction grammar needs to determine which schematizations are really supported by usage: Previous research on argumentstructure constructions with object-related complements has assumed overarching constructions with a formally underspecified component (Gries et al. 2005, 2010; Gonzalvez-Garcia 2009). These schematize over a number of formally different subconstructions. It has been shown, however, that paying attention to the formally different realisations of a constructional component may bring out the functional differential between subconstructions which are closely related within a construction network (Hampe 2011a). Based on the data used by Gries and colleagues (2010), this paper presents a fine-grained collostruction analysis of the as-predicative as a network of tightly related subconstructions and checks whether there is a functional difference between the subconstructions with nominal and adjectival as-complements. It is shown that the extended uses of the construction sketched out by Gries et al. (2005) are licensed by the subconstruction with nominal as-complement, rather than present a property of the overarching, most general pattern. Beyond this, the present paper locates the as-predicative within the network of all argument-structure constructions with phrasal object-related complements. In this context, it also discusses under which conditions the occurrence of a specific verb as a collexeme of more than one argument-structure construction can be seen as a verb-specific constructeme uniting several allostructions (Capelle 2006).