Argument Structure Constructions Research Articles

Roles of verb and construction cues

Abstract This study investigates how speakers of English and Korean, two typologically distinct languages, derive information from a verb and a construction to achieve sentence comprehension. In a sentence-sorting task, we manipulated verb semantics (real versus nonce) in each language. The results showed that participants from both languages were less inclined to sort sentences by a verb cue when the lexical-semantic information about a verb was obscured (i.e., nonce verb). In addition, the Korean-speaking participants were less likely affected by the verb semantics conditions than the English-speaking participants. These findings suggest the role of an argument structure construction in sentence comprehension as a co-contributor of sentence meaning, supporting the constructionist approach. The findings also imply language-specific mechanisms of sentence comprehension, contingent upon the varied impact of a verb on sentence meaning in English and Korean.

Responsibility attribution in gender-based domestic violence: A study bridging corpus-assisted discourse analysis and readers' perception

This paper investigates how argument structure constructions (see e.g. Goldberg 1995) are used by Italian newspapers to portray gender-based violence (GBV), how their usage affects responsibility attribution to perpetrators, and how such usage is perceived by Italian readers. The assumption is that constructions critically affect meaning: constructional choices prompt different viewpoints of the same event. For the corpus study, we collected 40 articles from local newspapers and annotated 720 constructions denoting GBV events. Constructions suppressing/backgrounding the perpetrator or depicting the event as a bare happening were the most frequent. Building upon these results, for the perception study, 274 participants read an author-constructed news report portraying GBV and answered four speculative questions about the identity of the perpetrator and the victim. Respondents were divided into groups and each group was presented with a stimulus article containing different constructions of the GBV event surrounded by the same information frame. In line with previous studies, it was found that the perpetrator could be assigned less responsibility when the passive and nominal constructions were employed.

Putting the argument back into argument structure constructions

AbstractThis paper shows that low-level generalisations in argument structure constructions are crucial to understanding the concept of alternation: low-level generalisations inform and constrain more schematic generalisations and thus constructional meaning. On the basis of an analysis of the causative alternation in English, and more specifically of the theme (i.e., the entity undergoing the event denoted by the verb), I show that each construction has its own schematic meaning. This analysis is conducted on a dataset composed of 11,554 instances of the intransitive non-causative construction and the transitive causative construction. The identification of lower-level generalisations feeds into the idea that language acquisition is organic and abstractions are formed only gradually (if at all) from exposure to input. So far, most of the literature on argument structure constructions has focused on the verb itself, and thus fails to capture these generalisations. I make up for this deficit through an in-depth analysis of the causative alternation.

Corpus‐based analysis of spoken narratives. Introducing a corpus and a search tool

This paper is concerned with the development of a synchronic corpus containing Serbian spoken narratives and its use for narrative analysis. The corpus (CRONUS – Corpus for the Research On Narratives and their Use in Speech) is optimised to study the structure and use of this discourse genre. First, data sources are presented, followed by corpus creation and access. The semi-spontaneous spoken narratives were orthographically transcribed, and the corpus deeply annotated, with special emphasis on the annotation of narrative sections following Labov’s approach and the annotation of argument structure constructions in the sense of Construction Grammar. Three case studies demonstrate how morphological and constructional annotation can be effective for the exploration of narratives.

Constructional associations trump lexical associations in processing valency coercion

Abstract The paper investigates the interaction of lexical and constructional meaning in valency coercion processing, and the effect of (in)compatibility between verb and construction for its successful resolution (Perek, Florent & Martin Hilpert. 2014. Constructional tolerance: Cross-linguistic differences in the acceptability of non-conventional uses of constructions. Constructions and Frames 6(2). 266–304; Yoon, Soyeon. 2019. Coercion and language change: A usage-based approach. Linguistic Research 36(1). 111–139). We present an online experiment on valency coercion (the first one on Italian), by means of a semantic priming protocol inspired by Johnson, Matt A. & Adele E. Goldberg. 2013. Evidence for automatic accessing of constructional meaning: Jabberwocky sentences prime associated verbs. Language & Cognitive Processes 28(10). 1439–1452. We test priming effects with a lexical decision task which presents different target verbs preceded by coercion instances of four Italian argument structure constructions, which serve as primes. Three types of verbs serve as target: lexical associate (LA), construction associate (CA), and unrelated (U) verbs. LAs are semantically similar to the main verb of the prime sentence, whereas CAs are prototypical verbs associated to the prime construction. U verbs serve as a mean of comparison for the two categories of interest. Results confirm that processing of valency coercion requires an integration of both lexical and constructional semantics. Moreover, compatibility is also found to influence coercion resolution. Specifically, constructional priming is primary and independent from compatibility. A secondary priming effect for LA verbs is also found, which suggests a contribution of lexical semantics in coercion resolution – especially for low-compatibility coercion coinages.

The effects of extensive reading on young Korean students’ construction development

AbstractThis study explores how input-focused implicit learning through extensive reading (ER) facilitates construction development in Korean-speaking young EFL students. Twenty-four EFL students, 10–13 years old, participated in ER as an after-school activity for four weeks (ER group). Their construction development in writing was assessed using seven argument structure constructions. The ER group’s performance preceding and following ER activities was compared to 24 young EFL students who did not engage in ER (baseline group). The results showed that the ER group improved their production of ditransitive and caused-motion constructions. Compared to the baseline group, the ER group not only produced a greater number of these constructions, but also used a wider variety of verbs not observed prior to the ER experiences, indicating an expansion of their linguistic knowledge with the target constructions. We conclude by addressing the pedagogical implications for using ER with young EFL students.

The effects of extensive reading on young Korean students’ construction development

AbstractThis study explores how input-focused implicit learning through extensive reading (ER) facilitates construction development in Korean-speaking young EFL students. Twenty-four EFL students, 10–13 years old, participated in ER as an after-school activity for four weeks (ER group). Their construction development in writing was assessed using seven argument structure constructions. The ER group’s performance preceding and following ER activities was compared to 24 young EFL students who did not engage in ER (baseline group). The results showed that the ER group improved their production of ditransitive and caused-motion constructions. Compared to the baseline group, the ER group not only produced a greater number of these constructions, but also used a wider variety of verbs not observed prior to the ER experiences, indicating an expansion of their linguistic knowledge with the target constructions. We conclude by addressing the pedagogical implications for using ER with young EFL students.

The cognition of caused-motion events in Spanish and German: An Agentive Cognitive Construction Grammar analysis

ABSTRACT In this paper, I present a comparative analysis of caused-motion events (involving placement, removal, causation and transfer) in Spanish and German within an emerging Cognitive Construction Grammar theory of mind and language. The aim of this article is to offer a syntactic account by which argument structure information is required to understand the encoding of transferred object/target path in these languages. The core theoretical observation is that the spatial representation of events of transfer and placement is reliant on embodied patterns of constructional attachment (constructional attachment patterns) that are not attributable to typological differences such as particle or monomorphemic verbal encoding of target path. This insight can be summarized as follows: typologically different languages encode caused-motion information in an argument structure construction, while the specific semantics of verbs encode stance, object, shape, weight and target path structure. In Spanish, verbal object–path encoding does not require the use of specific placement markers, since speakers identify the form and shape of objects encoded by specific verbs. In German, object shape and form, as well as path, are encoded by specific particles, prefixes and base verbs. The conclusion is that both argument structure and verbal meaning are required to understand the way speakers perceive and further conceptualize reality through language.

영어와 한국어의 논항구조 구문 대조 연구

This paper aims to propose a contrastive analysis of English and Korean argument structure constructions (ASCs) in the framework of Construction Grammar. Although Construction Grammar is best known for its thesis that ASCs can exist independently of argument taking verbs in English, it has yet to be investigated whether the equivalent patterns of argument structures or ASCs are available in Korean. In order to find the equivalent patterns, the present paper examined 7 types of English ASCs (of Goldberg 1995, 2019) and their Korean counterparts. As a result, it turned out that Korean equivalents of English examples of ASCs with coercion effects do not involve coercion effects. However, this does not indicate that Korean ASCs can not exist independently of argument taking verbs because it is observed that transitive construction exceptionally produces coercion effects, and case marking postpositions and verb endings are playing a pivotal role in the emergence of ASCs and other constructions in Korean.

Constructional creativity in a Romance language

Abstract The present contribution summarizes findings on the understudied area of Italian valency coercion – i. e. the interaction of verbs and argument structure constructions in novel and creative ways – from four different studies. It highlights their innovative character, theoretical significance, and crosslinguistic implications for Construction Grammar. The paper suggests that valency coercion resolution involve different phenomena, such as distributional properties of constructions and compatibility between verb and construction. Sociolinguistic factors such as age and diatopic variables are also suggested to be relevant.

The issue of specifying slots in argument structure constructions in terms of form and meaning

Abstract In Construction Grammar theory, constructions are generally described as form-meaning pairings. It will be argued here that the formal specifications of some abstract constructions are so vague that the notion of form needs to be discussed rather critically. We aim to demonstrate how, in the English predicative and intransitive-motion constructions, the slots of more general constructions can be seen as being specified indirectly through sets of mini-constructions.

Motion events again: Delimiting constructional patterns

Languages can be divided into two main types depending on how they express motion (Talmy, 1991, 2000). Satellite-framed languages (S-languages; e.g., English, German, Polish) express path outside the verb root leaving the verb free to encode manner (e.g., The bottle floated into the cave), while verb-framed languages (V-languages; e.g., Japanese, Spanish, Turkish) lexicalize path in the verb root and manner in an adjunct (e.g., Spanish La botella entró en la cueva flotando ‘The bottle entered the cave floating’). However, recent works suggest that languages also exhibit intratypological variation, i.e., variation within the same typological affiliation as well as intralinguistic variation, i.e., variation within particular languages. This paper aims to further delimit motion encoding patterns by focusing on the interplay between abstract argument structure constructions, verbs, and directional satellites. Based on data from Germanic, Romance, and Slavic languages, we propose that (i) Talmy's (2000) typology can be better accounted for in terms of verb-construction combinability constraints and (ii) intertypological, intratypological, and intralinguistic variability in the expression of motion can be regarded as a byproduct of the availability of particular verb-construction mappings in the world's languages.

Applying Constructionist Approaches to Teaching English Argument Structure Constructions to EFL Learners

The present study investigated the effects of construction‐based instruction on Korean English as a foreign language (EFL) learners’ production of the English argument structure constructions. Within the theoretical framework of construction grammar (Goldberg, 1995), the authors presented college students with English constructions in a hierarchical network and provided contextually meaningful visual scenes in connection with the language input. Results from translation and guided writing tasks, which were implemented before, immediately after, and 4 weeks after the learning sessions, revealed that learners who received construction‐based instruction outperformed those who received form‐centered instruction in both immediate and delayed posttests. Further, among the construction‐based groups, only those learners who were presented with the target constructions in a network hierarchy maintained improved performance in the delayed posttest. The authors conclude by addressing the pedagogical implications for construction‐based teaching in the EFL context.

Constructional variation with two near-synonymous verbs: the case of schicken and senden in present-day German

This article reports on the results of a corpus-based study of alternating ditransitive argument structures comprising an agent-like, a theme-like and a recipient-like argument in combination with the ditransitive verbs schicken and senden in present-day German. The alternation concerns the Indirect Object Construction with the addressee (i.e. the recipient-like argument) expressed in the dative case (IOC) and the Prepositional Object Construction with the addressee either introduced by the preposition an (+ accusative) or zu (+ dative) (POC). The quantitative analysis (logistic regression and Conditional Inference Tree) is based on N = 2689 naturally occurring sentences drawn from the Deutsches Referenzkorpus (IDS Mannheim). The article first presents a probabilistic account of the data that aims to predict the interplay of a wide array of morphosyntactic, semantic, pragmatic and processing factors. The problem with an exclusively semantic explanation of the alternation is that both IOC and POC can express the same senses. However, there are tendencies that relate IOC in particular to pronominal and individual addressees, whereas POC correlates more strongly with collective, dual reference and object addressees as well as passive voice. The article then proposes a typologically-informed account of the data that combines a constructional analysis with valency theory and a layered approach to the meanings of both the schematic argument structure construction and the verbs schicken and senden. The account corroborates the narrow definition of a construction as an encoded form-meaning pairing that allows for formal and pragmatic variation of the recipient-like argument. Accordingly, IOC and POC are not considered constructions in their own right but variants of a semantically underdetermined construction with an underspecified goal argument in present-day German.

Testing Usage-Based Approaches to Assessing EFL Learners’ Development of English Argument Structure Constructions

Testing Usage-Based Approaches to Assessing EFL Learners’ Development of English Argument Structure Constructions

Constructions, generalizations, and the unpredictability of language

AbstractAttempts at predicting syntactic behavior from semantic or other generalizations are often unsatisfactory. It is argued that the notion of competition as used byGoldberg (2019)can serve as an explanation for unpredictability in language because established formulations that are preferred over others automatically distort the collocational profiles of verbs in argument structure constructions. As a consequence of this, an approach of seeing items as items-in-constructions (and not as elements attracted to them) is argued for. It is then shown how this items-in-constructions view can be applied to designing models of reference constructicons and mental constructicons.

Effects of verb–construction association on second language constructional generalizations in production and comprehension

How strongly a verb is associated with a construction plays a crucial role in the learning of argument structure constructions. We examined the effect of verb–construction association strength on second language (L2) constructional generalization by analysing L2 learners’ production and comprehension of two complex constructions (i.e. ditransitive and resultative), comparable in constructional complexity and input frequency but distinctive in verb–construction association. Using a learner corpus study, we found greater verbal usage variability in the production of ditransitive rather than resultative constructions. The results of an acceptability judgment task indicated that L2 learners accepted the ditransitive sentences regardless of whether they contained high-frequency or low-frequency verbs, but learners were more likely to accept the resultative sentences when they read high-frequency rather than low-frequency verbs. These findings suggest that verb–construction association affects the learning of argument structure constructions, supporting its contribution to the constructional generalization.

Theway-construction in World Englishes*

AbstractTheway-construction (e.g.He sang his way into our hearts) is a highly idiomatic English Argument Structure construction. Apart from a brief discussion in Davies and Fuchs (2015: 13), however, no study has looked at the construction in World Englishes. Drawing on more than 14,000 tokens from theCorpus of Global Web-Based English(GloWbE), we present the first in-depth empirical analysis of the construction across various types of World Englishes. Our results provide support forHoffmann’s (2014)claim of the correlation of Dynamic Model stage (Schneider 2003,2007) and constructional productivity: the overall frequency of the construction as well as the productivity of the verbal, nominal, and prepositional slots of the construction correlate positively with a variety’s phase in the Dynamic Model. Moreover, it turns out that the less entrenched a variety is according to the Dynamic Model, the stronger is its tendency to select specific prototypical, or frequent, fillers in the constructional slots. Finally, we find no evidence for the reliteralisation hypothesis, i.e. that less advanced varieties exhibit a preference for concrete verbs or nouns.

A Review on the Role of Token Frequency in the Acquisition of Argument Structures

The role of frequency in second language acquisition has become an important focus among second language acquisition researchers. Argument structure, as one of the core topics of verbs, has always been the focus of academic attention. Frequency has a certain influence on second language construction acquisition, and the corresponding research is abundant. This paper reviews the research on the acquisition of argument structure construction with token frequency and its enlightenment to teaching, and puts forward some suggestions for future research.

Argument structure, conceptual metaphor and semantic change

AbstractIn contrast to grammaticalization studies of lexical verbs changing into auxiliaries, the realm of semantic changes associated with lexical verbs is an understudied area of historical semantics. We concentrate on the emergence of verbs of success from more semantically concrete verbs, uncovering six conceptual metaphors which all co-occur with non-canonical encoding of subjects in Indo-European. Careful scrutiny of the relevant data reveals a semantic development most certainly inherited from Indo-European; hence, we reconstruct adat-‘succeeds’ construction at different levels of schematicity for Proto-Indo-European, including a novel reconstruction of a conceptual metaphor,success is motion forward, and the mapping between this metaphor and the verb-class-specific argument structure construction. Hence, this article offers a systematic analysis of regularity in semantic change, highlighting the importance of predicate and argument structure for lexical semantic developments.