Constructional Idiom Research Articles

Vete a freír cristales

Abstract The constructional idiom [IRSE/ANDAR(SE)[imperative] a CLAUSE[infinitive]] (e.g., Vete a freír espárragos, lit. ‘go to fry asparagus’; Iros a tomar viento, lit. ‘go to get wind’) is commonly used in Spanish to convey the speaker’s strong rejection, and is a hallmark of colloquial language. This makes it an excellent candidate for exploring the phenomenon of extravagance, both because of these characteristics and its structure, which includes an empty slot filled with a clause headed by an infinitive. This structural aspect contributes to variability, as its high token frequency also results in high type frequency. The corpus analysis (Sketch Engine) presented in this paper allows us to illustrate the relationship between creativity and intensification, as well as between innovation and convention. Besides, it underscores the gradual nature of creativity, culminating in extravagance, which speakers employ to gain salience and, in turn, amplify the expressiveness and emotional impact of their statements.

Por mí como si te operas. Constructional idioms of rejection from a constructionist approach

Abstract The present study explores partially filled idioms that go beyond the limits of the Spanish phraseological tradition, in that it focuses on semi-schematic patterns that had been relegated to the periphery and does not restrict itself to the pairing phraseological expression and lexicalized form. With a corpus comprising 592 instances extracted from the esTenTen18 corpus (Sketch Engine), the objective in the study of the constructional idioms [a PRON como si X] and [por PRON como si X] is twofold. First, to shed light on the “pragmatic point” (Kay and Fillmore 1999) of these discontinuous patterns by describing their rejection illocutionary force, their colloquial dialogic context, and their intensifying speech act; and second, to delve into the lexical variability of the constructions under study in the intersection of creativity and extravagance.

Cardinal numerals in Akan

This paper presents a Construction Morphology account of complex cardinal numeral formation in Akan (Kwa, Niger-Congo). Through a detailed description of the Akan numeral system, which is decimal, we identify various ranges of cardinal numerals and show that they share structures with other constructions in the language because they are either compounds or coordinate constructions. We show that, consistent with crosslinguistic patterns, the two arithmetic operations that underpin the construction of cardinal numerals in Akan are addition and multiplication and they are formally realised differently. While multiplication is achieved mainly through compounding (and reduplication), addition is expressed mainly through compounding and coordination. The Construction Morphology framework allows us to account for the full range of Akan cardinal numerals in a consistent manner, showing how numerals relate to other constructions in the language. We posit two constructional schemas for the two arithmetic operations, with various subschemas for different instantiating constructions, including some constructional idioms in which certain recurrent forms are pre-specified.

Being itself: On German selbst in synthetic compounds

German synthetic compounds containing selbst have traditionally been treated as reflexive in nature. However, this view cannot cope on the one hand with the basic value of selbst as focus particle and not as pronoun and on the other with the non-reflexive value of many compounds whose meaning range from purely intensification of the understood agent of the activity as in Selbstbau ‘do-it yourself-construction’ to anti-causativity like Selbstentzündung ‘self-ignition’. In this paper, we will consider a different option, namely to interpret the focus particle selbst as a flag for signaling contrastive coreference. This option can be concretely operationalized in constructional terms as a case of constructional idiom.

Metapragmatic neology in digital discourse

This note addresses the topic of Judith Bridges’s focus article, namely ‑splain neologisms such as mansplain, thinsplain and covidsplain, from the perspective of morphological theory. I attempt to show that Morphopragmatics, a subfield of morphology, can account for the complex pragmatics of word formation processes like those in ‑splain neology. I propose that the analysis of ‑splain words as constructional idioms, under the framework of Construction Morphology, provides a suitable account of the pragmatic effects associated with the innovations in this lexical pattern.

Intransitive Phrasal-Prepositional Verbs in English: A Case of Constructional Idiom

There are intransitive phrasal-prepositional verbs in English which are intermediate between fixed and free combinations such as look in on ‘visit’ in He looked in on his parents. They are not permanently fixed with the idiomatic meaning, but partly, though limitedly, productive such as call in on, drop in on, pop in on, etc. This paper argues that these multiword combinations are a constructional idiom that is stored in the lexicon as an underspecified form with the constructional meaning. The idiom has the unspecified verb (V) and noun phrase (NP) with the particle (Prt) and preposition (P) specified, as in V in on NP ‘visit NP’. It is then fused with a compatible lexical verb in the lexicon to form a lexical VP, and then with a suited noun phrase in phrasal syntax to complete the VP. This lexical VP analysis is proposed with an alternative in terms of Jackendoff’s (2002) parallel architecture of grammar.

Affective stance in constructional idioms: A usage-based constructionist approach to Mandarin [yòu X yòu Y

The Mandarin Chinese [yòu X yòu Y] is a semi-formulaic construction with two open slots X and Y, which admit a range of lexical input. Existing studies of this constructional idiom are incomplete due to the lack of a theoretical commitment to construction-level form-function pairing on the one hand and limitations in empirical data to support putative structural constraints on the other hand. This study takes a usage-based constructionist approach and offers quantitative and qualitative analyses of both naturally occurring corpus data and elicited native speaker response data. Our corpus-based findings demonstrate that [yòu X yòu Y] as a constructional idiom is highly productive, admitting all three major lexical classes in its open slots with a preponderance of adjectives. Structural constraints on X and Y are subject to frequency of use and idiosyncrasies of lexical input. The compositional semantics of X and Y concentrates in the perceptual and evaluative domains of experience. Results from the response data demonstrate that [yòu X yòu Y] expresses personal affective stance (i.e. personal liking or disliking) toward the perceptual information specified in the X and Y slots. Native speakers are not only aware of, but are able to employ, this constructional meaning in affectively appropriate contexts when given options that differed in constructional pattern but not in core lexical input. Together, our findings point to the expression of personal affective stance as the constructional pragmatic function of [yòu X yòu Y] that is larger than the sum of the meanings of the components.

Constructional idioms of ‘insanity’ in English and Spanish: A corpus-based study

This paper presents a corpus-based study of constructions in English and Spanish, with a special emphasis on equivalent semantic-functional counterparts, and potential mismatches. Although usage/corpus-based Construction Grammar (CxG) has attracted much attention in recent years, most studies have dealt exclusively with monolingual constructions. In this paper we will focus on two constructions that represent conventional ways to express ‘insanity’ in both languages. The analysis will cover grammatical, semantic and informative aspects in order to establish a multi-linguistic prototype of the constructions. To that end, data from several giga-token corpora of contemporary spoken English and Spanish (parallel and comparable) have been selected. This study advances the explanatory potential of constructional idioms for the study of idiomaticity, variability and cross-language analysis. In addition, relevant findings on the dialectal distribution of certain idiom features across both languages and their national varieties are also reported.

Morphologie und Semantik der "n"-Erweiterung bei "Muttern" und "Vatern" im Deutschen

This paper deals with German kinship terms ending with the form n (Muttern, Vatern). Firstly, data from newspapers are presented that show that especially Muttern denotes very special meanings that can only be derived to a limited extent from the lexical base: a) Muttern referring to a home where mother cares for you, b) Muttern standing for overprotection, and c) Muttern representing a special food style (often embedded in prepositional phrases and/or comparative constructions like wie bei or wie von Muttern). Secondly, it is argued that the addition of n to kinship terms is not a word-formation pattern, but that these word forms are instead lexicalized and idiomatized in contemporary German. Hence, a diachronic scenario is applied to account for the data. It is argued in the present paper that the n-forms have been borrowed from Low German dialects, especially from constructional idioms of the type ‘X-wie bei Muttern’ and that forms were enriched by semantic concepts associated with the dialect. Dieser Beitrag ist ursprünglich im Peter-Lang-Verlag erschienen (https://www.ingentaconnect.com/contentone/plg/jwf/2021/00000005/00000001/art00002)

Paradigmatic pattern analysis

Abstract The phrase Sprache ist der Schlüssel zur Integration (“language is the key to integration”) is found frequently in the discourse around immigration in the German-speaking countries. Based on a corpus-linguistic analysis of this phrase, this paper proposes the existence of a particular type of constructional idiom I refer to as ‘paradigmatic pattern’. Like a metaphorical pattern (in the sense of Metaphorical Pattern Analysis), a paradigmatic pattern establishes a correspondence between a word occurring in a particular slot of the idiom and another word more typical of that slot, contributing to a conceptual mapping between the domains instantiated by these words. Unlike in the case of metaphorical patterns, the domain evoked by the paradigmatic pattern is not the domain in which the pattern occurs in its literal meaning, but a domain evoked by a highly frequent collexeme in one of the slots. As in the case of metaphorical patterns, however, this collexeme contributes (aspects of) its meaning even when it is replaced by another word. I suggest a generalized version of Metaphorical Pattern Analysis, referred to as Paradigmatic Pattern Analysis, to deal with such expressions.

Not on my watch and similar not-fragments: stored forms with pragmatic content

ABSTRACT This paper discusses the English idiom Not on my watch, which is a member of a family of both lexically fixed and constructional idioms, including Not if I can help it, Not as long as I … and, as a more distant member, Not in a million years. I argue that in these expressions, not is technically a negative proform referring to a contextually salient proposition and that, at least across conversational turns, it reverses the polarity of that clause. However, attempts to reconstruct Not on my watch as a full clause (e.g. This will not happen on my watch) do not do justice to the fact that this phrase is felt to be a single unit, as is witnessed, moreover, by its capacity to trigger subject-auxiliary inversion (e.g. Not on my watch will you be harmed). Functionally, not on my watch and its close relatives do not just emphatically deny a proposition but many of them are also used as a pledge not to let something happen.

Insubordinated concessive imperatives

The article deals with a constructional idiom attested in both Baltic languages as well as in the neighbouring Slavonic and Fennic languages and in Yiddish, containing as its central component what is argued to be an insubordinated imperatival concessive clause and characterising a situation by hyperbolically describing the consequences conceivably flowing from it or a course of action it could be imagined to induce. This construction, which is clearly an areal feature, has a stable constructional meaning but its formal shape is extraordinarily fluid and differentiated. It also displays a considerable degree of cross-linguistic variation partly resulting from separate developments and partly from interaction with other constructional idioms as well as with other languages. The article deals with the structure and origin of the construction and gives an overview of its variation across languages.

Phrasem-Konstruktionen kontrastiv Deutsch–Spanisch: ein korpusbasiertes Beschreibungsmodell anhand ironischer Vergleiche

Abstract In the persistently sparse interlingual studies in the field of Construction Grammar, grammatical constructions are the main concern of research (Koch 2016; Boas and Ziem 2018), while constructional idioms, defined as form–meaning pairings with lexically fixed constituents and free lexical slots, have been analyzed mainly monolingually, with very few exceptions. See, amongst others, Dobrovol’skij and Pöppel (2017), Mollica and Schafroth (2018) and Mellado Blanco et al. (forthcoming). This lack of studies from a contrastive point of view may be related to the lexical underspecification of constructional idioms and to the difficulties in assessing their often high pragmatic potential. Against this background, the present paper aims to give impetus to the contrastive studies in the field of constructional idioms and Construction Grammar by means of the language pair German–Spanish. In order to achieve this goal, a multi-level corpus-based description method for the determination and analysis of interlingual equivalent constructional idioms at the lexicographical level was developed using five comparison parameters. The contrastive description model was successfully implemented on the comparative constructional idiom [von A so viel verstehen/Ahnung haben/sich auskennen wie X von/vom Y] (‘von A absolut nichts verstehen’) ([from A V to have as much understanding / knowledge as X from Y] (‘to understand absolutely nothing from A’)) and on its functionally equivalent construction in Spanish [Ventender/saber de A lo (mismo) que/como yo de X]. Both comparative constructions are characterized by their negation value and a pronounced ironic meaning, respectively. Their intralingual description from a constructional grammatical point of view represents a further goal of this paper.

Chinese Motion-Directional Construction: A Conceptual and Cognitive Analysis

AbstractThis article proposes an analysis of the Motion-Directional Construction in Chinese in the Conceptual-Cognitive approach as outlined by Jackendoff and Langacker. This article first argues that the Motion-Directional Construction consists of conceptual subordination, expressing different mental spaces. Then, it examines the syntactic and semantic behaviors of the construction arguing that it is more like a constructional idiom. In particular, we discuss the case ofpa‘climb’ and generalize further that the motion verbs in Chinese typically express manners of movement. Within the Conceptual Semantics, we argue that a level of grammatical relation may not be necessary; it is the argument and conceptual structures that we need in the cognitive structure. Finally, we present the data and suggest the typological relevance of the Motion-Directional Construction.

Consanguinity and Possession in Varieties of Dutch

Southern varieties of Dutch use the 1st person plural form of the possessive pronounonsas a marker of consanguinity with proper names, as inons Emma‘Emma, our consanguineous family member’. This use ofons‘our’ has some remarkable properties: It is incompatible with adjectival modification and contrastive stress. These properties are shared with a construction from Standard Dutch: complex prenominals-possessors consisting of the 1st person singular form of the possessive pronoun and a kinship term as inmijn vaders fiets‘my father's bike’. We propose that both these constructions are constructional idioms (Booij 2002), a lexical template with a variable part. This offers a straightforward account of the properties of these constructions.*

Personal Attribute Nominals in Akan: A Constructionist Perspective

This paper provides a constructionist account of Akan constructions of the form ahoɔ den ‘strength’ and asoɔ den ‘disobedience’ which had been previously analysed as compounds. Through the analysis of previously cited examples in the relevant literature and additional examples collected purposively from written sources, it is shown that the constructions exhibit a constellation of formal and semantic/pragmatic properties that get masked in a straightforward compounding analysis. Also posited is a constructional idiom whose formal structure is motivated by a typical syntactic construction (predicate adjective construction) and a prefixation schema, through the process of template unification. Thus, some of the properties of this construction are motivated by already existing constructions, even though their properties may not be entirely predictable from those other constructions, confirming that language is a network. It is shown that the construction has limited productivity because of some stringent restrictions on possible constituents. Finally, a broad semantic classification of the constructions is provided and some properties of the major classes discussed.

Genitive Constructions as Constructional Idioms in English

Genitive Constructions as Constructional Idioms in English

The nominalization of Dutch particle verbs: Schema unification and second order schemas

Abstract The event nominalizations of Dutch particle verbs and other types of separable complex verbs are not derivations from particle verbs, but compounds nouns, with a deverbal head preceded by a word that functions semantically as a modifier of the verbal base of the head noun. This structural analysis explains two empirical generalizations: (i) simplex verbs allow for nominalization with -ing when embedded in compounds; (ii) particle verbs have corresponding nominalizations with the same unproductive type of nominalization as the corresponding simplex verbs. In order to account for these generalizations, the following related concepts from the theoretical framework of Construction Morphology are used: the representation of word formation patterns by means of constructional schemas (in which form-meaning asymmetries can be specified), schema unification (with unified schemas having their own degree of productivity), constructional idioms (constructional schemas with lexically filled slots), and second order schemas. Thus, this case study illustrates the descriptive power of Construction Morphology.

A Constructional Idiom in Modern Hebrew: The Influence of English on a Native Hebrew Collocation

This article discusses a constructional idiom that has developed in recent Modern Hebrew, based on the Classical Hebrew collocation expressing the committing of suicide, with the verb replaced by an open position that can be filled by a wide range of verbs. It is argued that the development of the idiom involved a syntactic re-analysis of the original collocation whereby the pp is reanalyzed as a result pp and the reflexive is analyzed as a non-subcategorized np. It is suggested that the idiom developed under the influence of a similar productive construction in English. The interpretation of the constructional idiom is briefly explored and comparison is made with another constructional idiom based on a group of native collocations under the influence of English.

Antiphrasis-Based Comparative Constructional Idioms in Spanish

Abstract: The aim of this study is to show the character of the antiphrasis-based comparative structures in Spanish [SUBJ^sub [anaph]^ V^sub TENER^ de S1 como/lo que yo de S2] and [SUBJ^sub [anaph]^ V^sub [COGN]^ de S1 como/lo que yo de S2], respectively with the referential meaning 'not to be S1' and 'to not know/understand absolutely anything about S1' and the pragmatic meaning disagreement/criticism. These schemata in Spanish have not been studied previously, either from the perspective of phraseology (in terms of their character as idiomatic schemata) or that of Construction Grammar (looking at their value as idioms). Hence, this study has a double aim: on the one hand to fill a gap in Spanish phraseological research, exploring in detail the value of these structures in terms of schematicity and as and on the other to establish a unifying bridge between Spanish phraseology and Construction Grammar. For the study a corpus has been compiled of 435 occurrences of the construction [SUBJ^sub [anaph]^ V^sub TENER^ de S1 como/lo que yo de S2] and 240 occurrences of the construction [SUBJ^sub [anaph]^ V^sub [COGN]^ de S1 como/lo que yo de S2], these drawn either from the CREA corpus or from the Internet/Google using the Webcorp tool.Keywords: Constructional Grammar, Spanish Comparative Idioms, Antiphrasis, Constructional IdiomsIntroductionConstructional Idioms: DefinitionFor the present study1 we take as a starting point Goldberg's (2006: 215) definition of constructions as learned pairings of form with semantic and discourse function, including morphemes or words, filled and fully general phrasal patterns. Thus, with the sentence Diner: Waiter, what's this fly doing in my soup?, according to Kay and Fillmore (1999), the underlying construction is [What's X doing Y?].Within constructions, we will focus on the partially filled phrasal patterns, or constructional idioms, to use the terminology of Taylor (2014: 11), who defines them as patterns (of varying degrees of productivity and schematicity) for the formation of expressions, but whose syntactic, semantic, pragmatic and even phonological properties cannot be derived from general principles, whether universal or language-specific (see also Dobrovol'skij, 2011; 2012; Mellado Blanco, 2015a; 2015b). According to Fischer (2006), are pairs of form and content, whose meaning sich nicht aus den Bedeutungen seiner Teile ergibt, that is, is not the result of the sum of the meanings of the two constituents (cf Staffeldt, 2011: 132; Stathi, 2011: 149). Some examples from Spanish are:* [DET[EL] S1/ADJ1sg de DET[LOS] N1/ADJ1pl]: el templo de los templos (Eng. the temple of temples, i.e., a very important temple from the point of view of the speaker)* [TODO DET[UNO] N]: toda una obra, todo un detalle (Eng. all a work, all a detail, i.e., a very important work/detail to the speaker)* [N1 con N1]: puerta con puerta, pared con pared (Eng. door with door, wall with wall, i.e., cheek by jowel)* [no SER de V[INF]/N]: No soy de comer mucho (Eng. I'm not of eating much, i.e., I'm not one for eating much)* [Y venga a V[INF]]: Y venga a comer/hablar/... (Eng. And come to eat/speak/..., i.e., he/she eats/speaks/... again and again)* [ir de ADJ[POSITIV]]: ir de guaperas/pijo/... (Eng. to go around beautiful/brattish/..., i.e., to boast to be very beautiful/brattish/...)The term constructional idiom (Taylor, 2014) is to a greater or lesser degree the same phenomenon as the German terms modellierte Bildungen (Cernyseva, 1975), phraseologisierte Muster (Eckert, 1979), Phraseoschablonen (Fleischer, 1997: 130-134, Donalies, 2009), typische grammatisch-stilistische Konstruktionen, idiomatische Konstruktionsmuster (Finkbeiner, 2008: 218), Modellbildungen (Burger, 2010: 45), syntaktische Pragungen (Feilke, 1994), semantisch-strukturelle Modelle (Dobrovol'skij, 1988; Hundt, 2005), syntaktische Ausdrucksmodelle mit primar pragmatischer Pragung: Topik-Muster (Feilke, 1996: 242) and the English terms lexically open idioms (Fillmore et al. …