Construction Grammar Perspective Research Articles

A Study of “AB Ren” From the Perspective of Construction Grammar

The “AB Ren” construction such as 打工人da gong ren ‘wage earner’ is fast becoming one of the key instruments in a riot of social media. In this corpus-based study to explore the nature of the “AB Ren” construction from Goldberg’s construction grammar perspective, a total of 108 “AB Ren” expressions were retrieved from the Beijing Language and Culture University Modern Chinese Corpus (BCC), and social media network Weibo. The study aims to investigate the formal features, constructional meaning, social functions and implied cognitive mechanisms behind the “AB Ren” construction. From the standpoint of the formal composition, this construction consists of two parts, the variable part and the fixed part. It can be divided into three categories (verb, noun, and adjective compounds). The “AB Ren” construction has the independent constructional meaning, which is used to describe a certain group of people who are engaged with an occupation corresponding to the “AB” part and are fond of particular activities as well as individuals who are defined as possessing certain features. Because of the high frequency of occurrences, some expressions acquire new emotional meanings as far as constructional meanings are concerned. A group of commonly-appeared “AB Ren” expressions, combining the use of metaphorical and metonymical mechanisms, illustrate language simplicity and are a great way to express self-encouragement and mockery. This study reveals the common generation trends of popular language on the internet in today’s world and the

Corpus linguistics meets historical linguistics and construction grammar: how far have we come, and where do we go from here?

Abstract This paper aims to give an overview of corpus-based research that investigates processes of language change from the theoretical perspective of Construction Grammar. Starting in the early 2000s, a dynamic community of researchers has come together in order to contribute to this effort. Among the different lines of work that have characterized this enterprise, this paper discusses the respective roles of qualitative approaches, diachronic collostructional analysis, multivariate techniques, distributional semantic models, and analyses of network structure. The paper tries to contextualize these approaches and to offer pointers for future research.

A topic which I want to know more about – preposition placement in finite WH-relative clauses in World Englishes

The present article analyzes the use of preposition stranding (the world which we live in) and pied-piping (the world in which we live) in finite WH-relative clauses in twelve varieties of English. In the light of previous studies, it assumes that the strength of processing constraints and formality effects that drive speakers’ constructional choices should correlate with Dynamic Model stages (Schneider 2007). However, drawing on data from the International Corpus of English (ICE) and using mixed-effects logistic regression analysis, the study shows that processing factors affect speakers of all Dynamic Model stages in a very similar way. At the same time, clear differences between variety stages are observed with respect to formality and topic, which strongly affect Phases IV and V but not Phase III. These results are interpreted from a Usage-based Construction Grammar perspective.

Subject-Verb Agreement in Arabic from a Sign-Based Construction Grammar Perspective: A Sentence Types View

Arabic sentences exhibit both SVO and VSO word orders, and these word orders show different agreement patterns between the subject and the verb. This agreement asymmetry has been the subject of research for a long time. This paper adds to the body of literature regarding this topic by presenting a Sign-Based Construction Grammar account of the phenomenon. It differs from previous research in that it accounts for all sentence types in Arabic and not the ones that include a verb. To achieve this goal, a sentence type view is adopted instead of a word order view. This paper shows that adopting a sentence type view instead of a word order view allows for a better understanding of Arabic sentences and paves the way to accounts of other languages exhibiting the same phenomenon

Towards a usage-based characterisation of the English Superlative Object Construction

Abstract Little attention has been paid to the English Superlative Object Construction (SOC), as in She worked her hardest. The historical grammarians Jespersen (1909–1949) and Poutsma (1904–1929) are the only ones who do touch on the SOC, and they do so in passing relying on what seem to be the prototypical examples of the construction. This empirical evidence, though valuable for a first characterisation of the pattern, is insufficient to provide a detailed analysis of the form, function, frequency, and distribution of the SOC in Present Day English from the perspective of Construction Grammar. Based on usage-based data from COCA, this paper argues that the SOC qualifies as an intensifying comparative construction. Despite being low frequent and showing a set of highly entrenched, lexicalised units (e.g., smile [X] prettiest, work [X] hardest), the SOC is relatively productive, especially in informal registers where the construction can be easily accommodated to serve emotive, phatic, and conative functions.

A Collostructional and Constructional Approach to the Transitive out of -ing Construction

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the so-called transitive out of -ing construction, characterised by the structure of NP subject + V1 + NP object + out of VP2[-ing] predicate with corpus data (e.g., I cheated you all out of being in my life), and offers a construction-based account of the construction. In this paper, based on 725 examples from COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English), we first explore its real-life uses in terms of the verbs frequently found in the V1 slot, favoured distribution patterns based on their semantic classes, subject types, preferred interpretation types, and frequent V1-V2[-ing] pairs, adopting collostructional analyses. We then show that the overall grammatical properties of the transitive out of -ing construction as well as the idiosyncrasies of its two atypical variants can be best accounted for in the Construction Grammar perspective.

“But I Hate Him Just the Same”: On the Rise of Concessive Markers with Same

Concessivity in English is often associated with structures like Although it was hot, she went running. Although introduces a subordinate clause. There are also several markers of concessivity associated with coordinate structures, among them, all the same and nevertheless. The development of coordinate markers of concessivity has received little attention. Here I compare the histories of three markers that arose from expressions of identity: all the same, just the same, and at the same time. All arose at various times in Late Modern English. Rich rhetorical contexts for the development of concessive uses of all the same ‘exactly the same’ are attested in corpora. Contexts for the later development in the US of just the same are less rich, and analogy to all the same is probable. Both came to be well entrenched in concessive use and are used in clause-final as well as clause-initial and occasionally clause-medial position. By contrast, at the same time functions only marginally as a concessive. It is also used as an elaborator and is not attested in clause-final position. Data are analyzed from the perspective of Diachronic Construction Grammar. Implications for some current debates are discussed, specifically for establishing when a construction has come into being, what kinds of contexts enable this emergence, and what level of abstraction is appropriate for analysis of sets of related constructions. Finally, some modifications of hypotheses about position of connectives relative to the clause are suggested.

Form (Prosody)-Meaning (Pragmatics) pairings of discourse markers: A case study of Nǐ zhīdào (‘You Know’) as a construction in Chinese media interviews

This article makes the first empirical corpus-based study of the actual performance of the discourse marker (DM) nǐ zhīdào (NZ) in Chinese media interview conversations from the perspective of synchronic Construction Grammar (CxG).1 The main objective is to pair the prosody of NZ at varying utterance positions (‘form’ properties at prosodic and discourse structural levels) with its pragmatic functions (‘meaning’ properties at the discourse communicative level), to enhance our understanding within the existing literature, specifically in relation to pragmatics in spontaneous speech, and provide implications for the broader study of discourse markers. The analysis of the ‘form’ properties of NZ reveals distinct, context-specific attributes of such prosodic metrics as duration, tempo, pause, F0, and intensity at varying utterance positions; the analysis of its ‘meaning’ properties discovers pragmatic functions with characteristic utterance distributions; and the form-meaning pairing between prosody and pragmatics highlights the roles of prosody in deciphering and materializing pragmatics and of pragmatics in underlying and motivating prosody. This study has shown that insights gained from CxG can enhance our understanding of the fields of pragmatics, discourse, and interaction, and specific linguistic phenomena whose importance has been entrenched in these domains can be sufficiently explained using CxG. It follows that the notion of construction can be extended to the discourse (e.g., dialogue and conversation) level to approach the complexities of spoken language and address diverse elusive pragmatic issues like DMs effectively.

A Sea of-Noun vs. a Mountain of-Noun: A Quantitative Corpus-Based Study of Two Metaphorical Constructions

Applying the perspective of Construction Grammar and the corpus-based method known as Distinctive-Collexeme Analysis, this study seeks to identify nouns that indicate a strong preference either for the sea of-noun-construction or the mountain of-noun-construction. Based on the data extracted from the corpus, this study reveals that the constructions convey subtle nuances of meaning, reflect different degrees of metaphoricity, and have a strong tendency to occur with specific nouns.

Revisiting Gradience in Diachronic Construction Grammar: PPs and the Complement-Adjunct Distinction in the History of English

AbstractThe present paper discusses the concept of gradience and fuzziness from the perspective of Diachronic Construction Grammar. It does so by investigating verb-attached PPs in the history of English, with a focus on their semantic and syntactic functions and features over time. Specifically, the paper uses thePenn-Helsinki Parsed Corpora of Historical English, including texts from Middle English (PPCME2), Early Modern English (PPCEME), and Late Modern English (PPCMBE) to revisit the distinction between adjuncts and complements. In particular, I address the question whether this traditionally binary classification finds support in diachronic data, or whether PPs rather represent a gradience between prototypical adjunct- and complementhood. Furthermore, the paper assesses whether any change in the distribution and features of PPs (specifically an increase in complementhood) can be observed over time. Ultimately, the findings suggest a multi-level network of PPs that is diachronically very stable.

You don’t get to see that every day

Abstract This paper contributes to the study of grammaticalization phenomena from the perspective of Construction Grammar (Coussé et al. 2018). It is concerned with modal uses of the English verb get that express a permitted action, as in The prisoners always get to make one phone call. Different views exist on the contexts in which permissive get emerged. Gronemeyer (1999: 30) suggests that the permissive meaning derives from causative uses (I got him to confess). An alternative is proposed by van der Auwera et al. (2009: 283), who view permissive get as an extension of its acquisitive meaning (I got a present). We revisit these claims in the light of recent historical data from American English. Specifically, we searched the COHA (Davies 2010) for forms of get followed by to and a verb in the infinitive. Besides examples of permissive get, we retrieved examples of obligative got to (I got to leave), causative get (Who did you get to confess?), possessive got (What have I got to be ashamed of?), and a category that we label inchoative get (You’re getting to be a big girl now). Drawing on distributional semantic techniques (Perek 2016, 2018), we analyse how permissive get and inchoative get developed semantically over time. Our results are consistent with an account that represents an alternative to both Gronemeyer (1999) and van der Auwera et al. (2009), namely the idea that permissive get evolved out of inchoative uses that invited the idea of a permission.

Construction Grammar Meets Language Testing and Evaluation: Redefining & Ensuring Construct Validity

<p>Theoretical linguistics and teaching are concurrent, that is, neither can exist without the other. In other words, decisions made in (foreign) language teaching will inevitably affect how language testing and evaluation as a concept is designed and administered. For example, if a curriculum states that the English as a foreign language teachers need to make a distinction between a gerund and an infinitive in the classroom and teach it as such, then, this distinction will be tested or evaluated in one way or another. In this article, language testing and evaluation (LTE), an important component in language teaching, is combined with construction grammar (henceforth CxG), a salient theory of language with ample evidence to support its claims. Specifically, this article discusses how construct validity, test items, and rubrics can be reimagined from the perspective of usage-based construction grammar. </p>

The constructionalization of antonymous compounds

AbstractIn modern Chinese, the adverbchi-zaois regarded as an adjective-adjective compound, with morphemeschi‘late’ andzao‘early’ as extreme poles in a gradable temporality. The formation ofchi-zaoas an antonymous compound has not received much attention from a diachronic construction grammar perspective. This study reports on the historical change ofchi-zaoas evidence showing the interplay of antonymous compounds and constructionalization in modern Chinese. Based on corpus analysis, I found that the formation ofchi-zaoas a lexical construction inherits from previous changes but emerges instantaneously in Pre-Modern Chinese, where its form has been condensed and its meaning has been bleached to indicate subjectivity. Three arguments shed light on the model of constructionalization: (1) constructionalization at the compound level can be associated with three motivations: subjectivity, frequency, and metaphor; and (2) the operation of constructionalization is at work not only at the sentential and phrasal level but also at the morphological level of compound word formation in Chinese; (3) rhetoric as an output of language use plays a part in the development of constructionalization in relation to antonymous compounds.

한국어 문장 층위 구문의 식별과 기술

This paper aims to propose and test several strategies for identifying and describing sentence-level constructions in Korean from the perspective of construction grammar. Although Goldberg (2006: 5) has proposed a modified definition of constructions that covers even common and predictable patterns, many construction grammarians have tended to favour a butterfly collecting approach, focusing primarily on patterns with unusual semantic and grammatical properties. However, the application of Hilpert

Trends and Recent Change in the Syntactic Distribution of Degree Modifiers: Implications for a Usage-based Theory of Word Classes

This paper examines the syntactic distribution of degree modifiers in both spoken and written English. The results of the empirical case studies show that degree modifiers, both amplifiers (e.g., very, extremely) and downtoners (e.g., quite, pretty), are generally more often used in predication than in attribution, a result that is in line with earlier observations of the distribution of individual modifiers. This synchronic trend is also evident in diachronic developments: corpus data show that the recent frequency increase of intensifying this and that has largely taken place in predication, and the adjectivization of a class of -ed participles (e.g., interested, scared) can also be connected to their frequent co-occurrence with degree modifiers after be. Finally, the connection between degree modifiers and predicative usage has recently become stronger for a subset of modifiers (e.g., so, this, that) due to the decline of the “Big Mess” construction (e.g., so good an idea). From a theoretical perspective, this paper promotes a dynamic, usage-based model of word classes where frequency of use plays a role in categorization. The data investigated in the article are mainly discussed from the perspective of usage-based Construction Grammar, and the theoretical implications of the findings are examined both in light of a more traditional Construction Grammar network model of language and some recent ideas of overlapping word classes.

구문문법을 통해 본 ‘非X不可’의 의미 분류 및 화용조건 분석

The purpose of this paper is to classify the meanings of “非X不可” and to analyze its conditions of practicality used in a certain fixed forms in modern Chinese from the theoretical perspective of construction grammar.<BR> The first meaning that “非X不可” expresses is subjective wishes or aspirations. In order to express this meaning, the background must be that someone objects to the wish or aspiration or is involved in it who does not want to be.<BR> The second meaning that “非X不可” expresses is that certain actions are contextually required. The premise is that certain objective circumstances force the actor to engage in the actions in question.<BR> The third meaning that “非X不可” expresses is the speculation about the occurrence of an event. This conjecture holds that the event is unavoidable and will necessarily produce an unwanted result.<BR> Although the detailed meanings of “非X不可” are different, they are all convey a strong tone and discuss events that have not yet occurred.<BR> In addition, initially other components could be inserted between “非X” and “不可” in “非X不可,” but it became fixed and was used as a structure over time. In the process of this change, the function of “非” conveying negative judgment was weakened and the independence of “X” increased, leading to an expansion of possible meanings.

Uma perspectiva construtiva sobre a ascensão dos marcadores de discurso metatextual

Cognitive linguistics seeks to account for “a speaker’s knowledge of the full range of linguistic conventions” (LANGACKER, 1987; also GOLDBERG, 2006). It is surprising therefore that little attention has been paid in cognitive linguistics to the linguistic conventions called “discourse markers” (SCHIFFRIN, 1987) or “pragmatic markers” (FRASER, 2009, et passim). Pragmatic markers include signals of attention to social relationships (well, please), beliefs (I think, in fact), and discourse management (after all, anyway). Members of the third subtype are metatextual connectors of discourse segments (“discourse markers” in Fraser’s taxonomy). I argue that because pragmatic markers in general play a major role in negotiating meaning, they are an important part of speakers’ knowledge of language. Pragmatic markers are well-known not to have truth-conditional meaning, and not to be syntactically integrated with the host clause. However, they have conventional pragmatic meanings (HANSEN, 2012; FINKBEINER, 2019). I exemplify my recent research on the historical development in English of metatextual discourse markers with a diachronic construction grammar perspective on by the way (TRAUGOTT, 2020). Focus will be on the importance of routinized, replicated contexts in change (CROFT, 2001; BYBEE, 2010).

From movement into action to manner of causation: changes in argument mapping in the into-causative

Abstract Over the last 300 years, the into-causative (he talked his father into giving him money) increased in frequency and lexical diversity. Changes of this kind are often taken as evidence of functional expansion. From a Construction Grammar (CxG) perspective, this paper argues that what appears to be a loss of restrictions on the verbal slot results from changes in argument mapping links. As the construction provides the argument roles by mapping semantics (causer, causee, result) onto syntax (subject, object, oblique), stronger mapping links increasingly facilitated the use of verbs that are semantically and syntactically atypical for the expression of causation. Data from the Corpus of Historical American English confirm three predictions of this hypothesis with respect to shifts in (i) the semantic classes of matrix verbs, (ii) their general argument structure preferences, and (iii) voice-marking. The results provide evidence for a subtle semantic change from movement into action to manner of causation. The increase in frequency and productivity are hence explained as the consequence of the syntactic form becoming a more reliable cue for causative meaning. We discuss implications for models of language change against the background of current issues in Diachronic Construction Grammar (DCxG) pertaining to constructionalization vs. constructional change.

FRAZEOLOŠKE JEDINICE IZ PERSPEKTIVE KONSTRUKCIONE GRAMATIKE

Phraseological units have so far been primarily analyzed from a lexical-semantic, cog- nitive-linguistic, ethnolinguistic and pragmatic point of view. Recently, they have also been studied from the perspective of Construction Grammar, which considers these units as (phra- seological) constructions. While phraseological research has indicated that phraseological units are ready-made word-groups with idiomatic meaning, the constructionist approach indicates the existence of phraseological patterns or schemes; they have a unitary meaning, at least one of their constituent element is lexically specified, they are more or less productive and they have a certain function in discourse. The results obtained from the perspective of Construction Grammar will have a special impact on the lexicographic processing of phrase- ological constructions and foreign language learning.

Лексикализованные формы русских перцептивных глаголов как семейство конструкций

In the present study, lexicalized forms of the Russian perception verbs are treated from the construction grammar perspective. The lexicalized forms were drawn from the modern dictionaries of Standard Russian and supplied with appropriate usage examples from the Russian National Corpus. The paper presents a detailed overview of the forms concerned, encompassing both their formal and semantic features. Each lexicalized form is argued to be a construction, in the special sense accorded to the term in construction grammar. Moreover, not only lexicalized forms as listed in the dictionaries but also their specific instantiations (allowing for the variability of the verb form and the addition of extra elements, e.g., particles) are claimed to be constructions. The paper particularly focuses on the analysis of manifold relations between constructions. In construction grammar, this problem has been given scanty coverage, scholars largely concentrating on taxonomic relations between more and less schematic constructions. This particular type of relations can be said to manifest itself in the links between lexicalized forms and their instantiations. However, the data at hand make it possible to identify a number of other relations. These include the links between lexicalized forms and the corresponding verb as well as semantic relations including homonymy and polysemy, complete and partial synonymy. Taken together, they form an integrated network of relations, both formal and semantic. This is natural, given the fact that the corresponding verbs belong to the same lexical group. The paper argues for the term constructional family to be used in such cases. The constructional family is thus a subset of constructional networks.