Verb Constructions Research Articles

Argument Coreference Between Content Verbs and Predicative Nouns in Brazilian Portuguese

The literature on complement clauses and support/light verb constructions provides most of the available information on coreference between arguments of matrix and subordinate syntactic predicates. However, this phenomenon is largely unexplored when it comes to verb phrases consisting of a content verb and a predicative noun in object position, such as declarar paixão (“declare passion”), cumprir a promessa (“fulfill the promise”), responder perguntas (“answer questions”), or resistir à tentação (“resist temptation”). The notions of obligatory and non-obligatory coreference do not fully explain this phenomenon, since non-coreferential usage of these phrases leads to different types of coercion, which are relevant properties to classify these phrases. This paper proposes a pilot study of verb phrases of this kind, extracting them from a Brazilian Portuguese newspaper corpus aiming at their syntactic-semantic classification. This procedure revealed a total of 75 such verb phrases. Based on semantic coercion and distributional properties, four major classes divided into seven subclasses are proposed to cover two-thirds of the data. There is also a fifth class with 17 items in which coreference appears to be a contextual property, i.e., unrelated to lexical semantics, and eight hapax legomena. The results provide a new perspective on this understudied topic, identifying also irregular aspects deserving further studies

Escape from Noun Complement Clauses in Avatime

This paper discusses the status of island phenomena in Avatime, an endangered Kwa language of Ghana. We focus on clausal adjuncts, specifically noun complement clauses (NCCs). We show that while standard adjuncts are strong islands in Avatime, NCCs allow argument extraction. We suggest that this is related to the fact that NCCs in Avatime are not a type of relative clause. Instead, NCCs involve a kind of serial verb construction, which independently allows for extraction.

Rising datives: tomar ‘take’ expressions with nouns of ‘emotion’ and constructional network reconfiguration in Spanish

Abstract This diachronic, corpus-based study examines Spanish constructions formed with the verb tomar ‘take’ and nouns of ‘emotion’, including endogenous nouns with a target participant (e.g. cariño ‘affection’), exogenous nouns with a source or cause participant (e.g. tristeza ‘sadness’), and hybrid nouns allowing both options (e.g. miedo ‘fear’). Such constructions involve three different inchoative (‘begin to feel’) subschemas. The first one, the Prepositional-Stimulus subschema (e.g. tomar tristeza de algo ‘grow sad over something’), included exogenous and hybrid nouns and predominated in the Middle Ages, but disappeared by the 1800s. The other two subschemas, formed with endogenous and hybrid nouns, have survived until today. They include the Prepositional-Goal subschema (e.g. tomar cariño por alguien ‘grow fond of someone’), the most frequent of the two in the Middle Ages, and the Dative-Goal subschema (e.g. tomarle cariño a alguien ‘grow fond of someone’, lit. ‘take fondness to someone’), which presumably arose through analogy in the 1400s and subsequently marginalized its prepositional counterpart, becoming the default realization in present-day Spanish. Using the framework of Diachronic Construction Grammar, these changes are analyzed as involving the reconfiguration of a broader network of inchoative light verb constructions with nouns of emotion in Spanish.

Negative scope ambiguity in serial verb constructions in Jordanian Arabic: an experimental investigation

Negative scope ambiguity in serial verb constructions in Jordanian Arabic: an experimental investigation

Towards an Empirical Understanding of membawa ‘bring’: Corpus Insights into Indonesian Light Verb Constructions

This study analyzes the usage of the verb membawa (lit. bring) in Indonesian light verb constructions (LVCs). LVCs are ubiquitous in many agglutinative languages, including Indonesian. These constructions offer a unique way of combining a semantically light verb, which lacks inherent meaning, with another element to convey a specific concept. For instance, membawa pesan (lit. bring a message), membawa kemenangan (lit. bring a victory), membawa perasaan (lit. bring the feeling), membawa perubahan (lit. bring the change), amongst others. This study utilized corpus-based techniques to conduct a quantitative and qualitative analysis of 150 LVCs from the Indonesian-Leipzig Corpora Collection (ILCC) corpus. The findings of the study revealed three key points. Firstly, LVCs demonstrated a wide range of morphological and semantic usage, including primary and advanced areas, synonymic pair, and noun core proposition areas. Secondly, the morphosemantic relationships between core nouns in LVCs could be identified in the relations between base-abstract (0.15), base-concrete (0.37), affixed-abstract (0.36), and affixed-concrete (0.13). Thirdly, constructions with synonymic pairs dominated the total LVCs (0.75). However, all LVCs demonstrated the core proposition of the noun, which varied between ‘peoples’ (0.23), ‘materials’ (0.19), ‘objects’ (0.13), ‘qualities’ (0.17), ‘actions’ (0.11), and ‘processes’ (0.17). The findings suggest that LVCs in Indonesian are not merely syntactic constructions but rather reflect the intricate relationships between the verb and the noun, which can be analyzed in terms of their semantic and morphological properties. These findings can be applied to areas such as machine translation and computational linguistics, where a comprehensive understanding of LVCs is essential for accurate and effective language processing. Further corpus-based study could focus on analyzing the syntax and discourse functions of LVCs membawa.

Analyzing Interaction Patterns on Dating Sites: A Generic Structure Potential Approach

Online dating has become a popular stage to find a romantic partner. In such context, interlocutors must employ language carefully to reveal their intentions, attract attention and as well sustain intimacy with their potential partners. While previous studies have explored aspects such as self-disclosure and linguistic strategies in impression formation, there remains a gap in understanding the structured interactions that occur between potential partners on dating sites. This study, therefore, investigated the linguistic elements and interactional structures characterizing online dating discourse, focusing on two popular platforms, Tinder and Tagged. Adopting Halliday and Hasan’s Generic Structure Potential framework, the study examined conversations of thirty participants (potential partners) whose relationship ranges between two weeks to three months. Findings revealed seven key stages: Discourse Initiation (DI), Introduction (INTR), Question and Response (QAR), Request (RQ), Admiration (AD), Declaration of Dating Intention (DDI), and Topic Formation for Conversation (TF). Each stage is marked by specific linguistic features and serves unique functions within the communication process. DI involves friendly greetings and endearments to initiate conversation and signal interest. INTR often includes declarative statements that provide personal information, establishing familiarity and a good first impression. QAR facilitates information exchange through questions and responses. RQ, predominantly by males, involves polite modal verb constructions to move the conversation to more personal platforms or obtain further information. AD includes compliments and positive affirmations to express appreciation and create a positive interaction tone. DDI features direct and indirect questions about relationship status to clarify the intent behind the interaction and define the nature of the potential relationship. Finally, TF sustains conversation with statements and questions about daily activities and interests. This study contributes to the broader understanding of professional discourse by analyzing the structured linguistic strategies and interactional patterns employed in online dating, demonstrating how individuals strategically use language to manage impressions, negotiate intentions, and build relationships – skills also crucial in professional communication.

Voice, impersonal construction, and zero lexeme: formalization of crucial notions

Abstract The paper considers a relatively rare verbal syntactic construction found in East Sakhalin Ainu and in Lingala: an active form of a transitive verb governs simultaneously a direct object and an agentive complement, has no overt syntactic subject and is in the 3rd person plural. In order to characterize this verb form, three sets of formal linguistic notions are introduced and described: voice (with a calculus of logically possible voice grammemes), impersonal construction, and zero lexeme; many illustrations come from Lingala and Kinyarwanda, as well as several other languages. The verb forms under analysis are shown to be the partial demotional passive.

English-to-Hindi translation divergence study of English phrasal verbs

English phrasal verbs pose complex semantic interpretations and cause significant problems in their translation into the target language. The paper selects some frequent and highly polysemous English phrasal verbs listed with 10 or more senses in the English WordNet, collects sample English sentences from the British National Corpus and examines their Hindi translation equivalents in terms of the morpho-syntactic structure of Hindi verbs and the representation of semantic information. This study attempts to present the semantic equivalence in rendering the identical semantics in the verbal system of both languages under consideration. The study found that the most frequent and common way of realising the concepts represented by English phrasal verbs in Hindi is by incorporating the compound verb constructions in the Hindi language. Besides that, we observe multiple mapping patterns of English phrasal verbs in Hindi, including the simple Hindi verb (v), compound verb (v1-v2), and conjunct verb (noun/adjective/adverb-verb) constructions.

Frequency effects in acquisition and processing of complex verbal constructions in Romance: Experimental and corpus perspectives on Spanish as well as potential implications for foreign language acquisition

Frequency effects in acquisition and processing of complex verbal constructions in Romance: Experimental and corpus perspectives on Spanish as well as potential implications for foreign language acquisition

Dreamers and caminantes

Migration remains a recurring yet controversial subject in today’s society. Previous research on press discourse has predominantly focused on migration metaphors from their verbal construction (Santa Ana, 1999; O’Brien, 2003) and the interplay with the visual mode in articles (Catalano & Waugh, 2013; Catalano & Mitchell-McCollough, 2019) or political cartoons (El Refaie, 2003). This genre frequently reflects an unfavorable and discriminatory representation of migrants through the lens of the host country. However, children’s picture books addressing this sensitive issue have received little attention despite their pedagogical value for promoting intercultural, positive attitudes at an early age in an increasingly multicultural and multilingual world. Our study aims to examine the metaphorical construction of migration in Yuyi Morales’ picture book Dreamers, combining the cognitive and social semiotic approaches (Forceville, 2016; Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2006; Painter et al., 2013) to shed light on how both frameworks can complement each other in Critical Discourse Analysis and to demonstrate how children’s picture books can constructively contribute to social change by providing a counterbalancing voice to the dominant narrative on migration.

Usage-based approaches to assessing syntactic sophistication in second language writing: Interaction of genre and proficiency

Based on usage-based approaches to language learning, this study investigated how second language (L2) writers use verbs and argument structure constructions across different genres, while also exploring how this genre effect interacts with L2 writing proficiency. We analyzed five previously established usage-based indices using a learner corpus comprising argumentative and narrative essays elicited from 3196 college-level learners. Through a series of mixed-effects regression analyses, we identified a consistent genre effect, with argumentative essays featuring a more sophisticated use of verbs and constructions alongside a greater diversity in construction types. Additionally, a significant interaction emerged between genre and proficiency regarding construction frequency and the frequency of verb–construction combinations. These results indicate that while the previously observed genre effect extends to the L2 use of verbs and constructions, its manifestation varies depending on L2 proficiency. Overall, our study supports the usage-based learning of verbs and constructions in the context of L2 writing.

Morphosemantic Features of memenuhi ‘meet’ in the Light Verb Constructions of Indonesian

Morphosemantic Features of memenuhi ‘meet’ in the Light Verb Constructions of Indonesian

Salgo de casa? Salgo a casa? Salgo la casa? Analysis of the crosslinguistic influence on preposition use in motion verb constructions by multilingual German learners of Spanish

The use of prepositions is one of the most difficult grammar topics for Spanish learners. The high frequency prepositions ‘a’ (‘to, at, on’), ‘de’ (‘from, of’) and ‘en’ (‘in, on, into’) are often confused or omitted, especially in motion verb constructions (e.g., Campillos Llanos, 2014). This can be due to their polysemous character and the low salience. In addition, crosslinguistic influence (Jarvis and Pavlenko, 2008) from the first language as well as additional acquired foreign language(s) play a significant role.In order to analyse the complexity of interlanguage phenomena in the construction [motion verb + a/de/en + noun] to improve acquisition in Spanish classes, it is necessary to study authentic learner data. In this paper, I will discuss the results of an explorative pilot study on crosslinguistic influence carried out at a German grammar school in the federal state Baden-Württemberg in order to find out after which verbs of motion these prepositions are omitted or confused, how often this occurs, and which languages might influence it. The results of two groups of pupils at beginner level with the mean age of 14,03 are compared: The first group (n = 21) learns Spanish as the third foreign language, in addition to English and French, while the second group (n = 16) learns Spanish as the second foreign language after English. Both groups learn the named foreign languages in an instructed setting at school.The pilot study reveals that the prepositions ‘a’ and ‘de’ are much more often confused or omitted in the construction types [llegar/volver/venir + a + noun] (‘arrive/come back/come + to/in + noun’) and [salir/ir + de + noun] (‘leave/go + noun’) compared to [ir + a + noun] (‘go to + noun’). A possible explanation is positive and negative intra- and interlingual transfer of equivalent constructions from different languages. These results form a hypothesis basis that a systematic application of Pedagogical Construction Grammar (Boas, 2022; De Knop and Gilquin, 2016) and multilingual didactics (Fäcke and Meiβner, 2019; García et al., 2020) in Spanish classes to teach these polysemous prepositions could probably be helpful to avoid errors.

Serial Verb Constructions in Three Tibetan Languages

This paper presents a description of the serial verb construction (henceforth SVC) in three Tibetan languages- Gyalsumdo, Nubri and Tsum, spoken in Nepal focusing mainly on two verb constructions. The data is collected with the native speakers in different periods and analysed based on the contemporary literatures of SVC. In three selected languages, they share the same arguments (mainly the subject). Temporal and motion verbs are attested in the final position in an SVC in these languages. All of these languages have a closed set of verbs that appear as V2 in SVC. The ordering of most of the verbs participating in SVC is consistent in their occurrence. The three verb serialization is attested only in Nubri.

The Nature and Structure of Reflexive Verb Constructions

Based on a summary of the features of reflexive verb constructions (ReVCs), this paper proposes that the internal structure of reflexive verb constructions is [VP Spec[V` V R]]. Whether it occurs overtly or covertly, the reflexive constituent is base-generated in the position of the complement of V. Its occurrence in other positions results from movement of the reflexive constituent. Due to the existence of the covert pronoun, the whole reflexive verb constructions cannot assign accusative case to other constituents. Therefore, reflexive verb constructions cannot be followed by an object. The reflexive pronoun introduces reflexive interpretation, as a consequence of which the verb is characterized by reflexivity. A reflexive verb construction operates in the syntax as a complete syntactic object and hence occupies a syntactic position. The whole reflexive verb construction can function as the object in the specifier position of VP and move to the position of the light verb to function as the predicate, followed by a tense or aspect marker.

Does D Select the CP in Light Verb Constructions? A Reply to Hankamer and Mikkelsen 2021

In this response to Hankamer and Mikkelsen (H&M) 2021, we clarify the meaning of the definite article the in out-of-the-blue occurrences of English light verb constructions such as make the claim. While H&M view these as purely uniqueness-requiring determiners (as opposed to purely anaphoric ones in non−light verb constructions), we classify them as instances of Carlsonian weak definites (e.g., Carlson et al. 2006), which presuppose neither uniqueness nor anaphoricity. This clarification casts doubt on H&M’s idea that the D in light verb constructions selects the descriptive CP, which serves to uniquely specify the intended referent. Crosslinguistic data (from the Dravidian language Kannada) also serve to question the relationship between D and CP claimed by H&M. We conclude that D does not directly select the CP in light verb constructions. Nevertheless, these CPs do empirically behave like syntactically selected complements. We suggest that this is because, if the light verb construction is taken as a whole—that is, the light verb + the weak definite nominal—its complement selection properties altogether parallel those of the corresponding lexical verbs. We propose a compositional analysis that reinforces this conclusion.

Linguistic coding of the INFIDELITY event. Analysis of verbal and nominal constructions in Mexican Spanish.

El objetivo central de este trabajo es analizar las técnicas lingüísticas que el español de México utiliza para configurar el evento de INFIDELIDAD, es decir, cómo el español mexicano codifica lingüísticamente el evento de INFIDELIDAD. El presente artículo constituye parte de una investigación más amplia, aquí nos centramos sólo en dos técnicas que utiliza el español mexicano para codificar dicho evento, a saber, las construcciones verbales y nominales. El análisis se hace recurriendo a la lingüística operacional, según la cual, la función primordial de las lenguas es la comunicación de significados, donde cada una de ellas los expresa de manera distinta haciendo uso de las estructuras y técnicas que le son propias, así como de la creatividad de sus hablantes al utilizarlas. Para este estudio nos valemos de un corpus heterogéneo tomado de artículos de revistas, textos literarios y del habla coloquial cotidiana, entre otros. Con este artículo pretendemos contribuir a los estudios en semántica, en variación lingüística y en otros temas concerientes a la lingüística en general.

Coding all clauses in L2 data: A call for consistency

Linguistic complexity is considered a hallmark of language proficiency (Norris & Ortega, 2009), and it is often a focus of second language (L2) research (Pallotti, 2015). Within the construct of complexity, syntactic complexity considers the combination of words and clauses. The term clause, however, is underspecified in the field, and L2 researchers only occasionally define how clause is operationalized in the coding. After a review of the importance of consistent clause coding, this commentary argues that coordinated verb phrases, nonfinite clauses, and verbal small clauses can reach the complexity of finite clauses by the production of another element, making these constructions commensurate with subordinate finite clauses. Since these constructions are structurally similar to accepted clauses (e.g., imperatives), their exclusion from the clausal complexity calculation threatens the validity and reliability of the coding. Because a narrow definition requires an arbitrary division along a continuum of complex verbal constructions, the field should adopt this broader definition of clause. Further, researchers should clarify their methodology choices and acknowledge coding challenges, which are common in L2 data, especially L2 speech data. The increased transparency in research methodology supports the interpretation of research results and facilitates comparisons across L2 studies.

Стратегии научно-популярного педагогического интернет-дискурса

The article presents the results of a discursive analysis of online articles on foreign language learning. The analysis continues the study of the English popular science pedagogical discourse, complementing the number of already identified and characterized components with discourse strategies. The aim of the paper is to identify and analyze the strategies of the popular science pedagogical internet discourse which would expand scientific ideas about the interaction peculiarities between the pedagogical community and society. As practical material, the study uses one of the most famous English online magazines dedicated to language learning. By random sampling, 70 text fragments are selected from the magazine, exhibiting the whole variety of speech means the pedagogical community uses to cover its intentions and values. To achieve the aim set in the research, the authors use linguapragmatic, linguasemiotic, discursive analysis and descriptive, analytical, interpretive, statistical methods. As a result of the analysis, the strategies of attracting attention, modality, transmitting reliability, forming professional identity, solidarity, manipulation and consolidation have been established. Each strategy reveals its own means of speech implementation, among which we can name various verbal constructions, appealing constructions, constructions emphasizing causes and consequences of educational processes, evaluating lexemes, lexemes with semantics of inducement to action, etc. The range of communication strategies and means of their verbalization is not limited to those given in the paper. In order to describe the model of the popular science pedagogical discourse existing not only in the English internet space, the need for further analysis of the research subject is obvious.

Are There Serial Verb Constructions in Old English? A New Perspective on the Changes in Verbal Complementation

This article discusses the existence of serial verb constructions in Old English and explores the complementation of aspectual and control verbs as well as other related constructions. The discussion of the Old English data finds remarkable differences with respect to the syntactic configurations of Present-Day English that are described as serial by Roberts (2010). Although the range of serial constructions is more restrictive in Old English, at least with aspectual verbs, the analysis of verbal complementation from the perspective of serialisation allows us to bring other convergent constructions to the discussion, including configurations with linked infinitives and participles in predicative constructions and configurations with pre-modals and the causative verb dōn ‘to do’.