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Work by Russell Tomlin has shown that there is a close relationship between the syntactic subject of an utterance and the entity the speaker's attention is focused on while the utterance is being formulated, for descriptions of a simple event (Tomlin 1985, 1995, 1997). The experiment presented in this paper demonstrates that the same effect can be obtained for a more complex event, and that attention also impacts the spontaneous hand gestures produced along with speech. The paper shows that both syntactic subject and the information contained in gesture can be manipulated by changing which entity a speaker is focused on during utterance formulation. This pattern suggests that changes in conceptualization give rise to changes in both speech and gesture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we take a Construction Grammar approach to Du Bois' concept of resonance activation. We suggest that the structural mapping relations between juxtaposed utterances in discourse, described in terms of diagraphs in dialogic syntax, can acquire the status of ad hoc constructions or locally entrenched form-meaning pairings within the boundaries of an ongoing conversation. We argue that the local emergence of these ad hoc constructions involves the same cognitive mechanism described for the abstraction of conventional grammatical constructions from usage patterns. Accordingly, we propose to broaden the scope of Construction Grammar to include not only symbolic units that are conventionalized in a larger speech community, but also a dimension of online syntax, i.e. the emergence of grammatical patterns at the micro-level of a single conversation. Drawing on dialogic data from political talk shows and parliamentary debates, we illustrate the spectrum of these ad hoc constructional routines and show their local productivity, which we take as an indication of their (micro-)entrenchment within a given conversation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dialogic syntax investigates the linguistic, cognitive, and interactional processes involved when language users reproduce selected aspects of a prior utterance, and when recipients respond to the parallelisms and resonances that result, drawing inferences for situated meaning. The phenomenon typically arises when a language user constructs an utterance modeled in part on the utterance of a prior speaker or author. The result is resonance, defined as the catalytic activation of affinities across utterances. This paper presents the concept of dialogic syntax and outlines some directions of current research on dialogic resonance, as represented in this Special Issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sentence No head injury is too trivial to be ignored is often presented as a verbal illusion. According to the standard view, this sentence, which seems perfectly acceptable at first sight, is in fact logically incorrect. It is usually assumed that sentences such as these are produced as the result of negation overload, but get a coherent interpretation because of shallow processing, and because of pragmatic factors, which overrule semantics and syntax. In this paper it is argued that this analysis is incorrect and that No head injury is too trivial to be ignored can be seen as an instance of the negative ‘No X is too Z to Y' construction, which is a sub-construction of the abstract ‘No X is too Y to Z' construction. This negative construction can be seen as a conventionalized construction (form-meaning unit) that has a transparent (i.e. linguistically analyzable) syntactic structure that can be linked to and motivated by other constructions. It is shown that the occurrence of negative ‘No X is too Z to Y' construction has to do with the rhetorical function of the infinitival verb in these sentences, and the need to express particular information by a form-meaning element. This study stresses the importance of the rhetorical dimension of constructions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the complex relationship between the meaning of predicates and the morphosyntactic expression of their arguments, as manifested in the swarm-class alternations in Czech. One way of getting at the nature of the alternations is to take a frame-semantic approach, which allows us to introduce the notion of scene as an important factor in linking relationships. It is proposed that linking patterns are organized in a network of generalized scene types, each of which represents a particular role configuration structured in such a way that one of its roles can be singled out as the vantage point from which that event type is conventionally presented in a particular diathesis; the analysis argues for the notion of viewpoint as an event-structuring concept (distinct from discourse-based topicness) that is directly reflected in certain conventionalized linking patterns. The results of the investigation show that what may appear to be hard-to-predict variations in subject selection can be treated as instances of regular linking relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues for the need to recognize a new order of syntactic phenomena, and for a theory of syntax capable of addressing it. Dialogic syntax encompasses the linguistic, cognitive, and interactional processes involved when speakers selectively reproduce aspects of prior utterances, and when recipients recognize the resulting parallelisms and draw inferences from them. Its most visible reflex occurs when one speaker constructs an utterance based on the immediately co-present utterance of a dialogic partner. Words, structures, and other linguistic resources invoked by the first speaker are selectively reproduced by the second. The alignment of utterances yields a pairing of patterns at varying levels of abstraction, ranging from identity of words and affixes, to parallelism of syntactic structures, to equivalence of grammatical categories and abstract features of form, meaning, and function. This mapping generates dialogic resonance, defined as the catalytic activation of affinities across utterances. The key unit of analysis is the diagraph, recognized as a higher-order, supra-sentential syntactic structure that emerges from the structural coupling of two or more utterances. Dialogic syntax goes beyond traditional linear syntax to recognize as integral to the task of syntactic analysis a new kind of structural relation that arises between otherwise independent sentences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper demonstrates that dependency-based syntax is in a strong position to produce principled and economical accounts of the syntax of constructs. The difficulty that constituency-based syntax has in this regard is that very many constructs fail to qualify as constituents. The point is evident with the box diagrams and attribute value matrices (AVMs) that some construction grammars (CxGs) use to formalize constructions; these schemata often represent fragments rather than constituents. In dependency-based syntax in contrast, constructions are catenae, whereby a catena is a chain of words linked together by dependencies. The catena is a novel but well-defined unit of syntax associated with dependency grammar (DG). The constructs of CxGs are more amenable to analyses in terms of the catenae of dependency-based syntax than to analyses in terms of the constituents of constituency-based syntax. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The seeming absence of negative evidence in the input that children receive during language acquisition has long been regarded as a serious problem for non-nativist linguistic theories. Among the solutions that have been suggested for this problem, preemption by competing structures is doubtless the most intensively researched and widely accepted. However, while preemption works well in the domain of morphology, it cannot apply categorically in the domain of syntax, as this would preclude the existence of semantically overlapping constructions, such as the ditransitive and the prepositional dative, which can be used alternatively with many, but not all, verbs of literal or metaphorical transfer. This paper investigates one specific version of preemption briefly entertained by Pinker (Language learnability and language development, Harvard University Pressm, 1984), which would account both for the existence of semantically overlapping constructions and for the fact that these constructions may preempt each other in the case of individual verbs. Typically, such pairs of grammatical constructions differ in their information-structural restrictions and speakers tend to choose the construction that best fits a given discourse context; when speakers use a construction even though there is an alternative that fits the discourse context better, children may take this as evidence that the alternative is not available for the specific verb in question. Two corpus studies are presented, comparing the information-structural profile of prepositional dative constructions containing verbs that may alternate between the dative and the ditransitive with the information structural profile of verbs that are restricted to the prepositional dative. For Pinker's preemptive mechanism to be feasible, there should be a clear and systematic difference in the information-structural profile of these two classes of verbs. However, no such difference can be found in actual usage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides responses to the points raised in this volume in an effort to evaluate, clarify and extend some of the arguments in Constructions at Work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines early syntactic development from a usage-based perspective, using transcripts of the spontaneous speech of two Englishspeaking children recorded at relatively dense intervals at ages 2;0 and 3;0. We focus primarily on the children’s question constructions, in an effort to determine (i) what kinds of units they initially extract from the input (their size and degree of specificity / abstractness); (ii) what operations they must perform in order to construct novel utterances using these units; and (iii) how the units and the operations change between the ages of two and three. In contrast to nativist theories of language development which suggest that children are working with abstract syntactic categories from an early point in development, we suggest that the data are better accounted for by the proposal that children begin with lexically specific phrases and gradually build up a repertoire of increasingly abstract constructions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unlike previous studies which generally seem to focus more on Hausa metaphorical expressions, this study investigates a wide range of uses of ίdὸ 'eye' in its constructional metonymy patterns in the language by exploring corpus data that contain over 300 eye-related expressions. We observe that some constructional metonymies maintain a set of fixed words and syntax in activating conceptual shifts and producing eye metonymies while others have semi-fixed patterns and produce the same metonymies. Lexical items like tsόkάlế, kὰn, ὰ, dὰ, and bὰsίrὰ among others are constant constituents in the constructional metonymies in which they appear. In the metonymic chaining, the basic mapping of eye metonymies occurs via the part for part relation under E-metonymies and the sub- for supercategory relation under C-metonymies. We also observe that E→E→C coding has the highest chained metonymic structure in the creation of the eye metonymies. Both attributive and predicative colligates motivate metonymic senses in the language. Finally, our analysis reveals that the eye is metonymically conceptualized and semantically extended to various target domains and produces metonymic conceptualizations that make the eye stand for vision, desire, envy, control, attention, perception, person, meeting, brain, intelligence, and so on. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the unusual behaviour of particle verbs in West Germanic has been the subject of much debate, it still awaits a substantive explanation. These verbs undergo reversal and/or intercalation subject to such syntactic constraints as finiteness and clause type. Situated within Prototype Theory, this study defines the relevant grammatical categories in terms of varying degrees of syntacticity (i.e., sentence-likeness vs. word-likeness) of which cohesiveness is a major indicator. The higher the cohesiveness of a given category, the more resistant it is to syntactic processes. The following scale of increasing cohesiveness is proposed: main clauses, finite verbs, subordinate clauses, non-finite verbs, nouns. Thus, reversal and intercalation are found in the leftward, though not in the rightward categories. This scale is pragmatically motivated. Generally speaking, main clauses are communicatively more important than subordinate clauses. Therefore, the former require a wider choice of expressive means such as reversal and intercalation than the latter. The availability of syntactic options is argued to be an iconic reflection of communicative needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the interaction between linear and dialogic syntax in Hebrew conversation. Analyzing resonance in divergently aligned contexts, we examine a particular dialogic modification of complex syntactic constructions: the embedding of one construction within the scope of another. Specifically, we examine a family of constructions which, in the terms of linear syntax, are analyzed as forms of complementation (via the complementizer še- 'that', via a question word, or via the conditional conjunction 'im 'if'). However, the dialogic alignment of these forms with their preceding utterances reflects a complex picture, in which some patterns are still definable by linear syntax, but others are not accounted for by these traditional terms. Rather, the application of the Dialogic Syntax framework calls into question defining such constructions from a purely structural perspective and supports a more fluid, Emergent Grammar approach. Moreover, we illustrate how dialogic actions in fact motivate the interaction-based grammaticization of new constructions, culminating, in the case of the constructions examined here, in the emergence of discourse markers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We used free association and verbal fluency tasks to investigate verbargument constructions (VACs) and the ways in which their processing is sensitive to statistical patterns of usage (verb type-token frequency distribution, VAC-verb contingency, verb-VAC semantic prototypicality). In experiment 1, 285 native speakers of English generated the first word that came to mind to fill the V slot in 40 sparse VAC frames such as ‘he ____ across the. . . .', ‘it ____ of the. . . .', etc. In experiment 2, 40 English speakers generated as many verbs that fit each frame as they could think of in a minute. For each VAC, we compared the results from the experiments with corpus analyses of verb selection preferences in 100 million words of usage and with the semantic network structure of the verbs in these VACs. For both experiments, multiple regression analyses predicting the frequencies of verb types generated for each VAC show independent contributions of (i) verb frequency in the VAC, (ii) VAC-verb contingency and (iii) verb prototypicality in terms of centrality within the VAC semantic network. VAC processing involves rich associations, tuned by verb type and token frequencies and their contingencies of usage, which interface syntax, lexis and semantics. We consider the implications for the mental representation of VACs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we tackle the issue of diachronic variation in constructional semantics through an exploration of the (recent) semantic history of the well-established English ditransitive or double object argument structure construction. Starting from the assumption that schematic syntactic patterns are not fundamentally different from lexical items, we will show that -- similar to the diachronic semantic development of lexemes -- the semantics of argument structure constructions in general and that of double object constructions in particular, is vulnerable to semasiological shifts as well. More specifically, the analysis, which compares data from 18th-century Late Modern English with present-day English, shows that the double object construction's semantic evolution presents a case of specialization, in which the construction has come to be associated with a significantly narrower range of meanings. It will further be argued that such patterns of semantic change are best captured in a model of argument structure semantics which discriminates between central and lesscentral or prototypical and non-prototypical uses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In relative clause extraposition (RCE) in English, a noun is modified by a non-adjacent RC, resulting in a discontinuous dependency, as in: arrived here yesterday . Although discourse focus is known to influence the choice of RCE over truth-conditionally equivalent sentences with canonical structure (Rochemont and Culicover, English focus constructions and the theory of grammar, Cambridge University Press, 1990; Takami, A functional constraint on Extraposition from NP, John Benjamins, 1999), Hawkins (Efficiency and complexity in grammars, Oxford University Press, 2004) and Wasow (Postverbal behavior, CSLI Publications, 2002) have proposed in addition that RCE should be preferred when the relative clause is long (or ‘heavy’) relative to the VP because such structures are processed more efficiently in comprehension and production. The current study tested this hypothesis based on Hawkins' (Efficiency and complexity in grammars, Oxford University Press, 2004) domain minimization principles. In an acceptability judgment task, canonical sentences were rated significantly higher than extraposition sentences when the RC was light, but this difference disappeared when the RC was heavy. In a self-paced reading task, extraposition sentences were read significantly faster than canonical sentences when the RC was heavy, but there was no difference when the RC was light. In an analysis of RCE in the ICE-GB corpus, extraposed RCs were significantly longer than the VP on average, whereas canonical RCs were significantly shorter, and the proportion of sentences with extraposition decreased as the ratio of VP-to-RC length increased. These findings support Hawkins' (Efficiency and complexity in grammars, Oxford University Press, 2004) domain minimization principles and help explain why a discontinuous dependency is allowed and sometimes preferred even in a language with relatively fixed word order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In commenting on Goldberg's article and book (Goldberg 2006), I concentrate on three points: (1) the importance of general learning mechanisms for language acquisition; (2) the relationship between form and function in learning and in the adult system; and (3) the combination of constructions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Guerssel et al.'s (1985) generalizations regarding the argument structure of verbs of cutting and breaking (C&B, hereafter) are reanalyzed based on the principles of Morpholexical Transparency and Complete Linking. A working hypothesis according to which the C&B domain is universally exhaustively partitioned into argument structure classes of C&B verbs is proposed and tested against a corpus of data from 17 languages. Counterevidence to the hypothesis includes bipolar verbs that are semantically specific both on the state change and its cause and a language that lacks cut verbs, framing severance as state change. The survey suggests that universals of argument structure include the principles of Morpholexical Transparency and Complete Linking, but not specific verb classes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The hypothesis was tested that transfer and facilitation of learning in early syntactic development does not rely on semantic analogy among the items. The study focused on the verb-indirect object (VI) construction. Longitudinal naturalistic speech corpora of 14 Hebrew-speaking children (1;04–2;08) were analyzed, 9 females and 5 males, White and predominantly middle class. There was facilitation of learning among the first 10 verbs in the VI pattern, as evidenced by the accelerating growth curves. However, there was much semantic variability among the 10 indirect objects, and most had no semantically similar antecedents in the same construction. The results indicate that facilitation of learning of early syntax is most probably not mediated by semantic similarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines instances of the pu relative construction in Modern Greek in which the semantic role of the head is underspecified by the syntax. Such cases include sentences whose nominal head corresponds to some complement of the relative clause predicate and sentences in which the head does not have any sort of syntactic relationship with the relative. The latter, which are characteristic of oral, informal discourse, have been completely ignored in the previous literature, which has defined relatives on the basis of exclusively structural criteria. It is argued that a unified account of the pu -construction (including gapped and gapless relatives) can be achieved if we analyze it as a conventional instruction for a particular kind of conceptual integration. Semantic and pragmatic factors influencing successful construal (one which leads to the construction of a unique blend) are systematically examined. The lack of a clear cut-off point in acceptability for such utterances tallies with the conclusion reached here, namely that the constraints governing such uses are constraints on interpretability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined patterns of auxiliary provision and omission for the auxiliaries BE and HAVE in a longitudinal data set from 11 children between the ages of two and three years. Four possible explanations for auxiliary omission-a lack of lexical knowledge, performance limitations in production, the Optional Infinitive hypothesis, and patterns of auxiliary use in the input-were examined. The data suggest that although none of these accounts provides a full explanation for the pattern of auxiliary use and nonuse observed in children's early speech, integrating input-based and lexical learning-based accounts of early language acquisition within a constructivist approach appears to provide a possible framework in which to understand the patterns of auxiliary use found in the children's speech. The implications of these findings for models of children's early language acquisition are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Implicit type shifting, or coercion, appears to indicate a modular grammatical architecture, in which the process of semantic composition may add meanings absent from the syntax in order to ensure that certain operators, e.g., the progressive, receive suitable arguments (Jackendoff 1997, De Swart 1998). I will argue that coercion phenomena actually provide strong support for a sign-based model of grammar, in which rules of morphosyntactic combination can shift the designations of content words with which they combine. On this account, enriched composition is a by-product of the ordinary referring behavior of constructions. Thus, for example, the constraint which requires semantic concord between the syntactic sisters in the string a bottle is also what underlies the coerced interpretation found in a beer. If this concord constraint is stated for a rule of morphosyntactic combination, we capture an important generalization: a single combinatory mechanism, the construction, is responsible for both coerced and compositional meanings. Since both type-selecting constructions (e.g., the French Imparfait) and type-shifting constructions (e.g., English progressive aspect) require semantic concord between syntactic sisters, we account for the fact that constructions of both types perform coercion. Coercion data suggest that aspectual sensitivity is not merely a property of formally differentiated past tenses, as in French and Latin, but a general property of tense constructions, including the English present and past tenses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]