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The present contribution starts from Goldberg and Perek’s (2019) analysis of gapping within a constructionist framework. The authors promote their analysis as surpassing non-constructionist takes on gapping and ellipsis more generally. In particular, they claim predictive power. That this is not the whole truth is explained in detail in this contribution. It is shown which predictions can be made from their perspective versus from a generative perspective and it is discussed whether they are borne out. Furthermore, I highlight how the predictions relate to the fundamentals of the respective theories and, as a consequence, how they differ in kind.

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Copyright of Zeitschrift für Germanistische Linguistik is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Aspectual meaning is often ambiguous in Afrikaans because the verb is not compulsorily marked for aspect. The inchoative aspect is a grammatical aspectual meaning that highlights the moment directly before the onset, the onset itself, or the moment directly after the onset of an action or change of state. A variety of strategies can be used in Afrikaans to express the inchoative aspect, one of which being auxiliary verb constructions. Ten auxiliary verbs can occur in inchoative constructions in Afrikaans, namely: begin (‘begin’), gaan (‘go’), kom (‘come’), loop (‘walk’), raak (‘become’), sit (‘sit’), slaan (‘hit’), spring (‘jump’), steek (‘stab’) and val (‘fall’). These auxiliary verbs function as inchoative aspectual markers in two kinds of constructions: as direct linking verbs in inchoative constructions or as indirect linking verbs (either with or without progressive periphrastic constructions). All of the auxiliary verbs that can express inchoative meaning do not occur in all of the possible constructions. For instance, slaan (‘hit’) exclusively occurs as an inchoative marker in auxiliary constructions with the progressive periphrastic construction aan die (‘on the’) together with the main verb collocate brand (‘to burn’). This article, therefore, does not investigate all ten auxiliary verbs that can occur in inchoative constructions but solely focuses on the direct linking verb constructions in which gaan and loop occur as cognate inchoative auxiliaries. In this article, the Watkykjy! corpus, Taalkommissie corpus and NWU Commentary corpus are used to investigate the frequencies and usage patterns of gaan and loop as direct linking verbs in inchoative constructions. Construction Grammar (CxG) and Grammaticalisation Theory are used as theoretical frameworks to describe the similarities and differences in use of loop and gaan as direct linking verbs in inchoative constructions. CxG provides a useful theoretical framework for the identification of the constructions and descriptions of the nuances between the two constructions, should any be present. Grammaticalisation Theory provides a framework in which the main verb collocates for gaan and loop in these inchoative constructions can be used to establish the degree to which these verbs have evolved to express additional meanings or perform additional functions. The results of the corpus study indicate that these gaan and loop inchoative constructions are formally and structurally similar, but that there are semantic nuances expressed by using one rather than the other. Collostruction analyses indicate both gaan and loop retain some of their lexical meaning in certain contexts where they are used to express inchoative aspectual meaning. However, gaan can be used in a larger variety of linguistic contexts and with a larger variety of main verb collocates. Gaan is, therefore, more grammaticalised and less constricted in its uses than loop. This result was expected because gaan has grammaticalised to function as a future tense marker and modal marker expressing epistemic modality in Afrikaans, which correlate with the grammaticalisation route for verbs like gaan in other languages. Whilst it was expected that loop would be less grammaticalised than gaan because loop is not commonly considered to function as a future tense marker in Afrikaans, it is, however, noteworthy that loop seems to have evolved to denote some kind of modal meaning. The loop inchoative construction is more frequently used in imperatives, occurs with a smaller variety of main verb collocates and tends to be used in contexts where the speaker is expressing a dislike for or disapproval of the situation being expressed by the main verb, or aims to evoke a negative emotional response from the receiver of the utterance towards the situation expressed by the main verb. This is indicative of loop being more specialised for imperatives, pejoratives and cases where the speaker expresses their own dislike or disapproval, or hopes to evoke these feelings in the receiver of the utterance, towards the situation expressed by the main verb. It, therefore, seems that loop has evolved to function as a kind of deontic modal marker. This supports the fi ndings of other researchers who note that loop expresses modality in progressive constructions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In this paper, I propose an extension of Busse's cognitive discourse semantics through a usagebased construction grammatical approach. Following Lasch (2015a, 2015b, 2016), I will argue that (i) constructions are discursive per se, and (ii) some constructions can fulfil a textual or discursive function depending on their usage. The theoretical discussion shows that construction grammar is arguably an interesting and fruitful tool of a cognitive discourse semantics, which is empirically explained with examples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Tekst i Dyskurs is the property of University of Warsaw and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Neuphilologische Mitteilungen is the property of Modern Language Society and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Linguistische Berichte is the property of Helmut Buske Verlag Hamburg and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Linguistische Treffen in Wrocław is the property of Oficyna Wydawnicza ATUT and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper analyses the constructions with a reflexive marker on the verb and a dative argument experiencing a state, such as necessity or craving/desire for something. They occur in all Slavic languages, with varied scope of distribution, but this research focuses on their use in South Slavic languages: Macedonian, Bulgarian and Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian (BCS), in which such constructions have a wide distribution. Although these types of clauses have been studied a lot, there are still contentious issues regarding their nature. Assuming that this particular combination of the reflexive marker with a dative argument represents a steady construction with specific formal properties we argue that its semantics cannot be computed from the meanings of the structures involved. The construction contains as part of its meaning a covert modal component of necessity, which cannot be explained as an inherited feature, neither from the reflexive, nor from the dative marker. Moreover, this component is of a more complex nature, ranging from a strong urge to inclination and craving. The main goal of this paper is to investigate the nature and the origin of this modality. Adopting a Construction Grammar approach we assume that the specific semantic-pragmatic features of the construction are a result of particular constraints operating on the morpho-syntactic and semantic features of the constituent components. DOI: 10.31168/2305-6754.2019.8.2.10

This paper employs the background assumptions of usage-based Construction Grammar (Goldberg 1995, 2006, 2013), Frame Semantics (Fillmore 1982), and a quantitative corpus-driven method for investigating the reciprocal interaction between lexical items occurring in two different slots of a grammatical construction. The method, referred to as co-varying collexeme analysis (Stefanowitsch and Gries 2005; Stefanowitsch 2013; Hilpert 2014), is applied to the determination of strongly attracted and repelled pairs of adjectives and verbs occurring in the extraposition construction with to-infinitive clauses in American English. Using the data extracted from the academic sub-corpus of COCA, the author seeks to indicate that some pairs of adjectives and verbs co-occur significantly more frequently than expected in the it is ADJ to V-construction. Furthermore, the results of the analysis of the co-variation of collexemes in two different slots of the same construction seem to suggest that such strong correlations between these slots can be determined by frame-semantic knowledge and/or discourse-functional properties of the construction under study.

This paper deals with a family of German constructions based on the reduplication pattern [von Xsg zu Xsg], The theoretical framework of the paper is formed by central postulates of Construction Grammar. German-Russian (RNC) and German-Spanish (PaGeS) parallel corpora serve as the empirical basis. The pattern under investigation is characterized formally by the duplication of a noun in singular without article, and semantically by different readings such as 'iterative locomotion' (von Haus zu Haus gehen, 'going from house to house') or 'steady development' (von Tag zu Tag zunehmen, 'increasing from day to day'). On the contrastive level, the lexical slot filling of each construct plays a special role, because it also conditions the formal and semantic specifics of the equivalents in Russian and Spanish. We thus primarily attempt to determine the functionally equivalent constructions of the German pattern on the basis of the consulted German-Russian or German-Spanish parallel corpora. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an overview of recent developments in research on the grammar/pragmatics interface. The focus is on Construction Grammar and contextualist (neo- and post-Gricean) pragmatics, which are currently among the most dominant frameworks in linguistic theory. While it is widely accepted since the beginnings of Construction Grammar that pragmatic aspects may be part of the meaning side of a construction, it is only recently that construction grammarians engage in a more systematic debate about what counts as a pragmatic aspect, and in what ways pragmatic aspects may be related to constructions. While constructionist approaches typically take as ‘pragmatic aspects’ those aspects of the context that may be conventionally tied to a construction, the standard assumption of contextualist approaches is that pragmatics is concerned with inferential, i.e. non-conventional aspects of meaning. After introducing basic concepts of theories on the grammar/pragmatics interface, the paper summarizes the main assumptions regarding the relationship between grammar and pragmatics as held in constructionist and contextualist approaches, respectively. The main part of the paper is concerned with providing a synopsis of recent work into the role of pragmatics in the description of constructions. The work discussed is grouped into six types of approaches, namely (1) constructional approaches, (2) frame-/template approaches, (3) interaction approaches, (4) distinction approaches, (5) grammaticalization approaches, and (6) integrative approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Starting out from a critical questioning of Construction Grammar's basic tenets I am advocating a version of Construction Grammar that should be primarily understood as based on the patterns evinced by grammatical operations. This approach aims for a theory of rule-governed operations over constructions and not for a theory of idiomaticity and non-(or restricted) compositionality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Construction Grammar, as a relatively new direction in linguistics, claims to take account of all linguistic phenomena as far as possible. The linguistic phenomenon dealt with in this article belongs to so-called ´´multi-word units`` and as such is primarily the object of phraseological research. In this article the author tries to treat such units using the example of the multi-word unit ´´wie auch immer´´ outside of phraseology and namely in the area of Construction Grammar. In order to be able to identify the units treated in the text of the article as constructions in the sense of the Construction Grammar, one has to check to what extent these units correspond to the characteristics of a construction. As is known, the constructions are prototypical form-meaning-pairs the correspond to the principles of noncompositionality and conventionality. In this article the author shows how the phraseological units can be evaluated from the perspective of the Constructions Grammar. A lot of space is given to determine the constructional grammatical meaning, which contains not only the semantic but also the functional-pragmatic aspects. To this end the author makes an empirical observation of how the above-mentioned unit behaves in different contexts, which syntactic functions it can assume, and how the syntactic functions correlate with the semantic aspects. Such an empirical description enables the so- called corpus linguistic analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last three decades the linguistic innovation has brought two main theoretical tools that are fully functional: the construction grammar and the frame semantics. The present work makes a proposal to unite both frameworks in order to exploit their respective contribution in a pedagogical perspective in foreign language classes. The aim is (i) to operationalize the theoretical junction, and (ii) to propose to exploit it by using mind maps, which elaboration is based on the observation of the speech praxis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the "phraseme-construction" (Dobrovol'skij 2011) [XNPnom seinKopula mirExp (modal particle) Detein(e) YNP]Exkl (e.g. Du bist mir einer, Du bist mir ja ein Schlingel), in which a so-called "dativus ethicus" is used. The aims of the contribution are (i) to describe the form and meaning of the phraseme construction with a corpus search, thereby focusing on the nonlexical position (Detein(e) YNP) and on the various expressions of illocutive function; (ii) define the links between the phraseme-construction [XNPnom seinKopula mirExp (modal particle) Detein(e) YNP]Exkl and the other dative constructions (compare De Knop & Mollica 2016, 2017). Some principles of Construction Grammar, i.e. the postulate of a grammar-lexicon-continuum, the claim of a holistic description, the inheritance links between constructions, together with Wittgenstein's concept of family resemblance prove to be useful for the study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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.1 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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article examines Lithuanian structures with accusative functioning as a subject. It pursues the idea that this accusative is of old origin. This hypothesis is based on a detailed comparison with Old Icelandic, revealing striking similarities within an unproductive semantic group, denoting force of nature and meteorological phenomena. Another semantic group, denoting physical inconveniences, highly productive in Lithuanian, shows signs of individual developments. Furthermore, I will propose that the structures under investigation will be labelled oblique anticausatives as they show an alternation pattern similar to other “normal” anticausatives only with an oblique case-preserving anticausative strategy, used to express an uncontrolled, non-agentive nature of an event, usually brought about by natural force.

The starting point of this paper is a particular idiom category. It deals with idioms that contain determinative compounds of a special kind. The first element of the compound points to the figurative meaning of the idiom, while the second element is a part of the source concept of the metaphor and thus interacts with the literal meaning. An appropriate apparatus for describing idioms of this category is provided by the Conceptual Blending Theory. It is shown that, apart from metaphorization processes, the blending of mental spaces plays a significant part in bringing about the figurative meaning of the idioms. At the same time, the paper supports the recently discussed hypothesis that phrasemes can be constructed according to certain patterns as recurrent form-meaning pairs. Therefore, the paper contributes to Construction Grammar as well as to Blending Theory and clarifies some aspects of idiom semantics and motivation.1 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]