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This paper argues that grammatical constructions, specifically argument structure constructions that determine the "who did what to whom" part of sentence meaning and how this meaning is expressed syntactically, can be considered a kind of relational category. That is, grammatical constructions are represented as the abstraction of the syntactic and semantic relations of the exemplar utterances that are expressed in that construction, and it enables the generation of novel exemplars. To support this argument, I review evidence that there are parallel behavioral patterns between how children learn relational categories generally and how they learn grammatical constructions specifically. Then, I discuss computational simulations of how grammatical constructions are abstracted from exemplar sentences using a domain-general relational cognitive architecture. Last, I review evidence from adult language processing that shows parallel behavioral patterns with expert behavior from other cognitive domains. After reviewing the evidence, I consider how to integrate this account with other theories of language development., (Copyright © 2017 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.)

There are broad disagreements between existing models regarding the mental representations and processes involved in the "DEGREE ADVERB + PROPER NAME" construction, including divergences regarding the semantics of the degree device, the category status of the proper name, the construction's expressed meaning, its compositionality, and, crucially, the operation holding between the degree device and the proper name. Our corpus-based investigation of two competing models from Construction Grammar and Formal Semantics shows that while both make useful contributions to the scientific understanding of the construction, neither is empirically adequate. Most importantly, we find that the construction participates in several non-predicted expressed meanings; multivariate analyses show that the three meanings amenable to statistical analysis cluster with different semantic usage-features. We argue that the best way to account for the construction's semantics/pragmatics is via a previously-dismissed cognitive mechanism: an enrichment/strengthening-type operation whereby a pragmatically-supplied scale is added to the message. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study introduces a novel instructional approach to teaching a Chinese construction to college students in a foreign language classroom. Based on the framework of the construction-grammar approach to language acquisition, this study tested the effect of construction-based teaching, which integrates formal and semantic aspects of language with contextually meaningful visual scenes, in Korean-speaking Chinese learners' acquisition of the Chinese Ba construction. Two groups of Chinese learners, who were enrolled in second-semester college-level Chinese classes, received constructional (n = 33) or form-focused instruction (n = 33) for 13 weeks. Results from elicited production and grammaticality judgment tasks implemented preceding and following the instruction showed that the constructional instruction group had improvements to a greater extent than the form-focused instruction group. These findings underscore the validity of the construction-grammar approach as an effective teaching method in foreign language learning settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

English comparative modals are combinations of the adverbs rather , sooner and better with an auxiliary. There is recent consensus that the comparative modals rather and sooner have over time developed a different syntax and semantics than better. However, potential differences in the syntax of rather and sooner with respect to patterns of complementation haven't been explored. This article reports the results of a corpus study of these two modals and finds that rather patterns like object-raising verbs, allowing a range of complements that are unavailable for sooner. Our analysis of these patterns draws on recent work in the Construction Grammar framework, with forays into its formal implementation, Sign-Based Construction Grammar, and we propose that rather differs from sooner in that it constitutes a micro-construction whose features are licensed by both the Modal Construction and the Object-Raising Construction, the latter a subtype of the Transitive Construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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.)

The radiotelephony communication is a voice communication mode between air traffic service unit and aircraft currently. The control instruction is a kind of unstructured data, so that the automatic systems cannot use understand its semantic. If control instruction is regarded as a sort of special "natural language," methods such as syntax analysis and sematic analysis can be adopted to generate the structured instruction. The correct recognition of the language must be important for the control instruction. However, the control instruction in Chinese is different from the general use of Chinese language in form, resulting in prepositions becoming important for semantic analysis. This paper proposes a deep neural network-based Chinese language control construction algorithm for the trajectory prediction. In particular, analysis of sematic characteristics of control instruction is realized by using cognitive linguistics theory and construction grammar theory. The control instruction is then designed by the semantic ontology. Based on the deep neural networks by considering the word sequence of instruction as the inputs. The test results have demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm with a developed entity extracting model. (The results are quantified using the BiLSTM-LAN-CRF in detail.) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines semantic features and functions of free relative clauses with pronominal relativizers, represented in the Croatian Glagolitic folk medicine books from the 14th, 15th and 18th centuries. Prediction, projection and topicality are singled out as central conceptual and functional features of the expressions studied. The examples are interpreted from the aspect of construction grammar and the pragmatic aspect, and therefore a schematic representation of mental spaces forming the basis for the selected relative clauses has been constructed using the methodology presented in Dancygier and Sweetser (2005). The expressions studied are also viewed in the context of the titling function, as well as in the context of all relative clauses in the studied corpus and have therefore also been linked to the specific features of the text type and certain diachronic changes in their use have been observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the historical development of the construction disponerse a + INF is analyzed, as a carrier of an aspectual value of imminence. Specifically, those lexical-grammatical criteria that allow observing the process of grammaticalization and constructionalization of the scheme are explored. In addition, the semantic expansion from the imminent value to the inchoative and causative value is studied. Throughout the paper, contrasts are made with the diachronic trajectory of poner(se), since this form has exerted an analogical influence on disponer(se). From a theoretical perspective, it interacts with the model of grammaticalization and with the constructions grammar applied to the historical study of verbal periphrasis. At the methodological level, the research is based on the elaboration of a database with the integral registry of the examples from CORDE, which allows projecting quantitative as well as qualitative linguistic analyzes. As a result, the grade of grammaticalization and constructionalization of the item is described, the chronology of its imminence, inchoative and causative values are explored, and the proximity of the construction with the paradigm of aspectual verbal periphrasis is reflected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the historical evolution of the Spanish causative micro-constructions with the motion verbs llevar ('take') and traer ('bring') (e.g., el miedo llevó al ladrón a cometer un error, 'the fear caused the thief to make a mistake'). In order to reconstruct the historical development of these micro-constructions between the 13th and 20th centuries, all causative uses of llevar and traer were extracted from the Corpus del Diccionario Histórico. This corpus was annotated for a series of formal and semantic parameters that count as indexes of grammaticalization, and was submitted to a quantitative productivity analysis. The results point to the existence of a subschema formed of verbs of caused accompanied motion, which has semantically specialized in the expression of indirect causation. From a formal point of view, this subschema is characterized by a low level of syntactic incorporation of the causative verb and the infinitive. In addition, it is shown that the productivity of the causative micro-constructions under study is determined by semantic changes experienced by llevar and traer as full lexical verbs during the history of Spanish. The late development of the micro-construction with llevar is explained by the initial tendency of this verb to express motion events not bounded by an endpoint. From the 16th century onwards, the decline in the micro-construction with traer and the rise in the micro-construction with llevar results from the consolidation of the deictic meaning of the verb pair. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we present the Construction Grammar Conceptual Network method, developed for identifying lexical similarity and word sense discrimination in a syntactically tagged corpus, based on the cognitive linguistic assumption that coordination construction instantiates conceptual relatedness. This graph analysis method projects a semantic value onto a given coordinated syntactic dependency and constructs a second-order lexical network of lexical collocates with a high co-occurrence measure. The subsequent process of clustering and pruning the graph reveals lexical communities with high conceptual similarity, which are interpreted as associated senses of the source lexeme. We demonstrate the theory and its application to the task of identifying the conceptual structure and different meanings of nouns, adjectives and verbs using examples from different corpora, and explain the modulating effects of linguistic and graph parameters. This graph approach is based on syntactic dependency processing and can be used as a complementary method to other contemporary natural language processing resources to enrich semantic tasks such as word disambiguation, domain relatedness, sense structure, identification of synonymy, metonymy, and metaphoricity, as well as to automate comprehensive meta-reasoning about languages and identify cross/intra-cultural discourse variations of prototypical conceptualization patterns and knowledge representations. As a contribution, we provide a web-based app at http://emocnet.uniri.hr/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Revista Soletras is the property of Editora da Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (EdUERJ) 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 Revista Soletras is the property of Editora da Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (EdUERJ) 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 Lexikos is the property of Bureau of the Woordeboek van die Afrikaanse Taal 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.)

The semantic classification of over 2,200 constructions in the Russian Constructicon has emerged objectively from empirical analysis. The resulting semantic classification comports with and goes beyond frame semantics, revealing complex patterns of related constructions verified against corpus data and by a panel of native speakers. Our model of a constructicon can inform and complement existing approaches with additional findings. We detail our discovery procedure and the semantic relationships that link constructions. While our methods and findings are based on a single language, they can serve as a basis for cross-linguistic comparison in the field of Construction Grammar and constructicography research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates syntactic and semantic features of the English concessive construction just because X doesn't mean Y (JB-X DM-Y) grounded in Goldberg's theory of construction grammar. Based on initial data collected from the British National Corpus (BNC) and the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), our qualitative analysis proved that: (1) syntactically, there should be an unexpressed pronoun it or that serving as the subject of the DM-Y part. The quantitative analysis revealed the productivity of JB-X DM-Y. In terms of vocabulary, just and mean in the construction can be replaced by the adverb simply and verbs indicating inference or making assertions. In terms of structure, JB-X NEG-VP and JB-X NEG-CLAUSE were widely used, and JB-X QUESTION exhibited certain productivity; and (2) semantically, JB-X DM-Y should be seen as the negation of the construction Y, because X. It presented the meaning of inference denial and concessive meaning, corresponding to the inferential-because construction and causal-because construction. This article provides a systemic discussion about JB-X DM-Y and hopes to provide a basic structure for the future analysis of JB-X DM-Y. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focus particles such as auch "also", nur "only" and sogar "even" form a closed word class and do not occur as immediate constituents in German. They usually have to adjoin to an associated focus constituent and are even occasionally referred to as function words. It is quite surprising that the focus particle ausgerechnet "of all X" (Peter kommt ausgerechnet heute "Peter is coming today of all days") also occurs as an independent utterance as in Peter kommt heute. Ausgerechnet! "Peter is coming today. Of all days!". The article describes this little studied (colloquial) use of ausgerechnet. It presents a detailed analysis of the focus particle ausgerechnet showing that it is an expressive item in the sense of Christopher Potts. The expressive semantics motivates its use as an utterance in analogy to exclamations with expressives such as the interjection Donnerwetter! "Oh dear!" or the adjective Toll! "great". The analysis is presented in a construction-based framework and illustrates the need to integrate core and peripheral grammatical phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coercion is an inferential strategy used to resolve conflict between an operator and its argument. Such conflicts are resolved in favor of the semantic requirements of the operator (Talmy, 2000). Jackendoff (1997) and De Swart (1998) , among others, represent coercion through type-shifting operators that intervene between an aspectual operator and its situation-type argument, ensuring that the argument is of the appropriate type for the operator. This framework has a mapping problem: the rules that it uses to represent aspectual-type shifts simply replace one aspectual type (the input) with another (the output), so it does not explain how the input representation constrains the output representation. This article offers a solution to the mapping problem: treating aspectual type shifts as operations on the decomposed semantic representations of verbs. I will show that two such operations can capture both implicit and explicit aspectual type-shifts in English, involving both tense constructions and aspectual constructions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

In the terminology of modern information structure studies, Sasse's distinction between "non-predicative" sentences and "predication base and predicate" sentences can be equated with the difference between "all-comment" sentences and "overt topic constituent-comment" sentences ([49]; [50]; [61]). 2.2 Italian thetic and sentence-focus constructions 2.2.1 Preliminary remarks on constructionhood and the constructions involved In Italian, various linguistic structures at the sentential level have been analyzed as "thetic and sentence-focus constructions". While any linguistic structure that can be used to express theticity tends to be considered a thetic construction in the literature, a linguistic structure is only considered a sentence-focus construction if it is used to convey sentence-focus construal and if the construction also structurally indicates this construal ([60], [61], [62], [63]). [60], [61], [62] excludes thetic sentences such as (18), which, functionally speaking, clearly have a sentence-focus construal, from the status of sentence-focus construction, because they are structurally indistinguishable from predicate-focus constructions with pronominal subjects that carry both referential and relational presuppositions, as in (19). Keywords: construction grammar; grammatically encoded category; integral linguistics; Italian; sentence-focus; theticity EN construction grammar grammatically encoded category integral linguistics Italian sentence-focus theticity 1241 1293 53 07/05/22 20220701 NES 220701 1 Introduction The categories of theticity and sentence-focus have frequently been used to characterize various linguistic structures in a wide variety of typologically diverse languages ([1]; [60], [61], [62]; [69]; [78], [79], [80]; [86]). [Extracted from the article]

Word-embedding models learned the word vectors by maximizing the likelihood of either predicting the context words when given the target word (e.g., word2vec:CBOW) or predicting the target word when given the context words (e.g., word2vec:Skipgram). Word-embedding models of lexical semantics were essentially a computational version of distributional semantics built upon the assumption that "difference of meaning correlates with difference of distribution" ([32]: 785). Network analysis, space particles, usage-based grammar, collocation, collostruction analysis, construction grammar We will closely investigate the network's properties at all three levels (i.e., microscopic, mesoscopic, and macroscopic) and will specifically contextualize their implications for the development of constructional semantics in relation to the emerging semantics of the usage-based grammar. Keywords: usage-based grammar; collocation; collostruction analysis; network analysis; space particles; construction grammar EN usage-based grammar collocation collostruction analysis network analysis space particles construction grammar 209 235 27 05/12/22 20220501 NES 220501 1 Introduction Meaning in language is a complex subject. [Extracted from the article]

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.)

The Chinese Passive Construction with Retained Object (CPCRO) has aroused extensive attention from scholars especially advocators of Generative Grammar due to its syntactic idiosyncrasy. Previous researches primarily concerned with such syntactic idiosyncrasy concentrate on issues of its syntactic derivation but fail to provide an empirically responsible and consensual explanation for all its instantiations. This paper initiates a new perspective by focusing on its semantics on the basis of Construction Grammar. It is argued that CPCRO is a construction with its constructional meaning characterized by a causative meaning that profiles the causee's change. This passive causative meaning is elaborated by three verb-class-specific semantic variants, i.e., the passive cause-motion variant associated with motion verbs or verbs entailing motion and specifying the causee's change of location, the passive cause-result variant associated with verbs of making or creating and specifying the causee's change of state, and the passive cause-receive/lose variant associated with ditransitive verbs or verbs with the potential of taking double objects and specifying the causee's change of possession. They are structured into a polysemy network in the sense that the passive cause-result variant is metaphorically extended from the passive cause-motion variant, whereas the passive cause-receive/lose variant encoding the object-dual-based conceptualization of Event Structure directly relates to the passive cause-motion variant which encodes the location-dual-based conceptualization, and indirectly to the passive cause-result variant which preserves the location-dual-based conceptualization due to the invariance principle of metaphorical mapping, through profile shift. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Compositionality is undoubtedly one of the hardest problems in linguistics. In decoding theories, the speaker occupies a leading role, having to carefully choose the form that better encodes the meaning to be communicated. In contrast, in inferential theories, the burden is shifted from speaker to hearer: linguistic information typically underspecifies meaning and the hearer must make a number of inferences to bridge the gap between what is said and what is meant. In this article, I argue that constructional meaning can aid the process of sentence meaning formation by providing a scaffold that can help the hearer with the construal operations. Constructions, by providing an additional layer of meaning, constrain the range of possible meanings activated by words thereby reducing the combinatorial explosion when several words are joined together. This process is examined here by analysing the meanings associated with the grammatical construction [from X to Y], which is connected to a polysemy network of related senses, using examples extracted from a multimodal corpus. A preliminary analysis of the gesturing behaviour associated with the different senses proposed is also included, which can be seen to contribute to the characterisation of the different senses of the polysemy network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

El artículo discute la anáfora del artículo definido, construcción del contexto en la interpretación anafórica a través de la comparación entre las lenguas española y china. El artículo también se centra en la teoría de la relevancia a través de las interacciones entre la gramática y la pragmática, la semántica lingüística y las interacciones conceptuales en los idiomas español y chino.

This paper aims to explore the main constructions showing a covert encoding of Path of motion in Classical Greek (5th–4th century BC). Based on a corpus study of five texts belonging to different literary genres, it applies the theoretical frameworks and conceptual tools of contemporary linguistic approaches, such as the semantic typology of motion events and Construction Grammar, to the data from an ancient language, in order to address the non-compositional expression of Path. The results of the analysis reveal that, in addition to the overt morphosyntactic encoding of Path information, Ancient Greek resorts to more implicit patterns, in which coercion, meaning extension and inference play a crucial role. Furthermore, as opposed to traditional views on motion expression, this study shows that the encoding of spatial meaning is rarely committed to a single lexical or morphological tool within the clause, but rather it distributes across different linguistic units and results from their interaction with one another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the Reference Corpus of Middle High German (REM) and the Bonn Early New High German Corpus (FnhdC), this paper investigates the development of the German future construction werden + Infinitive as well as constructions that are often seen as its predecessors and/or competitors. The paper focuses on the construction werden + Present Participle but also takes modal verb constructions with mögen, müssen, sollen, and wollen into account. A semantic analysis of the dependent verbs occurring in the constructions with regard to their aspectual characteristics reveals that werden + Infinitive and werden + Present Participle undergo parallel developments that can be seen as context expansion from a grammaticalization-theoretical perspective. The modal verb constructions, by contrast, remain stable with regard to the aspectual semantics of their dependent verbs. Furthermore, it is argued that, following recent theoretical approaches from diachronic Construction Grammar, the complex relationship between werden + Infinitive and werden + Participle can be modelled as ›attraction‹ or contamination between different constructions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comparative Correlatives (CCs) are biclausal constructions (e.g. The harder you work, the more you earn) that have complex semantics and form. This is the first construction grammar-based corpus study to investigate Slovak CCs, based on a 500-token sample. I argue that intra-clausal word-order phenomena can be explained through processing efficiency, based on Hawkins' principle of Early Immediate Constituents (2004), and I use covarying-collexeme analysis (Stefanowitsch & Gries 2005) to provide evidence for the existence of meso-constructions. The findings of this study contribute to construction grammar's "aspirations toward universal applicability" (Fried 2017: 249), proving that the theory is also suitable for analysis of syntactic patterns in Slavic languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking the object NP as the starting point, comparing the Chinese light verb construction "打+NP" and its Korean counterpart "NP+■" from the perspective of construction grammar. In terms of argument collocation, the tangible object structures such as tool, method and location are shared by both, and the identity object is unique to "打+NP". In terms of semantic function, hitting meaning is the core meaning of the Han-Korean light verb construction "打+NP/NP+■", which develops result meaning and conditional meaning through metonymy or metaphor. In terms of semantic representation, the two paraphrase templates are basically the same, and the prominent position of the argument NP is different. Constructing the polysemy corresponding semantic network of Chinese and Korean light verb constructions with the object NP as the center will help to weaken the negative impact of mother tongue transfer on the second language vocabulary acquisition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the collocational behavior of English modal auxiliaries such as may and might with the aim of finding corpus-based measures that distinguish between different modal expressions and that allow insights into why speakers may choose one over another in a given context. The analysis uses token-based semantic vector space modeling (Heylen et al. , 2015 , Monitoring polysemy. Word space models as a tool for large-scale lexical semantic analysis. Lingua, 157: 153–72; Hilpert and Correia Saavedra, 2017 , Using token-based semantic vector spaces for corpus-linguistic analyses: From practical applications to tests of theoretical claims. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory) in order to determine whether different modal auxiliaries can be distinguished in terms of their collocational profiles. The analysis further examines whether different senses of the same auxiliary exhibit divergent collocational preferences. The results indicate that near-synonymous pairs of modal expressions, such as may and might or must and have to , differ in their distributional characteristics. Also, different senses of the same modal expression, such as deontic and epistemic uses of may , can be distinguished on the basis of distributional information. We discuss these results against the background of previous empirical findings (Hilpert, 2016 , Construction Grammar and its Application to English, 2nd edn. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, Flach, in press, Beyond modal idioms and modal harmony: a corpus-based analysis of gradient idiomaticity in modal-adverb collocations. English Language and Linguistics) and theoretical issues such as degrees of grammaticalization (Correia Saavedra, 2019 , Measurements of Grammaticalization: Developing a Quantitative Index for the Study of Grammatical Change. PhD Dissertation, Université de Neuchâtel) and the avoidance of synonymy (Bolinger, 1968 , Entailment and the meaning of structures. Glossa, 2 (2): 119–27). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates the interaction of lexical and constructional meaning in valency coercion processing, and the effect of (in)compatibility between verb and construction for its successful resolution (Perek, Florent & Martin Hilpert. 2014. Constructional tolerance: Cross-linguistic differences in the acceptability of non-conventional uses of constructions. Constructions and Frames 6(2). 266–304; Yoon, Soyeon. 2019. Coercion and language change: A usage-based approach. Linguistic Research 36(1). 111–139). We present an online experiment on valency coercion (the first one on Italian), by means of a semantic priming protocol inspired by Johnson, Matt A. & Adele E. Goldberg. 2013. Evidence for automatic accessing of constructional meaning: Jabberwocky sentences prime associated verbs. Language & Cognitive Processes 28(10). 1439–1452. We test priming effects with a lexical decision task which presents different target verbs preceded by coercion instances of four Italian argument structure constructions, which serve as primes. Three types of verbs serve as target: lexical associate (LA), construction associate (CA), and unrelated (U) verbs. LAs are semantically similar to the main verb of the prime sentence, whereas CAs are prototypical verbs associated to the prime construction. U verbs serve as a mean of comparison for the two categories of interest. Results confirm that processing of valency coercion requires an integration of both lexical and constructional semantics. Moreover, compatibility is also found to influence coercion resolution. Specifically, constructional priming is primary and independent from compatibility. A secondary priming effect for LA verbs is also found, which suggests a contribution of lexical semantics in coercion resolution – especially for low-compatibility coercion coinages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the nature and function of mental representations in cognitive science, and in human language in particular? How do they come into existence and interact, and how is the information attributed to them stored in and retrieved from the human mind? Some theories treat constructions as primitive entities used for structure-building, central in both production and comprehension, while other theories only admit construction-like entities as devices to map the structure into semantics or to relate them to specific morphophonological exponents. In this positional piece, we seek to elucidate areas of commonality across what have traditionally been divergent approaches to the role of constructions in language. Here we outline a robust specification of the differences in how chunks of structure containing information are treated in the two main approaches, and we seek to offer a path toward a more unified theoretical stance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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An important recent innovation in Construction Grammar (CxG) has been to assume the existence of a general underspecified construction underlying two or more alternating constructions, which themselves are considered to be formally and functionally related allostructions of the general construction. Despite this novel proposal, the meaning side of the general construction has either been neglected or couched in a single-layered view of meaning that does not adequately distinguish semantics from pragmatics. Building on state-of-the-art developments at the semantics-pragmatics interface, this article proposes an account whereby the distinction between the meaning of the general construction and the meaning of the allostructions aligns with the distinction between encoded (semantic) and inferred (pragmatic) meaning. We argue in favor of an allostructional account for two grammatical alternations which have previously been treated as an epiphenomenon of two underlying independent constructions: the German ditransitive alternation and the English genitive alternation. While demonstrating the fruitfulness of an allostructional analysis for these two new cases, we also provide critical observations about the wider applicability of allostructional analyses. In particular, we argue that an allostructional analysis proves to be trivial for Lambrechtian 'allosentences'. • Allostructional account for the German ditransitive and the English genitive alternation. • Distinguishing the meaning of the general construction and the meaning of the allostructions. • Enriching Construction Grammar with the distinction between semantics and pragmatics. • Allostructional analysis has its limits in its application to allosentences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a case study of grammatical constructions and how their function in a single language (Russian) can be captured through semantic and syntactic classification. Since 2016 an on-going joint project of UiT The Arctic University of Norway and the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow has been collecting and analyzing multiword grammatical constructions of Russian. The main product is the Russian Constructicon (https://site.uit.no/russian-constructicon/), which, with over two thousand two hundred constructions (and more being continuously added), is arguably the largest openly available constructicon resource for any language. The combination of this large size with depth of analysis, containing both syntactic and semantic tags, makes it possible to view the interrelation of constructions as families and to discover trends in their behavior. Our annotation includes 53 semantic tags of varying frequency, with three tags that are by far more frequent than all the rest, accounting for 30% of the entire inventory of the Russian Constructicon. These three semantic types are Assessment, Attitude, and Intensity, all of which convey a speaker's evaluation of a topic, in contrast to most of the other tags (such as Time, Manner, and Comparison). Assessment and Attitude constructions are investigated in greater detail in this article. Secondary semantic tags reveal that negative evaluation among these two semantic types is more than twice as frequent as positive evaluation. Examples of negative evaluations are: for Assessment VP tak sebe , as in Na pianino ja igraju tak sebe "I play the piano so-so [lit. thus self]"; for Attitude s PronPers-Gen xvatit/xvatilo (NP-Gen) , as in S menja xvatit "I'm fed up [lit. from me enough]." In terms of syntax, the most frequent syntactic types of constructions in the Russian Constructicon are clausal constructions [constituting an independent clause like s PronPers-Gen xvatit/xvatilo (NP-Gen) ] and constructions with the anchor in the role of adverbial modifier (like VP tak sebe). Our semantic and syntactic classification of this large body of Russian constructions makes it possible to postulate patterns of grammatical constructions constituting a radial category with central and peripheral types. Classification of large numbers of constructions reveals systematic relations that structure the grammar of a language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how Vietnamese people express motion by using path verbs. This paper is based on the theory of lexicalization patterns, which is related to the conflation of semantic components into linguistic units. The data consists of expressions of motion verbs and spatial prepositions that were taken from twelve Vietnamese stories and three novels in the 20th century onward. The results of this paper present several lexicalization patterns of semantic components that become path verbs and spatial prepositions. Moreover, this paper clarifies construction grammar of lexical expressions of path motion in Vietnamese, which refers to speakers' knowledge of motion utilized to express motion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The English auxiliary system exhibits many lexical exceptions and subregularities, and considerable dialectal variation, all of which are frequently omitted from generative analyses and discussions. This paper presents a detailed, movement-free account of the English Auxiliary System within Sign-Based Construction Grammar (Sag 2010, Michaelis 2011, Boas & Sag 2012) that utilizes techniques of lexicalist and construction-based analysis. The resulting conception of linguistic knowledge involves constraints that license hierarchical structures directly (as in context-free grammar), rather than by appeal to mappings over such structures. This allows English auxiliaries to be modeled as a class of verbs whose behavior is governed by general and class-specific constraints. Central to this account is a novel use of the feature aux , which is set both constructionally and lexically, allowing for a complex interplay between various grammatical constraints that captures a wide range of exceptional patterns, most notably the vexing distribution of unstressed do , and the fact that Ellipsis can interact with other aspects of the analysis to produce the feeding and blocking relations that are needed to generate the complex facts of EAS. The present approach, superior both descriptively and theoretically to existing transformational approaches, also serves to undermine views of the biology of language and acquisition such as Berwick et al. (2011), which are centered on mappings that manipulate hierarchical phrase structures in a structure-dependent fashion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a construction grammar analysis of the innovative bèi construction in Chinese. The bèi construction departs from the canonical passive construction in that, instead of a transitive verb, it has a lexeme that is not a transitive verb to go with the passive marker bèi. We propose that the non-transitive verb denotes an event (as opposed to a state or action) in which the referent of the subject participates involuntarily. The passive semantics of the construction then coerces the non-transitive lexeme into behaving like one. We will, in addition, demonstrate a case of what may be called a "reverse constructional coercion" whereby the innovative construction imposes its semantics onto canonical passive sentences. Lastly, we argue that the structure and semantics of the construction create a parody of the social reality the construction seems to reflect. This parody, which is based on the similarities between the bèi construction and the canonical passive construction, in turn, produces the rhetorical effects of satire/sarcasm, expressing a sense of absurdity about the event in question and a sense of indignation and helplessness on the part of the speaker. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The resultative construction has been one of the focuses in exploring the interfaces between semantics and syntax. In the generativist tradition, constructions are regarded as the surface structures that are generated by a set of phrasal rules. In cognitive linguistics, especially the approach of construction grammar, constructions are viewed as the fixed pairings of forms and meanings that are regarded as symbolic like lexical items. This article argues that constructions are schemas determined by certain rules, and a set of subconstructions may be produced by a base construction. The article shows that the transitivity of the resultative construction is governed by the semantic relationship between the verb and the resultative phrase, which in turn determines concrete syntactic configurations. Grammar constructions consisting of two or more elements are essentially different from those atomic lexical items, a point distinguishing my analysis from construction grammar. Without the assumption of any underlying structures, unlike the generativist model, this article uncovers the surface rules that determine concrete constructions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the continuing goals and present status of the ICSI/UC Berkeley efforts on Embodied Construction Grammar (ECG). ECG is semantics-based formalism grounded in cognitive linguistics. ECG is the most explicitly inter-disciplinary of the construction grammars with deep links to computation, neuroscience, and cognitive science. Work continues on core cognitive, computational, and linguistic issues, including aspects of the mind/body problem. Much of the recent emphasis has been on applications and on tools to facilitate new applications. Extensive documentation plus downloadable systems and grammars can be found at the ECG Homepage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This squib provides a theoretical discussion on the use of the terms semantics and pragmatics in Construction Grammar. In the literature, the difference between semantics and pragmatics is often conceptualized either in terms of conventionality or in terms of truth-conditionality (Huang 2014, 299). It will be shown that, even though constructionists claim that there is no semantics–pragmatics distinction, both these underlying concepts are central to the study of constructions. Therefore, the aim is twofold. First, in keeping with Cappelle (2017), it will be argued that constructionists should make more explicit the distinction between the two types of (encoded) meaning. Second, it will be shown that constructionists need to be more terminologically consistent and agree on how to use the terms semantics and pragmatics. Following Depraetere (2019), I will argue that the terms semantics and pragmatics are most explanatory when defined in truth-conditional terms. In this way, finer-grained understanding of the meaning of constructions can be achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collocations of the type venirle en voluntad, a constructional pattern that seemed to be productive in the Middle Ages, fell out of use and became lexicalized in the Golden Age, leaving behind only fossilized relics such as venirle en gana(s). The loss of this pattern involved two related changes that are discussed within Traugott and Trousdale's (2013) diachronic model: the obsolescence and lexical constructionalization of a constructional subschema. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the diatopic variation of the periphrasis andar + ger, comparing its use in Mexican and Peninsular Spanish. To this end, the relative frequency of the construction is analyzed in several corpora, as well as its most distinctive semantic and syntactic features. Our quantitative analysis shows, on the one hand, the high frequency of andar + ger in Mexican Spanish as compared to Peninsular Spanish. On the other hand, it reveals that the periphrasis occurs, above all, in informal language modalities. Semantically, the present study corroborates that, in periphrases with a gerund, the verb andar ('to walk'), has progressively lost its lexical meaning of physical movement and has come to transmit pragmatic values, particularly of determination and insistence. In addition, unlike Peninsular Spanish, in Mexican Spanish the periphrasis is less subject to selectional restrictions with respect to the gerund, a relatively recent change that points to a strong grammaticalization. Syntactically, the grammaticalization process is reflected in the adjacency of the auxiliary and the gerund, the fixed internal order of the two components of the periphrasis, clitic climbing and a drop in the frequency of coordinated gerunds. The case of andar + ger demonstrates that grammaticalization of the same construction can take place in different ways depending on the specific dialectal environment. Likewise, and at a more general level, it stresses the importance of a diatopic approach in studies on verbal periphrases and grammaticalization processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this work is a diachronic study of the inchoative periphrasis ponerse a + inf. To this end, we have used a multimodal corpus which is composed of different textual typologies from the 12th up to the 21st century. Drawing on the Diachronic Construction Grammar theoretical model, this study argues for a usage-based approach for the verbal periphrasis studies. The central part of this study has two axes: firstly, a characterisation of ponerse a + inf, and secondly, a diachronic analysis of this verbal periphrasis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]