Constructing grammatical meaning

2007 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 721-764 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mirjam Fried
Keyword(s):  
Construction Grammar ◽  
Linguistic Structure ◽  
Spontaneous Change ◽  
Verb Semantics ◽  
Communicative Functions ◽  
Grammatical Categories ◽  
Change Of State ◽  
Patient Relations

In a usage-based analysis of four syntactic reflexives in Czech, this paper examines the question of representing speakers’ knowledge of polyfunctional grammatical categories. I argue that the reflexives form a prototype-based network of partially overlapping grammatical patterns, organized by the pragmatic concept of unexpected referential status in agent–patient relations. This concept is manifested in four distinct communicative functions: marking referential identity between agent and patient roles; distancing discourse participants from their involvement in the reported event; recasting a transitive event as a spontaneous change of state; expressing an attitude toward the reported event. Each function is shown to conventionally co-occur with a set of properties involving various combinations of the following: preferences in aspect and transitivity; semantic and/or pragmatic constraints on agents and patients; verb semantics; shifts in modality and pragmatic force; morphosyntactic constraints. Overall, the analysis supports the view that grammatical categories cannot be properly defined outside of broader grammatical context, thus arguing for a constructional approach to linguistic structure and for re-interpreting the principle of isomorphism in terms of ‘constructions’ in the sense of Construction Grammar.

EXPLORING ENGLISH VERBS OF MOTION AT THE SYNTAXSEMANTICS INTERFACE (AN ANALYTICAL OVERVIEW)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nataliya Gontarenko ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Construction Grammar ◽  
Research Papers ◽  
Verb Semantics ◽  
Verbs Of Motion ◽  
Motion Verb

This article provides an overview of research papers which explore English verbs of motion at the syntax-semantics interface. Among the issues addressed are controversial aspects of motion verb semantics. It is argued that the theoretical principles of construction grammar help to determine whether the meaning of motion is attributed to the verb or the syntactic construction.

The Place of Classifiers in the History of Linguistics

2014 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcin Kilarski
Keyword(s):  
East Asia ◽  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
Limited Attention ◽  
Western Tradition ◽  
Linguistic Structure ◽  
Grammatical Categories ◽  
Classifier Languages ◽  
History Of Linguistics ◽  
History Of

Summary This article examines the approaches to classifiers within the Western tradition, ranging from the earliest accounts of the languages of Mesoamerica and East Asia from the 16th-17th centuries to ongoing discussions regarding their semantic motivation and functionality. I show that in spite of the limited attention they attracted before the 1970s, classifiers have played an important role in discussions concerning such notions as the functions of grammatical categories, the distinction between grammar and lexicon as well as the cognitive and cultural correlates of linguistic structure. In addition, I attribute common assumptions about classifiers to projections of typical properties of grammatical gender and, more generally, semantic and morphosyntactic properties of non-classifier languages.

scholarly journals Ficar, tornar-se e virar em construções relacionais: variação e/ou mudança construcional?

2018 ◽  
pp. 68-82
Author(s):  
Bruna Gois Pavão Ferreira ◽  
Márcia Dos Santos Machado Vieira
Keyword(s):  
Central Place ◽  
Brazilian Portuguese ◽  
Construction Grammar ◽  
State Change ◽  
Functional Differences ◽  
Change Of State ◽  
State Construction ◽  
Constructionist Approach

Based on constructionist approach of Goldberg (1995, 2003, 2013) and Traugott & Trousdale (2013), this research focuses on the relational construction of state change and the variation/alternation between the verbs ficar, tornar-se e virar (stay, become and turn) in this type of construction in Brazilian Portuguese. The verbal forms that alternate are investigated in the same context (predicative construction of a change of state) and motivations for the variation to occur. The main objective of this research is to identify: (i) constructional verbal patterns of change of state in Brazilian Portuguese based on frequency and in the relations of form and/or meaning by family similarities existing in the instances of use of such verbal forms; (ii) the configuration of the relational construction of state change (in view of state construction formulated in Goldberg, 1995); (iii) the functional differences between the microconstructions with ficar, tornar-se e virar, seeking to analyze how the variation/alternation between such verbs occurs in the construction of change of state. The data were collected in academic articles, journalistic texts and texts accessed in some sites of evaluation or complaint and analyzed according to some parameters, among which: (a) the type of subject and of predicative syntagma; (b) the more permanent/more transient aspect of the construction; (c) the degree of formality of the context in which it was recorded. This paper also evidences the central place of variation in Construction Grammar.

scholarly journals Subjectivity in Japanese: A Corpus-Linguistic Study

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 202
Author(s):  
Wenchao Li
Keyword(s):  
Motion Verbs ◽  
Personal Pronoun ◽  
Linguistic Study ◽  
Intransitive Verb ◽  
Corpus Linguistic ◽  
Grammatical Categories ◽  
Change Of State ◽  
Transitive Verbs ◽  
Intransitive Verbs ◽  
Objective Meaning

This paper provides a corpus-linguistic study on subjectivity in Japanese, in an effort to arrive at how subjectivity, transitivity and grammaticalisation are related. 899 lexicons from nine grammatical categories (suffixes and prefixes, adjectives, particles, auxiliaries, nouns, adnominals, adverbs, and transitive/intransitive verb pairs) are examined. The findings reveal that Japanese is a subjective/objective-split language, and that subjectivity in affixes is facilitated by phonology: voiced/voiceless consonant alternation. The data also show that consonant-voiced prefixes and suffixes yield a subjective reading, while consonant-voiceless prefixes and suffixes render an objective meaning. Split subjectivity in adjectives is realised by morphology: しい-ending adjectives tend to be subjective, while い-ending adjectives are mostly objective. The differentiation of subjectivity in adjectives is further tied to the constraints on personal pronoun and verbalisation possibilities. Intriguingly, objective/subjective readings of しい-ending adjectives andい-ending adjectives are switchable. Furthermore, among transitive/intransitive verb pairs, intransitive verbs are likely to get grammaticalised, while transitive verbs are likely to be lexicalised and thus render a subjective reading. This is confirmed by change-of-state verbs and motion verbs. This paper therefore puts forward the hypothesis that the interrelationship of grammaticalisation and lexicalisation is orthogonal.

scholarly journals Verbal prefixation, construction grammar, and semantic compatibility: Evidence from the locative alternation in Polish

2016 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Wojciech Lewandowski
Keyword(s):  
Argument Structure ◽  
Construction Grammar ◽  
Testing Ground ◽  
Locative Alternation ◽  
Change Of State ◽  
Semantic Compatibility

AbstractThis paper aims to analyze the interaction between prefixes, verbs, and abstract argument structure constructions, using as a testing ground the locative alternation. It has been assumed that in order to participate in the locative alternation, a verb must specify a manner of motion from which a change of state can be obtained (see, for instance, Steven Pinker’s

Beyond Aristotle and gradience

2007 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 409-430 ◽  
Author(s):  
William A. Croft
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Category Member ◽  
Construction Grammar ◽  
The Other ◽  
Parts Of Speech ◽  
Grammatical Categories ◽  
Distributional Patterns ◽  
The One ◽  
Syntactic Properties ◽  
Radical Construction

Aarts (2004) argues that the best way to model grammatical categories is a compromise preserving Aristotelian form classes with sharp boundaries on the one hand, and allowing gradience in terms of the number of syntactic properties that a category member possesses on the other. But the assumption of form classes causes serious theoretical and empirical problems. Constructions differ in their distributional patterns, but no a priori principles exist to decide which constructions should be used to define form classes. Grammatical categories must be defined relative to specific constructions; this is the position advocated in Radical Construction Grammar (Croft 2001). Constructionally defined categories may have sharp boundaries, but they do not divide words into form classes. Nevertheless, the most important traditional intuitions for parts of speech (Aarts’ chief examples) are reinterpretable in terms of crosslinguistic universals that constrain distributional variation but do not impose Aristotelian form classes, gradable or not, on the grammars of particular languages.

scholarly journals The Chinese Notional Passive Construction under the View of Cognitive Construction Grammar

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 83-110
Author(s):  
Liulin ZHANG
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Language ◽  
Construction Grammar ◽  
Special Situation ◽  
Historical Approach ◽  
Passive Construction ◽  
Change Of State ◽  
State Construction ◽  
History Of ◽  
Corpus Data ◽  
Cognitive Construction Grammar

The notional passive construction (NPC, henceforth) is claimed to be the most common form of passive and the earliest mode of passive expression in Chinese. However, under the view of cognitive construction grammar, NPC remains a mystery with its form not clearly defined and its function not particularly discussed. Taking a character-based historical approach, this paper studies the form designated by NPC, the ‘theme + verbal’ structure in corpus data. Results show that the ‘theme + verbal’ structure is extremely stable in the history of the Chinese language, denoting change of state. In conjunction with some cross-linguistic findings, a change-of-state construction can thereby be proposed for the form ‘theme + verbal’. Accordingly, the idea of the so-called “notional passive construction” is challenged in the way that it essentially refers to a special situation of the change-of-state construction when the event expressed by the verbal is not likely to occur spontaneously- it is not a construction itself, yet plausibly passive.

Causal framing for medical instrumentality

2010 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 164-193 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Sambre ◽  
Cornelia Wermuth
Keyword(s):  
Medical Research ◽  
Medical Model ◽  
Causal Chain ◽  
Construction Grammar ◽  
Frame Semantics ◽  
Research Papers ◽  
Linguistic Structure ◽  
Linguistic Patterns ◽  
Conceptual Background ◽  
Conceptual Relations

This paper explores the linguistic patterns of instrumentality in the titles of English medical research papers, at the interface between conceptual and linguistic structure, and offers a contribution to the little studied interrelationships between static and dynamic conceptual relations in medical ontology and LSP terminology. It is demonstrated how causal cues constitute the conceptual background against which instrumentals are profiled in the causal chain of the medical model. Taking inspiration from Talmy, frame semantics and construction grammar, the linguistic patterns in which causal and instrumental frame elements are co-activated are transcribed as complex patterns with partial morphological, syntactic and lexical marking of the conceptual relations under study. The paper offers an exploratory typology of causal cues for instrumentals and describes how multiple instruments can appear in medical LSP. The findings are relevant for those interested in the nexus between ontology, constructional aspects of expert language and frame semantics

Constructions at the crossroads

2004 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 197-233 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dylan Glynn
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Model ◽  
Construction Grammar ◽  
Semantic Structure ◽  
Linguistic Structure ◽  
Conceptual Domain ◽  
Lexical Field

Construction Grammar focuses on the meaning encoded in the syntagmatic structures of language. However, syntagmatic meaning and coding interact in a complex way with paradigmatic structures such as lexis, metonymy, and metaphor. How can Construction Grammar capture the formal and semantic structure of entrenched schematic constructions while rigorously accounting for all these parameters? Based on the analysis of the conceptual domain of ‘stealing’ in English, this study demonstrates that through combining three different approaches to linguistic structure, the study of the semantic frame, the cognitive model, and the onomasiological lexical field, we can more properly appreciate and explain lexical, metaphoric, and constructional interplay.

Grammatical categories as paradigms in construction Grammar

2021 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriele Diewald ◽  
Katja Politt
Keyword(s):  
Language Change ◽  
Construction Grammar ◽  
Grammatical Categories

Abstract This squib discusses the question whether Construction Grammar can account for the assumption of universal grammatical categories (Bybee, Perkins, and Pagliuca 1994) that are prone to language change, e.g. tense. Most publications in Construction Grammar tackle individual constructions, such as the way-construction (Jackendoff 1990). But it remains unclear how grammatical categories as a universal phenomenon can be described in constructionist terms. We propose that there is a way to (a) describe grammatical categories, which per definition are encoded paradigmatically, as constructions themselves and (b) to thereby strengthen the assumption of a set of universal grammatical categories.

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