From X to Y: Anatomy of a Constructional Pattern

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.

Thai elf Users’ Characteristics of Relative Clauses

To build up the empirical description of elf’s morphosyntactic system, this study examines Thai elf users’ characteristics of relative clauses and analyses the causes underlying their use of the construction. Data were taken from the writing of 116 advanced and upper-intermediate English majors at a university in Bangkok. The results indicated that Thai elf users’ relative clauses exhibit preferences for unmarked and explicit structures. Both linguistic and functional causes are responsible for their production of the construction: they form relative clauses full of basic and transparent structures in order to ensure simple and successful communication. The overall results reveal the nature of elf communication. Although Thai elf users’ relative clauses are associated with some specific patterns, their use of this grammatical construction is governed by general linguistic processes which have been found to operate in the interactions of many groups of elf speakers, especially at the phonological and pragmatic levels.

English detached adjectival constructions with an explicit subject: A quantitative corpus-based analysis

This article reports on the quantitative corpus-based investigation into the form-function interplay of the English detached adjectival construction with an explicit subject. Taking Usage-based Construction Grammar as its theoretical framework, this paper investigates the patterns of attraction of lexical items that appear in the main slots of the grammatical construction. The data obtained substantiate the constructional status of the construction and determine its semantic and functional specification in present-day English.

Middle ratings rise regardless of grammatical construction: Testing syntactic variability in a repeated exposure paradigm

People perceive sentences more favourably after hearing or reading them many times. A prominent approach in linguistic theory argues that these types of exposure effects (satiation effects) show direct evidence of a generative approach to linguistic knowledge: only some sentences improve under repeated exposure, and which sentences do improve can be predicted by a model of linguistic competence that yields natural syntactic classes. However, replications of the original findings have been inconsistent, and it remains unclear whether satiation effects can be reliably induced in an experimental setting at all. Here we report four findings regarding satiation effects in wh-questions across German and English. First, the effects pertain to zone of well-formedness rather than syntactic class: all intermediate ratings, including calibrated fillers, increase at the beginning of the experimental session regardless of syntactic construction. Second, though there is satiation, ratings asymptote below maximum acceptability. Third, these effects are consistent across judgments of superiority effects in English and German. Fourth, wh-questions appear to show similar profiles in English and German, despite these languages being traditionally considered to differ strongly in whether they show effects on movement: violations of the superiority condition can be modulated to a similar degree in both languages by manipulating subject-object initiality and animacy congruency of the wh-phrase. We improve on classic satiation methods by distinguishing between two crucial tests, namely whether exposure selectively targets certain grammatical constructions or whether there is a general repeated exposure effect. We conclude that exposure effects can be reliably induced in rating experiments but exposure does not appear to selectively target certain grammatical constructions. Instead, they appear to be a phenomenon of intermediate gradient judgments.

Case grammar in film “the Professor and the Madman” based on Charles J. Fillmore’s Perspective

The sentences spoken by the actors in the dialogue contained in the film “the Professor and the Madman” consist of a variety of structures that form a grammatical construction, so that the sentences can be understood and the dialogue can run well and smoothly. In the context of Charles J. Fillmore’s case grammar, the various structures that form a grammatical construction in a sentence are called modality and proposition. In a line with that background, the purposes of the research are: (1) to reveal the modality in film “the Professor and the Madman” based on the perspective of Charles J. Fillmore; (2) to describe the proposition in film “the Professor and the Madman” based on the perspective of Charles J. Fillmore. This research is qualitative, descriptive and literary research. The data source in this research is film “the Professor and the Madman” directed by P.B. Shemran. The data collection techniques in this research use watching, reading-listening and taking note. The data analysis techniques consist of three stages, namely: (1) choosing and classifying data based on modality and its forms; and proposition and its forms; (2) illustrating and writing down case grammar elements and their forms on the table, explaining them sequentially and interpreting them based on Charles J. Fillmore’s perspective; and (3) conducting the induction of interpretation summary to obtain substantive and formative conclusions. The results are: (1) modality has types, including tense: past, present and future; mode: desiderative, imperative, indicative, and interrogative; negation: no and not; adverb: frequency, manner, degree, quantity, and explanatory; (2) there are several types of proposition. They are agentive case (A): first personal pronoun, second pronoun, and third pronoun; experiential case (E): verb (basic) and verb (modal); instrumental case (I): noun and sense; objective case (O): human and thing; source case (S): noun phrase and noun; goal case (G): human and place; locative case (L): area, part of house, and office; time case (T): part of the day, year, and century; collateral case (C): with + noun; and benefactive case: for + noun. Based on the results of this research, it can be concluded that if a sentence is viewed from the case grammar theory, then it must have an inner structure consisting of modality and or proposition. Modality and proposition consist of types and each of types has the various forms.

Confirming Scripture through Eyewitness Testimony (2 Peter 1.19a): Resolving a Crux Interpretum

Responding to objections raised against the parousia, the author of 2 Peter seeks to defend the validity of Jesus’ return by pointing to the experience of the apostles at the Transfiguration (1.16-18) and to prophetic scripture (1.19-21). But how these two proofs relate to one another has been a matter of dispute since the earliest days of critical scholarship. Standing behind this disagreement is a difficult grammatical construction involving the comparative adjective βεβαιότερον (2 Pet. 1.19a). This article seeks to bring resolution to the debate through a comprehensive assessment of the force and function of this key term.

A grammatical construction in the service of interpersonal distance regulation. The case of the Polish directive infinitive construction

The aim of the paper is to consider the pragmatic effects of the Polish (Proszę) ‘request1 SG. NON-PAST.’ + VINF construction in different contexts. The specific research problem is how these effects are related to the conceptual make-up of the construction. The framework for the analysis is the theory of cognitive grammar (cf. e. g. Langacker 1987, 1991, 2008, 2009). The analysis starts with an account of the conceptual make-up of the construction. Then, its selected uses are considered, with emphasis on the pragmatic effects in the relevant contexts. The study offers a qualitative analysis of two kinds of data: a sample of hand-picked utterances and a corpus of utterances extracted from the National Corpus of Polish (NCP). The claim made in the study is that the construction profiles a process figuring in a directive scenario in the role of the process the speaker wishes the hearer to engage in. At the same time, it involves defocusing of the trajector of the profiled process, identified with the hearer. The construction’s pragmatic effects in specific contexts are claimed to follow from how this trajector defocusing is put in correspondence with specific aspects of the actual ground.

The Conceptual Development of The Role of Grammar in Writing

Recognizing what the selected words mean and how to integrate these words together to compose significant sentences in many different ways are related to the role of grammar. Grammar, on one hand, is regarded as an essential aspect in writing any text since it provides information that assists the reader's understanding. The correct order of words actually gives wider sense of any proposed languagtical rules, no matter what, the sum of all the words in these languages have their own specialis grammar. From across the grammar, writing plays an important role in developing and strengthening learning process of the language. Therefore, this paper is an endeavor to display the grammar`s role as an influential factor in improving students` writing that is going to be tackled and discussed. Keywords: Language, Grammatical Construction, Communication Processes, Grammatical Errors.

CONTRASTING ENGLISH AND SERBIAN THROUGH THE LENSES OF MULTILEVEL-GROUNDED SEMANTICS

The paper illustrates how the author’s emerging theory of “multi-level grounding” may be applied to some contrastive phenomena in English and Serbian. The theory argues that classic semantic approaches based on cross-space interaction may profit enormously from a more thorough consideration of contextual constraints on meaning generation. For example, to understand even a fairly simple comparison such as “Achilles is a lion”, one needs to know a lot more than just how to, depending on the paradigm of choice, “cross-domain map”, “blend”, or “analogize” appropriate formal elements of the two concepts understood as mere mental representations. Rather, to be meaningful in more than just an academic sense, the interpretation needs to call layers of context, from the very general knowledge of who Achilles is and what lions are to specific cultural and even personal connotations appropriate to the two agents and their interaction. In relation to the earlier work of Searle and Langacker, cognitive linguists Coulson and Oakley propose to allocate such knowledge to the construct of the “grounding box” (containing implicit information on the agents, forum, and circumstances surrounding the utterance). The author’s theory makes this concept more refined, suggesting a series of at least six hierarchical and partly recursive grounding boxes constraining meaning generation – from the perceptual attributes of objects cognized to such percepts’ cross-modal interaction with the interlocutors’ embodied experience, to their affective, conceptual, and discourse-driven (re) interpretations. The analysis in this paper aims to show how this approach may be instrumental in disentangling the (seemingly) shared and different semantic strategies in the way English and Serbian treat a simple stock expression (“You are right” / “U pravu si”), grammatical construction (“tolerant of” / “tolerantan prema”), and widely used idiom (“a finger in every pie” / “u svakoj čorbi mirođija”).