This study looks at the variable use of two related forms, namely the reflexive construction (The defendant talked himself into trouble) and the way construction (The actress danced her way to stardom). Despite their differences, the two constructions are often used in ways that can be described as one taking over the other’s expressive functions. Following Mondorf (2011), I assume that the variation results in part from the historical competition between the two, and from the fact that the process of specialization is not yet complete. I present another factor responsible for the overlap, which may keep the specialization from ever being concluded. It involves specific uses of a construction chunked into formulaic phrases (like talk oneself into trouble) which are used reversively (talk oneself out of trouble) against the specifications of the construction they are based on. That is, the kind of variation discussed here is set in motion by the same mechanism observed in novelty motivated through local analogies with specific expressions and low-level instances of a construction.
{"title":"Variation motivated by analogy with fixed chunks","authors":"Konrad Szcześniak","doi":"10.1075/CF.00024.SZC","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/CF.00024.SZC","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This study looks at the variable use of two related forms, namely the reflexive construction (The defendant talked himself into trouble) and the way construction (The actress danced her way to stardom). Despite their differences, the two constructions are often used in ways that can be described as one taking over the other’s expressive functions. Following Mondorf (2011), I assume that the variation results in part from the historical competition between the two, and from the fact that the process of specialization is not yet complete. I present another factor responsible for the overlap, which may keep the specialization from ever being concluded. It involves specific uses of a construction chunked into formulaic phrases (like talk oneself into trouble) which are used reversively (talk oneself out of trouble) against the specifications of the construction they are based on. That is, the kind of variation discussed here is set in motion by the same mechanism observed in novelty motivated through local analogies with specific expressions and low-level instances of a construction.","PeriodicalId":42321,"journal":{"name":"Constructions and Frames","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2019-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44648620","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper investigates the constructional behaviour of three of the most frequent go verbs in Modern Standard Arabic: ḏahaba, maḍā, and rāḥa. These verbs are considered somewhat synonymous according to many classical and modern dictionaries of Arabic. Nevertheless, each verb has a distinctive profile manifested in its constructional behaviour, which explains why these verbs are not easily interchangeable in various contexts of use. In this paper, I will examine the prototypical uses of the three MSA go verbs based on corpus data (extracted from arabicorpus.byu.edu) by highlighting the lexico-syntactic frames they each associate with. This is achieved by annotating a large number of contextualized uses (per verb) for a variety of lexico-syntactic features. The data frame is subsequently probed with the help of Hierarchical Configural Frequency Analysis (von Eye 1990; Gries 2004) as a means of highlighting recurring and significant patterns of variable co-occurrences. The quantitative analysis is followed by a qualitative analysis that further explores the lexico-syntactic frames that pertain to different aspects of a deictic motion event. The results obtained from both the quantitative and qualitative analyses highlight the idiosyncratic constructional properties that characterize the use of each verb in various physical and figurative motion event construals.
{"title":"go constructions in Modern Standard Arabic","authors":"Dana Abdulrahim","doi":"10.1075/CF.00022.ABD","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/CF.00022.ABD","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This paper investigates the constructional behaviour of three of the most frequent go verbs in Modern\u0000 Standard Arabic: ḏahaba, maḍā, and rāḥa. These verbs are considered somewhat synonymous\u0000 according to many classical and modern dictionaries of Arabic. Nevertheless, each verb has a distinctive profile manifested in its\u0000 constructional behaviour, which explains why these verbs are not easily interchangeable in various contexts of use. In this paper,\u0000 I will examine the prototypical uses of the three MSA go verbs based on corpus data (extracted from arabicorpus.byu.edu) by highlighting the lexico-syntactic frames they each\u0000 associate with. This is achieved by annotating a large number of contextualized uses (per verb) for a variety of lexico-syntactic\u0000 features. The data frame is subsequently probed with the help of Hierarchical Configural Frequency Analysis (von Eye 1990; Gries 2004) as a means of highlighting recurring\u0000 and significant patterns of variable co-occurrences. The quantitative analysis is followed by a qualitative analysis that further\u0000 explores the lexico-syntactic frames that pertain to different aspects of a deictic motion event. The results obtained from both\u0000 the quantitative and qualitative analyses highlight the idiosyncratic constructional properties that characterize the use of each\u0000 verb in various physical and figurative motion event construals.","PeriodicalId":42321,"journal":{"name":"Constructions and Frames","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2019-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47273002","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In every-day language use, two or more structurally unrelated constructions may occasionally give rise to strings that look very similar on the surface. As a result of this superficial resemblance, a subset of instances of one of these constructions may deviate in the probabilistic preference for either of several possible formal variants. This effect is called ‘constructional contamination’, and was introduced in Pijpops & Van de Velde (2016). Constructional contamination bears testimony to the hypothesis that language users do not always execute a full parse of the utterances they interpret, but instead often rely on ‘shallow parsing’ and the storage of large, unanalyzed chunks of language in memory, as proposed in Ferreira, Bailey, & Ferraro (2002), Ferreira & Patson (2007), and Dąbrowska (2014). Pijpops & Van de Velde (2016) investigated a single case study in depth, namely the Dutch partitive genitive. This case study is reviewed, and three new case studies are added, namely the competition between long and bare infinitives, word order variation in verbal clusters, and preterite formation. We find evidence of constructional contamination in all case studies, albeit in varying degrees. This indicates that constructional contamination is not a particularity of the Dutch partitive genitive but appears to be more wide-spread, affecting both morphology and syntax. Furthermore, we distinguish between two forms of constructional contamination, viz. first degree and second degree contamination, with first degree contamination producing greater effects than second degree contamination.
在日常语言使用中,两个或两个以上结构上不相关的结构偶尔会产生表面上看起来非常相似的字符串。由于这种表面上的相似性,这些结构之一的实例的子集可能会偏离几种可能的形式变体中的任何一种的概率偏好。这种影响被称为“建筑污染”,Pijpops&Van de Velde(2016)对此进行了介绍。正如Ferreira、Bailey和Ferraro(2002)、Ferreira和Patson(2007)以及Dãbrowska(2014)所提出的那样,结构污染证明了这样一种假设,即语言使用者并不总是对他们所解释的话语进行完整的解析,而是经常依赖于“浅解析”和在记忆中存储大量未分析的语言块。Pijpops&Van de Velde(2016)深入调查了一个单一的案例研究,即荷兰的部分属格。对这一案例研究进行了回顾,并增加了三个新的案例研究,即长不定式和裸不定式之间的竞争、言语簇中的语序变化和仪式前形成。我们在所有案例研究中都发现了建筑污染的证据,尽管程度不同。这表明结构污染并不是荷兰语部分属格的特殊性,而是更广泛地传播,影响了形态和句法。此外,我们区分了两种形式的建筑污染,即一级污染和二级污染,一级污染比二级污染产生更大的影响。
{"title":"Constructional contamination in morphology and syntax","authors":"Dirk Pijpops, Isabeau De Smet, F. Velde","doi":"10.1075/CF.00021.PIJ","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/CF.00021.PIJ","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In every-day language use, two or more structurally unrelated constructions may occasionally give rise to strings\u0000 that look very similar on the surface. As a result of this superficial resemblance, a subset of instances of one of these\u0000 constructions may deviate in the probabilistic preference for either of several possible formal variants. This effect is called\u0000 ‘constructional contamination’, and was introduced in Pijpops & Van de Velde\u0000 (2016). Constructional contamination bears testimony to the hypothesis that language users do not always execute a full\u0000 parse of the utterances they interpret, but instead often rely on ‘shallow parsing’ and the storage of large, unanalyzed chunks of\u0000 language in memory, as proposed in Ferreira, Bailey, & Ferraro (2002), Ferreira & Patson (2007), and Dąbrowska\u0000 (2014).\u0000 \u0000 Pijpops & Van de Velde (2016) investigated a single case study in\u0000 depth, namely the Dutch partitive genitive. This case study is reviewed, and three new case studies are added, namely the\u0000 competition between long and bare infinitives, word order variation in verbal clusters, and preterite formation. We find evidence\u0000 of constructional contamination in all case studies, albeit in varying degrees. This indicates that constructional contamination\u0000 is not a particularity of the Dutch partitive genitive but appears to be more wide-spread, affecting both morphology and syntax.\u0000 Furthermore, we distinguish between two forms of constructional contamination, viz. first degree and second degree contamination,\u0000 with first degree contamination producing greater effects than second degree contamination.","PeriodicalId":42321,"journal":{"name":"Constructions and Frames","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2018-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42418687","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Asymmetries, Mismatches and Construction Grammar","authors":"Nikos Koutsoukos, K. Goethem, H. D. Smet","doi":"10.1075/CF.00016.KOU","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/CF.00016.KOU","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42321,"journal":{"name":"Constructions and Frames","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2018-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47958759","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Prior studies suggest that language users perform motoric simulations when construing action sentences and that verbs and constructions each contribute to simulation-based representation (Glenberg &