Argument Structure in Usage-Based Construction Grammar
Experimental and corpus-based perspectives
1st Edition
Published on 23. April 2015
X, 246 pages
978-90-272-6875-4 (ISBN)
Description
The argument structure of verbs, defined as the part of grammar that deals with how participants in verbal events are expressed in clauses, is a classical topic in linguistics that has received considerable attention in the literature. This book investigates argument structure in English from a usage-based perspective, taking the view that the cognitive representation of grammar is shaped by language use, and that crucial aspects of grammatical organization are tied to the frequency with which words and syntactic constructions are used. On the basis of several case studies combining quantitative corpus studies and psycholinguistic experiments, it is shown how a usage-based approach sheds new light on a number of issues in argument realization and offers frequency-based explanations for its organizing principles at three levels of generality: verbs, constructions, and argument structure alternations.
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Florent Perek
Argument Structure in Usage-Based Construction Grammar
Experimental and corpus-based perspectives
Book
04/2015
John Benjamins Publishing Co
€100.70
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Content
- Argument Structure in Usage-Based Construction Grammar
- Editorial page
- Title page
- LCC data
- Table of contents
- Acknowledgments
- Chapter 1. Introduction
- 1.1 Overview: Argument realization
- 1.2 Usage-based linguistics
- 1.3 Structure of the book
- 1.3.1 Part I: Verbs
- 1.3.2 Part II: Constructions
- 1.3.3 Part III: Alternations
- Part I. Verbs
- Chapter 2. Usage-based perspectives on verb valency
- 2.1 The verb in argument realization
- 2.1.1 Projectionist approaches and their limits
- 2.1.2 Constructional approaches
- 2.2 The division of labor between verbs and constructions
- 2.2.1 The problem of mapping form to meaning
- 2.2.2 The need for richer lexical knowledge
- 2.3 A usage-based account of verb valency
- 2.4 Summary
- Chapter 3. Empirical evidence for usage-based valency
- 3.1 The hypothesis and its predictions
- 3.1.1 The usage-based valency hypothesis
- 3.1.2 Existing evidence: Verb biases in language comprehension
- 3.2 Assessing cognitive accessibility
- 3.2.1 Why these verbs?
- 3.2.2 Design
- 3.2.3 Stimuli
- 3.2.4 Participants and procedure
- 3.2.5 Results
- 3.3 Comparison with usage data
- 3.3.1 Data collection
- 3.3.2 Valency distributions
- Sell
- Pay
- Buy
- 3.4 Conclusion
- Part II. Constructions
- Chapter 4. The usage basis of constructional meaning
- 4.1 The lexical origin of constructional meaning
- 4.1.1 Constructions and constructional meaning
- 4.1.2 Distributional biases and their significance
- 4.1.3 Experimental evidence
- 4.1.4 Evidence from corpus linguistics: Collostructional analysis
- 4.1.5 Summary: The usage basis of constructional meaning
- 4.2 Problems with the lexical basis of constructions
- 4.2.1 The conative construction
- Missed contact
- Lack of affectedness
- Lack of completion
- Repetition
- Lack of intentionality
- 4.2.2 The semantics of the conative construction
- 4.2.3 The conative construction in use
- 4.3 Conclusion
- Chapter 5. The importance of local generalizations
- 5.1 Low-level schemas
- 5.1.1 Varying degrees of schematicity
- 5.1.2 The status of low-level schemas
- 5.1.3 Conclusion: The importance of local generalizations
- 5.2 Low-level schemas in the conative construction
- 5.2.1 Verb-class-specific constructions
- 5.2.2 Verb-class-specific collexeme analysis
- Classification of verbs into semantic classes
- Operationalization of verb meanings
- Methods and results
- Implementation of verb-class-specific collexeme analysis
- 5.2.3 Verbs of ingestion
- 5.2.4 Verbs of cutting
- 5.2.5 Verbs of pulling
- 5.2.6 Verbs of hitting
- 5.3 Summary and conclusion
- Part III. Alternations
- Chapter 6. Alternations as units of linguistic knowledge
- 6.1 Argument structure alternations
- 6.2 Alternations in construction grammar
- 6.3 Alternations as allostructions
- 6.3.1 The allostructions model
- 6.3.2 The dative allostructions
- 6.3.3 The locative allostructions
- 6.3.4 Experimental evidence for allostructions
- 6.4 Alternation-based productivity
- 6.5 Conclusion
- Chapter 7. The usage basis of alternation based productivity
- 7.1 Asymmetries in alternations: An experiment
- 7.1.1 Goals of the experiment
- 7.1.2 General design and procedure
- 7.1.3 Stimuli
- Dative verbs of physical transfer
- Dative verbs of communication
- Locative content-oriented verbs
- Locative container-oriented verbs
- 7.2 Results
- 7.2.1 Meaning decision task
- 7.2.2 Sentence completion task
- 7.2.3 Contextual factors: A possible confound?
- 7.2.4 Summary
- 7.3 Accounting for productivity asymmetries
- 7.3.1 A context-based explanation
- 7.3.2 A usage-based explanation
- 7.4 Conclusion and prospects
- Conclusion
- Chapter 8. Summary and evaluation
- 8.1 Usage-based perspectives on argument realization
- 8.2 Theoretical and methodological implications
- References
- Appendix: Stimuli used in the productivity experiment (Chapter 7)
- Constructions index
- Name index
- Subject index
