Constructional idioms, morphology, and the Dutch lexicon (original) (raw)

The balance between syntax and morphology: Dutch particles and resultatives

Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 1993

This paper focuses on Dutch verb-particle constructions and verb-resultative constructions. On the one hand, Dutch particles and resultatives share some properties; for instance, they mutually exclude each other. On the other hand, they show contrastive behavior with respect to, for example, movement. The similarities can be captured if to some extent, the two constructions receive the same analysis. It is argued that both particles and resultatives are base generated in a position adjoined to the verb. The differences between the constructions follow from the assumption that resuttatives are adjoined to the verb at D-structure, while particles are adjoined to the verb in the morphological component. This analysis has several consequences for the syntaxmorphology interface: (i) there has to be a separate morpholoNcal component, (ii) the relation between this component and syntax is determined by generalizing metarules, and (iii) morphological structures are visible to syntactic principles such as the proposed constraint on the complexity of heads.

Construction morphology and the lexicon

2007

Word formation patterns can be seen as abstract schemas that generalize over sets of existing complex words with a systematic correlation between form and meaning. These schemas also specify how new complex words can be created. For instance, the word formation process for deverbal nouns in -er in English and Dutch can be represented as follows :

Constructions" And Grammar: Evidence From Idioms

2017

The paper presents results of our investigation of the distribution of idioms across diatheses (voice alternations) in English and Hebrew. We propose an account and discuss its consequences for idiom storage and its implications for alternative architectures of grammar. We provide evidence that idioms split into two distinct subtypes, which we label "phrasal" versus "clausal" idioms. Based on idiom surveys, we observe that phrasal idioms can be specific to the transitive, the unaccusative or the adjectival passive diathesis, but cannot be specific to the verbal passive. Clausal idioms, in contrast, do not discriminate between diatheses: they tend to be specific to a single diathesis. These findings, we argue, cannot be accommodated by a Construction Grammar approach, such as Goldberg (2006), which assumes knowledge of language consists merely of an inventory of stored 'constructions', and does not distinguish between a storage module versus a computationa...

Phrasal or Lexical Constructions?

Language, 2007

Start­ing in the nineties more and more lin­guis­tic ar­ti­cles were pub­lished in the frame­work of Con­struc­tion Gram­mar. Al­though Kay and Fill­more (1999, p. 19) made it clear that Con­struc­tions are not nec­es­sar­i­ly phrasal, most of the au­thors sug­gest phrasal Con­struc­tions. This is es­pe­cial­ly ap­par­ent in Con­struc­tion Gram­mar-​in­spired work in the frame­work of HPSG. In this paper, I show that the dif­fer­ence be­tween phrasal ap­proach­es and lex­i­cal ap­proach­es is not as big as it is some­times claimed, but that the de­ci­sion for one of the ap­proach­es nev­er­the­less may have se­ri­ous con­se­quences. The dis­cus­sion fo­cus­es on re­sul­ta­tive con­struc­tions, a phe­nomenon for which both phrasal and lex­i­cal anal­y­ses were sug­gest­ed. I show that an enor­mous amount of dif­fer­ent Con­struc­tions is need­ed to ac­count for all pat­terns that may arise be­cause of re­order­ing of con­stituents or re­al­iza­tion of the re­sul­ta­tive con­struc­tion in con­nec­tion with va­lence chang­ing pro­cess­es. It will be shown that ad­juncts, pred­i­cate com­plex­es, and deriva­tion­al mor­phol­o­gy pose con­sid­er­able prob­lems for the phrasal ap­proach, while they are un­prob­lem­at­ic for lex­i­cal rule-​based ap­proach­es.

The nominalization of Dutch particle verbs: Schema unification and second order schemas

Nederlandse Taalkunde

The event nominalizations of Dutch particle verbs and other types of separable complex verbs are not derivations from particle verbs, but compounds nouns, with a deverbal head preceded by a word that functions semantically as a modifier of the verbal base of the head noun. This structural analysis explains two empirical generalizations: (i) simplex verbs allow for nominalization with -ing when embedded in compounds; (ii) particle verbs have corresponding nominalizations with the same unproductive type of nominalization as the corresponding simplex verbs. In order to account for these generalizations, the following related concepts from the theoretical framework of Construction Morphology are used: the representation of word formation patterns by means of constructional schemas (in which form-meaning asymmetries can be specified), schema unification (with unified schemas having their own degree of productivity), constructional idioms (constructional schemas with lexically filled slot...

Morphological theory and English

This paper presents a review of a number of recent issues in the field of generative morphology, with their implications for the description of English. After an introduction to the field two types of question are considered. First, 1 examine the nature of word structure and illustrate two competing approaches, one of which assurnes that words have a constituent structure (much like the phrase structure of syntax) and the other of which rejects this assumption. Then we look at the way morphologicai structure interacts with syntax. We examine the extent to which syntactic principles can account for the behaviour of certain types of compounds and aiso the expression of syntactic arguments in nominaiizations.

Construction Grammars

To appear in: Barbara Dancygier, ed. The Cambridge Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press., 2017

To appear in: Barbara Dancygier, ed. The Cambridge Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. The previous chapter gave an overview of the renaissance of constructions in grammatical theory and the rise of Construction Grammar approaches. Yet, while all constructionist approaches share many important tenets concerning the nature of human language, the various individual approaches nevertheless differ from each other in non-trivial ways. In this chapter, I will first provide the common theoretical assumptions shared by all constructionist approaches. After that, I will outline the major differences between non-usage-based (such as Berkley Construction Grammar and Sign-Based Construction Grammar) and usage-based approaches (Cognitive Construction Grammar, Embodied Construction Grammar, Fluid Construction Grammar and Radical Construction Grammar). Moreover, I will discuss the controversial issue of what counts as a construction (from Kay's conservative competence-based notion to the usage-based interpretation of constructions as exemplar-based clouds) and the ontological status of meaningless constructions. In addition to that, I will also touch upon the nature of the structured inventory of constructions, the constructicon, and explore the advantage and limits of constructional inheritance in taxonomic networks. Finally, the chapter will also address the question as to how the meaning pole of constructions is analysed in the various approaches (which ranges from semantic paraphrases (Cognitive Construction Grammar) over first-order predicate logic (Fluid Construction Grammar) to Frame-based approaches (Sign-based Construction Grammar)).