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...

Construction morphology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010

Language and Linguistics Compass, 2010

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 :

On the relation between morphology and syntax.

The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Interfaces, 2007

According to the traditional view, the relation between morphology and syntax is the following: while morphology builds up word forms-typically by combining roots with other roots and with affixes, but also by applying other operations to them, syntax takes fully inflected words as input and combines them into phrases and sentences. The division of labour between morphology and syntax is thus perfect: morphology only operates below the word level whereas syntax only operates above the word level.