Extending collostructional analysis: A corpus-based approach to ations t: International Journal of Corpus Linguistics (original) (raw)
Related papers
Extending collostructional analysis: A corpus-based perspective on `alternations
International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 2004
This paper introduces an extension of distinctive-collocate analysis that takes into account grammatical structure and is specifically geared to investigating pairs of semantically similar grammatical constructions and the lexemes that occur in them. The method, referred to as 'distinctive-collexeme analysis' , identifies lexemes that exhibit a strong preference for one member of the pair as opposed to the other, and thus makes it possible to identify subtle distributional differences between the members of such a pair. The method can be applied in the context of what is sometimes referred to as 'grammatical alternation' (e.g. the dative alternation), but it can also be applied to other choices provided by the grammar (such as the two future tense constructions in English). The method has two main applications. First, it can reveal subtle differences between seemingly synonymous constructions, many of which are difficult to identify on the basis of more traditional approaches. Second, it can be used to investigate the very notion of 'alternation'; we show that many alternations are much more restricted than has hitherto been assumed, and thus confirm the claims of recent, non-derivational views of grammar.
Introduction: Analysing English Syntax Past and Present
Cambridge University Press eBooks, 2019
This book is an exploration of categories, constructions, and change in English syntax. A great many books are published on the syntax of English, both monographs and edited volumes, and yet another may seem unnecessary. However, we felt more than justified in adding to the sizeable literature here for two reasons. The first, to borrow from Richard M. Hogg and David Denison'sjustification for A History of the English Language,isthat'one of the beauties of the language is its ability to show continuous change and flexibility whileinsomesenseremainingthesame.And if that is true of the language, it is also true of the study of the language' (2006: xi). Central to our book is a focus on the syntax of the English language, through a wide variety of orientations that a collective work makes possible. Thus the volume aims to embrace the wide variety of approaches and methodologies in the current analysis of English syntactic structure, variation, and change, both past and present, through a careful curation of new case studies by established and emerging scholars in the field. Such breadth of scope, together with a specific focus on English syntax, sets the collection apart from most others. The second reason is that this book is dedicated to
Collostructions: Investigating the interaction of words and constructions
International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 2003
This paper introduces an extension of collocational analysis that takes into account grammatical structure and is specifically geared to investigating the interaction of lexemes and the grammatical constructions associated with them. The method is framed in a construction-based approach to language, i.e. it assumes that grammar consists of signs (form-meaning pairs) and is thus not fundamentally different from the lexicon. The method is applied to linguistic expressions at various levels of abstraction (words, semi-fixed phrases, argument structures, tense, aspect and mood). The method has two main applications: first, to increase the adequacy of grammatical description by providing an objective way of identifying the meaning of a grammatical construction and determining the degree to which particular slots in it prefer or are restricted to a particular set of lexemes; second, to provide data for linguistic theory-building.
Folia linguistica 43(1): 251-255., 2009
FOLIA LINGUISTICA is the peer-reviewed journal of the Societas Linguistica Europaea. It appears in Spring and Autumn (ca. 450 pages in all) and covers all nonhistorical areas in the traditional disciplines of general linguistics (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics), and also sociological, discoursal, computational and psychological aspects of language and linguistic theory. Other areas of central concern are grammaticalization and language typology. The journal consists of scientific articles presenting results of original research, review articles, critical surveys of research in specific areas, book reviews, and a miscellanea section carrying brief descriptive reports and discussion notes. Manuscript submission: Please consult the FoL style sheet (to be found at the FoL homepage www.folialinguistica.com).
Language Sciences, 2009
Semantic accounts of verb pattern alternations often rely on observations about 'verb disposition': the preference of verbs with particular lexical semantic characteristics for one of two competing constructions is taken as a clue to the semantic differences between the two constructions. For instance, it has been observed with regard to the English dative alternation that verbs of refusal such as deny and refuse are perfectly acceptable in the ditransitive construction but much less so in the so-called prepositional dative construction with to (compare They refused the convict a last cigarette with ? They refused a last cigarette to the convict); and this contrast has been presented as evidence for the hypothesis that the prepositional dative highlights the actual movement of the theme toward the receiver (e.g. . The inherent semantics of argument structure: the case of the English ditransitive. Cognitive Linguistics 3, 37-74]). This paper discusses the merit of verb disposition as evidence for semantic hypotheses about alternating constructions and presents the results of a corpus-based study of verb disposition in the Dutch dative alternation. On the basis of [Gries, S., Stefanowitsch, A., 2004. Extending Collostructional Analysis: a corpus-based perspective on alternations. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 9, 97-129] method of 'distinctive collexeme analysis', the alternating verbs with a statistically significant preference for the Dutch ditransitive are separated from those with a statistically significant preference for the prepositional dative in a corpus of contemporary Dutch newspaper language. The results of this test provide the basis for a number of empirically valid generalizations about the semantic parameters driving the dative alternation.
Lexical-grammatical patterns in spoken English
International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 2007
Based on a large set of data from one of the biggest available corpora of spoken British English (the 10-million word spoken component of the BNC), this article explores central lexical-grammatical aspects of progressive forms with future time reference. Among the phenomena investigated are verb preferences, adverbial co-selection, subject types, and negation. It is demonstrated that future time progressives in spoken British English are patterned to a considerable extent (for example that it is individual verbs, rather than semantic groups of verbs, that preferably occur in such constructions) and that actual language use often runs counter to claims that can be found in traditional grammatical descriptions of the construction. A number of general and often neglected issues in the analysis of lexical-grammatical patterns are also addressed, in particular the notion of pattern frequency.
Predicting the dative alternation
2007
Theoretical linguists have traditionally relied on linguistic intuitions such as grammaticality judgments for their data. But the massive growth of computer-readable texts and recordings, the availability of cheaper, more powerful computers and software, and the development of new probabilistic models for language have now made the spontaneous useoflanguageinnaturalsettingsarichandeasilyaccessiblealternativesourceofdata. Surprisingly, many linguists believe that such ‘usage data’ are irrelevant to the theory of grammar. Four problems are repeatedly brought up in the critiques of usage data: 1. Correlated factors seeming to support reductive theories; 2. Pooled data invalidating grammatical inference; 3. Syntactic choices reducing to lexical biases; and 4. Cross-corpus differences undermining corpus studies. Presenting a case study of work on the English dative alternation, we show first,that linguistic intuitions of grammaticality are deeply flawed and seriously underestimate the sp...
Cognitive Linguistics 22(2): 211-245. , 2011
To account for expressions with causative resultative meanings, construction grammar has postulated a family of argument-structure constructions whose core is constituted by the Caused-Motion Construction and the Resultative Construction, exhibiting a locative complement and a predicative complement in the form of an AjP, respectively. Argument structures with NP complements, however, have been largely neglected. The present study investigates these patterns in the International Corpus of English (ICE-GB) by means "collostruction analysis". It shows that the formal distinction between AjP and NP complements corresponds to a constructional distinction hitherto unrevealed, viz. that between the Resultative Construction and another argument-structure construction, here called the "Denominative Construction". Apart from improving existing descriptions of the network of complex-transitive argumentstructure constructions, this study demonstrates that collostruction analysis can be employed in an exploratory way to discover constructions.
2003
Combinatorial constraints are commonly assumed in linguistics to be either based on the grammatical system of a language or to be idiosyncratic constraints on the combinatorial properties of individual lexical items and not extensible in any systematic way to larger subsets of the vocabulary. Thus, the required complements of verbs are an example of a constraint of the former type, while the latter type of constraint is instantiated by lexical collocations which are commonly assumed to be individual and idiosyncratic co-selections of lexical items and are generally treated as a usage phenomenon. There are, however, subsets of the lexicon that display striking combinatorial constraints or, rather, combinatorial requirements, over and above singular lexical combinatorial preferences which are not modelled by the grammatical rules of the language. Such constraints can be shown to hold across larger subsets of the lexicon but are neither explicable as co-selection preferences of individ...