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Little attention has been paid to the English Superlative Object Construction (SOC), as in "She worked her hardest". The historical grammarians Jespersen (1909–1949) and Poutsma (1904–1929) are the only ones who do touch on the SOC, and they do so in passing relying on what seem to be the prototypical examples of the construction. This empirical evidence, though valuable for a first characterisation of the pattern, is insufficient to provide a detailed analysis of the form, function, frequency, and distribution of the SOC in Present Day English from the perspective of Construction Grammar. Based on usage-based data from COCA, this paper argues that the SOC qualifies as an intensifying comparative construction. Despite being low frequent and showing a set of highly entrenched, lexicalised units (e.g., smile [X] prettiest, work [X] hardest), the SOC is relatively productive, especially in informal registers where the construction can be easily accommodated to serve emotive, phatic, and conative functions.

A central aim of Construction Grammar is to model links within the construct-i-con. This paper investigates three constructions that share one property: an atypical element in the object slot. The constructions are therefore not prototypically transitive. Structural priming (implemented with an automatic maze variant of self-paced reading) is used to test hypotheses on the relation among the Reaction Objoid (She smiled her thanks), the Cognate Objoid (She smiled a sweet smile or He told a sly tale), and the Superlative Objoid (She smiled her sweetest) Construction, and between two variants of the latter (They worked (at) their hardest). Results support transitivity as gradient: intransitive COCs prime the ROC and the SOC, whereas COCs with transitives only prime the ROC. For variants of the SOC, we find evidence of asymmetric priming with the bare SOC priming the at-SOC. Within-construction priming effects in the SOC are of greater magnitude than those with the at-SOC and the latter are weaker than those of the COC and of a rather different nature than those from the ROC. This suggests that speakers, rather than creating a constructeme between the bare and the at-SOC, store distinct but closely related constructions on a cline of transitivity.

A central aim of Construction Grammar is to model links within the construct-i-con. This paper investigates three constructions that share one property: an atypical element in the object slot. The constructions are therefore not proto- typically transitive. Structural priming (implemented with an automatic maze variant of self-paced reading) is used to test hypotheses on the relation among the Reaction Objoid (She smiled her thanks), the Cognate Objoid (She smiled a sweet smile or He told a sly tale), and the Superlative Objoid (She smiled her sweetest) Con- struction, and between two variants of the latter (They worked (at) their hardest). Results support transitivity as gradient: intransitive COCs prime the ROC and the SOC, whereas COCs with transitives only prime the ROC. For variants of the SOC, we find evidence of asymmetric priming with the bare SOC priming the at-SOC. Within-construction priming effects in the SOC are of greater magnitude than those with the at-SOC and the latter are weaker than those of the COC and of a rather different nature than those from the ROC. This suggests that speakers, rather than creating a constructeme between the bare and the at-SOC, store distinct but closely related constructions on a cline of transitivity.

This chapter has thirteen sections: 1. General; 2. History of English Linguistics; 3. Phonetics and Phonology; 4. Morphology; 5. Syntax; 6. Semantics; 7. Lexicography, Lexicology, and Lexical Semantics; 8. Onomastics; 9. Dialectology and Sociolinguistics; 10. New Englishes and Creolistics; 11. Second Language Acquisition; 12. English as a Lingua Franca; 13. Pragmatics and Discourse Analysis. Sections 1 and 2 are by Viktorija Kostadinova; section 3 is by Marco Wiemann; sections 4 and 5 are by Gea Dreschler and Tamara Bouso; section 6 is by Beáta Gyuris; section 7 is by Ai Zhong; section 8 is by Maggie Scott; section 9 is by Lieselotte Anderwald; section 10 is by Wiebke Ahlers and Manuela Vida-Mannl; section 11 is by Kholoud A. Al-Thubaiti; section 12 is by Shawnea Sum Pok Ting, Ida Parise, and Alessia Cogo; section 13 is by Elisabeth Reber.

This paper provides further insight into the Reaction Object Construction (she nodded intelligence) as a case of constructional contamination, a phenomenon that describes the relation between two or more constructions such that usage frequencies of one construction influence the patterns of variation in another one (Pijpops and Van de Velde 2016). Earlier research has shown that the frequencies of structures of the type she gave a nod of intelligence explain part of the lexical diversity that is found in the object slot of the nineteenth-century British ROC. These findings are now contrasted with American data to explore whether the phenomenon has gone beyond British English and, if so, examine how this is manifested in diachrony. The results show clear similarities with the British data, confirming that horizontal interaction in the network of the Late Modern English ROC played a role in the diverse configuration of this construction.

This paper discusses a case of constructional contamination (Pijpops and Van de Velde 2016; Pijpops et al. 2018), a phenomenon which describes the relation between two or more constructions such that usage frequencies of one construction influence the patterns of variation in another (Hilpert and Flach 2022). Specifically, I investigate the influence of structures of the type she gave a nod of intelligence or she nodded with satisfaction on the variation in the object slot of the so-called English Reaction Object Construction (ROC; Levin 1993), as in she nodded intelligence and she nodded satisfaction. Using the British Sentimental Novel Corpus (Ruano San Segundo and Bouso 2019) and the method of distinctive collexeme analysis (Gries and Stefanowitsch 2004; Hilpert 2006, 2014), it is argued that early and frequent structures superficially similar to the ROC, like those just mentioned, partly explain the lexical diversity found in the object slot of the nineteenth-century ROC (Bouso 2020b). The results thus corroborate findings on the pervasiveness of constructional contamination in English syntax, confirm the claim put forward in Bouso (2021) that the ROC can be treated as an example of a multiple source construction, and provide evidence of the large-scale transitivisation process experienced by the English language since Old English times., Este artículo aborda un caso de contaminación construccional (Pijpops y Van de Velde 2016; Pijpops et al. 2018), un fenómeno que describe la relación entre dos o más construcciones en las que la frecuencia de uso de una de ellas ejerce una influencia en los patrones de variación de otra (Hilpert y Flach 2022). Más concretamente, se investiga el efecto de estructuras inglesas del tipo she gave a nod of intelligence o she nodded with satisfaction sobre la variación que muestra la posición del objeto en la denominada construcción con objetos de reacción inglesa (ROC, Levin 1993; e.g. she nodded intelligence, she nodded satisfaction). A través de un corpus de novelas sentimentales británicas (Ruano San Segundo y Bouso 2019) y varios análisis colostruccionales (Gries y Stefanowitsch 2004; Hilpert 2006, 2014), se argumenta que estructuras frecuentes superficialmente similares a la construcción con objetos de reacción explican en gran medida la diversidad léxica que manifiesta la ROC a lo largo del siglo XIX (Bouso 2020b). Los resultados obtenidos corroboran la persistencia del fenómeno de la contaminación construccional, confirman el tratamiento de la ROC como un caso de construcción de herencia múltiple (Bouso 2021), y arrojan nuevas luces al proceso de transitivización que ha caracterizado a la lengua inglesa desde el periodo del inglés antiguo.

This article deals with the Reaction Object Construction (ROC), as in She smiled disbelief, where an intransitive verb (smile), by adding an emotional object (disbelief), acquires the extended sense “express X by V−ing” (i.e. “She expressed disbelief by smiling”). Earlier research has suggested a diachronic connection between the ROC and Direct Discourse Constructions (DDCs) of the type She smiled, “I don’t believe you” (Visser 1963–1973). More recently, Bouso (2018) has shown that the ROC is primarily a feature of 19th century narrative fiction. This paper aims to bring together these insights. On the basis of a self-compiled corpus and De Smet’s Corpus of English Novels, it investigates the productivity of the ROC in 19th and 20th century fiction, and the role of DDCs in its development. The results reveal a peak in the productivity of the ROC that coincides with the development of the sentimental novel, and a correlation between the development of the ROC on the one hand and of those DDCs that have been mistakenly hypothesised to be its single source constructions on the other. Extravagance is proposed as a triggering factor for the use of the ROC in the 19th century as an alternative to DDCs.

This article provides a description of the British Sentimental Novel Corpus (BSNC) and a case study that explores, at the level of the individual, the relation between the Reaction Object Construction (ROC) and the Direct Discourse Construction (DDC). The BSNC is a large-scale specialised corpus that comprises full novels of eleven canonical authors across three generations from 19th century British fiction. It aims at studying language as both a social and a cognitive phenomenon and, in line with a recent trend in historical sociolinguistics, at exploring the interaction between individual and aggregate levels (see Fonteyn 2017; Hilpert 2020; Petré et al. 2019). The first part describes the methodological principles that underlie the design and compilation of the BSNC. In the second part, we present a new case study that aims to determine whether our previous aggregate findings also hold at the individual level. The results serve to confirm our hypothesis: first, individual changes in the ROC and the DDC run in parallel across almost the entire 19th century, correlating most significantly between 1851 and 1860. Second, the aggregate-level division of labour between these two functionally similar constructions turned out to be a feature of all authors in the BSNC. Last, the ROC-DDC alternation has been attested in an important proportion of the BSNC novels, with only a relatively small group of texts using solely the older and less extravagant variant (i.e. the DDC). This suggests that the alternation as such represents a cognitive reality for these individual writers across their lifespan.

Yáñez-Bouza, Nuria, Emma Moore, Linda van Bergen & Willem B. Hollmann (eds.). 2019. Categories, constructions, and change in English syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 403 pp. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108303576. Hardback: ISBN 9781108419567 | £95 · e-Book: ISBN 9781108321754 | $100

This paper explores the growth of the Reaction Object Construction (ROC) as in Pauline smiled her thanks, offering new insights into its characterisation and historical development from the perspective of Construction Grammar (Goldberg 1995, 2006, 2019) and its application to patterns of language change (Hilpert 2013; Traugott & Trousdale 2013). It is argued that the modern ROC qualifies as a traditional form-meaning pairing and, at a deeper level, as a polysemous construction that follows the path of development of other transitivising constructions such as the way-construction (Israel 1996), and of processes of constructionalisation in general. Once the ROC imposes a coreferential constraint on its object argument, acquiring in this way its status as a form-meaning pairing over the Early Modern English period (1500–1700), the construction increases its productivity and schematicity; at the same time it decreases its compositionality since the link between the form/syntax and the overall meaning of the construction becomes less transparent, as in The door jingled a welcome. The ROC can thus be argued to be part and result of a broader development in the grammar of English, namely the historical trend towards transitivisation.

This paper provides a concise overview of my current research project on the characterisation and history of the English Reaction Object Construction (ROC) from the perspective of Diachronic Construction Grammar (Hilpert 2013; Traugott and Trousdale 2013). It shows that the English ROC, as in Pauline smiled her thanks, qualifies as a form-meaning pairing whose origins go back to Early Modern English (Bouso 2020). Its development, on the other hand, takes place in the transition from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century alongside other transitivising constructions. On the basis of a self-compiled corpus of nineteenth-century novels (Ruano San Segundo and Bouso 2019) and the visualisation tool of ‘animated’ motion charts (Hilpert 2011; Hilpert and Perek 2015), it is argued here that the sentimental novel and other innovative uses of reporting speech must have played a role in the shaping and modelling of the Late Modern English ROC.

In this study presupposition is examined from the point of view of the type of information assumed by advertisers (Levinson 1983; Goddard 1998) and the functions they fulfi l in achieving persuasion in nutritional advertising. Thus, 25 headlines from 5 health and fi tness magazines (2012) have been classifi ed according to the type of covert information. The results indicate that there are gender differences as regards this form of inferential information as well as the linguistic items that trigger these presuppositions. Whereas commercials addressed to men are more competitive, those addressed to women appeal more to their emotions., Este trabajo examina la presuposición desde el punto de vista del tipo de información inferencial (Levinson 1983; Goddard 1998) y las funciones que esta desempeña en los anuncios publicitarios de revistas nutricionales. De este modo 25 encabezados extraídos de 5 revistas de salud y fitness (2012) se clasifi can según el tipo de información asumida por el publicista (Hardin 2001). Los resultados indican que hay claras diferencias de género con respecto al uso de la presuposición así como de los elementos lingüísticos que dan lugar a estas presuposiciones. Mientras que los anuncios dirigidos a hombres son más competitivos, los orientados al sector femenino optan por la apelación de las emociones.

Structures such as “she muttered contempt” or “she smiled appreciation” have been referred to as Reaction Object Constructions (ROCs), and consist of a normally intransitive verb followed by an object that conveys an emotion, such that the whole construction can be paraphrased as “express an emotion by V-ing”. Although ROCs have been discussed recently in relation to Present Day English, from a historical perspective they have received very little attention, mentioned only in passing in historical reference grammars. This paper explores aspects of the history of ROCs, drawing on data from the Oxford English Dictionary and the Corpus of Late Modern English Texts, version 3.0. The findings show that, similarly to other processes of transitivisation such as the way-construction, ROCs have been in use since the fifteenth century, expanding to more verbs over the course of the Late Modern English period. More specifically, the data suggests that the construction was established mainly in the nineteenth century, a period in which those verbs attested in the construction became quite fashionable in novels. Findings are also subjected to a collexeme analysis, revealing the prototypical verbs of the construction during this period.