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The purpose of the present article is to provide a new and practical definition for idioms and collocations, based on syntactic criteria, not merely semantic. One of the important criteria for distinguishing these two types of phrases (idioms and collocations) is the flexibility of their constituent elements. Idioms and collocations have not yet been studied within a syntactic approach. According to Construction Grammar, idioms were analyzed based on four syntactic tests: "passivization", "clefting", "dislocation" and "interrogation". Construction Grammar is a set of cognitive grammars that considers construction as a symbolic unit consisting of form and meaning poles. Two hundred idioms were analyzed. These idioms were collected from two main sources, namely The Colloquial Persian Dictionary (Abolhassan Najafi, 2008) and The Two -volume Dictionary of Kenayat-e Sokhan (Hassan Anvari, 2019). The four constructions of each idiom were judged syntactically by 15 people as research participants. The meanings of some of these constructions showed that the syntactic flexibility of all idioms is not the same. Some idioms were flexible to syntactic changes and therefore behaved similarly to collocations. The flexibility of idioms led to the introduction of a new definition of these types of phrases based on syntactic criteria. Thus, such phrases were considered a kind of collocation, not an idiom. In other words, those lexical phrases were called idioms which were inflexible to these syntactic constructions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a corpus of narrative dialogues, we show that the use of "on" is not intended to define a clear and precise reference, but rather to share a point of view and introduce entities onto the verbal scene: "on" is used to make narrated entities and events salient while erasing the narrative source, thus creating a fuzzy, dynamic and evolving reference. This observation puts the usual categorization of "on" as "indefinite" into perspective, and instead highlights its essential role in structuring the narrative in a context of direct dialogues Our results thus reveal the contribution of "on" to the coherence and cohesion of discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This systematic review synthesizes the literature (involving 62 empirical studies) regarding the effectiveness of cognitive linguistics‐inspired language pedagogies (CL‐ILPs) on second language (L2) learning. It begins with an overview of the main theoretical tenets of cognitive linguistics followed by a description of the data selection, coding, and analysis. Then, besides noting a sharp increase of research on CL‐ILPs in the past 20 years, the review presents four main findings: (a) While various language features have been taught in CL‐ILPs, the teaching targets of CL‐ILPs have been mainly low‐schematic constructions, such as phrasal verbs and prepositions, but a few recent studies have explored the teaching of clause‐ or sentence‐level structures including conditional clauses, (b) conceptual metaphor, cognitive grammar, construction grammar, and cognitive semantics have been the main guiding cognitive linguistics theories applied in language teaching, and the hallmark teaching practices of CL‐ILPs include the use of technology‐supported or technology‐delivered visuals, schemas, and diagrams; embodied activities; and group and/or pair work, (c) methodologies used in CL‐ILP research have become increasingly sophisticated, and (d) CL‐ILPs have been found to be effective in 93.5% (i.e., 58) of the 62 reviewed studies covering learners of different age groups, first languages, and learning contexts. These findings are discussed to uncover insights concerning CL‐ILP research. Pedagogical implications and future research directions are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

English causative alternation is largely considered to be controlled by the semantic content of a lexical entry. However, clarifying the extent of this belief has been challenging. This paper proposes an SBCG analysis utilizing the feature structures and inheritance hierarchies of HPSG to address these challenges, bypassing the need for inferential conceptual structure or arity operations. Unlike traditional theories where lexical entries directly function as lexemes in syntax, this approach suggests that terminal lexemes inherit constraints from both supertype lexemes and lexical entries. This method avoids issues arising from treating one alternant as the base of derivation and pursues grammatical rigor by model-theoretically defining alternation elements. The possibility of alternation is determined by the unification potential of feature types within a type hierarchy, thereby reconciling the productive aspects of causative alternation with lexical idiosyncrasies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the productivity of a family of inchoative constructions in (Peninsular) Spanish (empezar a + inf., echar a + inf.) and the way it correlates with semantic openness. Productivity is defined as lexical openness of a slot (here the infinitive) of a construction. A range of productivity measures (e.g., type/token ratio, hapax/token ratio, and other parameters related to the frequency of the most frequent types) are discussed and compared. Semantic openness is operationalized on the basis of distributional semantics, yielding two measures viz. semantic range and semantic sparsity. The correlations between productivity measures and semantics are studied by means of a Principal Components Analysis. It is shown that the so-called ‘anti-productivity’ measures (related to entrenchment due to high token frequency) on the one hand, and the productivity measures (including the hapax-based ones, traditionally associated with extensibility) on the other hand, strongly correlate and constitute opposites along the same dimension of lexical openness. In addition, the semantic measures strongly correlate with productivity, which suggests that often semantic and lexical openness go hand in hand in this dataset. As to the behavior of the individual auxiliaries (= micro-constructions), they appear to be rather extreme, showing very productive and less productive profiles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discourse presentation in the history of English has recently caught the attention of a number of studies. This paper aims to contribute to this area of research by making the case of the Reaction Object Construction or ROC (e.g. He shouted his excitement to come back) as another option used by narrators to frame and evaluate the speech/thought they represent in nineteenth-century sentimental novels. On the basis of data from the British Sentimental Novel Corpus, it will be argued that the ROC constitutes an emerging fully fledged subcategory within the Leech and Short’s model of discourse presentation constructions. The ROC fits in within their category Narrative Report of Speech/Thought Acts (NRS/TAs); the difference between the ROC and a prototypical NRS/TA is that the ROC is closer to the original act of communication that is being reported as it always conveys via a descriptive verb and an emotional object the illocutionary force (attitude) of the speaker’s utterance. The more than 500 ROC examples attested also confirm the tight connection between the ROC and the British sentimental novel, and reveal an array of meaningful stylistic, and socio-pragmatic motivations in the use of the nineteenth-century ROC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the mechanisms of and motivations for two unconventional comparative constructions in Mandarin: [bi Ni hai Ni] and [bi Ni hai Nj]. They are unconventional in that the item expressing the dimension along which the comparison is made is a noun rather than an adjective. It is shown that [bi Ni hai Ni] emerges (i) by analogy with the conventional comparative construction [bi N hai A] and (ii) by inheriting the nominal feature from an existing construction [Adverb N], which is corroborated by a collexeme analysis. At a more schematic level, the extension A > N observed in [bi N hai A] > [bi Ni hai Ni] may have been modeled on the existing development from [Adverb A] to [Adverb N]. Analogical extension and inheritance also underlie the subsequent development from [bi Ni hai Ni] to [bi Ni hai Nj]. This study not only shows how language changes in a constructional network (including node creation and network reconfiguration), but also sheds light on the nature of horizontal links. It also demonstrates how a synchronically perceived relation between constructions may impact a later, similar language change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the effectiveness of L2 instruction on the learning of English caused-motion constructions (e.g., Jane put the balls into the box, Harry swam Peter to the beach). Korean EFL high school students (N = 156) were randomly assigned to three instructional conditions and one control group. While the metalanguage group relied on explicit uses of grammar jargon, the input flood group read narrative stories in which the instances of a prototypical verb were presented with higher frequency than other verbs. The image-schema group, which adopted a balanced approach to form and meaning attention, studied the core meaning of the target construction. Mixed-effects logistic regressions on Korean-to-English translation tests revealed that the image-schema group was most effective in terms of learnability and generalizability. The benefits of image-schema-based instruction were attributed to simultaneous attention to form and meaning, which might lead to deeper processing. Image-schema-based-instruction is discussed as a viable alternative for L2 construction learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This diachronic, corpus-based study examines Spanish constructions formed with the verb tomar 'take' and nouns of 'emotion', including endogenous nouns with a target participant (e.g. cariño 'affection'), exogenous nouns with a source or cause participant (e.g. tristeza 'sadness'), and hybrid nouns allowing both options (e.g. miedo 'fear'). Such constructions involve three different inchoative ('begin to feel') subschemas. The first one, the Prepositional-Stimulus subschema (e.g. tomar tristeza de algo 'grow sad over something'), included exogenous and hybrid nouns and predominated in the Middle Ages, but disappeared by the 1800s. The other two subschemas, formed with endogenous and hybrid nouns, have survived until today. They include the Prepositional-Goal subschema (e.g. tomar cariño por alguien 'grow fond of someone'), the most frequent of the two in the Middle Ages, and the Dative-Goal subschema (e.g. tomarle cariño a alguien 'grow fond of someone', lit. 'take fondness to someone'), which presumably arose through analogy in the 1400s and subsequently marginalized its prepositional counterpart, becoming the default realization in present-day Spanish. Using the framework of Diachronic Construction Grammar, these changes are analyzed as involving the reconfiguration of a broader network of inchoative light verb constructions with nouns of emotion in Spanish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the development of the periphrastic passive voice construction in Swedish between 1300 and 1750, from the point of view of constructional change. The development involves the rise of a new auxiliary, bliva 'remain', originally a lexical loan from Middle Low German, which after a period of variation replaces the older auxiliary varda 'become'. The findings reveal that the origins of the periphrastic passive construction may be found in mutative constructions with varda and adjectival complements, and the same development is then found with the loanword bliva, delayed by some hundred years. The results of quantitative analysis place the turning point in the development between 1450 and 1550. The paper relates the variation and change in passive auxiliaries to Diachronic Construction Grammar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a class belonging to phraseology, winged words are characterized above all by the fact they are also used in other contexts as quotations, especially from literary texts (e.g., Grau, teurer Freund, ist alle Theorie from Goethes Faust I), thus acquiring a life of their own. However, they can be referred to the original sources in the consciousness of the language user. Forms of expression from areas other than literary areas, such as movies and television, advertising, etc., are increasingly gaining a comparable status in public language use. The imprinting of these expressions often stems from the fact that winged words are not only or no longer used as quotations but also used as a means of commenting on facts, evaluating them, etc., and at the same time calling up knowledge scenarios that refer to the original context of use as backgrounds for understanding. Over time, new patterns of expression may be established by modifying parts of the original formulation so that – expressed in construction grammar – new situationally adaptable form-meaning pairs can emerge. Based on this "phraseologization mechanism", problematic aspects of phraseology theory are identified and discussed using the example of Das also war des Pudels Kern. Finally, suggestions are made for the conceptual sharpening of the category "winged words". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ConstructiCons are innovative digital dictionary-like resources that aim to represent large inventories of prominent linguistic patterns called grammatical constructions. Building constructiCon resources is a rapidly advancing emergent field of research that combines the practices of applied language description (lexicography) and theoretical insights of Construction Grammar (a subfield of Cognitive Linguistics). Constructions comprise both grammatical and lexical information and often contain elements that belong to different "levels" of language organization: morphology, syntax, semantics, prosody, etc. Inspired by advances of comparable resources developed for other languages, we propose that a thorough repository of multi-word semi-general constructions should be built for Norwegian and discuss ten crucial benefits of this endeavor. Many of our arguments are applicable to any language that lacks a constructiCon resource and can be of interest for a broader readership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of paradigm has been used extensively in many areas of linguistics throughout the past century, such as language education or historical linguistics. It is therefore quite surprising that paradigms have mostly been disregarded when it comes to cognitive language theories. Recently however, more and more researchers have started to advocate for the introduction of paradigms into cognitivist frameworks to be able to account for certain phenomena in language that would be hard to explain otherwise. But whilst there is agreement on which phenomena could best be explained through the notion of paradigm, there is a lot of disagreement regarding the way in which paradigms would be mentally represented, and how they would relate to the rest of the mental lexicon. This paper will discuss a few reasons to believe that paradigms are part of our grammar, present two previously proposed examples for modelling paradigms from a cognitivist perspective, highlight possible issues regarding their psychological plausibility, and explore how further research on modelling paradigms could be aided through an alternative domain-general approach which proposes that paradigms are cognitively equivalent to non-linguistic categories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the extensive interest in cross-linguistic constructional research over the past few decades, the resultative construction in Spanish has largely been overlooked. Unlike its high productivity in English, in Spanish, this construction is confined to very specific contexts such as the culinary or gastronomic scenario or situations involving chromatic change. The present study is contrastive in two senses: on the one hand, it provides a descriptive analysis of the formal and functional differences and similarities of this construction in both languages, and on the other hand, it adopts a lexical-constructional approach combining the theoretical and methodological principles of Goldberg’s (1995) and Boas’s (2003) Construction Grammars. Both principles, traditionally opposed in the literature, aim to determine to what extent the observed properties of the construction under study can be predicted from Goldberg’s generalisations at the constructional level, the event-frame evoked by the predicate as advocated by Boas, or any other factor such as contextual background information or pragmatics. The results of this study are based on the analysis of 1,173 corpus examples of English and Spanish resultative expressions with verbs of cooking and colouring drawn from Levin’s (1993) classification. The data reveal distinctive traits of the Spanish resultative construction with no parallel in English: (i) the unacceptability of inanimate instrument subjects and the prepositional form of the resultative phrase in resultatives with verbs of cooking, (ii) the preference for the prepositional realization of the resultative phrase in examples with verbs of colouring, (iii) the collocational restrictions of the predicates pintar (“paint”) and manchar (“stain”) with regards to the semantic nature of the subject or the form of the RP respectively. In addition, this study demonstrates that finergrained analyses of the predicates’ event-frames, as those put forward by Boas (2003), make it possible to arrive at more accurate predictions about the idiosyncratic properties of each language than Goldberg’s (1995) broad-scale generalizations, some of which have been refuted. Furthermore, it demonstrates that contextual background information largely determines the observed syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic features of the resultative construction.

This study investigates the relative roles of frequency and transparency in native speakers’ comprehension of Spanish object relative sentences by comparing performance with two variants of the construction that differ in these properties. Experiment 1 suggests that seven- to eight-year-old children’s processing of object relative sentences is consistently facilitated by variant frequency and likely relies on separate representations for each variant as two different, although related constructions. Experiment 2 turns to adult comprehension of the two variants, showing similar accuracy and reaction time patterns for both variants for this population. This second outcome could be interpreted as a decrease in frequency effects over time, in line with the power law of practice, as an experience-based increase in the ability to make use of redundant markers, or both. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Speaking is a highly conventional enterprise. But unusual usages are, nonetheless, frequently encountered. Some of these novelties fall flat, while others find favour, to the extent of entering common usage. He considered to say something will sound wrong to most native speakers, while The military disappeared her husband, which was more or less unsayable prior to the 1960s, has come to seem fine. Linguist Adelle E. Goldberg has recently argued that speakers display a remarkable openness to new words, phrases and even grammatical forms, when there is no current way of communicating whatever it is those novel strings serve to express. My paper exegetes Goldberg's findings to illuminate the question of poetic judgement. It proposes that there is a strong parallel between how people judge linguistic innovation in everyday speaking, and the way poets and critics judge innovative poetic diction: in both cases there is a premium on what cannot otherwise be said. The paper proceeds to deepen the analogies between these two modes of judgement. It starts by linking the lack of rules for determining the acceptability of new words and phrases in everyday speaking with the indifference to prior rules associated with aesthetic judgement in Kant's third critique, and apparent in the appraisals of many a contemporary poetry critic. It turns to consider the claim that what motivates the judgements under consideration is a preference in the human conceptual system for distinct symbols to have mutually exclusive meanings. A fourth section concerns what Construction Grammar, the broad field of Goldberg's intervention, has to reveal about the conditions under which new words and phrases can take on meaning in the first place. This too has something to suggest about why we judge certain poetic efforts poor, others landed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The parts of speech system and lexical flexibility in Mandarin Chinese (henceforth Chinese) has long been subjects of debate due to the pervasive zero coding of action reference constructions. In this article, we analyze properties of the Chinese Action Reference Construction from the perspective of Radical Construction Grammar (Croft 2001, 2022), focusing on its structural coding, behavioral potential, productivity, and semantic shifts. We also discuss typological features that potentially reinforce lexical flexibility in Chinese, and the implications that the language-specific properties of Chinese present for cross-linguistic discussions of parts of speech. Specifically, reference, instead of predication, is the most flexible information-packaging function in Chinese, challenging the privileged status of predication established in previous studies on parts of speech and lexical flexibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study conducts a multimodal discourse analysis of the live streaming of Jiaqi Li, a well-known Chinese streamer. Integrating systemic functional grammar and systemic visual grammar to explore the construction of interpersonal meanings in Li's live streams, the authors found that Li uses verbal semiotics to convey information and feelings and, more important, to create his different interactive roles as an authoritative opinion leader, a protector of consumers' benefits, and a friend who shares his experiences and recommends products. This study offers insight into e-commerce discourse and communication, adding to the literature on live streaming in commerce and business communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Linguistic & Rhetorical Studies is the property of Semnan University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper aims to give an overview of corpus-based research that investigates processes of language change from the theoretical perspective of Construction Grammar. Starting in the early 2000s, a dynamic community of researchers has come together in order to contribute to this effort. Among the different lines of work that have characterized this enterprise, this paper discusses the respective roles of qualitative approaches, diachronic collostructional analysis, multivariate techniques, distributional semantic models, and analyses of network structure. The paper tries to contextualize these approaches and to offer pointers for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses two constructions in Spanish with discursive functioning which arise from the metadiscursive use of the general noun cosa: constructions of the type te digo una cosa [lit. I tell you something] and una cosa [lit. one thing], together with their variants. Cosa is an archilexeme which is often associated with discourses of communicative immediacy to recover a block of information about the processing of which some instruction is to be given. With this metatextual use, this word tends to appear in certain semi-fixed expressions, but with a high degree of conventionalisation. This is the case of the constructions analysed in this paper. Through a corpus-driven analysis, this paper identifies the formal characteristics of these constructions and the procedural values associated with them, which are based, in principle, on the cataphoric relationship that these structures possess and their preparatory functioning. The analysis is based on the precepts of pragmatic linguistics and macro-syntax. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on two fragmentary constructions in English: why -fragments (WFs), such as Why (deal with) why -fragments? , and Mad Magazine sentences (MMs), such as (Me) paint the house purple? While both types can be equivalent in meaning to their corresponding fully fledged interrogative sentences, they can also be used to convey a specific nuance of scepticism regarding a particular proposition. To explore the specific nuance enriching the canonical interpretation (i.e. equivalent to that of the corresponding complete questions) of WFs and MMs, and their potential constructionalisation in contemporary English, two corpus-based studies were conducted using data from the BNC1994 DS, Spoken BNC2014 and COCA. The results show that MMs seem to be fully constructionalised, while the significant trends attested for WFs indicate an ongoing process of constructionalisation, at least in contemporary British English. The evidence also shows that both may be classed as examples of an umbrella 'Sceptical Small' construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article "Fragments: a usage-based view" published in the journal "English Language & Linguistics" explores the prevalence and linguistic characterization of fragments in Present-Day English. Fragments, defined as functionally felicitous linguistic units that are intonationally and syntactically independent, have been understudied due to unclear definitions. The special issue aims to highlight the discourse functions, classifications, and syntactic status of fragments in English, combining empirical and theoretical perspectives within a usage-based framework. Various contributions in the special issue address questions related to the usage, discourse functions, and syntactic modeling of fragments, providing insights into their communicative roles and conventionalization in language use. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses the importance of grammar instruction in language learning, highlighting the different approaches of implicit and explicit instruction. It introduces the PACE (Presentation, Attention, Co‐construction, Extension) method as a way to teach grammar inductively, providing a detailed explanation of each phase of the model. The author, a German teacher, shares their experience using the PACE model in their classroom and presents survey results from students who found the PACE lessons effective and enjoyable, showing a preference for this method over traditional explicit instruction. [Extracted from the article]

The English way-construction has been investigated time and again in Construction Grammar from various different perspectives. The way-construction is a prototypical example of an argument-structure construction, and as such an ideal test case for some of the basic tenets of Construction Grammar. As a partially filled construction with open slots, it lends itself particularly well to collostructional analysis. In recent years, equivalents of the way-construction in other languages have also gained attention in constructionist approaches. In this paper, we contrast the English way-construction to three German constructions that can be considered its (rough) equivalents: the reflexive motion construction (Sie kämpfte sich durch den Aufsatz 'she fought her way (lit. herself) through the paper'), the reflexive particle-verb construction (Sie mogelt sich durch 'She cheats her way (lit. herself) through'), and the reflexive Weg construction (Sie kämpfte sich einen Weg durch die Menschenmenge 'She fought herself a way through the crowd'). We compare the results to previous collostructional approaches to the way-construction as well as with previous frame-semantic analyses of the three constructions, arguing that a quantitative approach like collostructional analysis and a more qualitatively-oriented frame-semantic approach can complement each other in promising ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The interlanguage of L2 learners is shaped by various factors, perhaps most noticeably transfer from the L1 to the L2 and overgeneralization in the L2. Transfer has traditionally been treated as an all-or-nothing phenomenon by focusing on L2 structures that either have or do not have an equivalent in the L1. Only recently, researchers working in usage-based construction grammar have taken into account frequencies and association strengths of L2 structures. These studies suggest that entrenchment plays a similar role in L2 learning as it does in L1 acquisition. This paper extends this research by systematically taking into account the potential role of the entrenchment of L1 structures and its interaction with L2 entrenchment. We report a translation study and two acceptability rating studies that investigate these factors using the case of the ditransitive construction in the interlanguage of German learners of English as a Foreign Language. Ditransitive constructions exist in both languages but the German construction has a broader meaning (it can encode almost any type of three-participant event) than the English one (which is restricted to events of caused reception and has a large number of idiosyncratic restrictions on individual verbs). This semantic difference leads to differences in the collostructional preferences of the constructions in the two languages (i.e., the set of verbs that they are associated with positively or negatively), allowing us to investigate the extent to which the transfer of L1 usage patterns to the L2 depends on the entrenchment of verb-construction combinations in the L1, and the extent to which transfer can be inhibited by the positive or negative entrenchment of verb-construction associations in the L2. Our results suggest an influence of both L1 entrenchment and L2 entrenchment (positive and negative) on linguistic production and linguistic representation respectively, such that learners transfer L1 associations between verbs and constructions to their L2, especially if these L1 associations are strong, and that they seem to be sensitive to negative L2 entrenchment, especially if the corresponding L1 associations are only weakly entrenched. However, differences between the translation study and the judgment studies suggest that learners may not acquire the specific semantic restrictions of the English ditransitive at all, relying on verb-specific associations to particular argument structures in the L2 instead and resorting to their L1 knowledge when such verb-specific associations are not available to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses two English constructions, the monotransitivethat-clconstruction and the np+to-infinitive construction. In particular, we will show how the principles of collostructional analysis can be used to establish collo-profiles for argument structure constructions, i.e. the verbs to be found very frequently in a construction, and how such collo-profiles can provide important cues for a semantic characterization of these constructions. In this case, we find that the that-clause cxn contains a large number of verbs of reporting, indicating a factual character of the construction in contrast to the infinitive construction that expresses a kind of modal meaning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While linguistics traditionally keeps lexicon separate from grammar, Construction Grammar takes the grammatical construction as the basic unit of language. A grammatical construction integrates the roles of lexemes with their typical grammatical contexts, suggesting the advantages of a comprehensive approach. Furthermore, according to Construction Grammar, grammatical constructions comprise a system in which constructions mutually reinforce each other. We reveal the complex connections among Russian grammatical constructions that emerge from the Russian Constructicon, a resource with over 2200 annotated constructions. We achieve this by focusing on a single semantic subclass of 110 constructions labeled Sets and elements. Our analysis follows the connections among constructions through two domains: semantics and syntax. We find that all constructions fit into groupings at various levels of semantic schematicity, as well as presenting various syntactic dimensions. A given construction has affinities both to constructions with similar meanings and with similar form, and any given construction may have multiple affinities in either or both of these domains. Through our focus on multiword grammatical constructions, we reach beyond traditional approaches that separate words from grammar, instead viewing words in their grammatical context and grammar in its lexical context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Or" is associated, in Gricean approaches, with the readings Inclusive ("at least one, and possibly both, options are true") and Exclusive ("exactly one option is true"). Empirical findings show adults favoring Exclusive readings; but for children, the literature yields puzzling results. Laboratory comprehension tasks suggest children favor Inclusive, but naturalistic evidence suggests children's "or" productions are overwhelmingly Exclusive. We first identify problems with previous research. Methodologically, asking children to provide truth judgements (the dominant experimental task) is not a child-friendly task. And theoretically, Inclusive and Exclusive are not optimal categories for classifying "or" readings. To resolve the comprehension-production puzzle, we adopt Ariel and Mauri's richer analytic classification of "or" constructions, where Inclusive and Exclusive as such are not speaker-intended readings, and there are several, rather than one, "single-option" (Exclusive) readings. We apply this framework in analyzing the Berman corpus of Hebrew child language; and in designing a new, more ecologically valid, experimental task. Study 1 shows that in child-directed-speech, one specific Exclusive "or" construction, Choice Immediate (e.g., ↗Chocolates? Or ↘jelly beans?), is (i) the single dominant "or" function addressed to children, (ii) the one "or" reading children consistently respond appropriately to, and (iii) virtually the only "or" construction children produce. In Study 2, we present young children with a task involving this familiar "or" construction. The children respond with adult-like mastery even in the absence of a supporting context. These empirical findings argue for a usage-based account of how children acquire "or". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of 'snowclones' has gained interest in recent research on linguistic creativity and in studies of extravagance and expressiveness in language. However, no clear criteria for identifying snowclones have yet been established, and detailed corpus-based investigations of the phenomenon are still lacking. This paper addresses this research gap in a twofold way. On the one hand, we develop an operational definition of snowclones, arguing that three criteria are decisive: (i) the existence of a lexically fixed source construction; (ii) partial productivity; (iii) 'extravagant' formal and/or functional characteristics. On the other hand, we offer an empirical investigation of two patterns that have often been mentioned as examples of snowclones in the previous literature, namely [ the mother of all X] and [X BE the new Y]. We use collostructional analysis and distributional semantics to explore the partial productivity of both patterns' slot fillers. In sum, we argue that the concept of snowclones, if properly defined, can contribute substantially to our understanding of creative language use, especially regarding the question of how social, cultural, and interpersonal factors influence the choice of more or less salient linguistic constructions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper addresses the notion of multimodal constructions. It argues that Tell me about it is a multimodal construction that consists of a fixed spoken and a variable, but largely obligatory multimodality slot on the formal side of the construction. To substantiate this claim, the paper reports on an experiment that shows that, first, hearers experience difficulties in interpreting Tell me about it when it is neither sequentially nor multimodally marked as either requesting or stance-related and, second, hearers considerably rely on multimodal features when a sequential context is missing. In addition, the experiment also shows that the more features are used, the better hearers get at guessing the meaning of Tell me about it. These results suggest that, independent of the question of whether the multimodal features associated with requesting or stance-related Tell me about it are non-spoken, unimodal constructions themselves (like a raised eyebrows construction), a schematic multimodality slot might be part of the constructions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the development of the existential sign var 'there' in Turkish Sign Language from a synchronic point of view. The sign has been previously described as being restricted to clause-final predicate position and typically used for two main linguistic functions: (i) existential and (ii) possessive. However, abundant corpus evidence indicates that var can also be used for other linguistic functions in post-verbal position, which have not been reported in the literature before. Following Construction Grammar, this study presents a theoretical framework to investigate how the construction [verb + var] arose and what its semantic motivation is, paying particular attention to the notion of possession. It is argued that this construction has three different functions: (i) habitual, (ii) evidential, and (iii) assumptive. According to this account, var originated as an existential marker and subsequently developed into a marker of possession, before evolving to encompass its other linguistic functions in three stages. Using Labov's Apparent Time Hypothesis (Labov, William. 1963. The social motivation of a sound change. Word 19(3). 273–309), closer examination also revealed that a progressive difference exists between age groups. Younger TİD signers use the construction [verb + var] more frequently, and as the age of the TİD signer decreases, the usage of this construction in the assumptive function increases considerably. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The expression of binominal concepts, i. e. the combination of two nominal concepts, varies between the world's languages qualitatively as well as with regard to quantitative proportions (Pepper 2020; Pepper et al. 2023). The combination of a noun and a relational adjective (NArel) is a frequently applied option, amongst others in Polish and French, which we focus on in this paper. Both languages show high proportions of postponed attributive adjectives and deviate from the other Slavic respective Romance languages in this trait.In our paper we take a constructionist perspective and compare the expression of binominal concepts in Polish and French based on a qualitative and quantitative analysis of AN and NA constructions and their constructional equivalents (especially N Prep N) in the Polish and French translations of Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita (Parasol Corpus). The results show that NArel constructions are of high relevance for the expression of binominals in Polish with lower proportions for NNgen, N Prep N and ArelN, whereas in French N Prep N is predominant, followed by NArel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the intensifying schematic construction [[adj1positive] [adj1comparative] [NP]] that is strongly related to headings, as our corpus analysis reveals. A characteristic of the construction is that, although it structurally exhibits the paradigm of the German adjective comparison, it has a slot for a noun phrase in the third position, where an adjective in the superlative form would normally occur (e. g., Stark, stärker, Dante, ‘Strong, stronger, Dante’). We analyze this construction, which we refer to as a “superlative heading”, from syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic perspectives, using 2,835 instances (tokens) from the German Reference Corpus. To explain the formal and semantic peculiarities of the construction, we consider the principle of coercion and approaches to linguistic creativity. The pragmatic effects of the construction as a genre-specific pattern are discussed from a relevance-theoretic perspective. The paper thus combines construction grammar and relevance theory.

SEEM-verbs constructions, such as those with Italian sembrare ‘seem’, have been widely studied, with much of the research investigating the alternation between impersonal constructions with finite complementation, and personal (“raising”) constructions governing an infinitival clause. However, most of the studies on the matter seem to disregard the role of the extra-linguistic context of production in the choice between said alternants, even though in various languages there seems to be a strong variability between written and spoken situations (Davies 1997a, b; Cornillie 2007; Pisciotta 2023). The aim of this study is thus to evaluate the relevance of extra-linguistic context (operationalized as text genre), as opposed to linguistic factors, in the choice between mi sembra che ‘it seems to me that’, sembra che ‘it seems that’ and sembrare+infinitive in Italian. We do so by integrating a Construction Grammar perspective with studies on register variation and on orality and scripturality, adopting a point of view that decomposes written and spoken language in a continuum of text genres (Voghera 2017). A multifactorial analysis is carried out on 405 total occurrences of (mi) sembra che and sembrare+infinitive constructions, extracted from written and spoken Italian corpora, by fitting a Conditional Inference Tree. The results show that, at least for mi sembra che and sembrare+infinitive, the heaviest role in determining the choice of the constructions is played by the degree of dialogicity and planning of text genres, which are split by the model in three groups: conversational speech, an intermediate group consisting of fiction prose and monological speech, and non-fiction prose. Furthermore, data reveal that a continuum-based perspective on text genres allows us to interpret and to draw generalizations on the behaviour of sembrare-constructions. These results encourage us to take into account and to encode text genres in the description of constructions, even “traditional” and less idiosyncratic ones.

This article investigates the extent to which context can impact the meaning of a construction. It focuses on the French expression en situation de (‘in situation of’) + NOUN, whose meaning is contested among language users when specifically applied to human referents (e.g., en situation de handicap ‘disabled’, en situation de pauvreté ‘poor’). Analyzed as a constructional idiom, its meaning is mapped out on the basis of corpus data. Although a clash is consistently observed between the “circumstantial characterization” meaning arising from the constituent parts of the construction and the “inherent characterization” interpretation it typically receives in context, I argue that contextual pressure has not resulted in the obliteration of constructional meaning. En situation de + NOUN is shown to retain semantic and pragmatic properties that distinguish it from referentially equivalent expressions and ensure its longevity. In addition to making a contribution to research on euphemism and so-called ‘politically correct’ language, the article demonstrates the necessity to uphold the semantics/pragmatics distinction in usage-based Contruction Grammar (CxG) studies of language and language change.

The fact that language is continually changing and that there is a constant flow of linguistic innovations is blatantly obvious. In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the notion of E(nlarging/extending)-creativity in the context of Construction Grammar (Bergs 2019; Hoffmann 2020, 2022; Ivorra Ordines & López Meirama 2024; Mellado Blanco 2023; among others), in the sense of creating new communicative possibilities that are not already in the language. Against this background, I investigate the extravagant nature of a family of consecutive constructional idioms using data from the esTenTen18 corpus (Sketch Engine), with instances such as una sed que me bebería el entero lago ‘a thirst that could drink the entire lake’. After a constructionist description of the patterns under discussion, the aim of this paper is twofold. First, to elucidate the intersection of creativity and extravagance. Second, to explore the extravagant nature of such patterns through different indicators: orthotypographic markers and cognitive devices. Arguably, semi-schematic patterns with a pragmatic point constitute illustrative examples in the interface of syntax and pragmatics, and as such they can be insightful for our understanding of the trade-off between psychological-cognitive factors of creativity and socio-cognitive ones (such as the wish to be extravagant).

The topic of transitive structures with implicit (phonologically null) objects has received much attention in Construction Grammar (CxG). Among natural languages, English is characterized by allowing mainly non-referential implicit objects (‘They build _ for a living’), whereas referential implicit objects are highly constrained and/or require conversational implicatures (Fillmore 1986 ; Cummins & Roberge 2004 ; Goldberg 2001). Using the CxG framework, this article investigates discourse-based acceptability of the Implicit Object Construction (IOC) in two context types: Generic (no antecedent for an implicit object) and Definite/Indefinite (+antecedent for an implicit object). One of the hypotheses explored is that English allows implicature-based referential construals for implicit objects (Cummins & Roberge 2004). Two online experiments were conducted. Experiment 1 included 31 native speakers of American English (AE) who provided acceptability rankings for the IOC in three experimental conditions (Generic, Indefinite, Definite). Experiment 2 included a different group of 24 AE native speakers and used the same materials as in Experiment 1; however, the ranking component of the task was replaced with a multiple-choice format. Experimental results converge on two findings: an IOC is clearly favored in the [-antecedent] contexts, whereas overt object counterparts of an IOC are preferred in [+antecedent] contexts. However, implicit objects, when used with some verbs, are ranked as quite acceptable with a [+specific] antecedent, which attests to the role of individual verbs in speakers' judgments.1

The present contribution starts from Goldberg and Perek’s (2019) analysis of gapping within a constructionist framework. The authors promote their analysis as surpassing non-constructionist takes on gapping and ellipsis more generally. In particular, they claim predictive power. That this is not the whole truth is explained in detail in this contribution. It is shown which predictions can be made from their perspective versus from a generative perspective and it is discussed whether they are borne out. Furthermore, I highlight how the predictions relate to the fundamentals of the respective theories and, as a consequence, how they differ in kind.

The present research has aimed at describing and also qualitive and quantities analysis of constructions in Shushtari dialect called expressions based on construction grammar proposed by Fillmore et al (1988) and syntax-lexicon continuum (Croft, 2001). Data collection has been done using both field and library method from Shushtari native speakers and “Dictionaries of Shushtari Dialect” (Niroud, 1977 & Fazeli, 2004). First, with the help of the tools in the construction grammar, the analysis of Shushtari expressions based on the classification of Fillmore et al. (1988) has been attempted, and their frequency has been measured. The results indicate that Shushtari dialect idiomatic constructions fall into four categories of encoding/decoding, formal/substantive, grammatical/extra grammatical, and with pragmatic point/without pragmatic point. Idioms and the percentage of frequency of each terminology category was as follows: 47 decoding (57%) vs. 62 encoding idioms (43%), 91 substantive (83.5%) vs. 18 formal idioms (16.5%), 96 without pragmatic point (88%) vs. 13 with pragmatic point idioms (12%). None of the data is extragrammatical and as a result%100of the data is grammatical idioms. Also, the data examined, have been placed in complex and specific constructions in Croft's proposed syntax-lexicon continuum (2001).IntroductionThe branch of linguistics that studies dialects is called dialectology (Chambers and Trudgill, 1998: 3). Considering the fact that Iranian languages and dialects are intangible heritage of Iranians and their codification and preservation are essential, this study investigates one of the Iranian dialects called Shushtari. The Shushtari dialect is one of the southwestern dialects in Iran, specifically in Khuzestan province, which is very close to dialects such as Lori, Bakhtiari, and Dezfuli. This connection is rooted in the history of Aryan migration to Iran (Fazeli, 2006). A dialect is a technical term used to describe a variety of languages that, despite having phonetic, lexical, and grammatical differences, allow their speakers mutual intelligibility (Abdolkarimi, 2017: 64). According to these definitions, Shushtari can be considered a dialect. The authors aim to study this dialect, particularly its idioms, within the framework of Construction Grammar as the basis of data analysis. The researchers in this study seek to answer the following questions: 1. What are the types of Shushtari dialect idioms/expressions within the framework of Fillmore et al.'s (1988) Construction Grammar? 2. What reality is hidden behind the quantitative analysis of the different types of Shushtari dialect idioms/expressions within the framework of Construction Grammar?Theoretical FrameworkCognitive linguistics is a multi-aspectual theory that includes theories such as Conceptual Metaphor and Frame Semantics; one of the syntactic frameworks in this field is Construction Grammar. This grammatical model was first introduced by Charles Fillmore and colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Fillmore (1988) outlined the fundamental principles of Construction Grammar and the distinctions between the Construction Grammar approach, transformational grammar, and the grammar of phrasal structures in an article entitled "The Mechanisms of Construction Grammar" (Zhukovska, 2021: 65). In addition to this article, Fillmore et al. (1998) have published another paper in this field in which they analyzed expressional constructions using the mentioned approach. Many researchers, including Goldberg (1995; 2002), Michaelis and Lambrecht (1996), Kay and Fillmore (1999), and Croft (2001) became interested in Construction Grammar.The research on Shushtari dialect, expressional constructions in general, and studies focused on Construction Grammar have not examined any of the expressional constructions of the Shushtari dialect. As a result, the expressional constructions of this dialect have not been studied or analyzed from a cognitive perspective. Construction Grammar discusses the linearity of syntax, the meaning of symbolic units, patterns, and classes of words. In this framework, each construction and pattern has an inherent meaning. As in other cognitive linguistic patterns, there is no definitive distinction between lexicon and syntax. Lexical and syntactic structures differ in terms of internal complexity and definite phonological forms, and their similarity lies in the formation of all structures by meaning (Goldberg, 1995: 4-7). Kay and Fillmore (1999: 7), quoted by Evans and Green (2006: 653), believe that Construction Grammar can examine and explain the properties of idiomatic expressions of languages, in addition to everyday language. The characteristic of Construction Grammar patterns is their linearity; that is, instead of any structural pattern being the result of a sequence of transformational structures, it consists of only one level of syntactic representation. Furthermore, representations in Construction Grammar include semantic and functional information in addition to syntactic information. In Construction Grammar, the study of grammar is not accepted without considering the meaning and conceptual aspects of grammatical elements. Grammatical structures are considered basic symbolic units, showing the unconditional presence of meaning within them. Construction Grammars are distinguished from transformational grammars by the absence of transformational rules. In Construction Grammars, grammatical relations are determined throughout the grammar as a whole (Fillmore et al., 1988: 35).Discussion and ConclusionsIn this research, based on four categories of expressional constructions introduced by Fillmore et al. (1988), Shushtari dialect expressional constructions were investigated, and three categories of expressional constructions were identified: encoding/decoding, formal/substantive, and grammatical/extra-grammatical, with pragmatic point/without pragmatic point. However, in the grammatical/extra-grammatical category of idioms, no examples of extra-grammatical idioms were found in the Shushtari dialect. The frequency of idioms in each terminology category was as follows: 47 decoding (43%) vs. 62 encoding idioms (57%), 91 substantive (83.5%) vs. 18 formal idioms (16.5%), 96 without pragmatic point (88%) vs. 13 with pragmatic point idioms (12%). None of the data are extra-grammatical, and as a result, 100% of the data are grammatical idioms. Additionally, the data examined were placed in complex and specific constructions in Croft's proposed syntax-lexicon continuum (2001).The formal/substantive interaction analysis is investigated in an independent paper. According to Croft's syntactic terminology continuum (2001), the studied data in this research are located in complex and specific constructions. Semantically speaking, the number of constructions without semantic compositionality is lower than those with semantic compositionality, because they increase the memory load of speakers. Therefore, Shushtari speakers have fewer linguistic constructions in mind that are associated with specific use.Since there has not been a sociological study to show the relationship between the types of common linguistic structures in a geographical area, especially in Shushtar, and cultural realities and beliefs, presenting the above hypotheses can motivate such research to confirm or disprove the hypotheses and present new findings to researchers in the fields of sociology, ethnography, and dialectology.

While previous studies have investigated the productivity of the better construction (in the forms had better, ’d better and better) in British and US English (USE), to present knowledge, no large‐scale comparisons on the use of this construction in other English dialects have been carried out. The present paper aims to address the existing research gap by exploring the synchronic use and grammaticalization rate of better in 20 world Englishes. The analysis of corpus data reveals that better is more grammaticalized in USE than in British English, and even more in Singapore English (SgE) data, where the construction seems to be more grammaticalized than in any other dialect. The hypothesis of a functional need in SgE for deontic better is tested. It is shown why SgE ‘needs’ alternative deontic constructions in a modal system where (semi‐)modals of necessity have been shown to express higher rates of ‘dynamic’ modality than in other dialects. The substrate reinforcement from a parallel construction in Mandarin is presented as a potential driving factor justifying the selection of better as a deontic marker in this particular variety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the emergence of neologisms derived from the word "cunt" in contemporary English, particularly within the context of internet communication. Traditionally considered a rather offensive word in English, "cunt" has undergone a notable transformation in social media settings, acquiring more positive and varied connotations. An example of a "cunt"-related neologism is "I was bored, so I decided to cuntify my lighter" (X, 2024), in which "cuntify" means to make something more charming or appealing. Thus, this study aims to document and analyze the new uses of "cunt," focusing on how they integrate into broader linguistic frameworks such as Derivational Morphology and Construction Grammar. The research involved extracting data from the social media platform X (formerly Twitter) to capture real-time usage of "cunt"-derived neologisms. By applying derivational suffixes listed by Crystal (2018), such as "-age," "-dom," "- ery," "-hood," "-ism," "-ocracy," and "-ship," the study identified a range of new terms like "cuntage," "cuntdom," "cuntery," "cunthood," "cuntism," "cuntocracy," and "cuntship." These neologisms reflect diverse meanings, often highlighting attributes like empowerment, boldness, and innovation. Analysis also identified potential analogies based on phonetic similarity, such as "cunter scale" mirroring "Richter scale," "cuntic" mirroring "Atlantic," and "cuntette" aligning with "cadette," among others. These analogies likely arise from the term "cunt" being highly adaptable, allowing it to integrate seamlessly with various morphological structures and representations. Analysis also utilized Fillmore et al.'s (1988) framework for classifying constructions. The study found that "cunt"-related neologisms typically fall under decoding constructions, as they require contextual understanding for their meanings. Moreover, they adhere to standard grammatical rules, rendering them grammatical constructions, and they exhibit flexibility in form and meaning, characteristic of formal constructions. Findings also suggest that these neologisms are highly productive in present-day English, contributing to the evolving landscape of internet language and reflecting broader cultural shifts towards inclusivity and self-expression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Encoding of nominal predication constructions (NPC) is an essential component in typological debates concerning lexical flexibility and parts of speech. This study investigates encoding strategies of NPCs in 65 verb-initial languages from 20 language families. The results indicate that the combinations of a zero strategy and certain other typological features are cross-linguistically disfavored due to non-iconicity. The varying degree of lexical flexibility observed among languages reflects a competition between economy and iconicity, as in many other aspects of linguistic diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many languages, an argument external to a nominal can be interpreted as a possessor of that nominal. Korean and Spanish both have such constructions, but the external possessors contrast in their case features, grammatical functions, distribution, and semantic properties (e.g. alienability). This paper develops a Construction Grammar account that treats external possessors as unselected arguments licensed through a conventional implicature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a special issue of the journal Languages in Contrast, featuring papers presented at the 10th International Contrastive Linguistics Conference. The aim of the conference series is to promote cross-linguistic research from various theoretical and methodological perspectives. The collection of articles in this special issue focuses on the contrastive study of linguistic constructions, including future constructions, classifier and quantifier constructions, external possession constructions, embedded exclamative constructions, existential and presentational constructions, and converbs. The studies analyze these constructions using corpus-based methods and include a variety of language pairs. The papers provide empirical and theoretical insights into these linguistic phenomena. [Extracted from the article]

The aim of the paper is to examine the functional and formal features of the construction here’s hoping. Our analysis is informed by the frameworks of construction grammar (Fried, 2010, 2013), grammaticalization (Fried, 2009; Himmelmann, 2004), subjectification (Company, 2006) and impersonalization (Siewierska, 2008). The construction seems to have developed a novel subjectified function, i.e. to express the speaker’s positive expectation while retaining a degree of tentativeness and distance. The data for the analysis was excerpted from the corpus English Web 2021 (enTenTen21). The internal and external features of the construction (e.g. the (non-)deictic function of here, fixedness, syntactic isolation, initial position) together with the overall expansion of the semantic and pragmatic context and the gradual host-class expansion suggest that the process of grammaticalization/subjectification is currently under way (cf. Fried, 2010; Company, 2006). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Second language acquisition studies have mainly considered transfer between two or more languages as a binary setting, it either happens or does not. However, research emerging out of usage-based approaches show that such transfer effects might be more gradient than ever thought before (e.g., Goschler & Stefanowitsch, 2019). Investigating a construction that has been reported to pose problems such as overpassivization to L2 English learners, i.e., unaccusatives, this study aims to trace gradient transfer effects between Turkish and English in the intransitive-unaccusative construction in Turkish learners of English. Following Goschler and Stefanowitsch's (2019) method to analyze, extract experimental items from English and Turkish corpora, and experiment with collostructional transfer effects, the study revealed similar findings. Findings suggest that learners are likely to transfer strongly entrenched L1 items into the L2 even at advanced proficiency levels. Interestingly, when the item is weakly entrenched in L1, speakers attune to the input in L2 with growing proficiency. Furthermore, proficiency or experience helps with preempting non-optimal constructional combinations. Pedagogically, the study suggests that collo-profiles may help teachers and students with mitigating unconventional item-construction combinations at advanced levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores a constructionist and corpus-based approach to Old English formulaic language through an analysis of the "maþelode system" of speech introductions. The analysis is performed on a section of the York-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Poetry, comprising the poems Beowulf, Battle of Brunanburh, and Exodus. The results show that most instances of the maþelode system belong to a well-attested construction continuum, structured by the widespread Old English (and ultimately Germanic) poetic devices of variation and kenning. This continuum ranges from more fixed repetitions that exclusively involve the verb maþelian to more schematic patterns that are also attested by other speech verbs, by verbs of giving, as well as by a number of further verbs of various semantic types. The particularly high frequency of this pattern with speech verbs and verbs of giving matches the prominent role, highlighted by previous studies, of both word-exchange and gift-exchange within Old English heroic ideology, and suggests that these formulaic patterns served the purpose to characterize the protagonists of speech or giving events as heroic and/or lordly figures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]