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Constructional Profiles As The Basis of Semantic Analysis: Suzanne Kemmer Rice University Kemmer@rice - Edu
Constructional Profiles As The Basis of Semantic Analysis: Suzanne Kemmer Rice University Kemmer@rice - Edu
Suzanne Kemmer
Rice University
kemmer@rice.edu
Introduction
Construction Grammarians:
Corpus-construction grammarians:
Corpus-cognitive linguists:
Diachrony
Two perspectives
For relational units, the various senses of a given lexical unit are
actually associated with constructions.
over (the hill) : hovered over the hill, flew over the hill
Prep NP : V-static over NP, V-motion over NP
an extra sense for sneeze in she sneezed the napkin off the
table seems absurd
Bidirectional links
But Langacker (2003) points out: there are many verbs that have
a strong associative link to a particular construction.
Predictions
Prediction:
Rohde 2001
Rohde 2001
For example, the verb escape occurs extremely frequently with source
prepositions like from. Most other motion verbs in English prefer goal
prepositions, with varying degrees of preference. Rohde concluded that
a source (rather than goal) image schema is strongly conventionally
linked with the lexical item escape.
Coercion in action
Coercion
Now consider:
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
She
She
She
She
She
Coercion explained
More predictions
Problems
Testability
Potential problems
Potential problems
Corpus-Construction
Grammarians and Corpus
Cognitive
Linguists
The small community
of Corpus-Construction Grammarians
The make-causative
The make-causative
The make causative has its own unique constructional profile of elements
that typically occur with it and which relate to its function as a construction.
These characteristic distribution patterns are found with many constructions
(e.g. English passive; Dutch laten and doen causatives; German lassen causative;
English let and have causatives; into causative, split infinitives, Swedish future)
The make-causative
In
And
I worked
It worked
The make-causative
The make-causative
We can also observe the history of the make causative. In this history we
find support for the 3 senses of the current construction, and find their
progressive emergence as distinct senses.
When we examine the history of the construction, we find that the
construction did not always occur with its current constructional profile.
In fact, in the earliest days in our data, make was primarily a main verb taking
nominal and adjectival predicates.
It began to take infinitives in early middle English (the do-causative was fading by
then), but as an early causative construction it was principally (most frequently in
type and token frequency) used with the Mechanical Action type of predicates.
Although all 3 senses were apparently attested, the primary use as attested by
frequency was the Mechanical action.
As time went on, emotion predicates began to dominate, as they still do today, but
the number of compulsion predicates began to move past the one or two found in
the earlier periods.
Furthermore, we find the beginnings of coercion effects as the construtcion begins
to exert an interpretational effect on the senses of verbs like work and look.
Effectively, it begins to coerce its component elements to become more
compatible with its own developing semantics.
Conclusions--Utility of
Constructional Profiles
Conclusions: Coercion;
diachrony
We can find early evidence for the
conventionalization of a construction by
pinpointing the first visible instances of
coercion.
These show that the construction has
acquired some semantics of its own that
can override semantic anomalies.
Constructions are a fruitful perspective for not
only synchronic, but diachronic
investigation.
Acknowledgments
References
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Stanford: CSLI Publications.
Barlow, Michael, and Suzanne Kemmer, eds. 2000. Usage Based Models of
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Langacker, Ronald. 1987,1991. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar Vols I and II.
References, cont.
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