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.
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.
Adopting the perspective of construction grammar and related frameworks, this paper introduces a corpus-based method for investigating correlations between lexical items occurring in two different slots of a grammatical construction. On the basis of three case studies dealing with the into-causative, English possessive constructions, and the way-construction, we show that such correlations are determined by semantic coherence. We identify three kinds of coherence: one based on frame-semantic knowledge, one based on semantic prototypes, and one based on image schemas. We conclude by proposing a method that can potentially enhance the precision of our results and that allows us to identify ever-finer contrasts by adopting a multidimensional perspective towards co-occurrence patterns.
It has often been claimed that the distribution of the s-genitive and the of-genitive is determined by considerations of information structure, more specifically by linear precedence preferences related to animacy, givenness, or syntactic weight. This paper shows that such claims are untenable on empirical as well as theoretical grounds. First, corpus analyses simply do not bear out the predictions made by these claims. Second, such claims assume that the two genitives are semantically equivalent. I show that this assumption is wrong and offer a systematic account of the s-genitive and the of-genitive as distinct semantic-role constructions, arguing that the former encodes a possessor-possessee relation and the latter a part-whole relation unless the head noun itself inherently specifies a different relation. Only in the case of such an inherently specified relation does the possibility arise that information structure may play a role. I then show that in such cases animacy and (to a lesser degree) length have an influence, but that givenness has an optional stylistic influence at best.
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