Constructional semantics on the move: On semantic specialization in the English double object construction

Colleman, Timothy; Clerck, Bernard De

doi:10.1515/cogl.2011.008

Cited by 71 publications

(41 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…Others yet may have come to instantiate a limited number of conventionalized combinations or obsolesced completely (see e.g. Colleman & De Clerck 2011, Van de Velde 2011, Hilpert 2013, Torrent 2015, Colleman 2015 for some sporadic case studies on the growth and contraction of constructional networks). In addition, it remains to be investigated whether it is possible to pinpoint when these reorganizations of the network have taken place.…”

Section: The Fake Reflexive Resultative Construction and Its Intensifmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tracking shifts in the literal versus the intensifying fake reflexive resultative construction

Gyselinck

Colleman

2016

BJL

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This paper explores diachronic shifts in the literal and intensifying uses of dood 'dead' in the Dutch fake reflexive resultative construction. Without sufficient context, a clause like Hij werkte zich dood (lit. 'He worked himself dead') is ambiguous in that it is unclear whether dood expresses an actual result of the activity denoted by the verb or whether it intensifies that verbal activity. We will investigate shifts in the (relative) type and token frequencies of both subtypes over the last two centuries and show that the intensifying use has become predominant. Particular attention is paid to the notion of productivity, which may help us to elucidate the possible pathways along which dood -in its function as an intensifier -is moving. By taking into account the variety of verbs that dood has occurred with since the early 19th Century, we aim to assess whether the dramatic increase in relative frequency of intensifying dood is paralleled by a concomitant extension of its collocational range or, conversely, whether this increase in frequency is mainly due to the rise of some highly frequent collocations.

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Section: The Fake Reflexive Resultative Construction and Its Intensifmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tracking shifts in the literal versus the intensifying fake reflexive resultative construction

Gyselinck

Colleman

2016

BJL

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“…For instance, the fact that double object give, offer, send, bring, promise, tell, etc. have survived despite the availability of a good prepositional alternative there as well (viz. the to-dative) can only be accounted for by referring to the more central position of these 'caused reception' uses in the construction's semantic network (see the semantic specialization hypothesis developed in Colleman and De Clerck 2011). In addition, there are constructional shifts which cannot be related to general processes of morphosyntactic change at all.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There is a crucial distinction between this kind of change operating at the level of the verb class and the lexically-motivated valency shifts discussed in the previous sub-section, the latter of which are by definition characteristic of individual verbs. Colleman and De Clerck (2011) present and discuss a number of such diachronic shifts in the semantic range of the English double object construction. Another now-obsolete constructional subsense-which as it happens had virtually completely disappeared from the grammar even before the 18th century, judging by the CLMET data-is the antonym of the construction's basic 'caused reception' sense, viz.…”

Section: Valency Change As a Consequence Of Shifts In Constructionalmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Trousdale 2010) constituting a particularly active research topic. Colleman and De Clerck (2011) observe that in the domain of argument structure, the majority of existing diachronic studies is concerned with either the emergence of argument structure constructions or their demise; the above-mentioned studies by Israel (1996) and Trousdale (2008) provide good examples of both perspectives. Such topics are of course wellworthy of linguistic investigation: it goes without saying that a wealth of information on the defining properties of constructions as schematic form-meaning mappings is to be gleaned from investigating the way in which they come into being.…”

Section: Diachronic Construction Grammarmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As a case study in constructional semasiology, Colleman and De Clerck (2011) present the results of an exploration of the semantic range of the double object construction in 18th-century English, on the basis of data from the 1710-1780 subperiod of the extended version of the Corpus of Late Modern English Texts (CLMET-EV; cf. De Smet 2005).…”

Section: The Double Object Construction In 18th-century Englishmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Ditransitive Verbs and the Ditransitive Construction: A Diachronic Perspective

Colleman¹

2011

Zeitschrift Für Anglistik Und Amerikanistik

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Ditransitive verbs and the ditransitive construction. A diachronic perspective TIMOTHY COLLEMAN This paper argues for the adoption of a construction-based perspective to the investigation of diachronic shifts in valency, which is a hitherto largely neglected topic in the framework Introduction 1Whereas valency grammar has been a thriving research area for about half a century and continues to be so-especially, but not exclusively, in Germanic linguistics-it has also been a predominantly synchronic enterprise. Existing work in historical valency usually takes the form of a synchronic investigation of the valency behaviour of selected lexical items in a single older language stage, more often than not with a view to the compilation of a valency dictionary for that particular period in the history of the language (see, e.g., Greule's 1999 valency dictionary of Old High German and Maxwell's 1982 valency grammar of Middle High German). Studies with a truly diachronic focus, i.e. investigations of the ins and outs of valency change have been scarce. Echoing a concern voiced by Ágel (2000, 269), Habermann (2007, 85) states that "what is lacking, is a theory of valency dynamics and shifts." Similarly, Heringer (2006Heringer ( , 1456 observes that valency research has not as yet succeeded in providing an accurate account of diachronic valency change: in his view, existing studies in this domain are limited to the macro level and lack real explanatory power. 2 The present paper will argue that the development of a theory of valency change may benefit in important ways from the incorporation of insights from construction-based theories of argument structure.To make this argument, I will draw on data on the (recent) semantic evolution of the double object argument structure constructions of English and Dutch, focussing on shifts which have taken place in the course of the last three or four centuries. The paper is structured as follows. First, section 2 briefly elaborates on the limited corpus of existing studies on diachronic valency and section 3 further sets the stage with a number of introductory remarks on the emerging field of diachronic construction grammar. In section 4, we move on to the data analysis, which will start out from an exploration of the semantic range of the English double object argument structure construction at the beginning of Late Modern English and a 1 The author is associated with the Linguistics Department at Ghent University. I would like to thank the organisers of and the other participants in the Hamburg workshop on 'Valency vs. argument structure' for their comments and suggestions. Bernard De Clerck is to be thanked for allowing the use of corpus data which were collected as part of a previous, joint investigation. My research into the diachrony of argument structure semantics is funded by a BOF grant from Ghent University (Special Research Fund, 'Variation and change in constructional semantics'). Author's address: timothy.colleman@UGent.be 2 "Alles in allem ist es der Valenzforschung ...

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The evolutionary dynamics of language

Steels

Szathmáry

2018

Biosystems

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The well-established framework of evolutionary dynamics can be applied to the fascinating open problems how human brains are able to acquire and adapt language and how languages change in a population. Schemas for handling grammatical constructions are the replicating unit. They emerge and multiply with variation in the brains of individuals and undergo selection based on their contribution to needed expressive power, communicative success and the reduction of cognitive effort. Adopting this perspective has two major benefits. (i) It makes a bridge to neurobiological models of the brain that have also adopted an evolutionary dynamics point of view, thus opening a new horizon for studying how human brains achieve the remarkably complex competence for language. And (ii) it suggests a new foundation for studying cultural language change as an evolutionary dynamics process. The paper sketches this novel perspective, provides references to empirical data and computational experiments, and points to open problems.

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Constructional semantics on the move: On semantic specialization in the English double object construction

Cited by 71 publications

References 17 publications

Tracking shifts in the literal versus the intensifying fake reflexive resultative construction

Tracking shifts in the literal versus the intensifying fake reflexive resultative construction

Ditransitive Verbs and the Ditransitive Construction: A Diachronic Perspective

The evolutionary dynamics of language

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