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Case Studies in Fluid Construction Grammar: The verb phrase
Edited by Luc Steels and Katrien Beuls
[Benjamins Current Topics 106] 2019
► pp. 79–104

How a Construction Grammar account solves the auxiliary controversy

The English auxiliaries have been a matter of dispute for decades with two opposing views: one analysis treats them as main verbs that take a VP complement; the other considers them as feature carriers. Proponents of both approaches have convincingly pointed out each other’s weaknesses without however settling the debate and without accounting for the fact that the English VP is still evolving today. The goal of this paper is to show that Construction Grammar offers a way out of the current status quo. This claim is substantiated by a computational formalization of the English verb phrase in Fluid Construction Grammar that includes a bi-directional processing model for formulation and comprehension available for online testing.

Keywords: verb phrase, Construction Grammar, auxiliaries, tense, aspect, modality, grammar formalization
Article outline
  • 1.The auxiliary controversy
    • 1.1The main-verb analysis and its problems
    • 1.2The feature-carrier analysis and its problems
    • 1.3Coping with language change
    • 1.4Construction Grammar makes a synthesis possible
  • 2.Modeling the English verb phrase
    • 2.1Overview of the analysis
    • 2.2Verbal lexical constructions
      • Meaning
      • SEM-VALENCE
      • SEM-CAT
      • SYN-CAT
      • LEX-ID
    • 2.3Verb Phrase Construction
    • 2.4Present- and Past-Tense-Indicative Constructions
      • Present-Tense-Indicative Construction
      • Past-Tense-Indicative Construction
    • 2.5Perfect and Non-Perfect Constructions
      • Perfect Construction
    • 2.6Progressive and Non-Progressive Constructions
      • Progressive Construction
    • 2.7Modal Constructions
      • Modal-Will Construction
      • Marked-Modality Construction
  • 3.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 9 October 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/bct.106.cf.00004.van
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