Cover not available
Article published In:
The Wealth and Breadth of Construction-Based Research
Edited by Timothy Colleman, Frank Brisard, Astrid De Wit, Renata Enghels, Nikos Koutsoukos, Tanja Mortelmans and María Sol Sansiñena
[Belgian Journal of Linguistics 34] 2020
► pp. 17–29

Constructional creativity in a Romance language

Valency coercion in Italian

| Aston University

The present contribution summarizes findings on the understudied area of Italian valency coercion – i. e. the interaction of verbs and argument structure constructions in novel and creative ways – from four different studies. It highlights their innovative character, theoretical significance, and crosslinguistic implications for Construction Grammar. The paper suggests that valency coercion resolution involve different phenomena, such as distributional properties of constructions and compatibility between verb and construction. Sociolinguistic factors such as age and diatopic variables are also suggested to be relevant.

Keywords: construction grammar, Italian, coercion, experimental linguistics
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Valency coercion in English and Italian
  • 2.Experimental findings on valency coercion in Italian
    • 2.1Does valency coercion exist in Italian?
    • 2.2How much does construction semantics matter?
    • 2.3How much does verb compatibility matter?
    • 2.4Coercion and sociolinguistics
  • 3.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 28 May 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/bjl.00031.bus
References (41)
Barak, Libby, and Adele Goldberg
2017 “Modeling the Partial Productivity of Constructions.” In Proceedings of the American Association of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) Symposium on Computational Construction Grammar and Natural Language Understanding: Technical Report SS-17-02,131–138. Stanford: AAAI.Google Scholar
Barðdal, Johanna
2008 Productivity: Evidence from Case and Argument Structure in Icelandic. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Boas, Hans C.
2011 “Coercion and Leaking Argument Structures in Construction Grammar.” Linguistics 49 (6): 1271–1303. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Boas, Hans C., and Francisco Gonzálvez-García
(eds.) 2014 Romance Perspectives on Construction Grammar. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Buchstaller, Isabelle
2006 “Diagnostics of Age-graded Linguistic Behaviour: The Case of the Quotative System.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 10 (1): 3–30. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Busso, Lucia, Alessandro Lenci, and Florent Perek
2020 “Valency Coercion in Italian.” Constructions and Frames 12 (2): 171–205. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Busso, Lucia, Ludovica Pannitto, and Alessandro Lenci
2018 “Modelling Italian Construction Flexibility with Distributional Semantics: Are Constructions Enough?” In Proceedings of the Fifth Italian Conference on Computational Linguistics (CLiC-it 2018), ed. by Elena Cabrio, Alessandro Mazzei, and Fabio Tamburini, 68–74. CEUR-WS Team. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Busso, Lucia, Florent Perek, and Alessandro Lenci
In press. “Constructional Associations Trump Lexical Associations in Processing Valency Coercion.” Cognitive Linguistics.
Busso, Lucia, and Domenica Romagno
Forthcoming. “Caused Motion Constructions between standard and substandard: entrare, uscire, scendere, salire in contemporary Italian.” Italian Journal of Linguistics.
Bybee, Joan
2010 Language, Usage and Cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cerruti, Massimo
2011 “Regional Varieties of Italian in the Linguistic Repertoire.” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 2101: 9–28. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
de Swart, Henriette
1998 “Aspect Shift and Coercion.” Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 161: 347–385. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Eckert, Penelope
2017 “Age as a Sociolinguistic Variable.” In The Handbook of Sociolinguistics, ed. by Florian Coulmas, 151–167. New York: Wiley. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ellis, Nick
2019 “Essentials of a Theory of Language Cognition.” The Modern Language Journal 103 (1): 39–60. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fried, Mirjam, and Jan-Ola Östman
2004 “Construction Grammar: A Thumbnail Sketch.” In Construction Grammar in a Cross-language Perspective, ed. by Mirjam Fried, and Jan-Ola Östman, 11–86. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goldberg, Adele
1995 Constructions: A Construction Grammar Approach to Argument Structure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
2006 Constructions at Work: The Nature of Generalization in Language. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
2019 Explain Me This. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Kuznetsova, Alexandra, Per B. Brockhoff, and Rune H. B. Christensen
2017 “lmerTest Package: Tests in Linear Mixed Effects Models.” Journal of Statistical Software 82 (13): 1–26. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hilpert, Martin
2015 “From Hand-carved to Computerbased: Noun-participle Compounding and the Upward Strengthening Hypothesis.” Cognitive Linguistics 26 (1): 113–147. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Johnson, Matt A., and Adele Goldberg
2013 “Evidence for Automatic Accessing of Constructional Meaning: Jabberwocky Sentences Prime Associated Verbs.” Language and Cognitive Processes 28 (10): 1439–1452. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Koch, Peter
2001 Lexical Typology from a Cognitive and Linguistic Point of View. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
Lauwers, Peter and Dominique Willems
2011 “Coercion: Definition and Challenges, Current Approaches, and New Trends.” Linguistics 49 (6): 1219–1235. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lebani, Gianluca, and Alessandro Lenci
2017 “Modelling the Meaning of Argument Constructions with Distributional Semantics.” In Proceedings of the American Association of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) Symposium on Computational Construction Grammar and Natural Language Understanding: Technical Report SS-17-02, 197–204. Stanford: AAAI.Google Scholar
Lenci, Alessandro
2018 “Distributional Models of Word Meaning.” Annual Review of Linguistics 41: 151–171. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Levin, Beth
1993 English Verb Classes and Alternations: A Preliminary Investigation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Loporcaro, Michele
2013 Profilo linguistico dei dialetti italiani [Linguistic Profile of Italian Dialects]. Bari: Laterza.Google Scholar
Masini, Francesca
2005 “Multi-Word Expressions Between Syntax and the Lexicon: The Case of Italian Verb-particle Constructions.” SKY Journal of Linguistics 181: 145–173.Google Scholar
Michaelis, Laura
2004 “Type Shifting in Construction Grammar: An Integrated Approach to Aspectual Coercion.” Cognitive Linguistics 15 (1): 1–67. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Perek, Florent
2016 “Using Distributional Semantics to Study Syntactic Productivity in Diachrony: a Case Study.” Linguistics 54 (1): 149–188. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Perek, Florent, and Adele Goldberg
2017 “Linguistic Generalization on the Basis of Function and Constraints on the Basis of Statistical Preemption.” Cognition 1681: 276–293. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Perek, Florent, and Martin Hilpert
2014 “Constructional Tolerance: Cross-Linguistic Differences in the Acceptability of Non-Conventional Uses of Constructions”. Constructions and Frames 6 (2): 266–304. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pustejovsky, James
2011 “Coercion in a General Theory of Argument Selection.” Linguistics 49 (6): 1401–1431. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ricca, Davide
1993 I verbi deittici di movimento in Europa: una ricerca interlinguistica [Deictic Movement Verbs in Europe: a Crosslinguistic Research]. Firenze: La Nuova Italia Editrice.Google Scholar
Singmann, Henrik, Ben Bolker, Jake Westfall, and Frederik Aust
2020  Afex: Analysis of Factorial Experiments. R package.Google Scholar
Suttle, Laura, and Adele Goldberg
2011 “The Partial Productivity of Constructions as Induction.” Linguistics 49 (6): 1237–1269. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wagner, Suzanne
2012 “Age Grading in Sociolinguistic Theory.” Language and Linguistics Compass 6 (6): 371–382. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wonnacott, Elizabeth
2013 “Statistical Mechanisms in Language Acquisition.” In The Language Phenomenon, ed. by Paul Binder, and Katherine Smith, 65–92. Berlin: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Yoon, Soyeon
2016 “Gradable Nature of Semantic Compatibility and Coercion: A Usage-Based Approach.” Linguistic Research 33 (1): 95–134. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2019 “Coercion and Language Change: a Usage-Based Approach.” Linguistic Research 36 (1): 111–139. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zeschel, Arne
2012 Incipient Productivity: a Construction-Based Approach to Linguistic Creativity. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar