Argument Structure in Usage-Based Construction Grammar
Experimental and corpus-based perspectives
Author
The argument structure of verbs, defined as the part of grammar that deals with how participants in verbal events are expressed in clauses, is a classical topic in linguistics that has received considerable attention in the literature. This book investigates argument structure in English from a usage-based perspective, taking the view that the cognitive representation of grammar is shaped by language use, and that crucial aspects of grammatical organization are tied to the frequency with which words and syntactic constructions are used. On the basis of several case studies combining quantitative corpus studies and psycholinguistic experiments, it is shown how a usage-based approach sheds new light on a number of issues in argument realization and offers frequency-based explanations for its organizing principles at three levels of generality: verbs, constructions, and argument structure alternations.
[Constructional Approaches to Language, 17] 2015. x, 246 pp.
Publishing status: Available
© John Benjamins
Table of Contents
-
Acknowledgments | pp. ix–x
-
Chapter 1. Introduction | pp. 1–12
-
Part I. Verbs
-
Chapter 2. Usage-based perspectives on verb valency | pp. 15–44
-
Chapter 3. Empirical evidence for usage-based valency | pp. 45–76
-
Part II. Constructions
-
Chapter 4. The usage basis of constructional meaning | pp. 79–104
-
Chapter 5. The importance of local generalizations | pp. 105–142
-
Part III. Alternations
-
Chapter 6. Alternations as units of linguistic knowledge | pp. 145–174
-
Chapter 7. The usage basis of alternation based productivity | pp. 175–210
-
Conclusion
-
Chapter 8. Summary and evaluation | pp. 211–218
-
References
-
Appendix | pp. 235–238
-
Constructions index | pp. 239–240
-
Name index | pp. 241–244
-
Subject index | pp. 245–246
“In this data-rich, theoretically sophisticated volume, Perek offers many new and intriguing insights into our usage-based knowledge of argument structure. Inspiring!”
Adele Goldberg, Princeton University
“This book offers a lucid and theoretically inspiring empirical study of argument structure in English from a usage-based perspective; an absolute must-read for anyone, regardless of theoretical inclination, working on verb valency, argument structure, and alternations.”
Maarten Lemmens, Université Lille 3
“Within the research program of Construction Grammar, the topic of argument structure has a central place. In this book, Florent Perek takes up existing constructional research and shows how corpus-linguistic studies and experimental methods can be combined to arrive at a truly usage-based understanding of how verbs and their arguments form part of speakers' linguistic knowledge. For anybody who is interested in current constructional theory and methodology, this is required reading.”
Martin Hilpert, University of Neuchâtel
Cited by
Cited by 95 other publications
Boas, Hans C.
2020. Constructions in English Grammar. In The Handbook of English Linguistics, ► pp. 277 ff. 
Busso, Lucia, Alessandro Lenci & Florent Perek
Busso, Lucia, Florent Perek & Alessandro Lenci
2021. Constructional associations trump lexical associations in processing valency coercion. Cognitive Linguistics 32:2 ► pp. 287 ff.
Cappelle, Bert
2022. Lexical Integrity: A mere construct or more a construction?. Yearbook of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association 10:1 ► pp. 183 ff.
Cappelle, Bert & Ilse Depraetere
2016. Short-circuited interpretations of modal verb constructions. Constructions and Frames 8:1 ► pp. 7 ff.
Cichosz, Anna
Condamines, Anne
2018. Is “to fish in a river” equivalent to “to fish a river”?. Cognitive Linguistic Studies 5:2 ► pp. 208 ff.
Dattner, Elitzur
2019. The Hebrew dative: Usage patterns as discourse profile constructions. Linguistics 57:5 ► pp. 1073 ff.
Diessel, Holger
2019. The Grammar Network,
Diessel, Holger
2023. The Constructicon,
Gedik, Tan Arda
2021. An analysis of lexicogrammatical development in English textbooks in Turkey: A usage-based construction grammar approach. ExELL 9:1 ► pp. 26 ff.
GEDİK, Tan Arda
2022. A Usage-Based Constructionist Approach to Evidentiality in Turkish: The Unevidentiality Construction. Cankaya University Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences 16:1 ► pp. 61 ff.
Gonzálvez-García, Francisco & Christopher S. Butler
2018. Situating Valency Theory in functional-cognitive space. Review of Cognitive Linguistics 16:2 ► pp. 348 ff.
Granvik, Anton
2018. The development of the conditional caso construction in Spanish. In Grammaticalization meets Construction Grammar [Constructional Approaches to Language, 21], ► pp. 205 ff.
Groom, Nicholas
2019. Construction Grammar and the corpus-based analysis of discourses. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 24:3 ► pp. 291 ff.
Hartmann, Stefan
2019. Compound worlds and metaphor landscapes: Affixoids, allostructions, and higher-order generalizations. Word Structure 12:3 ► pp. 297 ff.
Haugen, Tor Arne
2021. When complementation gets specific: A study of collocational preferences in verb–object combinations in Norwegian. Nordic Journal of Linguistics 44:1 ► pp. 71 ff.
Hennecke, Inga & Evelyn Wiesinger
2023. Chapter 1. Construction Grammar meets Hispanic linguistics. In Constructions in Spanish [Constructional Approaches to Language, 34], ► pp. 2 ff.
Herbst, Thomas
2018. Is Language a Collostructicon? A Proposal for Looking at Collocations, Valency, Argument Structure and Other Constructions. In Lexical Collocation Analysis [Quantitative Methods in the Humanities and Social Sciences, ], ► pp. 1 ff.
Herbst, Thomas & Susen Faulhaber
2015. Do Constructions make a Difference? Introduction to a Special Issue of ZAA on Aspects of Construction Grammar. Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 63:3 ► pp. 249 ff.
Herbst, Thomas & Judith Huber
2022. Diachronic Construction Grammar – Introductory Remarks to This Special Issue. Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 70:3 ► pp. 213 ff.
Hilpert, Martin
2018. Three open questions in Diachronic Construction Grammar. In Grammaticalization meets Construction Grammar [Constructional Approaches to Language, 21], ► pp. 21 ff.
Hilpert, Martin
2019. Higher-order schemas in morphology: What they are, how they work, and where to find them. Word Structure 12:3 ► pp. 261 ff.
Hilpert, Martin, Bert Cappelle & Ilse Depraetere
2021. Modality in Diachronic Construction Grammar. In Modality and Diachronic Construction Grammar [Constructional Approaches to Language, 32], ► pp. 1 ff.
HOFF, MARK
2023. The Role of Frequency in Morphosyntactic Variation. In The Handbook of Usage‐Based Linguistics, ► pp. 197 ff.
Hoffmann, Thomas
2020. What would it take for us to abandon Construction Grammar?. Belgian Journal of Linguistics 34 ► pp. 148 ff.
Hoffmann, Thomas
2020. Marginal Argument Structure constructions: the [V the Ntaboo-word
out of]-construction in Post-colonial Englishes. Linguistics Vanguard 6:1
Hoffmann, Thomas
2021. The Cognitive Foundation of Post-colonial Englishes,
Höder, Steffen
2019. Phonological schematicity in multilingual constructions: A diasystematic perspective on lexical form. Word Structure 12:3 ► pp. 334 ff.
Höhmann, Doris
2022. Nomen-Verb-Verbindungen im korpusgestützten inner- und zwischensprachlichen Vergleich. In Syntax in Fachkommunikation [Forum für Fachsprachen-Forschung, 163], ► pp. 307 ff.
Imo, Wolfgang
2015. Interactional Construction Grammar. Linguistics Vanguard 1:1 ► pp. 69 ff.
Inglese, Guglielmo
2022. Towards a typology of middle voice systems. Linguistic Typology 26:3 ► pp. 489 ff.
Jiang, Canzhong & Xu Wen
2022. Semantics of the Chinese passive construction with retained object. Cognitive Linguistic Studies 9:1 ► pp. 64 ff.
Jiang, Canzhong & Xu Wen
2022. Constructional network at work in second language acquisition. Asian-Pacific Journal of Second and Foreign Language Education 7:1
Kim, Hyunwoo, Tae Eun Kim & Jeeyoung Park
2022. The cognitive construction-grammar approach to teaching the Chinese Ba construction in a foreign language classroom. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching 0:0
Kolkmann, Julia
2019. Possessive interpretation at the semantics-pragmatics interface. Constructions and Frames 11:2 ► pp. 244 ff.
Küchenhoff, Helmut & Hans-Jörg Schmid
2015. Reply to “More (old and new) misunderstandings of collostructional analysis: On Schmid & Küchenhoff” by Stefan Th. Gries. Cognitive Linguistics 26:3 ► pp. 537 ff.
Laporte, Samantha, Tove Larsson & Larissa Goulart
2021. Testing the Principle of No Synonymy across levels of abstraction. Constructions and Frames 13:2 ► pp. 230 ff.
Liu, Meili
2022. Review of Sommerer & Smirnova (2020): Nodes and networks in diachronic Construction Grammar. Review of Cognitive Linguistics 20:1 ► pp. 290 ff.
Maekelberghe, Charlotte
2022. From noun to verb. In English Noun Phrases from a Functional-Cognitive Perspective [Studies in Language Companion Series, 221], ► pp. 136 ff.
Matusevych, Yevgen, Afra Alishahi & Ad Backus
2018. Quantifying cross-linguistic influence with a computational model. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 8:5 ► pp. 561 ff.
Middeke, Kirsten
2022. Sōþes ne wanda. The Avoidance is Separation Metaphor in West-Germanic Argument Structure. Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 70:3 ► pp. 223 ff.
Neels, Jakob
2020. Lifespan change in grammaticalisation as frequency-sensitive automation: William Faulkner and thelet aloneconstruction. Cognitive Linguistics 31:2 ► pp. 339 ff.
Percillier, Michael
2020. Allostructions, homostructions or a constructional family?. In Nodes and Networks in Diachronic Construction Grammar [Constructional Approaches to Language, 27], ► pp. 214 ff.
PEREK, FLORENT
2023. Construction Grammar and Usage‐Based Theory. In The Handbook of Usage‐Based Linguistics, ► pp. 215 ff.
Perek, Florent & Amanda L. Patten
2019. Towards an English Constructicon using patterns and frames. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 24:3 ► pp. 354 ff.
Perini, Mário A.
2019. Notes on Methodology. In Thematic Relations, ► pp. 47 ff.
Perini, Mário A.
2022. Anmerkungen zur Methodik. In Thematische Rollen und Relationen, ► pp. 51 ff.
Pijpops, Dirk
PIJPOPS, DIRK, DIRK SPEELMAN, STEFAN GRONDELAERS & FREEK VAN DE VELDE
2018. Comparing explanations for the Complexity Principle: evidence from argument realization. Language and Cognition 10:3 ► pp. 514 ff.
Pijpops, Dirk, Dirk Speelman, Freek Van de Velde & Stefan Grondelaers
2021. Incorporating the multi-level nature of the constructicon into hypothesis testing. Cognitive Linguistics 32:3 ► pp. 487 ff.
Pijpops, Dirk, Dirk Speelman & Antal van den Bosch
2022. Generating hypotheses for alternations at low and intermediate levels of schematicity. The use of Memory-based Learning. Linguistics Vanguard 8:1 ► pp. 305 ff.
Proost, Kristel
2017. Chapter 1. The role of verbs and verb classes in identifying German search-constructions. In Constructing Families of Constructions [Human Cognitive Processing, 58], ► pp. 17 ff.
Romain, Laurence
2017. Measuring the alternation strength of causative verbs. Belgian Journal of Linguistics 31 ► pp. 219 ff.
Rostila, Jouni
2018. Goldberg’s Rely On construction. In Changing Structures [Studies in Language Companion Series, 195], ► pp. 55 ff.
Rosário, Ivo da Costa do
2020. Variação construcional no domínio da adição. In Sociolinguística e funcionalismo: vertentes e interfaces, ► pp. 103 ff.
Serrano, María José
2018. Managing subjectivity: Omission and expression of first-person singular object a mí in Spanish media discourse. Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique 63:3 ► pp. 423 ff.
Silvennoinen, Olli O.
Sláma, Jakub
2021. The study of valency is biased toward more frequent verbs: A corpus study of the valency of less frequent verbs in Czech. Journal of Linguistics/Jazykovedný casopis 72:2 ► pp. 434 ff.
Smirnova, Elena
2021. Horizontal links within and between paradigms. In Modality and Diachronic Construction Grammar [Constructional Approaches to Language, 32], ► pp. 185 ff.
Smirnova, Elena & Lotte Sommerer
2020. Introduction. In Nodes and Networks in Diachronic Construction Grammar [Constructional Approaches to Language, 27], ► pp. 2 ff.
Sommerer, Lotte
2022. Day to day and night after night. In English Noun Phrases from a Functional-Cognitive Perspective [Studies in Language Companion Series, 221], ► pp. 364 ff.
Sommerer, Lotte
2023. If that’s what she said, then that’s what she said: a usage-based, constructional analysis of pleonastic conditionals in English. Corpus Pragmatics
Sommerer, Lotte & Andreas Baumann
2021. Of absent mothers, strong sisters and peculiar daughters: The constructional network of English NPN constructions. Cognitive Linguistics 32:1 ► pp. 97 ff.
SUNG, MIN-CHANG
2023. Functional idiosyncrasies of suggesting constructions in British English. English Language and Linguistics 27:2 ► pp. 321 ff.
Szczesniak, Konrad
Szcześniak, Konrad
2019. Alternations should resurface next to surface generalizations: The reflexive-prepositional alternation in Portuguese. Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 12:1 ► pp. 205 ff.
Tian, Zhen
2019. Chapter 2. On the partial productivity of constructions. In Cognitive Linguistics and the Study of Chinese [Human Cognitive Processing, 67], ► pp. 73 ff.
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs
2020. The intertwining of differentiation and attraction as exemplified by the history of recipient transfer and benefactive alternations. Cognitive Linguistics 31:4 ► pp. 549 ff.
Ungerer, Tobias
2021. Using structural priming to test links between constructions: English caused-motion and resultative sentences inhibit each other. Cognitive Linguistics 32:3 ► pp. 389 ff.
Ungerer, Tobias
2022. Extending structural priming to test constructional relations: Some comments and suggestions. Yearbook of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association 10:1 ► pp. 159 ff.
Ungerer, Tobias & Stefan Hartmann
2023. Constructionist Approaches,
Van de Velde, Freek & Dirk Pijpops
2021. Investigating Lexical Effects in Syntax with Regularized Regression (Lasso). Journal of Research Design and Statistics in Linguistics and Communication Science 6:2
van Lier, Eva & Maria Messerschmidt
2022. Lexical restrictions on grammatical relations in voice and valency constructions. STUF - Language Typology and Universals 75:1 ► pp. 1 ff.
van Trijp, Remi, Katrien Beuls, Paul Van Eecke & Andrew Kehler
2022. The FCG Editor: An innovative environment for engineering computational construction grammars. PLOS ONE 17:6 ► pp. e0269708 ff.
Van Wettere, Niek
Wiliński, Jarosław
2021. Nouns in the Be of N-Construction: A Corpus-Based Investigation. Studies in Logic, Grammar and Rhetoric 66:3 ► pp. 747 ff.
Zehentner, Eva
2020. Cognitive reality of constructions as a theoretical and methodological challenge in historical
linguistics. Belgian Journal of Linguistics 34 ► pp. 371 ff.
Zehentner, Eva
2021. Alternations emerge and disappear: the network of dispossession constructions in the history of English. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 17:3 ► pp. 525 ff.
Zehentner, Eva
2022. Competing constructions construct complementary niches. Language Dynamics and Change 13:1 ► pp. 34 ff.
Zehentner, Eva, Melanie Röthlisberger & Timothy Colleman
2023. Ditransitive constructions in Germanic languages. In Ditransitives in Germanic Languages [Studies in Germanic Linguistics, 7], ► pp. 1 ff.
Zehentner, Eva & Elizabeth Closs Traugott
2020. Constructional networks and the development of benefactive ditransitives in English. In Nodes and Networks in Diachronic Construction Grammar [Constructional Approaches to Language, 27], ► pp. 168 ff.
Zhan, Fangqiong & Elizabeth Closs Traugott
2020. A study of the development of the Chinese correlative comparative construction from the perspective of
constructionalization. Diachronica 37:1 ► pp. 83 ff.
Zhang, Dong & Jiajin Xu
[no author supplied]
2016. Angebote zur Rezension. Zeitschrift für Angewandte Linguistik 2016:65 ► pp. 255 ff.
[no author supplied]
2016. Angebote zur Rezension. Zeitschrift für Angewandte Linguistik 2016:64 ► pp. 167 ff.
[no author supplied]
2016. References. Language Learning 66:S1 ► pp. 313 ff.
[no author supplied]
[no author supplied]
[no author supplied]
[no author supplied]
[no author supplied]
[no author supplied]
[no author supplied]
[no author supplied]
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 14 september 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.
Subjects
Main BIC Subject
CFK: Grammar, syntax
Main BISAC Subject
LAN009000: LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General