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Grammaticalization meets Construction Grammar
Edited by Evie Coussé, Peter Andersson and Joel Olofsson
[Constructional Approaches to Language 21] 2018
► pp. 169–202

Type frequency, productivity and schematicity in the evolution of the Latin secundum NP construction

This paper adopts a constructional approach as a heuristic to explore the changes undergone by Latin secundum NP ‘according to NP’, considering both its frequency and its network organisation. My data demonstrate a significant syntactic and host-class expansion of secundum NP between the years BC 106 – AD 17 and a support to Barðdal’s (2008) model of productivity. The vocabulary growth curve for the construction also suggests that the productivity of secundum NP remains high in all the periods considered. Finally, the discussion highlights the role played by the social context in stimulating some of the changes observed, which is crucial in order to interpret the quantitative data.

Keywords: constructional network, productivity, schematization, expansion, social context, frequency
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Grammatical constructionalisation of secundum NP: A reconstruction
  • 3.The secundum NP construction in the Latin Library corpus
  • 4. Frequency effects: Productivity and schematicity
  • 5. Hapax legomena counts and productivity
  • 6.Type frequency counts: Syntactic and host-class expansion of secundum NP
    • 6.1Syntactic expansion
    • 6.2Host-class expansion
  • 7.Accounting for the increase in productivity with Barðdal (2008)
  • 8.Analogy and cultural factors at play
  • 9.Conclusion
  • Abbreviations used in the interlinear glosses
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 23 May 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cal.21.c7
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Latin corpus

The Latin Library corpus
Available at [URL] Accessed 28 February 2014.
Cited by

Cited by 2 other publications

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2021. Exploring relative degrees of auxiliarization empirically in German modal constructions with wissen and verstehen. In Modality and Diachronic Construction Grammar [Constructional Approaches to Language, 32], ► pp. 53 ff. DOI logo
Hartmann, Stefan
2019. Compound worlds and metaphor landscapes: Affixoids, allostructions, and higher-order generalizations. Word Structure 12:3 ► pp. 297 ff. DOI logo

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