Chapter published in:
Give Constructions across Languages
Edited by Myriam Bouveret
[Constructional Approaches to Language 29] 2021
► pp. 75–96

Chapter 3
The role of verb polysemy in constructional profiling

A cross-linguistic study of give in the dative alternation

| Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań
This study employs corpus-based quantitative methods to investigate the interaction between the semasiological structure (polysemy) of a single verb and the onomasiological (near-synonymous) structuring of the dative alternation in English and Polish. More precisely, the verbal category examined here is give in English and its equivalent in Polish. The primary objective is to examine the relationship between morpho-syntactic variation and lexical semantic variation. More specifically, the study addresses the importance of accounting for variation in lexical semantic structure while modeling morpho-syntactic structure. It is argued here that the polysemous nature of lexemes licensed by constructions has an impact on the choice of alternate constructions. In other words, some meanings of a given lexeme are likely to be more distinctly associated with one construction than the other. The empirical results obtained in the study for both English and Polish provide supporting evidence for this claim.
Keywords: dative alternation, give-verbs, semasiology, onomasiology, multivariate statistics, cross-linguistic, English, Polish
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1Dative alternation: Prior findings
    • 2.2Polysemy of give
  • 3.Study goals and hypotheses
  • 4. Method, data, and analysis
  • 5. Results and discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 10 March 2021
https://doi.org/10.1075/cal.29.03kra
References
Arnold, J., Wasow, T., Losongco, A., & Ginstrom, R.
(2000) Heaviness vs. newness: The effects of complexity and information structure on constituent ordering. Language, 76, 28–55. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Behaghel, O.
(1910) Beziehungen zwischen Umfang und Reihenfolge von Satzgliedern. Indogermanische Forschungen, 25, 110–142.Google Scholar
Boas, H.
(2003) A constructional approach to resultatives. Stanford: CSLI.Google Scholar
Bresnan, J.
(2007) Is syntactic knowledge probabilistic? Experiments with the English dative alternation. In S. Featherston, & W. Sternefeld (Eds.), Roots: Linguistics in search of its evidential base (pp. 76–96). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Bresnan, J., Cueni, A., Nikitina, T., & Baayen, R. H.
(2007) Predicting the dative alternation. In G. Bouma, I. Kraemer, & Zwarts, J. (Eds.), Cognitive foundations of interpretation (pp. 69–94). Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences.Google Scholar
Bresnan, J., & Ford, M.
(2010) Predicting syntax: Processing dative constructions in American and Australian varieties of English. Language, 86, 186–213.Google Scholar
Bresnan, J., & Hay, J.
(2008) Gradient grammar: An effect of animacy on the syntax of give in New Zealand and American English. Lingua, 118, 245–259. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bresnan, J., & Nikitina, T.
(2009) The gradience of the dative alternation. In L. Uyechi, & L. H. Wee (Eds.), Reality exploration and discovery: Pattern interaction in language and life (pp. 161–184). Stanford: CSLI.Google Scholar
Collins, P.
(1995) The indirect object construction in English: An informational approach. Linguistics, 33, 35–49. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Davies, M.
(2008) The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA): 560 million words, 1990-present. Available online at https://​corpus​.byu​.edu​/coca/.
(2018) The 14 Billion Word iWeb Corpus. Available online at https://​corpus​.byu​.edu​/iWeb/.
Dąbrowska, E.
(1994) Some English equivalents of Polish dative constructions. Papers and Studies in Contrastive Linguistics, 29, 105–121.Google Scholar
(1997) Cognitive Semantics and the Polish dative. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Divjak, D.
(2006) Ways of intending: A corpus-based Cognitive Linguistic approach to near-synonyms in Russian. In S. Th. Gries, & A. Stefanowitsch (Eds.), Corpora in Cognitive Linguistics: Corpus-based approaches to syntax and lexis (pp. 19–56). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Erteschik-Shir, N.
(1979) Discourse constraints on dative movement. In T. Givon (Ed.), Discourse and syntax (pp. 441–467). New York: Academic Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Garretson, G., O’Connor, M. C., Skarabela, B., & Hogan, M.
(2004) Coding practices used in the project Optimal Typology of Determiner Phrases. http://​npcorpus​.bu​.edu​/ documentation​/index​.html.
Geeraerts, D., Grondelaers, S., & Bakema, P.
(1994) The structure of lexical variation: Meaning, naming, and context. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Geeraerts, D., Grondelaers, S., & Speelman, D.
(1999) Convergentie en divergentie in de Nederlandse woordenschat. Amsterdam: Meertens Instituut.Google Scholar
Glynn, D.
(2004) Constructions at the crossroads. The place of construction grammar between field and frame. Annual Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 2, 197–233. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(2009) Polysemy, syntax, and variation: A usage-based method for Cognitive Semantics. In V. Evans, & S. Pourcel (Eds.), New directions in Cognitive Linguistics (pp. 77–106). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(2010a) Synonymy, lexical fields, and grammatical constructions: A study in usage- based Cognitive Semantics. In H.-J. Schmid, & S. Handl (Eds.), Cognitive foundations of linguistic usage-patterns: Empirical studies (pp. 89–118). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(2010b) Testing the hypothesis: Objectivity and verification in usage-based Cognitive Semantics. In D. Glynn, & K. Fischer (Eds.), Quantitative Cognitive Semantics: Corpus-driven approaches (pp. 239–270). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(2014) The many uses of run: Corpus methods and Socio-Cognitive Semantics. In D. Glynn, & J. Robinson (Eds.), Corpus methods for semantics. Quantitative studies in polysemy and synonymy (pp. 117–144). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Glynn, D., & Fischer, K.
(Eds) (2010) Quantitative Cognitive Semantics: Corpus-driven approaches. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Glynn, D., & Robinson, J.
(Eds.) (2014) Corpus methods for semantics. Quantitative studies in polysemy and synonymy. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Goldberg, A.
2002 Surface generalizations: An alternative to alternations. Cognitive Linguistics, 13, 327–356. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(2006) Constructions at work: The nature of generalization in language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Green, G.
(1974) Semantics and syntactic regularity. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Gries St. T
(1999) Particle movement: A cognitive and functional approach. Cognitive Linguistics, 10, 105–145.Google Scholar
Gries, St. Th.
(2003a) Multifactorial analysis in Corpus Linguistics: A study of particle placement. London: Continuum Press.Google Scholar
(2003b) Towards a corpus-based identification of prototypical instances of constructions. Annual Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 1, 1–27. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(2006) Corpus-based methods and Cognitive Semantics: The many senses of to run . In St. Th. Gries, & A. Stefanowitsch (eds.), Corpora in Cognitive Linguistics: Corpus-based approaches to syntax and lexis (pp. 57–99). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(2010) Behavioral profiles. A fine-grained and quantitative approach in corpus-based lexical semantics. The Mental Lexicon, 5(3), 323–346. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Gries, St. Th., & Stefanowitsch, A.
(2004) Extending collostructional analysis: A corpus-based perspective on alternations. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 9, 97–129. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(Eds.) (2006) Corpora in Cognitive Linguistics: Corpus-based approaches to syntax and lexis. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Heylen, K.
(2005) A quantitative corpus study of German word order variation. In St. Kepser, & M. Reis (Eds.), Linguistic evidence: Empirical, theoretical and computational perspectives (pp. 241–264). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hosmer, D. W., & Lemeshow, S.
(2000) Applied logistic regression. New York: John Wiley & Sons. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kilgarriff, A., Baisa, V., Buta, J., Jakubek, M., Kov, V., Michelfeit, J., Rychly, P., & Suchomel, V.
(2014) The Sketch Engine: Ten years on. Lexicography, 1, 7–36. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kizach, J., & Mathiasen, T.
(2013) The dative alternation in Danish and Polish – A learner’s perspective. Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics, 49(4), 487–507.Google Scholar
Krawczak, K., Fabiszak, M., & Hilpert, M.
(2016) A corpus-based, cross-linguistic approach to mental predicates and their complementation: Performativity and descriptivity vis-à-vis boundedness and picturability. Folia Linguistica, 50(2), 475–506. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Michaelis, L. A.
(2003) Headless Constructions and Coercion by Construction. In E. J. Francis, & L. A. Michaelis (Eds.), Mismatch: Form-function incongruity and the architecture of grammar (pp. 259–310). Stanford: CSLI.Google Scholar
Michaelis, L. A., & Ruppenhofer, J.
(2001) Beyond alternations: A constructional model of the German applicative pattern. Stanford: CSLI.Google Scholar
Michaelis, L. A., & Hartwell, S. F.
(2007) Lexical subjects and the conflation strategy. In N. Hedberg, & R. Zacharski (Eds.), Topics in the grammar-pragmatics interface: Papers in honor of Jeanette K. Gundel (pp. 19–48). Amsterdam: Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Newman, J.
(1996) Give: A cognitive linguistic study. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Pinker, S.
(1989) Learnability and cognition. The acquisition of argument structure. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Prince, E.
(1981) Toward a new taxonomy for given-new information. In P. Cole (Ed), Radical pragmatics (pp. 223–255). New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
R Core Team
(2014) R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. URL http://​www​.R​-project​.org/Google Scholar
Reddy, M. J.
(1979) The conduit metaphor: A case of frame conflict in our language about language. In A. Ortony (Ed.), Metaphor and thought (pp. 284–310). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rudzka-Ostyn, B.
(1992) Case relations in Cognitive Grammar. Some reflexive uses of the Polish dative. Leuvense Bijdragen, 81, 327–373.Google Scholar
(1996) The Polish dative. In W. Van Belle, & W. Van Langendonck, (Eds.), The dative: Descriptive studies (pp. 341–394). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Siewierska, A.
(1993) Syntactic weight vs. information structure and word order variation in Polish. Journal of Linguistics, 29, 233–265. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Speelman, D., & Geeraerts, D.
(2009) Causes for causatives. The case of Dutch doen and laten . In T. Sanders, & E. Sweetser (Eds.), Causal categories in discourse and cognition (pp. 173–204). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Theijssen, D. L.
(2012) Making choices. Modeling the English dative alternation. PhD dissertation, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen.
Thompson, S.
(1987) Information flow and ‘dative shift’ in English. Unpublished manuscript.
Wasow, T.
(2002) Postverbal behavior. Stanford: CSLI.Google Scholar
Wasow, T., & J. Arnold
(2003) Post-verbal constituent ordering in English. In G. Rohdenburg, & B. Mondorf (Eds), Determinants of grammatical variation in English (pp. 119–154). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Wierzbicka, A.
(1986) The meaning of a case: A study of the Polish dative. In R. Brecht, & J. Levine (Eds.), Case in Slavic (pp. 386–426). Columbus: Slavica.Google Scholar
Williams, R.S.
(1994) A statistical analysis of English double object alternation. Issues in Applied Linguistics, 5, 37–58.Google Scholar
Wolk, C., Bresnan, J., Rosenbach, A., & Szmrecsányi, B.
(2013) Dative and genitive variability in Late Modern English: Exploring cross-constructional variation and change. Diachronica, 30, 382–419. CrossrefGoogle Scholar