Cover not available
Article published In:
Reflections on Constructions across Grammars
Edited by Martin Hilpert and Jan-Ola Östman
[Constructions and Frames 6:2] 2014
► pp. 266–304

Constructional tolerance

Cross-linguistic differences in the acceptability of non-conventional uses of constructions

 | Universität Basel
 | Université de Neuchâtel
The present paper investigates the question whether different languages can be categorized into ‘constructionally tolerant’ languages, which grant speakers considerable freedom to combine syntactic constructions with lexical items in non-conventional ways, and ‘valency-driven’ languages, which impose stronger restrictions on the way in which constructions and lexical items can be combined. The idea of such a typological distinction is sketched for instance by Rostila (2014). In order to explore possible effects of constructional tolerance, a grammaticality judgment task is administered to speakers of English and French, which are two languages that differ with regard to this phenomenon: English verbs can be used across different argument structure constructions with relative ease, French verbs are more constrained. Both populations of speakers are exposed to stimuli sentences of varying creativity in a second language, namely German. The paper advances the constructional tolerance hypothesis, which states that speakers of a constructionally tolerant language should judge non-conventional examples in an L2 with more lenience than speakers of a valency-driven language. The experimental results are in line with this hypothesis, but they also suggest that grammaticality judgments are influenced by the availability of a productive L1 construction that shows functional overlap.
Keywords: creativity, argument structure constructions, German, French, second language, English, typology
Published online: 30 March 2015
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cf.6.2.06per
References (37)
Aijmer, K., & Hasselgård, H. (Eds.) (2004). Translation and corpora. Gothenburg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis.Google Scholar
Alderson, J.C. (2006). Diagnosing foreign language proficiency: The interface between learning and assessment. London/New York: Continuum.Google Scholar
Baayen, R.H. (2008). Analyzing linguistic data: A practical introduction to statistics using R. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baayen, R.H., Davidson, D., & Bates, D. (2008). Mixed-effects modeling with crossed random effects for subjects and items. Journal of Memory and Language, 591, 390–412. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bäckström, L., Lyngfelt, B., & Sköldberg, E. (2014). Towards interlingual constructicography: On correspondence between constructicon resources for English and Swedish. Constructions and Frames, 6(1), 9–33. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bates, D., Maechler, M., & Ben Bolker (2011). lme4: Linear mixed-effects models using S4 classes. <[URL]>
Boas, H.C. (Ed.). (2010). Contrastive studies in Construction Grammar. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. (2011). Constructing parallel lexicon fragments based on English FrameNet entries: Semantic and syntactic issues. In H. Hedeland, T. Schmidt, & K. Woerner (Eds.), Multilingual Resources and Multilingual Applications. Proceedings of the German Society for Computational Linguistics and Language Technology (GSCL) 2011, Hamburg (pp. 9–18). University of Hamburg: Center for Language Corpora.Google Scholar
Bresnan, J., Cueni, A., Nikitina, T., & Baayen, R.H. (2007). Predicting the dative alternation. In G. Boume, I. Kraemer & J. Zwarts (Eds.), Cognitive foundations of interpretation (pp. 69–94). Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Science.Google Scholar
Citron, F., & Goldberg, A.E. (in press). Metaphorical expressions are more emotionally engaging than literal paraphrases. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.
Croft, W. (2001). Radical Construction Grammar. Syntactic theory in typological perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
De Swart, H.E. (1998). Aspect shift and coercion. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 161, 347–385. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fillmore, C.J., Kay, P., & O’Connor, M.C. (1988). Regularity and idiomaticity in grammatical constructions: The case of Let alone. Language, 64(3), 501–538. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Frense, J., & Bennett, P. (1996). Verb alternations and semantic classes in English and German. Language Sciences, 18(1–2), 305–317. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fried, M., & Östman, J-O (Eds.). (2004). Construction Grammar in a cross-language perspective. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gass, S.M., & Selinker, L. (1992). Language transfer in language learning. Amsterdam: John Benjamins DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goldberg, A.E. (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. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hilpert, M. (2009). The German mit-predicative construction. Constructions and Frames, 1(1), 29–55. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. (2014). Construction Grammar and its application to English. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Höder, S. (2012). Multilingual constructions: A diasystematic approach to common structures. In K. Braunmüller & C. Gabriel (Eds.), Multilingual individuals and multilingual societies (pp. 241–257). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Israel, M. (1996). The Way constructions grow. In A. Goldberg (Ed.), Conceptual structure, discourse and language (pp. 217–230). Stanford: CSLI.Google Scholar
Jarvis, S., & Pavlenko, A. (2008). Crosslinguistic influence in language and cognition. New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lakoff, G. (1991). Metaphor and war: The metaphor system used to justify war in the Gulf. Journal of Urban and Cultural Studies, 2(1), 59–72.Google Scholar
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Langacker, R.W. (1987). Foundations of Cognitive Grammar. Theoretical prerequisites. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Lauwers, P., & Willems, D. (2011). Coercion: Definition and challenges, current approaches, and new trends. Linguistics, 49(6), 1219–1235. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
L’Hôte, E., & Lemmens, M. (2009). Reframing treason: Metaphors of change and progress in new Labour discourse. CogniTextes, 31. URL : [URL]Google Scholar
Michaelis, L.A. (2005). Entity and event coercion in a symbolic theory of syntax. In J.-O. Östman & M. Fried (Eds.), Construction grammars: Cognitive grounding and theoretical extensions (pp. 45–87). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Perek, F., & Goldberg, A.E. (submitted). Generalizing beyond the input: the functions of the constructions matter.
Proost, K. (2009). Warum man nach Schnäppchen jagen, aber nicht nach Klamotten bummeln kann: Die nach-Konstruktion zwischen Lexikon und Grammatik. Opal 41/2009, 10–41. URL: [URL]Google Scholar
R Development Core Team (2012). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Vienna: R Foundation for Statistical Computing. URL: [URL].Google Scholar
Rostila, J. (2014). Inventarisierung als Grammatikalisierung: produktive Präpositionalobjekte und andere grammatikalisierte Linking-Muster. In A. Lasch & A. Ziem (Eds.), Grammatik als Netzwerk von Konstruktionen? Sprachliches Wissen im Fokus der Konstruktionsgrammatik (pp. 127–153). Berlin/ New York: Walter de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schütze, C. (1996). The empirical base of linguistics: Grammaticality judgments and linguistic methodology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Wonnacott, E. (2011). Balancing generalization and lexical conservatism: An artificial language study with child learners. Journal of Memory and Language, 651, 1–14. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wonnacott, E., Newport, E.L., & Tanenhaus, M.K. (2008). Acquiring and processing verb argument structure: Distributional learning in a miniature language. Cognitive Psychology, 561, 165–209. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ziem, A., & Lasch, A. (2013). Konstruktionsgrammatik. Konzepte und Grundlagen gebrauchsbasierter Ansätze. Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (9)

Cited by nine other publications

Busso, Lucia, Florent Perek & Alessandro Lenci
2021. Constructional associations trump lexical associations in processing valency coercion. Cognitive Linguistics 32:2 ► pp. 287 ff. DOI logo
Shin, Gyu-Ho & Hyunwoo Kim
2021. Roles of verb and construction cues. Review of Cognitive Linguistics 19:2 ► pp. 332 ff. DOI logo
Wiesinger, Evelyn
2021. The Spanish verb-particle construction [V para atrás]. In Constructions in Contact 2 [Constructional Approaches to Language, 30], ► pp. 139 ff. DOI logo
Busso, Lucia
2020. Constructional creativity in a Romance language. Belgian Journal of Linguistics 34 ► pp. 17 ff. DOI logo
Busso, Lucia, Alessandro Lenci & Florent Perek
2020. Valency coercion in Italian. Constructions and Frames 12:2 ► pp. 171 ff. DOI logo
Toivonen, Ida
2020. Verbal Particles, Results, and Directed Motion. In The Cambridge Handbook of Germanic Linguistics, ► pp. 516 ff. DOI logo
Proost, Kristel
2017. The role of verbs and verb classes in identifying German search-constructions. In Constructing families of constructions [Human Cognitive Processing, 58], ► pp. 17 ff. DOI logo
Lohmann, Arne
2016. Review of Butler & Gonzálvez-García (2014): Exploring Functional-Cognitive Space. Functions of Language 23:2 ► pp. 271 ff. DOI logo
Canakis, Costas
2015. Non-quantifyinglíγoconstructions in Modern Greek. Constructions and Frames 7:1 ► pp. 47 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 1 january 2025. 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.