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Constructing Families of Constructions: Analytical perspectives and theoretical challenges
Edited by Francisco José Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez, Alba Luzondo Oyón and Paula Pérez Sobrino
[Human Cognitive Processing 58] 2017
► pp. 277–299

Chapter 9
The English conative as a family of constructions

Towards a usage-based approach

| University of Córdoba, Spain

This chapter aims to provide a constructionist usage-based analysis of English conative expressions, arguing that a family of related constructions is required to account for the semantico-pragmatic properties of the at-frame in English. Drawing mainly on Broccias’s (2001) and Perek and Lemmens’s (2010) analyses, I challenge Goldberg’s (1995) monosemic analysis of the conative construction, where the ‘directed action’ meaning remains invariable, highlighting the essential role played by the verb’s inherent lexical semantics in determining the specific constructional senses that can be subsumed under the rubric of conative uses. Three distinct configurations are posited: the allative at-construction, instantiated by non-resultative verbs (Tsunoda 1985), the ablative at-construction, instantiated by resultative verbs, and the directional at-construction, compatible with intransitive verbs of ‘visual perception’.

Keywords: ablative at-construction, allative at-construction, conative construction, Construction Grammar, directional at-construction, family-resemblance
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The conative construction in the linguistic literature
    • 2.1The lexical rule approach
    • 2.2Tenny’s aspectual approach
    • 2.3Van der Leek’s compositional approach
    • 2.4The constructional approach
  • 3.Lexical-constructional integration in the English conative pattern
    • 3.1The role of the verb’s semantics
      • 3.1.1 The allative at-construction : non-resultative verbs of ‘hitting’
      • 3.1.2 The ablative at-construction : resultative verbs of ‘cutting’ and ‘ingesting’
      • 3.1.3 The directional at-construction : verbs of ‘attention’
    • 3.2The fusion of verbal and constructional semantics: A family-resemblance analysis
  • 4.Final remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 26 July 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.58.10gue
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