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Part of
Analogy and Contrast in Language: Perspectives from Cognitive Linguistics
Edited by Karolina Krawczak, Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk and Marcin Grygiel
[Human Cognitive Processing 73] 2022
► pp. 283–302

Chapter 9
A case of constructional contamination in English

Modified noun phrases influence adverb placement in the passive

| Université de Neuchâtel
| University of Zurich

This chapter discusses a case of what Pijpops and Van de Velde (2016) call constructional contamination. Specifically, we investigate the influence of English modified noun phrases on variation in adverb placement in the passive. On the basis of data from the COCA, we argue that highly frequent nominal expressions such as sexually transmitted disease influence adverb placement in the passive, which offers speakers a choice between adverb-initial order (The disease was sexually transmitted) and adverb-final order (The disease was transmitted sexually). Our results thus corroborate findings from Dutch corpora (Pijpops and Van de Velde 2016) and suggest that construction al contamination is a phenomenon that can be observed across different languages. We further discuss the role of constructional contamination for analogy and contrast.

Keywords: adverbial modification, constructional contamination, construction grammar, passive, syntactic variation
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Constructional contamination
  • 3.Data and methodology
    • 3.1Data retrieval
    • 3.2Differences between adverb-initial and adverb-final passive examples
    • 3.3Data annotation
      • 3.3.1Dependent variable: Order of adverb and participle
      • 3.3.2NP frequency
      • 3.3.3String resemblance
      • 3.3.4Adverb and participle
      • 3.3.5Mutual association strength between adverb and participle
    • 3.4Splitting the data into two datasets
    • 3.5Data analysis
  • 4.Results
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 27 October 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.73.09hil
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2024. Corpus linguistics meets historical linguistics and construction grammar: how far have we come, and where do we go from here?. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 0:0 DOI logo
Pijpops, Dirk
2022. Lectal contamination. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 27:3 ► pp. 259 ff. DOI logo
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2023. Martin Hilpert: Ten lectures on Diachronic Construction Grammar . Folia Linguistica 57:1 ► pp. 261 ff. DOI logo
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