10 Constructions
10.1 Construction Grammar
10.1.1 Construction
- Constructions are a phenomenon between purely morpho-syntactical and purely lexical patterns
- lexico-grammatical
- also form-meaning pairings
10.1.2 Examples
- Ditransitive construction
- She gave him a happy smile. (COCA)
- Mail me the results.
-
into causative (cf. Stefanowitsch & Gries 2003)
- [VERB] [SOMEONE] into [VERBing] [something]
- … to pressure the government into accepting …
- … having been tricked into thinking Shatov is a danger (BNC)
- There are few things worse than being bludgeoned into reading a book you hate. (BNC)
10.1.3 More than the sum of its parts
What are the crucial meaning components of the parts in bold?
- I looked at the drummer, and he dropped me a sick beat.
In 72, there is an abstract sense of “transfer” of “offer” which is not part of the semantics of its component parts. The beat is now “mine” to dance or jam to. drop in this sense is used roughly for “suddenly starting music”, me is a deictic pronoun simply pointing to the speaker, and a sick beat stands for “an enjoyable, highly danceable/jammable” rhythm. The meaning of transfer can only come from the construction itself. Even if we constructed a clause with nonsense words, it is likely to feel like a transfer.
- He gnubgnarfed us a tiwilbemba.
It works as a ditransitive because we associate the meaning of transfer with the construction itself.
Now, consider the following example of the into causative
- In the end, they embarrassed me into deleting the photos
embarrass again does not necessarily cause a specific action. It is most often used to describe an internal state of mind. Likewise, into as a directional preposition does not have a meaning component of causation. We could assume a “causative” into as a sense or homonym of into. However, the issue would be that we would inflate our model of the lexicon with a new sense for every use we encounter that is not explained by the meaning components. A construction grammatical model would solve this more elegantly again. The causative meaning comes from and is learned from the construction itself. Again, we can play with those associative patterns creatively:
- He gnubgnarfed us into reading a tiwilbemba.
10.1.4 Tip of the day
Today, just some reflections on a general mindset I think people can profit from:
No matter your skill level: re-read and re-watch basics over and over.
Instructors have a different perspective and very often explain aspects that seem important at their own skill level. Sometimes there are realizations of the type: “I should have known that when I started”, or, “now that I know x, y becomes so much clearer”. Very often, however, this is a fallacy, and that type of information is not yet useful to a beginner at all. Therefore, most introductory materials have a lot to offer to advanced learners as they offer insight into the thinking of a fellow-learner. I, personally, still go over introductory materials again and again, be it in linguistics, statistics, programming or whatever I need in my day-to-day job. People who stop with that, I believe, lose track of what’s important really quickly. They also might not even be aware that they don’t have sufficient understanding of some of the ‘basics’ in their field.
So re-read, re-watch, re-visit. If you think, you know your way around in your field of interest, go back and reflect on it. There will be aspects you have overlooked. And, if you feel like your still a novice, it’ll help anyway. Worst case: you have the same joy of discovering the facts and feelings that lead you to your field in the first place. It’s never a waste of time. :)
Which leads me to the practical conclusion: if you struggle to find something in linguistics that is worth writing about, return to the beginnings, skim through introductory videos, textbooks, slides, etc. If you’re not yet brimming with ideas and vibrating with an urge to find out more about language, go back to the basics. Maybe you discover things you didn’t see when there was an exam in your neck.