Concessive constructions in varieties of English

This volume presents a synchronic investigation of concessive constructions in nine varieties of English, based on data from the International Corpus of English. The structures of interest are complex sentences with a subordinate clause introduced by although, though or even though. Various functional and formal features are taken into account: (i) the semantic/pragmatic relation that holds between the propositions involved, (ii) the position of the subordinate clause, (iii) the conjunction that is used, and (iv) the syntax of the subordinate clause. By exploring patterns of variation from a Construction Grammar perspective, the study works towards an explanatory model, whose point of departure is at the functional (semantic/pragmatic) level, and which makes hierarchically organised predictions for different formal levels (clause position, choice of connective and realisation of the subordinate clause). It treats concessives as complex form-function pairings, and develops arguments and routines that may inform quantitative approaches to constructional variation more generally

Alternating ditransitives in English: a corpus-based study

This thesis is a large-scale investigation of ditransitive constructions and their alternants in English. Typically both constructions involve three participants: participant A transfers an element B to participant C. A speaker can linguistically encode this type of situation in one of two ways: by using either a double object construction or a prepositional paraphrase. This study examines this syntactic choice in the British component of the International Corpus of English (ICE-GB), a fully tagged and parsed corpus incorporating both spoken and written English. After a general introduction, chapter 2 reviews the different grammatical treatments of the constructions. Chapter 3 discusses whether indirect objects have to be considered necessary complements or optional adjuncts of the verb. I then examine the tension between rigid classification and authentic (corpus) data in order to demonstrate that the distinction between complements and adjuncts evidences gradient categorisation effects. This study has both a linguistic and a methodological angle. The overall design and methodology employed in this study are discussed in chapter 4. The thesis considers a number of variables that help predict the occurrence of each pattern. The evaluation of the variables, the determination of their significance, and the measurement of their contribution to the model involve reliance on statistical methods (but not statistical software packages). Chapters 5, 6, and 7 review pragmatic factors claimed to influence a speaker’s choice of construction, among them the information status and the syntactic ‘heaviness’ of the constituents involved. The explanatory power and coverage of these factors are experimentally tested independently against the corpus data, in order to highlight several features which only emerge after examining authentic sources. Chapter 8 posits a novel method of bringing these factors together; the resulting model predicts the dative alternation with almost 80% accuracy in ICE-GB. Conclusions are offered in chapter 9

Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar

Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) is a constraint-based or declarative approach to linguistic knowledge, which analyses all descriptive levels (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics) with feature value pairs, structure sharing, and relational constraints. In syntax it assumes that expressions have a single relatively simple constituent structure. This volume provides a state-of-the-art introduction to the framework. Various chapters discuss basic assumptions and formal foundations, describe the evolution of the framework, and go into the details of the main syntactic phenomena. Further chapters are devoted to non-syntactic levels of description. The book also considers related fields and research areas (gesture, sign languages, computational linguistics) and includes chapters comparing HPSG with other frameworks (Lexical Functional Grammar, Categorial Grammar, Construction Grammar, Dependency Grammar, and Minimalism)

Understanding complex constructions: a quantitative corpus-linguistic approach to the processing of english relative clauses

Die vorliegende Arbeit präsentiert einen korpusbasierten Ansatz an die kognitive Verarbeitung komplexer linguistische Konstruktionen am Beispiel englischer Relativsatzkonstruktionen (RCC). Im theoretischen Teil wird für eine konstruktionsgrammatische Perspektive auf sprachliches Wissen argumentiert, welche erlaubt, RCCs als schematische Konstruktionen zu charakterisieren. Diese Perspektive wird mit Konzeptionen exemplarbasierter Modelle menschlicher Sprachverarbeitung zusammengeführt, welche die Verarbeitung einer linguistischen Struktur als Funktion von der Häufigkeit vergangener Verarbeitungen typidentischer Vorkommnisse begreift. Häufige Strukturen gelangen demnach zu einem priviligierten Status im kognitiven System eines Sprechers, welcher in konstruktionsgrammatischen Theorien als entrenchment bezeichnet wird. Während der jeweilge entrenchment-Wert einer gegebenen Konstruktion für konkrete Zeichen vergleichsweise einfach zu bestimmen ist, wird die Einschätzung mit ansteigender Komplexität und Schematizität der Zielkonstruktion zunehmend schwieriger. Für höherstufige N-gramme, welche durch eine grosse Anzahl an variablen Positionen ausgezeichnet sind, ist das Feld noch vergleichweise unerforscht. Die vorliegende Arbeit ist bemüht, diese Lücke zu schließen entwickelt eine korpusbasierte mehrstufige Messprozedur, um den entrenchment-Wert komplexer schematischer Konstruktionen zu erfassen. Da linguistisches Wissen hochstrukturiert ist und menschliche Sprachverarbeitungsprozesse struktursensitiv sind, wird ein clusteranalytisches Verfahren angewendet, welches die salienten RCC hinsichtlich ihrer strukturellen Ähnlichlichkeit organisiert. Aus der Position einer RCC im konstruktionalen Netzwerk sowie dessen entrenchment-Wert kann nun der Grad der erwarteteten Verarbeitungsschwierigkeit abgeleitet werden. Der abschliessende Teil der Arbeit interpretiert die Ergebnisse vor dem Hintergrung psycholinguistischer Befunde zur Relativsatzverarbeitung

Quantitative determinants of prefabs: A corpus-based, experimental study of multiword units in the lexicon

In recent years many researchers have been rethinking the Words and Rules\u27 model of syntax (Pinker 1999), instead arguing that language processing relies on a large number of preassembled multiword units, or \u27prefabs\u27 (Bolinger 1976). A usage-based perspective predicts that linguistic units, including prefabs, arise via repeated use, and prefabs should thus be associated with the frequency with which words co-occur (Langacker 1987). Indeed, in several recent experiments, corpus analysis is found to be associated with behavioral measures for multiword sequences (Kapatsinski and Radicke 2009, Ellis and Simpson-Vlach 2009). This dissertation supplements such findings with two new psycholinguistic investigations of prefabs. Study 1 revisits a dictation experiment by Schmitt et al. (2004), in which participants are asked to listen to stretches of speech and repeat the input verbatim, after performing a distractor task intended to encourage reliance on prefabs. I describe the results of an updated experiment which demonstrates that participants are less likely to interrupt or partially alter high-frequency multiword sequences. Although the original study by Schmitt et al. (2004) reported null findings, the revised methodology suggests that frequency indeed plays a role in the creation of prefabs. Study 2 investigates the distribution of affix positioning errors (he go aheads) which give evidence that some multiword sequences (e.g., go ahead) are retrieved from memory as a unit. As part of this study, I describe a novel methodology which elicits the errors of interest in an experimental setting. Errors evincing holistic retrieval are induced more often among multiword sequences that are high in Mutual Dependency, a corpus measure that weighs a sequence\u27s frequency against the frequencies of its component words. Followup analyses indicate that sequence frequency is positively associated with affix errors, but only if component-word frequencies are included as variables in the model. In sum, the studies in this dissertation provide evidence that prefabricated, multiword units are associated with high frequency of a sequence, in addition to statistical measures that take component words\u27 frequency into account. These findings provide further support for a usage-based model of the lexicon, in which linguistic units are both gradient and changeable with experience

Beyond the Subject: The Interaction of Syntax and Semantics in the Production of English Verb Agreement

A key debate in the psycholinguistic study of grammatical language production is whether the process is a syntactocentric one, driven by grammatical information and grammatical rules, or a dynamic, interactive one, involving both semantic and syntactic information. Examining how speakers produce subject-verb number agreement has been useful in addressing this debate. Verb agreement is widely considered to be primarily a syntactic process in which grammatical number features of the subject are copied onto the verb. Variation in verb agreement patterns can, however, reflect the construal of the subject number. Such variation suggests that speakers are sensitive to both syntactic and semantic information about the subject during the production of agreement. However, psycholinguistic accounts of how speakers integrate these two types of information cannot yet account for the full range of variation seen in agreement in spontaneous, natural speech. This dissertation concerns a subject-verb number agreement pattern that cannot be explained either in terms of grammatical form or semantic construal of the subject, exemplified by the utterance [One thing I thought about the other day]-SG were-PL batteries. The research presented here examines how verb agreement is affected by grammatical and semantic features outside of the subject noun phrase: the number of the post-verbal nominal, the concreteness of the post-verbal noun relative to the subject, and the semantics of the construction used when agreement is produced. I used a corpus study and three elicited production experiments to investigate how these features correlated with speakers’ likelihood of producing verb agreement that did not match the grammatical number of the subject. Results demonstrate that speakers are sensitive to both grammatical and semantic information outside of the subject when producing verb number agreement. Specifically, the grammatical number of the post-verbal nominal affects speakers’ production of verb agreement. Furthermore, the effects of post-verbal number are modulated by constructional semantics. These findings cannot be accounted for by syntactocentric models of language production, in which grammatical forms are processed in isolation from semantic information. Rather, they suggest that grammatical language production is an interactive process in which semantic information can modulate the effects of activated syntactic features

There and Gone Again: Syntactic Structure In Memory

This dissertation addresses the relationship between hierarchical syntactic structure and memory in language processing of individual sentences. Hierarchical syntactic structure is a key part of human languages and language processing but its integration with memory has been uneasy ever since Sachs (1967) demonstrated that the syntactic structure of individual sentences is lost in explicit sentence recall tasks much faster than other linguistic information (lexical, semantic, etc.). Nonetheless, psycholinguists have continued to draw on memory in syntactic processing theories, in part due to (i) the explanatory power that memory can give to sentence processing hypotheses, and (ii) the conflicting results that continually replicate the basic findings of Sachs (1967, 1974) while on the other hand supporting robust, long-term implicit persistence of syntactic structure in the form of abstract syntactic priming. The dissertation provides three case studies on syntactic structure in memory at three different time points over the course of processing. One case-study revisits syntactic persistence during the timescale which has classically provided the bulk of the evidence against syntactic structure in memory, from late in online processing to early offline processing, using a comparison of ellipsis-antecedent resolution and recognition memory over time. A second case-study looks at the sensitivity of proposed memory-operations to subject-verb agreement versus reflexive anaphora at the earliest timescale, during online sentence processing. Finally, the second half of the dissertation focuses on the reliability of abstract syntactic priming in comprehension, with an extended test of Syntactic Adaptation theory (Fine, Jaeger, Farmer, & Qian, 2013). The dissertation argues that while there is still some good evidence in favor of syntactic structure in memory, theories which intend to control most of online sentence processing from memory are probably premature. Even if memory does turn out to play a role in the syntactic processing of individual sentences, domain general, declarative memory is most likely an insufficient architecture to capture even the data which is most supportive of a memory-based account

The ditransitive alternation in present-day German : a corpus-based analysis

The ditransitive alternation in present-day German A corpus-based study Hilde De Vaere The study is a corpus-based analysis of the ditransitive alternation in present-day German with 17 noncomplex and complex verbs, viz. geben, schicken, senden; abgeben, preisgeben, übergeben, vergeben, weitergeben, zurückgeben; einschicken, einsenden, übersenden, zurückschicken, zurücksenden; ausleihen, verleihen and verkaufen. The alternating constructions are the Indirect Object Construction (IOC) and the Prepositional Object Construction (POC). Both alternants contain a trivalent transfer verb in combination with three arguments: an AGENT in the nominative, a THEME in the accusative and a RECIPIENT-like argument. The RECIPIENT-like argument can either be realised as a dative Noun Phrase or as a Prepositional Phrase introduced by an + accusative (or, alternatively, zu + dative with the verbs schicken and senden and their complex counterparts), resulting in IOC or POC, respectively. Statistical analyses of 7400 sentences retrieved from the IDS Mannheim’s DeReKo corpus and taken from German, Swiss, Austrian and Wikipedia sources show that the alternation is associated with multiple factors that are assumed to operate simultaneously. A major conclusion of the investigation is that predictors pertaining to the principle of Harmonic Alignment of the arguments (according to which animate, pronominal, definite, given, short arguments precede inanimate, nominal, indefinite, new and long arguments) play a role in the alternation, but that other predictors are involved as well and, hence, Harmonic Alignment only partly accounts for the German data. Apart from factors such as Case Syncretism and Propernounhood of the RECIPIENT argument, which relate to a tendency towards greater transparency associated with POC, properties specifically pertaining to the verb, the three denotational classes (viz. concrete, abstract, propositional) and various senses turn out to be important factors in view of a comprehensive account of the alternation. The alternation moreover proves to be stongly verb-dependent. The two alternating constructions IOC and POC are thus shown to relate to the semantics/pragmatics interface, which requires a careful analysis of the encoded and inferred meanings that ground the alternation. Apart from the Probabilistic Approach utilised to analyse the data, the theoretical framework in which the study is embedded is an Integrative Approach which takes into account both constructionist and projectionist assumptions in the analysis of morphosyntax and alternating constructions. With regard to the issues of meaning and sense, the analysis is couched in a Three-Layer Approach to meaning, in which a difference is made between encoded linguistic content (semantics proper) and inferred linguistic content (the domain of pragmatics). Importantly, the pragmatic level is further differentiated to account for the partly highly conventionalised variation in form and meaning at the intermediate level of ‘normal language use’, in line with the theories of meaning developed by E. Coseriu and S. Levinson. IOC and POC are thus not considered two encoded constructions in their own right in German grammar, but rather as two pragmatically defined ‘allostructions’ of an overarching general ‘constructeme’, which is termed the AGENT-THEME-GOAL construction. Both the verbs and the AGENT-THEME-GOAL construction contribute to the alternation with their general, underspecified meanings but they are varyingly enriched by encyclopaedic knowledge and a range of factors that pertain to pragmatics. IOC or POC can thus be shown to be associated with a large set of statistically significant factors that interact with each other and with the AGENT-THEME-GOAL construction, i.e. the ‘constructeme’ that underpins both IOC and POC. Samenvatting De studie is een corpusgebaseerde analyse van de ditransitieve alternantie in hedendaags Duits met een selectie van 17 non-complexe en complexe werkwoorden, meer bepaald: geben, schicken, senden; abgeben, preisgeben, übergeben, vergeben, weitergeben, zurückgeben; einschicken, einsenden, übersenden, zurückschicken, zurücksenden; ausleihen, verleihen en verkaufen. De alternantie doet zich voor tussen de zgn. ‘Indirect Object Constructie’ (IOC) en de ‘Prepositioneel Object Constructie’ (POC). Beide alternanten bevatten een trivalent werkwoord dat een transfer uitdrukt in combinatie met drie argumenten: een AGENS in de nominatief, een THEMA in de accusatief en een RECIPIENS-achtig (“ONTVANGER”) argument. Het laatstgenoemde argument kan ofwel in de datief gerealiseerd worden, of door middel van een voorzetselconstituent ingeleid door an + accusatief (of ook zu + datief met de werkwoorden schicken en senden en hun complexe tegenhangers), wat respectievelijk resulteert in IOC of POC. Statistische analyses van 7400 zinnen uit DeReKo (IDS Mannheim), opgevraagd uit Duitse, Zwitserse en Oostenrijkse bronnen en uit Wikipedia, tonen aan dat de alternantie geassocieerd kan worden met een samenspel van meerdere factoren die gelijktijdig de alternantie beïnvloeden. Een belangrijke conclusie van het onderzoek is dat predictoren met betrekking tot het principe van “Harmonic Alignment” van de argumenten (volgens welke animate, pronominale, definiete, gegeven, korte argumenten voorafgaan aan inanimate, nominale, indefiniete, nieuwe en lange argumenten) met zekerheid een rol spelen in de alternantie, maar de analyse brengt ook aan het licht dat andere predictoren eveneens van belang zijn en dat “Harmonic Alignment” de Duitse data slechts gedeeltelijk kan verklaren. Afgezien van factoren zoals Casussyncretisme en Proprialiteit (d.i. eigennaam vs. soortnaam) van de ONTVANGER-rol, die te maken hebben met een tendens tot grotere transparantie in POC, zijn er eigenschappen, meer specifiek met betrekking tot het werkwoord, de drie denotationele klassen (concreet, abstract, propositioneel) en diverse gebruiksbetekenissen (Eng. “senses”), die belangrijk zijn voor een omvattende verklaring van de alternantie tussen IOC en POC. De alternantie blijkt bovendien in sterke mate werkwoordspecifiek te zijn. De studie toont op die manier aan dat de twee alternanten gesitueerd moeten worden op het raakvlak van semantiek en pragmatiek, wat een nauwkeurige analyse van de gecodeerde en geïnfereerde betekenissen vereist waarop de alternantie gebaseerd is. Naast de Probabilistische Aanpak die gebruikt wordt voor de analyse van de data, is het theoretisch kader van de studie een Integrale Aanpak, die in de analyse van morfosyntaxis en alternerende constructies zowel met constructionele als met projectionistische principes rekening houdt. Met het oog op betekenis (Engels “meaning” en “senses”) wordt een analyse volgens drie betekenisniveaus voorgesteld, waarin een verschil gemaakt wordt tussen gecodeerde inhouden (de semantiek stricto sensu) en geïnfereerde inhouden (het domein van de pragmatiek). Belangrijk is dat het pragmatische niveau verder gedifferentieerd wordt om de deels sterk geconventionaliseerde variatie in vorm en betekenis op het intermediaire niveau van ‘normaal taalgebruik’ te verklaren, in overeenstemming met de betekenistheorieën ontwikkeld door E. Coseriu en S. Levinson. IOC en POC worden niet beschouwd als twee op zich gecodeerde constructies in de Duitse grammatica, maar als twee pragmatisch gedefinieerde ‘allostructies’ van een overkoepelend algemeen ‘constructeem’, dat de AGENS-THEMA-DOEL-constructie genoemd wordt. Zowel de werkwoorden als het ‘constructeem’ dragen bij tot de alternantie met hun algemene, ondergespecificeerde betekenissen, maar ze worden op verschillende manieren verrijkt met encyclopedische kennis en een reeks factoren die tot de pragmatiek behoren. Op die manier wordt er aangetoond dat IOC en POC in verband gebracht kunnen worden met een groot aantal statistisch significante factoren die interageren met elkaar en met de AGENS-THEMA-DOEL-constructie, het ‘constructeem’ dat aan de grondslag van IOC en POC ligt