Volume 36, Issue 3

This study examines whether embedding predicates’ semantic type affects the acceptability of internally headed relative clauses (IHRCs) in Korean. Existing studies on Korean IHRCs have primarily focused on their highly limited distribution, employing three research approaches to understand their restricted use: (i) explaining their formal restrictions using a set of rules; (ii) describing how they are used with naturally occurring data; (iii) refuting their existence as an independent construction in Korean by providing alternative explanations for how the interpretation of IHRCs is construed. Although these approaches have significantly enhanced the understanding of the use of IHRCs in Korean, whether a specific semantic type of embedding predicates renders an IHRC construal in a more acceptable manner has not been explored. To address this research gap, we conducted an acceptability judgment task. The results showed significantly higher acceptability, compared to the control condition, for predicates implying physical contact between entities but not for those that do not. This finding may indicate that Korean IHRCs serve as an example of a partially productive or verb-class-specific construction. This study contributes to the understanding of partial productivity or local generalization in language use and the interaction between a human and an object.

Sustainability is generally conceptualised as comprising three interrelated aspects, or “pillars”, namely environmental, social, and economic dimensions (Purvis, Ben, Yong Mao & Darren Robinson. 2019. Three pillars of sustainability: In search of conceptual origins. Sustainability Science 14. 681–695). This conceptual framework is mirrored in the tripartite structure of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) reports used by pharmaceutical companies for annual disclosure. This paper focuses specifically on the first “pillar” – the “E” – the environmental aspect of ESG, with a view to exploring the “framing effects” employed in pharmaceutical discourse to construct an image of environmental awareness. The study draws on a corpus of ESG reports from eight pharmaceutical companies present on the stock exchange. A mixed-methods approach was adopted, combining quantitative analysis of lexical patterns with qualitative analysis of framing devices specific to the environmental section of the reports. This dual approach allows for a comprehensive examination of how language is used to frame environmental issues across different companies, while ensuring statistical robustness. Grounded in cognitive linguistics, and specifically in the analytic concept of frame and the theoretical notion of construal (Langacker 1987. Foundations of cognitive grammar: Volume I, theoretical prerequisites . Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007. Constructing grammar: Cognitive and contextual . Oxford: Oxford University Press; Talmy 1988. Frames of reference and the semantics of space. In Vyvyan Evans & Melanie Green (eds.), The cognitive linguistics reader , 21–44. London: Equinox, 2000. Toward a cognitive semantics: Volume I: Concept structuring systems . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), this paper examines the mental representations stakeholders are prompted to construct in response to specific lexical and grammatical choices. By analysing both lexical frequency and force-dynamic patterns in the ESG corpus, this study elucidates the role of framing devices in shaping stakeholders’ cognitive and emotional responses to environmental concerns within pharmaceutical corporate communication.

In Dutch verb clusters consisting of an auxiliary and a past participle, both orders of participle and auxiliary are fine. This distinguishes auxiliaries from copular verbs combined with an adjectival participle, for which only the [Part + V]-order is straightforwardly possible. Reference grammars claim that for the resultative krijgen -construction, the order krijgen ‘to get’ + participle is ungrammatical and that, thus, the construction is adjectival. In this paper we first show that the [Aux + Part]-order is actually used in resultative krijgen -clusters in real-language corpora, albeit infrequently so, and that, in grammaticality judgements, language users find it quite acceptable. More crucially, we present evidence that the order in resultative krijgen -clusters is affected by constructional contamination (Pijpops, Dirk & Freek Van de Velde. 2016. Constructional contamination: How does it work and how do we measure it? Folia Linguistica 50(2). 543–581). On the one hand, other auxiliary constructions with krijgen contaminate the resultative construction, resulting in sporadic occurrences of [Aux + Part]-orders. On the other hand, we show that resultative infinitive clusters, which are historically very strongly attracted to the [Part + Aux]-order, occur significantly more often than with other auxiliary constructions and hence promote the [Part + Aux]-order in non-infinitive clusters, thus preventing a full-fledged alternation. In this way, usage tendencies explain the observed word order facts better than postulated grammatical properties such as the alleged “adjectival” status of resultative krijgen . Additionally, we show that constructional contamination does not only affect language production, but also acceptability judgements.

This psycholinguistic study investigates the effects of aspect (i.e., the grammatical distinction between progressive and simple) on the interpretation of English modals (epistemic versus deontic) with a view to gaining insights into the mental representation of modal constructions, specifically their schematicity degree and node structure. This overarching question is addressed through an experiment focusing on the necessity modals must , should , and have to and measuring word-by-word reaction times in self-paced reading (online processing) combined with decision times and forced choices for follow-up judgment questions (offline processing). The results show that, while the progressive is generally more inclined towards epistemic modality than the simple aspect in the offline task, the strength of this effect varies across different modals in online processing, thereby demonstrating their different degrees of subjectivity. From a constructionist perspective, this suggests that some modals have developed mid-level constructional schemas for certain meanings and grammatical forms (e.g., [SBJ must be V ing ] epistemic ), while others are processed via higher-level schemas (e.g., [SBJ V mod be V ing ] epistemic ). This demonstrates that grammatical-aspectual context is a crucial meaning-defining component within constructional networks that contributes to the formation of mid-level constructions for certain modals.

The conceptual characterization of word classes has been a central topic in cognitive linguistics since its inception. However, compared to major classes such as nouns and verbs, minor word classes have received less attention. This study discusses the conceptual basis of prepositional phrases, especially focusing on prepositional complements of prepositions (hereafter, PCOPs) – a syntactically irregular but widely-used structure in English (e.g., from within the company , from behind the table , since before the war ). The aims of this paper are threefold: (1) to demonstrate the relative prevalence of PCOPs in English through an extensive study of the British National Corpus; (2) to identify two distinct functions of PCOPs – the Emphasis Type and the Search-domain Type; and (3) to characterize the conceptual basis of PCOPs, highlighting the conceptual similarities between PCOPs and (countable) noun phrases, and thus to explain the occurrence of PCOPs in slots where we normally find noun phrases. We also show how the analysis could be extended to another type of nominal prepositional phrases, i.e., prepositional subjects. By explaining the distribution of PCOPs (and prepositional subjects) in this manner, we underscore the necessity of a conceptual characterization of word classes in linguistic research.