Rethinking constructional polysemy
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Florent Perek
Abstract
This chapter examines the conative construction, e.g., I kicked at the ball, using collexeme analysis. Previous studies report that strong collexemes of a construction provide an indication of its central meaning, from which polysemic extensions are derived. However, the conative construction does not seem to attract a particular kind of verb that could be used to characterize its central meaning. To address this problem, a variant of collexeme analysis is suggested that consists in splitting the verbal distribution into semantic classes and consider “verb-class-specific” constructions independently. For the three classes tested, the most significant collexemes are found to be verbs whose inherent meaning contains the semantic contribution of the construction in that class. Hence, the most attracted collexemes do provide an indication of the constructional meaning, albeit specific to each verb class.
Abstract
This chapter examines the conative construction, e.g., I kicked at the ball, using collexeme analysis. Previous studies report that strong collexemes of a construction provide an indication of its central meaning, from which polysemic extensions are derived. However, the conative construction does not seem to attract a particular kind of verb that could be used to characterize its central meaning. To address this problem, a variant of collexeme analysis is suggested that consists in splitting the verbal distribution into semantic classes and consider “verb-class-specific” constructions independently. For the three classes tested, the most significant collexemes are found to be verbs whose inherent meaning contains the semantic contribution of the construction in that class. Hence, the most attracted collexemes do provide an indication of the constructional meaning, albeit specific to each verb class.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Contributors vii
- Outline 1
-
Section 1. Polysemy and synonymy
- Polysemy and synonymy 7
- Competing ‘transfer’ constructions in Dutch 39
- Rethinking constructional polysemy 61
- Quantifying polysemy in Cognitive Sociolinguistics 87
- The many uses of run 117
- Visualizing distances in a set of near-synonyms 145
- A case for the multifactorial assessment of learner language 179
- Dutch causative constructions 205
- The semasiological structure of Polish myśleć ‘to think’ 223
- A multifactorial corpus analysis of grammatical synonymy 253
- A diachronic corpus-based multivariate analysis of “I think that” vs. “I think zero” 279
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Section 2. Statistical techniques
- Techniques and tools 307
- Statistics in R 343
- Frequency tables 365
- Collostructional analysis 391
- Cluster analysis 405
- Correspondence analysis 443
- Logistic regression 487
- Name index 535
- Subject index 541
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Contributors vii
- Outline 1
-
Section 1. Polysemy and synonymy
- Polysemy and synonymy 7
- Competing ‘transfer’ constructions in Dutch 39
- Rethinking constructional polysemy 61
- Quantifying polysemy in Cognitive Sociolinguistics 87
- The many uses of run 117
- Visualizing distances in a set of near-synonyms 145
- A case for the multifactorial assessment of learner language 179
- Dutch causative constructions 205
- The semasiological structure of Polish myśleć ‘to think’ 223
- A multifactorial corpus analysis of grammatical synonymy 253
- A diachronic corpus-based multivariate analysis of “I think that” vs. “I think zero” 279
-
Section 2. Statistical techniques
- Techniques and tools 307
- Statistics in R 343
- Frequency tables 365
- Collostructional analysis 391
- Cluster analysis 405
- Correspondence analysis 443
- Logistic regression 487
- Name index 535
- Subject index 541
