Transitivity, constructions, and the projection of argument structure in RRG
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James K. Watters
Abstract
Traditional “projectionist” accounts of transitivity project the argument structure of a clause from the head verb. Some studies within Construction Grammar have shown this does not account for cases in which syntactic frames override a verb’s inherent transitivity, arguing instead that transitivity is determined by the syntactic construction. Such examples typically come from English and related languages in which many or most verbs freely occur in transitive or intransitive frames without any overt derivational morphology. However, in languages such as Tepehua (Totonacan), verbs have rigidly specified transitivity, with no such overriding of argument structure. Role and Reference Grammar treats argument structure as a projection from the composite logical structure, accounting for clause structure in both types of languages.
Abstract
Traditional “projectionist” accounts of transitivity project the argument structure of a clause from the head verb. Some studies within Construction Grammar have shown this does not account for cases in which syntactic frames override a verb’s inherent transitivity, arguing instead that transitivity is determined by the syntactic construction. Such examples typically come from English and related languages in which many or most verbs freely occur in transitive or intransitive frames without any overt derivational morphology. However, in languages such as Tepehua (Totonacan), verbs have rigidly specified transitivity, with no such overriding of argument structure. Role and Reference Grammar treats argument structure as a projection from the composite logical structure, accounting for clause structure in both types of languages.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction vii
- Controller-controllee relations in purposive constructions 1
- Transitivity, constructions, and the projection of argument structure in RRG 23
- Constructions in RRG 41
- A constructional perspective on clefting in Persian 67
- Radical Role and Reference Grammar (RRRG) 103
- Constructions as grammatical objects 143
- Constructions in Role and Reference Grammar 179
- Towards a model of constructional meaning for natural language understanding 205
- Meaning construction, meaning interpretation and formal expression in the Lexical Constructional Model 231
- Constructions in the Lexical Constructional Model 271
- From idioms to sentence structures and beyond 295
- Index 331
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction vii
- Controller-controllee relations in purposive constructions 1
- Transitivity, constructions, and the projection of argument structure in RRG 23
- Constructions in RRG 41
- A constructional perspective on clefting in Persian 67
- Radical Role and Reference Grammar (RRRG) 103
- Constructions as grammatical objects 143
- Constructions in Role and Reference Grammar 179
- Towards a model of constructional meaning for natural language understanding 205
- Meaning construction, meaning interpretation and formal expression in the Lexical Constructional Model 231
- Constructions in the Lexical Constructional Model 271
- From idioms to sentence structures and beyond 295
- Index 331
