Syntax from and for discourse II: More on complex sentences as meso-constructions
-
Beate Hampe
and
Stefan Th. Gries
Abstract
This paper presents a direct continuation of preceding corpus-linguistic research on complex sentence constructions with temporal adverbial clauses in a cognitive and usage-based framework (Diessel 2008; Hampe 2015). Working towards a more systematic construction-based account of complex sentences with before-, after-, until- and once-clauses in spontaneously spoken English, Hampe (2015) hypothesised that the morpho-syntactic realisations of configurations with initial adverbial clauses systematically diverge from those of configurations with final ones as a reflection of the specific functionality of each and that usage properties that are found across instantiations with a coherent functional load are retained in the schematisations creating constructions. This paper employs a multinomial regression in order to test to which extent each of eight closely related complex-sentence constructions with either initial or final before-, after-, until- and once-clauses can be predicted from the realisation of a few key morpho-syntactic properties of the respective adverbial and matrix clauses involved. The results support an analysis of complex-sentence constructions as meso-constructions that are not only specific about the subordinator and the positioning of the adverbial clause, but also retain “traces” of characteristic usage properties.
© 2018 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelei
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- Editorial: Corpora, constructions, cognition
- Facing the facts of fake: A distributional semantics and corpus annotation approach
- Through the prototypes of through: A corpus-based cognitive analysis
- Anybody (at) home? Communicative efficiency knocking on the Construction Grammar door
- Divergent theories, converging evidence: The constructional semantics of competing future constructions
- Syntax from and for discourse II: More on complex sentences as meso-constructions
- The goal bias revisited: A collostructional approach
- Unifying entrenched tokens and schematized types as routinized commonalities of linguistic experience
- Reconciling older and newer approaches to grammaticalization
- Construction Grammar for students: A Constructionist Approach to Syntactic Analysis (CASA)
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelei
- Contents
- Editorial: Corpora, constructions, cognition
- Facing the facts of fake: A distributional semantics and corpus annotation approach
- Through the prototypes of through: A corpus-based cognitive analysis
- Anybody (at) home? Communicative efficiency knocking on the Construction Grammar door
- Divergent theories, converging evidence: The constructional semantics of competing future constructions
- Syntax from and for discourse II: More on complex sentences as meso-constructions
- The goal bias revisited: A collostructional approach
- Unifying entrenched tokens and schematized types as routinized commonalities of linguistic experience
- Reconciling older and newer approaches to grammaticalization
- Construction Grammar for students: A Constructionist Approach to Syntactic Analysis (CASA)
