Volume 70, Issue 3 - Special issue: Diachronic Construction Grammar; Guest Editors: Judith Huber and Thomas Herbst

In this paper I reconstruct two separative argument structure constructions for West Germanic: one involving a genitive of origin and one involving an instrumental in the process of being subsumed under the dative. Although neither genitives nor instrumentals/datives are typically used to refer to literal origins in space in any of the languages under consideration, a number of verbs attested with genitives and instrumentals/datives can be semantically related to each other as expressing different metaphorical extensions from the concept of separation. The fact that the expression of spatial origin itself is not a function of the genitive or the instrumental/dative can be explained diachronically with reference to a common evolutionary scenario in which adpositional phrases replace bare-case constructions in their concrete, spatial functions before they take over their derived, more abstract senses. The alternation between genitives, instrumentals/datives and separative prepositions is best modelled as a constructeme , a schema with various allostructions.

This paper discusses the emergence and development of a mirative constructional network involving the shell nouns wonder , marvel and chance , called ‘wonder’ nouns here. In combination with negative quantifiers (e.g. no wonder ), they can be used either lexically or as part of grammatical, mirative markers, qualifying a proposition as unsurprising in view of another situation. The network emerges in Old English around wonder , with three meso-constructions which differ in surface structure but all inherit the anti-concessive discourse schema from the macro-construction, consisting of a proposition, mirative qualifier and justification. Two additional meso-constructions emerge in Middle English, which is also the time when the Romance loan marvel joins the network, making it gain in schematicity, abstractness and productivity. In Present-day English, another Romance loan, chance , expands the mirative network even more. Throughout time, we observe node loss, node creation, constructional substitution and changes in frequencies of constructions. Theoretically, we propose a semiotic approach to diachronic construction grammar, arguing that multi-sign constructions invariably involve syntagmatic relations, which are themselves form-meaning pairings. This approach allows us to capture generalizations which would otherwise be missed.

The present paper discusses the concept of gradience and fuzziness from the perspective of Diachronic Construction Grammar. It does so by investigating verb-attached PPs in the history of English, with a focus on their semantic and syntactic functions and features over time. Specifically, the paper uses the Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpora of Historical English , including texts from Middle English (PPCME2), Early Modern English (PPCEME), and Late Modern English (PPCMBE) to revisit the distinction between adjuncts and complements. In particular, I address the question whether this traditionally binary classification finds support in diachronic data, or whether PPs rather represent a gradience between prototypical adjunct- and complementhood. Furthermore, the paper assesses whether any change in the distribution and features of PPs (specifically an increase in complementhood) can be observed over time. Ultimately, the findings suggest a multi-level network of PPs that is diachronically very stable.

This article starts out from the observation that, in present-day English, pity is occasionally used in the ditransitive [Subj V Obj1 Obj2] argument structure pattern, although the verb denotes an emotional state and can hardly be construed as encoding an event by means of which a transfer of possession is potentially brought about. Since the English ditransitive construction is undergoing a semantic specialization process, one hypothesis that comes directly to mind is that the sporadic uses of ditransitive pity are a relic from a formerly more well-entrenched use. Data from the CLMET 3.1 corpus and from COHA suggest that this scenario is unlikely, though. Instead, it will be argued that ditransitive pity  – as well as uses with other emotion verbs such as rue and resent  – are low-level extensions starting from the verb-specific [Subj envy Obj1 Obj2] pattern, which is thus less unproductive as has been assumed in the existing literature.

Recent work in Diachronic Construction Grammar (DCxG) has foregrounded the importance of multiple sources of a particular construction, as well as promoting the idea that constructions are organised as a network of knowledge. The research presented in this article explores the ways in which multiple sources play a role at various stages in constructional change, and the effects of this on the structure of the language network. We aim to show how an account of language structure that focuses on links between constructions may be useful in tracking the various stages in the development of a new construction.