Volume 72, Issue 3 - Special Issue: Current Research in Collostructional Analysis

This article analyses two English constructions, the monotransitive that -cl construction and the np+ to- infinitive construction . In particular, we will show how the principles of collostructional analysis can be used to establish collo-profiles for argument structure constructions, i.e. the verbs to be found very frequently in a construction, and how such collo-profiles can provide important cues for a semantic characterization of these constructions. In this case, we find that the that -clause cxn contains a large number of verbs of reporting, indicating a factual character of the construction in contrast to the infinitive construction that expresses a kind of modal meaning.

The global burden of depression is rising, highlighting the urgency to gain a better understanding of the condition. As depression is known to cause interpersonal difficulties, this paper sets out to investigate emotion attribution in the context of depression, from two perspectives: depressed individuals, experiencing depression first-hand, and their social environment, experiencing depression second-hand. The specific questions addressed are (a) which emotions do the two groups typically attribute to themselves and others?, (b) how do the self -attributed emotions of the two groups differ?, and (c) what are distinguishing characteristics in the self - and other -attributions of the two groups? The analytical approach involves a family of quantitative corpus-linguistic methods known as collostructional analysis, which can be used to determine statistically significant associations between linguistic units in naturally occurring language. The methods are applied to natural language data obtained from online peer-support forums. The results show, broadly, that both groups are affected by negative emotions; specifically, depressed individuals’ emotional self -attributions characteristically involve feelings of inadequacy towards themselves, while self -attributions by caregivers characteristically involve feelings of detachment from their relationship with a depressed individual.

The interlanguage of L2 learners is shaped by various factors, perhaps most noticeably transfer from the L1 to the L2 and overgeneralization in the L2. Transfer has traditionally been treated as an all-or-nothing phenomenon by focusing on L2 structures that either have or do not have an equivalent in the L1. Only recently, researchers working in usage-based construction grammar have taken into account frequencies and association strengths of L2 structures. These studies suggest that entrenchment plays a similar role in L2 learning as it does in L1 acquisition. This paper extends this research by systematically taking into account the potential role of the entrenchment of L1 structures and its interaction with L2 entrenchment. We report a translation study and two acceptability rating studies that investigate these factors using the case of the ditransitive construction in the interlanguage of German learners of English as a Foreign Language. Ditransitive constructions exist in both languages but the German construction has a broader meaning (it can encode almost any type of three-participant event) than the English one (which is restricted to events of caused reception and has a large number of idiosyncratic restrictions on individual verbs). This semantic difference leads to differences in the collostructional preferences of the constructions in the two languages (i.e., the set of verbs that they are associated with positively or negatively), allowing us to investigate the extent to which the transfer of L1 usage patterns to the L2 depends on the entrenchment of verb-construction combinations in the L1, and the extent to which transfer can be inhibited by the positive or negative entrenchment of verb-construction associations in the L2. Our results suggest an influence of both L1 entrenchment and L2 entrenchment (positive and negative) on linguistic production and linguistic representation respectively, such that learners transfer L1 associations between verbs and constructions to their L2, especially if these L1 associations are strong, and that they seem to be sensitive to negative L2 entrenchment, especially if the corresponding L1 associations are only weakly entrenched. However, differences between the translation study and the judgment studies suggest that learners may not acquire the specific semantic restrictions of the English ditransitive at all, relying on verb-specific associations to particular argument structures in the L2 instead and resorting to their L1 knowledge when such verb-specific associations are not available to them.

The English way -construction has been investigated time and again in Construction Grammar from various different perspectives. The way -construction is a prototypical example of an argument-structure construction, and as such an ideal test case for some of the basic tenets of Construction Grammar. As a partially filled construction with open slots, it lends itself particularly well to collostructional analysis. In recent years, equivalents of the way -construction in other languages have also gained attention in constructionist approaches. In this paper, we contrast the English way- construction to three German constructions that can be considered its (rough) equivalents: the reflexive motion construction ( Sie kämpfte sich durch den Aufsatz ‘she fought her way (lit. herself) through the paper’), the reflexive particle-verb construction ( Sie mogelt sich durch ‘She cheats her way (lit. herself) through’), and the reflexive Weg construction ( Sie kämpfte sich einen Weg durch die Menschenmenge ‘She fought herself a way through the crowd’). We compare the results to previous collostructional approaches to the way -construction as well as with previous frame-semantic analyses of the three constructions, arguing that a quantitative approach like collostructional analysis and a more qualitatively-oriented frame-semantic approach can complement each other in promising ways.