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Abstract
The paper addresses a pair of construction variants: the N1 V for N2 to-infinitive construction and its version without for, in the cases when both are possible with the same main verb (I need for him leave / I need you to stop). It aims to point to the importance of the use of massive e-corpora in gaining better insight into the given construction pair. It also aims to test the hypothesis that the obtained quantitative data from such corpora can at least partially be accounted for by the interplay of: (1) the differences in the semantics of the two construction variants (based on combining relevant cognitive-linguistic insights), (2) the differences in the lexical semantics of the main verbs, and (3) extra-linguistic factors dealt with by models of cross-cultural communication styles. The paper thus argues for a tighter integration of cognitive-linguistic insights and a social-interactional perspective on language phenomena.