Licensing and blocking factors in the use of BEGIN verbs: A lexical-constructional and pragmatic analysis

This article investigates the cognitive operations underlying the different uses of four main begin verbs in English, i.e. start, begin, commence and initiate, and the pragmatic implications connected with them. The study follows an analytical approach based on the Lexical Constructional Model and on more general but fundamental assumptions of Cognitive Linguistics, according to which grammar is conceptually motivated. Attention is paid to the effects produced at the structural level by our varying conceptualizations of occurrences indicating the inception of an activity, with a special focus on the metonymic and metaphoric processes governing and affecting lexical-syntactic and semantic-pragmatic representations. begin verbs are observed in their ability to be integrated into constructions that appear to be regulated by a well-defined set of constraints.