Constructions and Frames - Volume 17, Issue 2, 2025

In this paper, we provide an extensive analysis of the formal features displayed by Italian diminutives (especially allomorphy) by using surface alternation patterns automatically extracted from a dataset of base-diminutive pairs. Applying the theoretical tools provided by Construction Morphology (CxM), we take alternation patterns as a proxy for paradigmatic relations and locate them into separate hierarchies, exploiting the mechanism of multiple inheritance in order to express generalizations on different, mutually independent factors at play (i.e., lexical category, gender and final segment of the base and derivative, suffixes and antesuffixal phonological material displayed by the derivative). In doing so, we contribute to the exploration of the formal side of Italian diminutives, which have been so far addressed mostly from a semantic perspective, and to the refinement of the representation of formal phenomena such as allomorphy according to the CxM framework.

This paper relates two levels of constructional analysis in accounting for the functions of verb-forming suffixation in English: argument structure constructions and suffix schemas. The function of verbal-forming suffixation expressed by the four suffixes in English -ize, -ify, -en, and -ate, has been shown to exhibit a wide range of semantic categories that correspond to a number of argument structure constructions (Laws 2023). The current paper extends that semantic analysis. Firstly, by using a Construction Morphology approach (Booij 2010) to formalize the relationship between argument structure and suffix schemas proposed by Laws. Secondly, a hierarchical view of verb-class and subclass argument structure constructions is articulated by using semantic rules that involve selection and enrichment by coercion within suffix subschemas. Thirdly, it is demonstrated that the motivation for partially opaque complex verbs with these suffixes can be expressed by referring to paradigmatic relationships between these complex verbs and other related words.

In the generative literature, whether manner/result complementarity is correct or not has been hotly debated. This paper aims to shed new light on the debate by approaching manner/result complementarity from a different angle: polysemy. Our focal example is cut. A detailed frame-semantic analysis of its polysemy reveals that the manner of cut is to be identified as something like ‘to move quickly in a straight line’. Accordingly, what counts as the manner use and what counts as the result use share the same base, differing only in terms of profiling. Thus, manner/result complementarity simply does not make sense.

This study examines the theoretical status as well as the quantitative distribution of subjects with Definite Null Instantiation (DNI) readings in Standard British English, Hong Kong English, and Singapore English from the perspective of Usage-based Construction Grammar. Following an extensive review of previous theoretical treatments, I propose an alternative formalization of DNI as a both schematic and semantically rich construction. Based on spoken data from the International Corpus of English, random forests and logistic regression models were then fitted to complement the theoretical model of DNI with distributional data, taking into account both intra- and extra-linguistic predictors. The models reveal significant differences between L1- and L2-usage; the extent of these constructional reconfigurations is best explained by a combination of substrate influence and the socio-cognitive stability of the L2-varieties.