Constructions and Frames - Volume 5, Issue 2, 2013

This paper looks at the ways of refining the technique of collostructional analysis, and more precisely multiple distinctive collexeme analysis, by taking word senses into account. It presents the main results of a sense-based multiple distinctive collexeme analysis of the non-finite verb slot of English periphrastic causative constructions and shows how these results compare with those of a lemma-based analysis of the same data. The study reveals that the different senses of a verb tend to be attracted to different constructions and that integrating sense into the analysis not only makes the interpretation of the data more straightforward and more reliable, but also provides information that would otherwise have to be obtained by means of other techniques.

Translation can generally be seen as a task in which the meaning of the original should be preserved as far as possible. This paper formulates the preservation of meaning in terms of the primacy of the frame hypothesis: ideally, the frame of the original is matched by the frame of the translation. I investigate one factor overriding this principle in translations between English and German through the examination of two grammatical constructions, one in English, one in German, which are not commonly available in the other language. Picking a construction comparable in function in the target language leads to frame shifts. In addition to highlighting the interplay between construction and frame choice, the paper explores how frame-to-frame relations can be used to describe the semantic relatedness of original and translation in cases of frame divergences. Theoretical and methodological questions and implications of the cross-lingual application of frame relations are discussed at the end.

In the present paper the phenomenon of translation shifts is discussed within the theoretical framework of Construction Grammar. It is suggested that viewing linguistic structures of various sizes and levels of abstractness as constructions allows us to better grasp the complexities of the phenomenon of translation shifts. The methodology of studying construction shifts is applied to the analysis of the construction [Subject Verb Direct Object] for the translation direction English-German. The quantitative results have been obtained using the parallel CroCo corpus.

This article provides an analysis of Korean adverbial case constructions from a Cognitive Grammar viewpoint. I argue that nominative-marked adverbials are the result of the setting-subject construal of the adverbial. Accusative-marked adverbials, then, are construed as a location, which is part of the setting. I also argue that the notion of setting-subject is associated with the imperfective construal of a given situation in conjunction with the subject’s lower degree of topicality. Conversely, the locational interpretation of an adverbial is tied to the perfective construal of a situation and a higher degree of topicality of the subject.