Constructions and Frames - Online First

We argue for the lexicon-grammar continuum by looking into the separability of Persian complex predicates, an open class of verb constructions for which it has been argued that the components are either separable or inseparable. We contend that separability is best described as a scalar rather than an all-or-nothing phenomenon. Our analysis of zadan ‘to hit’ within the framework of Construction Grammar yields a semantic description of zadan complex predicates as a radial category. We measure both the frequency of zadan complex predicates and their rate of separation based on corpus attestations. We explore the relationships between meaning, frequency, and separation rates and the implications of our findings for cognitive linguistics and construction grammar. We find that semantic compositionality and lower frequency are associated with a higher rate of separation. Overall, our data points towards separability as a continuum rather than a binary opposition.

Creation verbs are traditionally divided into at least two classes: verbs of creation of an entity and verbs of image creation. Such classification analyses face two important problems: how to account for the common creation semantics and how to explain the behavior of verbs which can describe either type of creation. Assuming a cognitive-semantic approach and based on Brazilian Portuguese data, this paper proposes that types of creation are different construals of a unified creation event, represented as a frame-based causal chain. Thus, the common creation semantics is defined as a causal chain, which is evoked by creation verbs in general, and the distinct properties of different classes of creation verbs follow from profiling of specific parts of that frame via argument structure constructions. Some creation verbs are lexically constrained as to how they construe the creation event, but others have the potential to construe the event in different ways.

This study proposes an extended FrameNet approach for the description of connectives. The meanings of connectives are described with respect to the two frames evoked by each of the conjoined clauses, whose combinational patterns are termed “frame valences”. Taking the English polysemous connective while as an example, features of each meaning were statistically analyzed based on the frame valences using correspondence analysis. The correspondence analysis has revealed that in the contrastive use the same frame tends to be evoked in the conjoined clauses. To test this result, this study has further examined the contrastive connective whereas, which has firmly supported the results of the correspondence analysis and shown that frames that are closely related via ‘frame-to-frame relations’ can be evoked in the contrastive uses. These findings, in turn, corroborate the validity of the frame-based approach for the description of connectives.