Grain size issues in constructicon building – and how to address them

Novel formats of construction-based description hold great potential for phenomena that fall through the cracks in traditional kinds of linguistic reference works. On the example of German verb argument structure constructions with a prepositional object, we demonstrate that a construction-based description of such phenomena is superior to existing lexicographic and grammaticographic treatments, but that it also poses a number of new problems. The most fundamental of these relates to the fact that construction-based analyses can be proposed on different levels of abstraction. We illustrate pertinent problems relating to the precise identification of constructional form and meaning and suggest a multi-layered descriptive format for web-based electronic reference constructica that can accommodate these challenges. Semantically, the proposed solution integrates both lumping and splitting perspectives on constructional grain size and permits users to flexibly zoom in and out on individual elements in the resource. Formally, it can capture variation in the number and marking of realised arguments as found in e.g. passives and transitivity alternations. Aspects of the theoretical controversy between Construction Grammar and Valency Theory are addressed where relevant, but our focus is on questions of description and the practical implementation of construction-based analyses in a suitable type of linguistic reference work.

Transitivity Alternations in North Sámi

In North Sámi, verbs that form transitivity alternation pairs are always distinguished morphologically. However, even if morphology is seen as a reflex of the syntax, the syntactic structure underlying transitive and intransitive verbs in North Sámi cannot be directly read off from the morphology. Since the verbalisers have vocalic phonological realisations with some roots but consonantal realisations with others, and since consonantal realisations give the verb an additional syllable, one can get the impression that in some transitivity alternation pairs the transitive verb is derived from the intransitive verb, whereas in other pairs it is the other way round, and that in still other pairs both verbs are derived from a common base. On closer inspection it nevertheless appears that while in some cases the transitive verb is actually formed from the intransitive verb by causativisation, in other cases the transitive verb differs from its intransitive counterpart only in involving a Voice head. In addition, the language has a type of intransitive verb that are marked anticausatives, meaning that they have an expletive Voice head. The main difference between these verbs and the corresponding transitive verbs is the properties of Voice.

Nominalization and the problem of indirect access: Evidence from Ossetian

We examine aspect, eventuality type and transitivity alternations in two types of nominalization in Ossetian, an Iranian language spoken in East Caucasus, focusing on how deverbal nominals differ from fully inflected clauses projected by the same VPs. The main empirical finding of the study is: nominalizations exhibit a wider range of syntactic and semantic possibilities than fully inflected clauses. The finite verb in Ossetian is either perfective or imperfective and shows Slavic-type aspectual composition, but (prefixless) nominalizations are aspectless and are associated with English-type aspectual composition. Besides, deverbal nominals allow for transitivity alternations even if a corresponding finite verb does not. Our account for the observed pattern is based on the hypothesis that in the course of derivation, the range of options available at the VP level is narrowed down by the elements of functional structure, specifically, Asp and T. We argue that the role of Asp is to impose a quantization requirement on its complement predicate, while T interacts with the structure generated at the VP level in determining transitivity of a clause. Nominals can be built before Asp and T are merged, hence the semantic contribution of those heads is not part of their meaning. It that way, nominals provide us with a more direct access to the true characteristics of the verb and its immediate projections at early stages of derivation.