Abstract In Dutch, verb-particle constructions are traditionally classified as either separable or inseparable. While the formal distinctions between these two types are straightforward, their semantic differences remain contested. This study investigates whether iconicity plays a role in distinguishing between separable and inseparable verbs. Using both a synchronic corpus study and an experimental forced-choice task using nonce verbs, we test two existing hypotheses that link separability to either concreteness (Booij, Geert. 2002. The morphology of Dutch . Oxford: Oxford University Press) or resultativity (Blom, Corrien. 2004. On the diachrony of complex predicates in Dutch: Predicative and nonpredicative preverbs. Journal of Germanic Linguistics 16. 1–75; Blom, Corrien. 2005. Complex predicates in Dutch: Synchrony and diachrony . Utrecht: Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics dissertation), two notions that can be associated with the principle of iconicity of independence (Haiman, John. 1983. Iconic and economic motivation. Language 59(4). 781–819). While our corpus-based analysis did not yield any significant patterns, the experimental results do reveal a significant relationship between concreteness and separability for the particles over- and om- . For the particle door- , the findings point to a slight tendency toward resultativity, but this effect did not reach statistical significance. Overall, the findings provide empirical support for the claim that language users associate morphosyntactic separability with iconic meaning distinctions.
Abstract This study investigates the processing relevance of mid-level constructions, partially schematic form–meaning pairings with semantically constrained slots, in English possessives. Drawing on usage-based Construction Grammar, we ask whether patterns such as [ my N kinship ] or [ her N bodypart ] give rise to processing effects not fully explained by semantic category membership or broader schemas like [POSS N] or [ my / her N]. We introduce mid-level chunk priming as a real-time diagnostic of constructional influence. In two primed lexical decision experiments (Stimulus Onset Asynchrony [SOA] = 200/300 ms, N = 646), primes varied by frame (bare noun, my -N, her -N) and semantic field (kinship, body part, furniture, abstract quality), followed by related or unrelated targets. We tested whether primes instantiating a hypothesized mid-level construction (e.g., my niece ) facilitated recognition of targets from the same construction-internal category (e.g., aunt ) beyond semantic priming or a general expectation for an upcoming noun. At 300 ms, [ my N kinship ] and [ her N bodypart ] yielded selective facilitation; no comparable effects appeared for furniture or abstract quality nouns, nor at 200 ms. These findings suggest that such mid-level patterns differ in processing relevance and that their effects take time to unfold during prime–target processing, consistent with a role for certain construction-specific generalizations in real-time use.
This article explores the evolution of colour terms in French, with a focus on the comparative analysis of brun, marron, and ch & acirc;tain, all of which fall within the spectrum of the colour brown in English. Within the framework of Schmid's Entrenchment-and-Conventionalization model, we investigate how the system of colour terms, as patterns of associations in the minds of speakers and communicative behaviours among the members of a speech community, shapes the meanings and usages of these terms over time. We claim that marron has emerged as an all-purpose and denotatively focused expression, establishing it as a Basic Colour Term. Brun, by contrast, is characterized by its broad semantic scope which encompasses various hues and meanings, but it lacks the precise chromatic focus seen in marron.
Usage-based theories posit that first language (L1) and second language (L2) speakers recruit constructional usage patterns in language input as part of their linguistic knowledge. This study focused on L2 English speakers' knowledge of two near-synonymous constructions, let+V-2 and permit+V-2, which typically express permission. The study has two goals. First, we examined the extent to which linguistic factors predicting the use of these constructions in the British National Corpus (BNC) affected L2 speakers' constructional choices in a forced-choice task, in which they selected a preferred construction or indicated equal preference for both constructions to complete contextual sentences. Second, we explored how L2 proficiency mediated these effects. We used Bayesian multilevel logistic regression to determine key predictors of constructional choices in the BNC data and Bayesian multilevel ordinal regression to analyze forced-choice data. Participants were 46 L1 English speakers in the UK and 42 L1 Thai-L2 English graduate students in Thailand. The results showed that the corpus predictors impacted responses from both groups. L2 proficiency did not mediate these effects but was still influential. The findings support the cognitive plausibility of corpus model predictors and align with usage-based theories.
Palm-up (PU) is among the most frequent manual forms across signed languages, yet its functional range and form-function mapping remain poorly understood. This study presents a corpus-based analysis of PU in Chinese Sign Language (CSL), drawing on 793 tokens from 15.6 h of naturalistic interaction across three generations of signers. All tokens were coded for function, handshape, movement, clausal position, and non-manual features. PU in CSL is restricted to three functional domains: negation (61 %), discourse marking (28 %), and interrogation (11 %), which together account for 100 % of the corpus with no propositional functions attested. Each domain is associated with a stable bundle of formal features, forming a gradient from context-dependent discourse uses to morphologically bound affixal forms. Age-based analysis shows that the functional inventory is stable across cohorts while internal weighting has shifted, reflecting differential entrenchment consistent with ongoing grammaticalization. These findings support the view that PU is specialized for intersubjective meaning, managing cognitive coordination between signer and addressee, and that this specialization reflects both the iconic, addressee-directed properties of the open-palm form and the conventionalization history of individual signing communities.
There are two general views on the connection between language acquisition and change. Functional usage-based theories usually argue against children as agents of phonological and morphosyntactic changes. By contrast, formal rule-based accounts assume that incrementation of new variants in a linguistic community can be triggered by the acquisition process. In this paper, I argue that the latter point of view is reconcilable with a data-driven approach and is in fact corroborated by probabilistic language modelling. Using extensive corpus data of child speech and a new Bayesian model of collostructional analysis, I investigated how children learn construction-verb relations during the acquisition of English grammatical future. I hypothesize that this process includes the following developmental stages: (i) children learn which words their parents preferably use in certain constructions and reproduce these patterns, (ii) children introduce some innovations into the acquired system, and (iii) once their own preferences are established, children become less sensitive to the input from child-directed speech; as the new system grows more self-contained, further innovations become less likely. The innovation curve constructed by my model resembles the so-called "reverse-U model of incrementation" which suggests that incrementation of new variants in language can have its origin in the acquisition process.
The Mandarin dative alternation encompasses four constructions whose changing functions and driving forces of change have not been systematically addressed. Drawing on a large, richly annotated diachronic dataset of Chinese texts (1300s-2000s), this study traces how these constructions evolve, and how language internal and external factors interact to shape their trajectories. Using Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) and Lasso regression, we find that the two ditransitive constructions ([V yu/g & ecaron;i IO DO] and [V IO DO]) shift from attraction to differentiation, while the two prepositional dative constructions ([V DO yu/g & ecaron;i IO] and [yu/g & ecaron;i IO V DO]) develop from differentiation to attraction and likely substitution. Attraction might be driven by analogy owing to functional overlap, whereas differentiation arises from the interaction of structural, cognitive, and sociolinguistic forces, including iconicity, preverbal/postverbal ordering constraints, Chinese's shift from synthesis to analyticity, and disyllabification, as well as the Vernacular Movement. This study extends the scope of the present attraction-differentiation model by integrating socio-cultural (Vernacular Movement, regional dialect contact) and typological trends (analytic drift, disyllabification) into the explanation of constructional competition and change, and showing that attraction and differentiation are embedded in socio-historical ecologies, not just in internal constructional pressures. It also offers new insights into the adaptive dynamics of constructional networks. Methodologically, the integration of exploratory (MCA) and confirmatory (Lasso) techniques provides a replicable approach for uncovering emergent patterns in constructional change.
This article explores the cognitive foundations of Chinese writing by analyzing the earliest attestations on oracle bone and bronze inscriptions from the Late Shang (1250-1045 BCE) to the Western Zhou (1045-771 BCE) periods. Integrating palaeographic and cognitive perspectives, we show that metaphorical and metonymic devices of the visual type, through visual emphasis on key configurations (such as pars pro toto), conceptual extension of meaning, and organization of iconic core components, were crucial in shaping and anchoring the visual and semiotic architecture of the script. These cognitive mechanisms reveal a primacy of the visual structure of the script, supported by neuroscientific evidence of direct orthography-to-semantics mapping, with phonology acting only as a secondary refining mechanism. These findings challenge traditional phonocentric models of writing evolution and illustrate an internal developmental trajectory grounded on visual metaphor and metonymy that confirms, at last, the independent invention of Chinese writing.
Usage-based approaches to language acquisition emphasize the central role of input–output relationships in the gradual emergence of linguistic knowledge. Recent computational work has provided empirical support for this view by showing how network-based analyses can capture constructional patterns in child language. One such method is the Dynamic Network Model (DNM). However, it remains unclear whether these findings extend to bilingual acquisition, where differing input conditions across the two languages are expected to shape the formation of linguistic networks more visibly. To address this gap, the present study investigates two German–English bilingual children aged 2;03–3;11. Applying the DNM to both child-directed speech and children’s own utterances, we examine how constructional “pivots” emerge under bilingual input conditions and how they differ between individual children. Our results indicate that the DNM identifies informative clusters in the data, reflecting the language distribution in the input and thus provides a promising heuristic for advancing our understanding of bilingual first language acquisition.
In the Construction Grammar framework, grammatical knowledge is described as a network of related constructions. While usage-based language acquisition research has investigated the emergence of taxonomic relations and the development of abstract grammatical knowledge from concrete representations, less is known about the development of horizontal relations between constructions at the same level of abstraction. Horizontal relations may emerge between lower-level, lexically specific patterns of different constructions, supporting the acquisition of complex constructions by linking them to simpler forerunner constructions. This study investigates the development of horizontal relations between the ditransitive construction (e.g., I give you a book) and two related constructions, the reflexive ditransitive construction (e.g., I buy myself a book) and the reflexive construction (e.g., I blame myself) in the longitudinally sampled data of a German-speaking child. Evidence from the order of the emergence of these constructions, the development of pronoun frames, and the use of verb types in these pronoun frames suggests that shared lexical patterns at lower levels of abstraction serve as links between the constructions. The results indicate that horizontal relations may play a crucial role in language acquisition by facilitating the development of complex constructions from lexically specific patterns of previously established forerunner constructions.
Recurrent multiword units (RMUs) are central to language processing, yet their systematic identification and networked organization remain understudied. This study combines corpus-based and network-analytic methods to examine how RMUs contribute to the emergence of constructional schemas. Drawing on a 185-million-word corpus of Taiwan Mandarin, we pursue two aims. First, we propose a quantitative method for identifying cohesive RMUs based on word predictability in context. Second, we model RMUs as a network in which nodes represent RMUs and edges encode structural and semantic similarity, estimated with a state-of-the-art large language model. A comparison with a random sequence network confirms the non-random structure of the RMU network. Analysis of its topology reveals exemplar-based semantic groupings that support higher-level generalizations. These findings highlight RMUs as key building blocks in linguistic categorization, where subgroupings emerge through sequential lexical associations that underlie the formation of grammatical patterns and hierarchical structure.
Frame-relative fictive motion describes a linguistic phenomenon whereby the motion of an entity is communicated via the – fictive – motion of stationary background objects. For instance, a woman’s experience of riding on a fast train might be described as The trees rushed past her. Such fictive-motion constructions allow the addressee to see the point of view of a character in a narrative, but in sign languages, they perform additional tasks. Our quantitative study of fictive motion in narratives in German Sign Language (DGS) demonstrates how it allows signers to depict distance, speed, and point of view while circumventing constraints imposed by anatomy/physiology and phonology. Data from nine additional sign languages confirm this range of uses. In contrast to spoken languages, sign languages allow the combination of factive- and fictive-motion depiction in one sentence, posing problems for a purely morphological analysis of the movement parameter in classifier constructions. This work shows that both cognitive-perceptual and anatomical matters shape sign language grammars.
This study investigates metaphorical motion in modern Arabic fiction (1970–2022) to understand how motion verbs are selected and realized in abstract conceptual domains. While Arabic is traditionally classified as a verb-framed language, typically encoding path over manner, the research explores whether this typological tendency holds true for figurative language. Drawing on a 1.6-million-word corpus and integrating Talmy’s typology with a structurally enriched Conceptual Metaphor Theory, the study analyzes the distribution of manner and non-manner verbs across conceptual domains, metaphorical mappings, and underlying structural features like image schemas and experiential grounding. Findings reveal that while abstract domains (e.g., Time, Death) favor schematic, path-only expressions, sensorimotor domains (e.g., Physical Sensation, Emotion) frequently employ vivid, manner-rich verbs, especially for agentive or affectively salient metaphorical figures. Crucially, metaphorical mappings and their internal conceptual architecture – including image schema, figure–ground alignment, and experiential grounding – prove to be stronger predictors of verb choice than grammatical typology alone. This suggests that typological constraints can be overridden by the metaphor’s conceptual structure, particularly in metaphor-rich literary discourse. The study advocates for a shift from typological essentialism towards a cognitively informed model where metaphor structure primarily shapes motion rendering.
This study analyzes the English comparative alternation (morphological prouder and periphrastic more proud) with regard to adjective-specific variability. Substantial empirical evidence indicates that speakers redundantly represent both abstract schemas (e.g., ADJ + -er) and their specific instantiations (e.g., prouder) as symbolic units, which together constitute a network of constructions at different levels of schematicity. Against this background, we offer a re-analysis of data from (Hilpert, Martin. 2008. The English comparative - Language structure and use. English Language & Linguistics 12(3). 395–417), which yields new results on the basis of a mixed-effects (multi-level) model that incorporates individual adjectives as random effects. The results demonstrate robust lexical idiosyncrasies in this alternation. First, many adjectives exhibit tendencies that deviate from the general conditioning factors incorporated as fixed effects. Furthermore, frequency of adjectives in comparative forms positively correlates with the degree of skewness. In other words, the more an adjective is used in comparative forms, the stronger its preference becomes, regardless of the direction of the preference. These findings support the idea that competition between linguistic forms occurs across different levels of schematicity: at the schematic level, the competition between variants is governed by probabilistic factors, while at the lexically specific level, the conventionalization of concrete forms can override these factors.
Repeated comparatives joined by the conjunction and (for instance more and more, bigger and bigger, etc.) are used to express a gradually increasing/decreasing degree of quality or quantity. The repetition in these phrases reveals an even higher/lower degree of the quality or quantity than with a single comparative form. The aim of this study is to determine whether this gradation is associated with specific gesture sequences, whether the progressive aspect inherent in the construction's semantics is also expressed in the verb of the clause or in gesture, and finally whether the semantic prominence expressed in the phrase finds a correlation with prosodic emphasis or emphasis marked with the use of bodily behaviour like head and eyebrow movements. In the perspective of CxG, the study aims at exploring whether these forms are entrenched in usage as multimodal constructions and how speakers express gradation in space. Results show that although gestures and prosodic emphasis are not frequent enough to consider [COMP 1 and COMP 1] as a multimodal construction, some gesture patterns are certainly more frequent than others, especially the use of iconic gestures in sequences that match the verbal repetition of the comparative.
Language comprehension involves simulating event representations. However, previous research has primarily focused on discrete linguistic cues, paying little attention to how syntactic constructions influence experiential simulations. This study examines Mandarin Chinese ditransitive sentences that imply either of two transfer directions of entities: "giving" (transfer from the subject to the indirect object) and "receiving" (transfer from the indirect object to the subject). We engaged native Chinese participants in saccadic tasks in which they read ditransitive or static existential prime sentences (the preceding sentence), and then performed a target word (the following word) identification task. Experiments 1 and 2 investigated whether entity transfers in different directions are simulated. Results showed that participants responded faster when the transfer direction of the ditransitive prime sentences matched the location of the target object nouns, whereas no such difference was observed after static existential prime sentences. Experiment 3 replicated this pattern using pseudo-verb ditransitive constructions, indicating that simulation effects operate beyond specific verb semantics. These findings suggest that ditransitive constructions systematically trigger mental simulations with spatial specificity, activating implicit directional processing that facilitates identification processes for spatially congruent targets. Our study sheds light on how constructional meanings learned through usage activate embodied cognition in language comprehension.
Synonymy avoidance has been a recent topic of theoretical contention in Construction Grammar. This paper defines, unpacks, and models the ‘principle of no equivalence’ previously sketched by Leclercq, Benoît & Cameron Morin. 2023. No equivalence: A new principle of no synonymy. Constructions 15. 1–16 to better account for this phenomenon of linguistic knowledge and use. First, we detail three domains of constructional function covered by the principle, namely semantic, pragmatic, and social meaning. We then delineate the scope of the principle as onomasiological usage competitions between syntagmatically interchangeable constructions. Following this, we computationally demonstrate the validity and accuracy of the principle in an agent-based simulation. In particular, we show that only two linguistic maxims, optimal expressivity and usage affecting grammar, are sufficient minimal conditions for the consistent emergence of no equivalence in a community of agents. We conclude on the generalisability of our results and the desirability of sophisticated computational methods for the sharpening of core tenets in theories of language such as Construction Grammar.
This psycholinguistic study investigates the effects of aspect (i.e., the grammatical distinction between progressive and simple) on the interpretation of English modals (epistemic versus deontic) with a view to gaining insights into the mental representation of modal constructions, specifically their schematicity degree and node structure. This overarching question is addressed through an experiment focusing on the necessity modals must, should, and have to and measuring word-by-word reaction times in self-paced reading (online processing) combined with decision times and forced choices for follow-up judgment questions (offline processing). The results show that, while the progressive is generally more inclined towards epistemic modality than the simple aspect in the offline task, the strength of this effect varies across different modals in online processing, thereby demonstrating their different degrees of subjectivity. From a constructionist perspective, this suggests that some modals have developed mid-level constructional schemas for certain meanings and grammatical forms (e.g., [SBJ must be Ving]epistemic), while others are processed via higher-level schemas (e.g., [SBJ Vmod be Ving]epistemic). This demonstrates that grammatical-aspectual context is a crucial meaning-defining component within constructional networks that contributes to the formation of mid-level constructions for certain modals.
In Dutch verb clusters consisting of an auxiliary and a past participle, both orders of participle and auxiliary are fine. This distinguishes auxiliaries from copular verbs combined with an adjectival participle, for which only the [Part + V]-order is straightforwardly possible. Reference grammars claim that for the resultative krijgen-construction, the order krijgen ‘to get’ + participle is ungrammatical and that, thus, the construction is adjectival. In this paper we first show that the [Aux + Part]-order is actually used in resultative krijgen-clusters in real-language corpora, albeit infrequently so, and that, in grammaticality judgements, language users find it quite acceptable. More crucially, we present evidence that the order in resultative krijgen-clusters is affected by constructional contamination (Pijpops, Dirk & Freek Van de Velde. 2016. Constructional contamination: How does it work and how do we measure it? Folia Linguistica 50(2). 543–581). On the one hand, other auxiliary constructions with krijgen contaminate the resultative construction, resulting in sporadic occurrences of [Aux + Part]-orders. On the other hand, we show that resultative infinitive clusters, which are historically very strongly attracted to the [Part + Aux]-order, occur significantly more often than with other auxiliary constructions and hence promote the [Part + Aux]-order in non-infinitive clusters, thus preventing a full-fledged alternation. In this way, usage tendencies explain the observed word order facts better than postulated grammatical properties such as the alleged “adjectival” status of resultative krijgen. Additionally, we show that constructional contamination does not only affect language production, but also acceptability judgements.
The conceptual characterization of word classes has been a central topic in cognitive linguistics since its inception. However, compared to major classes such as nouns and verbs, minor word classes have received less attention. This study discusses the conceptual basis of prepositional phrases, especially focusing on prepositional complements of prepositions (hereafter, PCOPs) – a syntactically irregular but widely-used structure in English (e.g., from within the company, from behind the table, since before the war). The aims of this paper are threefold: (1) to demonstrate the relative prevalence of PCOPs in English through an extensive study of the British National Corpus; (2) to identify two distinct functions of PCOPs – the Emphasis Type and the Search-domain Type; and (3) to characterize the conceptual basis of PCOPs, highlighting the conceptual similarities between PCOPs and (countable) noun phrases, and thus to explain the occurrence of PCOPs in slots where we normally find noun phrases. We also show how the analysis could be extended to another type of nominal prepositional phrases, i.e., prepositional subjects. By explaining the distribution of PCOPs (and prepositional subjects) in this manner, we underscore the necessity of a conceptual characterization of word classes in linguistic research.
