The present analysis is grounded in the belief that linguists, when describing a language, should aim for a full and comprehensive coverage. Talmy’s (1985, 2000) influential two-way typology, verb-framed vs. satellite-framed patterns, represents the preferred option here for the encoding of motion events cross-linguistically, but does not cover other peripheral uses that a language may show. This paper provides evidence for the growing assumption that languages may in fact show both encoding options (Beavers, 2008; Beaverset al., 2010; Filipovic, 2007; Iacobini and Masini, 2006, 2007; Fortis, 2010, Croftet al., 2010,inter alia). The analysis of a large corpus sample of satellite-framed constructions shows that in Spanish this pattern is not only available but indeed is preferred under some circumstances. Previous assertions that Romance languages have poor lexical manner inventories and lack resultatives can help explain low productivity, but they do not argue against the existence of a satellite-framed encoding choiceper se. By analysing naturally occurring constructions in their contexts, I will outline the pragmatic conditions that compensate for lexical and aspectual limitations. When the resultative element (change of location) is a default inference, it can be lexicalized.
The English progressive construction is thriving. Even stative verbs, traditionally considered incompatible with the be+- ing form, are being increasingly used in the progressive. To fully understand these emerging uses of the so-called “progressive states,” we must consider the syntactic elements of the construction and the meaning and pragmatics of the so-called “stative” verb. In this paper, I perform a large-scale corpus analysis of love in the progressive (e.g., “I’m loving your blog!”) to investigate the new functions of this construction. My data confirm a tendency toward colloquialization (Mair & Hundt 1995; Mair 1997; Smitterberg 2005; Leech et al. 2009; Collins 2013; Levin 2013) and suggest an ongoing shift toward a more grammatical status. The core phenomenal meaning of the progressive construction and its heavy reliance on contextual information promotes the extension of the be- loving construction to a greater number of contexts and functions, including more subjective readings, which is missing in the corresponding non-progressive construction.
This paper examines resulting objects in English and Spanish. Fillmore's (1968) concept of effected object, e.g. He built the table has been extended to include certain resulting objects which are not sub categorized by their verbs: He kicked a hole in the door, She smiled her thanks or They pushed their way through the crowd. These constructions, we argue, are formed by fusing two semantic predicates into one: the object expresses a result while the verb designates the means by which the intended result is achieved. An analysis of corpus examples demonstrates that they are neither totally lexicalized nor regular productive patterns. The intermediate lexicalized position in question is due to a gradual metaphoric process found in this English construction, a process not allowed in Spanish. The paper concludes that the inability of Spanish to fuse two semantic predicates in this lexically unfilled resulting construction, which works independently of the particular lexical items that instantiate it, may be a consequence of the rigidity of its lexical items, which are strongly marked by morphology. The lack of inflectional information of most English words, on the contrary, confers more grammatical power to the construction.
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