Lexical restrictions on grammatical relations in voice and valency constructions

Lier, Eva van; Messerschmidt, Maria

doi:10.1515/stuf-2022-1047

Cited by 4 publications

References 60 publications

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The Constructicon

Diessel

2023

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It is one of the central claims of construction grammar that constructions are organized in some kind of network, commonly referred to as the constructicon. In the classical model of construction grammar, developed by Berkeley linguists in the 1990s, the constructicon is an inheritance network of taxonomically related grammatical patterns. However, recent research in usage-based linguistics has expanded the classical inheritance model into a multidimensional network approach in which constructions are interrelated by multiple types of associations. The multidimensional network approach challenges longstanding assumptions of linguistic research and calls for a reorganization of the constructivist approach. This Element describes how the conception of the constructicon has changed in recent years and elaborates on some central claims of the multidimensional network approach.

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The Constructicon

Diessel

2023

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How do middle voice markers and valency reducing constructions interact? Typological tendencies and diachronic considerations

Inglese

2022

Folia Linguistica

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Middle voice markers are highly polyfunctional items that, among other things, also perform a range of valency-changing operations such as anticausativization and reflexivization. Typological research has shown that individual markers display a great deal of variation with respect to their inventory of functions. Explaining this variation remains a key question that a comprehensive typology of middle markers needs to address. We now know that only a sub-set of the possible polyfunctionality patterns is actually attested and that existing patterns often represent the result of specific grammaticalization processes. In this paper, I explore yet another possible factor, that is, the interaction between middle markers and other valency-changing constructions within the same language. Based on a study of 129 middle-marking languages, I single out two recurrent patterns, that is, complementarity and competition, and argue that their study offers crucial insights in explaining the synchronic polyfunctionality of middle markers.

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Restrictions on past-tense passives in Late Modern Danish

Gregersen

2023

Open Linguistics

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This article investigates a case of lexical restrictions on a voice construction, specifically Danish past-tense passives. Present-Day Danish has both a periphrastic and an inflectional passive construction, but in the past tense, most ablaut (strong) verbs cannot form the inflectional passive (e.g. ∗ \ast skreves ‘was written’, ∗ \ast bares ‘was carried’). Various explanations for these restrictions have been proposed in the literature, but their historical background has not been investigated in any detail. This article focusses on the passive restrictions in Late Modern Danish, using various sources mainly from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It is shown that while lexical restrictions on the past-tense s-passive are already mentioned in eighteenth and nineteenth-century grammars, the grammaticality of the individual forms has changed; for instance, the now obsolete form skreves ‘was written’ is attested in several Late Modern Danish sources. Furthermore, the primary sources differ greatly with respect to their use of the passive in the past tense. I suggest that sociolinguistic variables, such as level of education and formality of the texts, must be taken into account when trying to explain the development of the Danish passive, and that the lexical restrictions on past-tense s-passives may in fact be a side effect of standardization in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

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Lexical restrictions on grammatical relations in voice and valency constructions

Cited by 4 publications

References 60 publications

The Constructicon

The Constructicon

How do middle voice markers and valency reducing constructions interact? Typological tendencies and diachronic considerations

Restrictions on past-tense passives in Late Modern Danish

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