Phrasal lexemes, compounds and phrases: A constructionist perspective

Abstract

The paper addresses the issue of the syntax-lexicon distinction from a Construction Grammar perspective. In the constructionist framework, the construction is the basic unit of linguistic analysis and there is no clear-cut division between lexical items and syntactic structures. Under this view, phenomena which are intermediate between syntax and the lexicon are expected. Apart from well-known cases such as idioms and compounds, there can be found in various languages a number of multi-word expressions that are not fully syntactic objects. I refer to these units as phrasal lexemes. The paper shows that, although phrasal lexemes follow the syntactic patterns of the language, they clearly have a lexical, naming function and, furthermore, they are more restricted compared to canonical phrases. This is exemplified by two case studies from Italian, namely noun-preposition-noun combinations and verb-conjunction-verb combinations. Construction Grammar not only offers efficient tools for describing these expressions, but also allows to treat phrasal lexemes as distinct with respect to both words and canonical phrases, without abandoning any of these notions.

A quantitative survey of N Prep N constructions in Romance languages and prepositional variability

“…Moyna ( In contrast, Masini (2009) does not include orthographically unified combinations, such as hierbabuena, but she adds constructions of the type N Prep V INF , such as salle à manger 'dining room'.…”

“…Bouvier, 2000;Buenafuentes de la Mata, 2006;Bisetto & Scalise, 2005;Lieber & Scalise, 2007;Masini, 2009;Masini & Scalise, 2012). These tests generally include criteria such as the modification of the constituents (e.g.…”

“…Currently, possible denominations include terms such as phrasal compounds (Bisetto & Scalise, 2005), syntactic compounds (Rio-Torto & Ribeiro, 2009), improper compounds (Kornfeld, 2009), phrasal lexemes (Masini, 2007(Masini, , 2009Masini & Scalise, 2012), "frozen" multiword units (Guevara, 2012), lexicalized syntactic constructions (Villoing, 2012), lexicalized phrases (Fradin, 2009), syntactic words (DiSciullo & Williams, 1987) or even syntactic syntagms or prepositional syntagms. The heterogeneous terminology goes along with a diverse delimitation and integration of different types of lexical and syntagmatic units.…”

“…From a construction grammar, respectively a construction morphology perspective, syntagmatic compounds and (partially) equivalent nominal syntagms are both considered as constructions, lying on a continuum between lexicon and morphosyntax (e.g. Masini 2009). Still, these studies also target a description and classification of different constructions, such as syntagmatic compounds, phrases and other types of compounds (Masini 2009).…”

Morphology of Direct Modification

“…The ambivalent status of attribute-head combinations has given birth to linguistic units intermediate between word and phrase, such as construct (Ralli and Stavrou (1998)), W + (Shimamura (2007), Kageyama (2009: sec. 28.2.1.1)), phrasal lexeme (Masini (2009)), and phrasal name (Booij (2010: ch. 7)).…”