Locative Alternation: A Lexical-Constructional Approach

Abstract

The aim of the present volume is two-fold: to give a coherent account of the locative alternation in English, and to develop a constructional theory that overcomes a number of problems in earlier constructional accounts. The lexical-constructional account proposed here is characterized by two main features. On the one hand, it emphasizes the need for a detailed examination of verb meanings. On the other, it introduces lower-level constructions such as verb-class-specific constructions and verb-specific constructions, and makes full use of these lower-level constructions in accounting for alternation phenomena. Rather than being a completely new version of construction grammar, the proposed lexical-constructional account is an automatic consequence of the basic tenet of constructional approaches as being usage-based. Table of contents Acknowledgements xiii?xiv Chapter 1. Introduction 1?10 Chapter 2. Two previous analyses 11?26 Chapter 3. A lexical-constructional account of the locative alternation 27?52 Chapter 4. More on the location-as-object variant 53?64 Chapter 5. Another look at putative non-alternating cases 65?86 Chapter 6. The locative alternation and verb meaning 87?100 Chapter 7. Types of verb meaning and types of alternation 101?118 Chapter 8. Further issues 119?132 Chapter 9. The locative alternation with verbs of removal 133?148 Chapter 10. Morphologically complex cases 149?168 Chapter 11. The locative alternation in Japanese 169?206 Chapter 12. Summary and conclusion 207?212 References 213?219 Notes 221?231 Index of names 233 Index of subjects 235 Index of verbs 237 Index of constructions 239