The interaction of polysemy and complementation: a case study

The combination of a diachronic and a synchronic approach has proved to be very fruitful in recent linguistic research. Whereas until relatively recently historical studies had been ignored by the most prominent linguistic theories, such as Government and Binding (GB), Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG), and Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG), which carried out their analyses from an exclusively synchronic point of view, it is now accepted that only by reference to earlier historical periods can we find an explanation to the present state of the language. Sweetser, Traugott, Hopper and Bybee among others have emphasized the importance of diachronic studies. The need of a historical perspective is especially evident in the study of polysemy, because it can bring to light not only the interrelationship of the different subsenses, which are apparently unrelated from a synchronic point of view, but also the importance of the complementation in determining and disambiguating its main senses.

Cultural Critique, 2007

This paper addresses the diachronic development of two periphrastic constructions in Old and Middle English, He waes huntende and He waes on huntunge, into the progressive in Modern English. The literature on the origin of the progressive offers several hypotheses for explaining the coalescence of the two constructions. This paper offers a new hypothesis based on the consideration that the first construction, consisting of be + present participle, developed into the progressive, and that the second construction, consisting of be + on + verbal noun, was originally a construction denoting absence. The evidence for the coalescence comes from a partial overlap in the semantics of the progressive and the absentive, and the fact that progressives often originate from spatial constructions.

Studia Anglica Posnaniensia, 2014

In this paper, I shall examine the complements of perception verbs in Old English involving a noun phrase and a present participle. What kind of perception is described by these structures? Do they evoke the perception of an event, or that of an entity? It will be shown here that there are good reasons to believe that an NP + present participle sequence could function as the equivalent of the traditional “AcI” construction when used with perception verbs. I shall also attempt to determine to what extent the syntax of this construction matches the semantics: is the internal argument of the perception verb the NP alone, or some kind of combination of the NP and the participle? This question is particularly interesting in the light of Declerck’s (1982) remarks on participle perception verb complements in modern English. Finally, I shall take a look at morphological parametres: sometimes the participle inflects to agree with the NP, whereas on other occasions it does not. What might the...

Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, 1979

Folia Linguistica Historica, 2009

Applying the framework of Radical Construction Grammar to diachronic phenomena, the present paper examines Copular Constructions in Old and Middle English, with special attention to the loss of the Copula weorðan ‘become’. First we reconstruct the extension of the OE Verbs is, beon, weorðan and becuman to various types of Copular Constructions. We further argue that schematic Copular Constructions emerge in overlapping usage areas resulting from these developments, in which abstraction is made of the Copulas’ particular aspectual semantics. These schematic Copular Constructions in turn undergo some changes themselves. In Middle English a Passive Construction developed out of an original Copula Construction involving Adjectival Participles. However, the constructional profile of weorðan comprised an association between Participial and Adjectival Subject Complements much stronger than in other copulas, and this conflicted with this development, with the archaisization of weorðan as a result. This process of archaisization was further strengthened by the takeover of Weak Verbs in -ian (type ealdian ‘become old’) by new copulas like becuman. In general, we show how diachronic construction grammar might account for the loss of a function word otherwise difficult to account for.

Evgeniy G. Filimonov. Dual Semantics of the Latin inter(-). Philologia Classica 2019, 14(1), 84–88, 2019

The paper analyzes the function of the prefix inter-, which allows to reduce the 15 main senses (described in the OLD) to the basic two. The sense of the prefix depends on the situation described with the compound: a) the situation of dividing space: ‘a border between two or more points disconnecting them’ (inter hostes flumen erat). Most of the verbs in this group are transitive and accompanied by a countable object: intercalare ‘to insert a day or month into the calendar’; interloqui ‘to interrupt, to speak between’. b) the situation of connected space: ‘all the space (or time) between two points connecting them within the same situation’ (inter arma tacent musae). The majority of these verbs are transitive and are used with an uncountable object: interbibere ‘to drink dry, drain’; interlegere ‘to pick off here and there, to thin’. Some verbs can have either sense depending on the context (interesse: a. ‘to lie between, intervene’ modo inter me atque te murus intersit (Cic. Cat. 1. 10.), b. ‘to be in the company of, to take part’ legit scripta de se carmina, legit historias, et posteritati suae interfuit (Plin. Ep. 2.1.2). On the basis of this classification principle four verbs are analyzed in which the meaning of the prefix inter- is unclear: interire, interficere, interimere, intellegere. Three of them have the prefix inter– in the sense of division and form pairs of compounds (an intransitive verb of state interire — a verb of action interimere, interficere). The verb intellegere has two senses as different stages of its semantic development: 1. ‘to choose between’, ‘to notice, discern’ and 2. ‘to collect together (all the parts)’ > ‘to grasp, understand (the whole picture of an object or a situation)’.

Probus: International Journal of Latin and Romance Linguistics. 25(2): 1-39., 2013

Nodes and Networks in Diachronic Construction Grammar, 2020

The network of prepositional secondary predicate constructions has undergone massive changes throughout the history of English. While in Old English forms marked with “to” (e.g. “crown someone to king”) used to dominate, forms marked with “as” dominate in Present-Day English (e.g. “crown someone as king”). The present paper studies the changes in the network of such constructions marked with “as”, “for”, “into”, and “to” in the Middle English period by analysing changes in frequency and semantic similarity. A corpus study in the PPCME2 was conducted, based on a Distributional Semantic Model. The results indicate a sudden turning point in the early Middle English period whereby "to"-marked forms quickly lost their importance. In addition to providing insights into the (changing) nature of polysemic links and allostructions, the description of constructions copied from Anglo-Norman introduces a language contact component to the framework of Diachronic Construction Grammar.

2001