Usage-based, constructivist approaches to first language acquisition assume that children’s linguistic abilities emerge in a piecemeal fashion through interaction with mature language users (Tomasello 2003). In spite of the fact that both formal and functional characteristics of the linguistic constructions involved are thought to be of importance in this process, most previous studies have focused exclusively on form. The current study aims at exploring the contribution of functional factors in the learning of a subset of yes-no questions: providing an in-depth analysis of the emergence of Can -person-process?-constructions in a high-density Childescorpus of a boy learning English (Lieven et al. 2009), it is shown that functional factors need to be considered in order to be able to account for the developmental path. It is suggested that we need to re-evaluate the relationship between (formal as well as functional) frequency, salience, and entrenchment and the ways in which these aspects interact during the language learning process. This has important implications for future research on language development as well as for claims about the mental organization of linguistic knowledge within CxG and Cognitive Linguistics more generally.

英語動詞take有許多不同的語意，而這些語意之間則存有密切的關聯性。藉著分析take的各種語意，可以讓我們更深入地瞭解多義詞現象。本論文藉助認知語言學派的語意架構理論和構造語法理論，深入分析了take出現在不同句法結構中所產生的不同語意及這些語意彼此之間的關聯性。研究結果發現︰當take出現在及物結構中(Caused-Affected Construction)時，透過語言使用者在觀點上不同的選擇(Windowing of Attention)，會衍生出四個基本語意，分別為選擇、拿取、消耗、及狀態改變。此外，take可以與七類型的介詞片語共同表達出七種不同的語意功能。最後，take還可以與介詞組合成片語動詞，產生特殊的語意，為使動結構的邊緣衍生用法。 / The English verb take attests a wide range of meanings and provides rich resources for the exploration of polysemy. Attempting to examine how the various senses of take are related to one another, this thesis investigates the meaning relatedness under the framework of Frame Semantics, which postulates that a conceptual representation is required to fully capture verb semantics (Fillmore and Atkins 1992, 2000), and Construction Grammar, which holds that constructions found in language are the basic units of language and that verb semantics interacts with constructions, thus yielding different meanings (Goldberg 1995, Jackendoff 1997). A careful examination of data reveals that take derives a variety of senses both from its interaction with the semantics of other components in the constructions and from different windowings of take’s conceptual frame. When integrated with the Caused-Affected Construction, the take construction acquires the senses of choosing, grabbing, consuming, and changing. When integrated with the Caused-Motion Construction, the take construction is found to be prototypically followed by prepositional phrases exhibiting seven semantic functions. When occurring in less prototypical cases of the Caused-Motion Construction, the meaning of the take construction blends into the meaning of the preposition following right behind it.

This thesis presents a description and analysis of non-canonical case-marking of core arguments in Lithuanian. It consists of an introduction and six articles, providing historical and/or contrastive perspective to this issue. More specifically, using data from Lithuanian dialects, Old Lithuanian and other languages such as Icelandic, Latin and Finnic for comparison, the thesis examines the development and current state of non-canonical case-marking of core arguments in Lithuanian The present work draws on empirical findings and theoretical considerations to investigate non-canonical case-marking, language variation and historical linguistics. Special attention is paid to the variation in the case-marking of body parts in pain verb constructions, where an accusative-marked body part is used in Standard Lithuanian, and alongside, a nominative-marked body part in Lithuanian dialects. A common objective of the first three articles is to clarify and to seek a better understanding for the reasons for this case variation. The research provides evidence that nominative is the original case-marking of body parts in pain specific construction, i.e. with verbs, with the original meaning of pain, like skaudėti and sopėti ‘hurt, feel pain’. On the contrary, in derived pain constructions, i.e. with verbs like gelti with the original meaning of ‘sting, bite’ and diegti with the original meaning ‘plant’, accusative is the original case-marking of body parts. This accusative is explained by means of an oblique anticausative and it is argued furthermore that it is extended into the pain specific construction. The three last articles focus on the comparative and contrastive perspective. Their main results include the following: Lithuanian and Icelandic differ considerably in the frequency of using accusative vs. dative marking on the highest ranked argument. Accusative is more frequently used in Lithuanian while dative is dominant in Icelandic. The semantic fields of the dative subject construction have remained very stable, suggesting that the dative subject construction is inherited. It has, however, become productive in the history of Germanic, Baltic and Slavic. The similarities in Finnic and Baltic partiality-based object and subject-marking systems are due to Baltic influence. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 1: In press. Paper 2: In press. Paper 3: In press.</p>

O presente trabalho propõe uma análise funcionalista-cognitivista sobre construções imperativas do Português Brasileiro (PB). Ao contrário do que ocorre na tradição gramatical, não nos limitamos a analisar um grupo pré-definido de formas verbais, optando então por tratar de um conjunto mais amplo de atos de fala diretivos. Para tanto, amparamos nossa investigação em dados concretos extraídos de obras cinematográficas , o que explica em parte o caráter funcionalista do trabalho, uma vez que abordamos a língua como um instrumento de interação social (cf. TRASK, 2004). Já o aspecto cognitivista subjaz nossa principal hipótese, segundo a qual a imperatividade se constrói como um evento metaforicamente estruturado (cf. LAKOFF, 1992), cujas bases principais são as categorias cognitivas FORÇA e MOVIMENTO. Procuramos então contribuir com os estudos do PB defendendo que as construções imperativas são um conjunto variado de artefatos simbólicos por meio dos quais um enunciador-antagonista pode aplicar determinada força sobre um enunciatário-agonista cf. TALMY (2000) , pelo que postulamos que IMPERATIVIDADE É FORÇA. / This paper proposes a cognitive-functionalist analysis about imperative constructions in Brazilian Portuguese (BP). Different from what happens in grammatical tradition, we do not just look at a pre-defined group of verb forms, opting for dealing with a broader set of directive speech acts. To do so, we hold our study on evidence extracted from cinematographic , which partly explains the functionalist character of the work, as we approach the language as a social interaction tool (cf. TRASK, 2004). However, the cognitive aspect underlies our main hypothesis, according to which the imperative is constructed as a metaphorically structured event, whose main bases are the cognitive categories FORCE and MOVEMENT. Then we seek to contribute with the BPs researches securing that the imperative constructions are an assorted ensemble of symbolic artifacts, through which an antagonist-enunciator can apply certain force on an enunciatee-agonist cf. TALMY (2000), therefore we postulate that IMPERATIVE IS FORCE.

A presente pesquisa está inserida nos estudos com base na Gramática de Construções Cognitiva, e tem por objetivo realizar um mapeamento sintático-semântico do verbo stellen, com ênfase em seu uso como verbo-suporte. Para a realização desse mapeamento, analisou-se contextos de uso do verbo stellen em que ele ocorre como verbo pleno, como integrante de construções com verbo-suporte e de outros fraseologismos que se inserem nas fronteiras com essas construções. A análise dos dados está baseada na abordagem construcional de Goldberg (1995 e 2006), para quem construções são definidas como pareamentos entre forma e significado. A autora se foca em um tipo específico de construção as chamadas construções de estrutura argumental que seriam, por si só, portadoras de sentido, independentemente de outros itens lexicais que compõem as sentenças. No que diz respeito à análise da estrutura argumental das construções com verbo-suporte (doravante CVS), levamos em conta os trabalhos de Wittenberg e Piñango (2011), Rostila (2011) e Wittenberg (2016). A metodologia adotada baseou-se na elaboração de um corpus composto por informações retiradas de entradas de dicionários em língua alemã e por excertos de textos retirados do Arquivo Wikipedia Artikel und Diskussionen, fornecido pelo banco dados COSMAS II, do Institut für Deutsche Sprache, da Universidade de Mannheim. Os resultados obtidos com o estudo aqui realizado confirmam o princípio da economia semântica postulado pela Gramática de Construções, já que os sentidos atribuídos tradicionalmente ao verbo stellen, são, na verdade, resultado da instanciação do verbo nas construções argumentais que ele pode integrar, são elas, a Construção de Movimento Causado, a Construção Transitiva, a Construção Resultativa e a Construção Bitransitiva. Os resultados da análise das CVS deverbais indicam que o sentido dessas construções é influenciado pela estrutura argumental tanto do verbo-suporte, quanto do componente nominal, em um processo de partilha de argumentos. Além disso, foram encontradas no corpus CVS formadas por stellen que, por serem altamente lexicalizadas, são consideradas unidades armazenadas como um todo no Léxico. / This master\'s dissertation belongs to the studies of Cognitive Construction Grammar and aims to demonstrate a sintatic and semantic investigation of the light verb stellen. Thus, the verb was analyzed in contexts, in which the verb stellen is a fullverb and as a component of light verb constructions and other phraseologies, which are considered as borderline cases of such constructions. This analysis was carried out following Goldberg\'s perspective (1995). The author assumes that the constructions are defined as form-meaning pairs and are considered as the fundamental unit of grammar. Goldberg argues, that constructions, disregarding their verbal meaning, are the significant components because of the Argument Structure. The analysis of the Argument Structure of the light verb constructions is based on the scientific researches of Rostila (2011), Wittenberg and Piñango (2011) and Wittenberg (2016).After all, this analysis is described as qualitative and based on corpus. For the creation of the corpus, examples were used from German dictionaries as well as dictionaries for German as a foreign language. Besides, references of the archive Wikipedia Artikel und Diskussionen of the IDS COSMAS II database of texts of the University of Mannheim were collected.The results confirm the principle of the semantic economy because the meanings, that are traditionally assing to the verb stellen, can be understood as the result of the relations between verb and four argument structure construciotns: The Caused Motion Construction, the Transitive Construction, the Resultative Construction and the Ditransitive Construction. Hence, the results of the analysis of non-deverbal light verb constructions suggest that both the argument structure of the light verb and the argument structure of the nominal element influence the entire meaning of the construction within a process of argument-sharing. In the corpus, there were other examples of light verb constructions with the verb stellen, of which its nominal component had no separate Argument Structure. Those light verb constructions are highly lexicalized and therefore included in the lexicon as a whole.

O presente trabalho propõe uma análise funcionalista-cognitivista sobre construções imperativas do Português Brasileiro (PB). Ao contrário do que ocorre na tradição gramatical, não nos limitamos a analisar um grupo pré-definido de formas verbais, optando então por tratar de um conjunto mais amplo de atos de fala diretivos. Para tanto, amparamos nossa investigação em dados concretos extraídos de obras cinematográficas , o que explica em parte o caráter funcionalista do trabalho, uma vez que abordamos a língua como um instrumento de interação social (cf. TRASK, 2004). Já o aspecto cognitivista subjaz nossa principal hipótese, segundo a qual a imperatividade se constrói como um evento metaforicamente estruturado (cf. LAKOFF, 1992), cujas bases principais são as categorias cognitivas FORÇA e MOVIMENTO. Procuramos então contribuir com os estudos do PB defendendo que as construções imperativas são um conjunto variado de artefatos simbólicos por meio dos quais um enunciador-antagonista pode aplicar determinada força sobre um enunciatário-agonista cf. TALMY (2000) , pelo que postulamos que IMPERATIVIDADE É FORÇA. / This paper proposes a cognitive-functionalist analysis about imperative constructions in Brazilian Portuguese (BP). Different from what happens in grammatical tradition, we do not just look at a pre-defined group of verb forms, opting for dealing with a broader set of directive speech acts. To do so, we hold our study on evidence extracted from cinematographic , which partly explains the functionalist character of the work, as we approach the language as a social interaction tool (cf. TRASK, 2004). However, the cognitive aspect underlies our main hypothesis, according to which the imperative is constructed as a metaphorically structured event, whose main bases are the cognitive categories FORCE and MOVEMENT. Then we seek to contribute with the BPs researches securing that the imperative constructions are an assorted ensemble of symbolic artifacts, through which an antagonist-enunciator can apply certain force on an enunciatee-agonist cf. TALMY (2000), therefore we postulate that IMPERATIVE IS FORCE.

La présente recherche s’interroge sur la présumée dichotomie entre les alternances et les généralisations de surface dans le cadre théorique de la grammaire de constructions. Plus précisément,l’objectif de cette thèse est ternaire. Par l’analyse attentive d’une grande quantité de données, nous faisons une description détaillée de l’alternance causative en anglais (The fabric stretched vs. Joan stretched the fabric), nous proposons une méthode qui permet de mesurer la force d’alternance des verbes ainsi que la quantité de sens partagée entre les deux constructions, et, enfin, nous montrons que si l’on veut rendre compte des contraintes au niveau de la construction, l’on doit alors prendre en compte les généralisations de plus bas niveau, telles que les interactions entre le verbe et ses arguments dans le cadre de chaque construction. Afin d’ajouter au débat entre alternance et généralisations de surface, nous proposons une analyse détaillée des deux constructions qui forment l’alternance causative en anglais : la construction intransitive non-causative d’une part et la construction transitive causative de l’autre.Notre but est de mesurer la quantité de sens partagée par les deux constructions mais aussi démontrer en quoi ces deux constructions diffèrent. Dans cette optique, nous prenons en compte trois éléments: construction, verbe et thème (i.e. l’entité sujette à l’évènement dénoté par le verbe). Nous utilisons la sémantique distributionnelle pour la mesure des similarités sémantiques entre les divers thèmes employés avec chaque verbe dans chaque construction dans notre corpus.Ce groupement sémantique met en lumière les différents sens verbaux employés avec chaque construction et nous permet d’établir des généralisations quant aux contraintes qui s’appliquent au thème dans chaque construction. / The present research takes issue with the supposed dichotomy between alternations on the onehand and surface generalisations on the other, within the framework of construction grammar.More specifically the aim of this thesis is threefold. Through the careful analysis of a largedataset, we aim to provide a thorough description of the causative alternation in English (Thefabric stretched vs. Joan stretched the fabric), suggest a method that allows for a solid measure ofa verb’s alternation strength and of the amount of shared meaning between two constructions,and finally, show that in order to capture constraints at the level of the construction, one mustpay attention to lower level generalisations such as the interaction between verb and argumentswithin the scope of each construction.In an effort to add to the discussion on alternation vs. surface generalisations, we propose adetailed study of the two constructions that make up the causative alternation: the intransitivenon-transitive causative construction and the transitive causative construction. Our goal is tomeasure the amount of meaning shared by the two constructions and also show the differencesbetween the two. In order to do so we take three elements into account: construction, verband theme (i.e. the entity that undergoes the event denoted by the verb). We use distributionalsemantics to measure the semantic similarity of the various themes found with each verb andeach construction in our corpus. This grouping highlights the different verb senses used witheach construction and allows us to draw generalisations as to the constraints on the theme ineach construction.

<p>English noun phrases (NP) which include degree modified adjectives show some interesting variation of the position of the indefinite article. A particularly salient pattern is displayed in <em>This is anticipated to be <strong>more common a scenario</strong> than fleas spreading bubonic plague </em>(BoE, BU-NX022521)<em>.</em> The present paper is based on a study of utterances where this pattern was used even though a canonical word order would have been possible. Such constructs are referred to as the <em>Optional Postposed Indefinite Article Noun Phrase </em>(OPIANP) and have been collected from the British National Corpus (BNC) and <em>Collins Word Banks Online: English Corpus</em> (BoE). The central question is whether there is semantic motivation for this postposition of the indefinite article. The results suggest that there is such motivation, namely that the OPIANP could be an extension of a more frequent construction identified as the <em>Postposed Indefinite Article Noun Phrase</em> (PIANP). Furthermore, it is shown that the pattern’s semantics is unpredictable from the composition of its parts and that its primary function is that it positions already given arguments on an adjectival scale. That is, it foregrounds scalar qualities and backgrounds the noun. These conclusions stem from observations of patterns of unification with other constructions, illustrating how the OPIANP unifies best with the non-referential, descriptive PC-constructions and less well with referential constructions such as the subject and direct object constructions. These findings are remarkable as the idea of an adjective-scalar centred NP-construction challenges the idea of NPs being centred round their head, the noun.</p>

<p>The present paper examines the N₁ by N₁ construction using corpus linguistic methodology.The distribution of types of the construction that occur more than once either unhyphenated or hyphenated in any subcorpus of the British National Corpus accessed through the BrighamYoung University interface is examined. Written and spoken language as well as variousgenres are compared. Hyphenation is also investigated. A collocation analysis of some typesof the construction is further carried out and it is concluded that the N₁ by N₁ construction canbe part of the on a N₁ by N₁ basis construction. Results from the quantitative analysis as wellas the qualitative discussion suggest that the N P N construction may be undergoinglexicalisation starting as an adverbial and moving to functioning as a premodifier. Thissuggestion is indicated through complementary diachronic searches in the Oxford EnglishDictionary. It is also indicated that the construction may follow a development pattern similarto that of N₁to N₁. The notion of construction is discussed in relation to the N₁ by N₁ construction, and a hierarchical view of constructions is proposed as a solution to some of theproblems with the term.</p>

Η εργασία αυτή κινείται στα όρια της μορφολογίας με τη σύνταξη και έχει ως απώτερο στόχο να προσδιορίσει τη θέση της μορφολογίας στο πλαίσιο της γραμματικής. Οι δομές που μελετώνται, τα χαλαρά πολυλεκτικά σύνθετα (βλ. Ράλλη, 2005, προσεχώς), έχουν τη μορφή [Ε Ο] και [Ο Ο σε γενική]. Ανήκουν στην κατηγορία των συνθέτων και ορίζονται ως μορφολογικοί σχηματισμοί. Σε αντίθεση όμως με τα κλασικά σύνθετα, εμφανίζουν συντακτικά χαρακτηριστικά. Στο πλαίσιο επομένως ενός δομικού συνεχούς (Ράλλη 2005) οι σχηματισμοί αυτοί θα μπορούσαν να τοποθετηθούν εντός της μορφολογίας, στα όρια όμως με τη σύνταξη. Στην εργασία αυτή θα αναλυθούν οι ξεχωριστές ιδιότητες των χαλαρών πολυλεκτικών συνθέτων και θα διαφοροποιηθούν τόσο από τις ονοματικές φράσεις, όσο και από τις ενδιάμεσες δομές. Η διαφοροποίηση των τριών ειδών δεν αποκλείει όμως την κοινή αναπαράστασή τους, με τη μορφή σχεδίων παραγωγής λέξεων, σε ένα ιεραρχημένο δομησιολόγιο, έτσι όπως προτείνεται από το θεωρητικό πλαίσιο της Δομησιακής Γραμματικής (Construction Grammar, Booij 2005). Στο ίδιο δομησιολόγιο εντάσσονται και οι σχηματισμοί της μορφής [Ο Ο σε ονομαστική], για τους οποίους υποστηρίζεται ότι βρίσκονται σε διαδικασία γλωσσικής αλλαγής και συγκεκριμένα μορφολογοποίησης. / The main object of my assignment is the analysis of loose multi-word compounds in Greek. There are two possible structures of multi-word compounds in Greek. So they appear combinations of adjective and noun, for example «μαύρη λίστα» (black list) and combinations of a noun in nominative and an other one in genitive, for example «μηχανικός αυτοκινήτων» (engineer of cars). It is argued that multi-word compounds are object of morphological analysis because they share a lot of common characteristics with the classical one-word compounds. I could mention their non compositional meaning. At the same time they share some syntactic features or properties. These compounds consist of two words like a syntactic construction. There is also agreement or inflection. So the object of this work is considered to be the interaction between morphology and syntax, because multi-word compounds in Greek are morphological constructions, in which syntax has some kind of authority. In this analysis are used some tests in order to distinguish similar formations, like noun phrases or compound-like phrases. Even though these kinds of structures do not belong in morphology, are represented in the same way in a hierarchical construction. The same fact occurs also for structures, which consist of two nouns both in nominative, for example «άνθρωπος αράχνη» (man spider). This kind of structure is considered to be under morphologization.