The present paper reports on an investigation into an English un-participle pattern that is called unpassive, or is described as an adjectival passive. The main characteristic of the pattern is an (adjectival) past participle prefixed by un-, which is used as a predicative complement to a verb. Besides the different terms used for the pattern, there is also some indeterminacy with respect to its particular form. All of the descriptions focus on the verb BE, but mention is also made of GO and REMAIN. That is, the specifications of the pattern’s formal side differ to some extent. To provide information on this issue and to get hold of potential (verb-related) differences in the pattern’s function, we conducted an empirical analysis from a usage-based construction grammar perspective. Our focus is on the form-function interplay of the pattern in order to gain information about its constructional status and its exact formal and semantic make-up. The database selected for this study is the BNC, from which all occurrences of ‘verb plus un-participle’ were extracted. The data were submitted to collexeme and covarying collexeme analyses to identify the spectrum of meanings/functions associated with these forms, and distinctive collexeme analyses were carried out to see whether the un-participles found pattern differently with the individual verbs. The results indicate that, on closer examination, the un-participle construction does not represent a homogeneous category, but must be seen as a schematic template of related, though different, usage events that may have expanded analogously from a prototype construction. On the basis of our analyses and informed by findings from developmental studies, we suggest that the related constructions form a network.

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It has been suggested that the semantics of some metaphoricalmotion constructions is related to the deixis of the verbs involved. In accordance with the directions of movement, metaphorical go is said to be associated with deterioration ( go rotten etc.) and metaphorical come – with improvement ( come true etc (cf. Quirk et al. 1985: 1174). The paper at hand aims at empirically testing this assumption from a usage-based construction grammar perspective. It analyses metaphorical-motion constructions from the BNC whose verb-slot is filled by the motion verbs go , come and run followed by an adjective, using the methods of collostruction analysis (cf. Gries and Stefanowitsch 2004a). On the basis of the quantitative analyses carried out, the semantic preferences of the three verbs are determined, compared and related to the deictic aspects involved in the verb meanings. The verb run was selected as a ‘control verb’, since it does not exhibit any deictic aspect of meaning. All three verb constructions are found to exhibit semantic preferences, and, since deixis is absent in run , other aspects are discussed which may motivate such associations. Finally, the results of the data analyses are inspected for what they can say about the emergence of semantic prosodies ‘colouring’ the verbs in the respective constructions.