Serial verb constructions are grammatical that still debatable by linguists from different schools of theories because whether they considered as simple or complex predicates in terms their various structures found world’s languages. Creol languages such Papuan Malay has serial interested for further studies there lacks similar done the language. This research describes Malay. Its focus is to i...

This article presents the results of quantitative-corpus parameterization reference properties English detached nonfinite constructions with an explicit subject, carried out from perspective cognitive-quantitative approach to language study. Through prism cognitive-constructive grammar, syntactic patterns under scrutiny are recognized as grammatical constructions, i.e. complex semiotic units, n...

1. The Problem I count myself among the linguists who believe in a continuity between grammar and lexicon (Fillmore et al. 1988, Joshi 1985), and I entertain the common image that each lexical item carries with it instructions on how it fits into a larger semantic-syntactic structure, or, alternatively, on how semantic-syntactic structures are to be built around it. My remarks here specifically...

This paper aims at offering a global picture of the subtype of comparative constructions known as ‘multi-headed comparatives’ (from the fact that they exhibit more than one comparative operator in semantic interdependence). As a prerequisite to the fulfilment of his goal, an attempt will be made to clarify the scope of the notion ‘comparative construction’ and to draw a general typology of such...

One main complexity of the copula constructions concerns a mismatch between morphology and syntactic constituency: the copula seems to form a morphological unit with the immediately preceding element, whereas in terms of syntax the copula appears to take this as its syntactic complement. In capturing such mismatches, we show that the copula is treated as an independent verb at the level of tect...

This article explores the influence of idiomatic syntactic constructions (i.e., constructions whose phrase structure rules violate the rules that underlie the construction of other kinds of sentences in the language) on the acquisition of phrase structure. In Experiment 1, participants were trained on an artificial language generated from hierarchical phrase structure rules. Some participants w...

Based on a video recording of conversational British English, this paper tests whether several different subordinate syntactic structures are evenly vocally integrated to their environment. "Secondary constructions" have been described in linguistics as dependent, subordinate forms elaborating on primary elements of discourse. Although their verbal and vocal characteristics have been deeply ana...

Construction-based approaches to syntax (Croft, 2001; Goldberg, 2003) posit a lexicon populated by units of various sizes, as envisaged by (Langacker, 1987). Constructions may be specified completely, as in the case of simple morphemes or idioms such as take it to the bank, or partially, as in the expression what’s X doing Y?, where X and Y are slots that admit fillers of particular types (Kay ...

Korean has two syntactic constructions expressing negation. Examples of the two types of negation, which I will refer to as “Short Form” and “Long Form,” are given in (2) and (3). Short Form negation involves adding a negative prefix anto the verbal complex. The Short Form negated sentence in (2) differs from the affirmative sentence in (1) only in the underlined morpheme. Long Form negation, s...

Branigan & Pickering (B&P) argue successfully that structural priming provides valuable information for developing psychologically plausible syntactic and semantic theories. I discuss how their approach can be used to help determine whether partially grammaticalized constructions that have undergone semantic change also have undergone syntactic reanalysis. I then consider cases in which evidenc...