Cross-linguistic investigation of the way-construction in English, Dutch, and German
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Date
29/11/2019Author
McColm, Daniel George Fernandes
Metadata
Abstract
This thesis presents a large-scale corpus investigation into the way-construction
(found in sentences such as Peter made his way to the front door) in English, Dutch,
and German in a Construction Grammar framework. A cross-linguistic investigation
of the way-construction on this scale has never been carried out; this thesis fills a gap
in the literature by chronicling the development and synchronic state of the
construction in each of the three languages, and presenting a cross-linguistic
comparison. In Chapter 2, I present a justification for employing a Construction
Grammar framework for this investigation, and also outline the diachrony and
synchrony of the construction in each of the three languages. In this chapter, I also
show that all three of these languages have (at least) one other construction similar
in form and function to the way-construction, and that multiple sources have played a
role in the development of the construction in each language (cf. the papers in van de
Velde et al. 2013 on multiple source constructions). Chapter 3 outlines the
methodology of the study and describes the corpora and statistical analysis
techniques used in this study. Chapters 4 and 5 concern the role of reanalysis and
analogy in the development of the way-construction in the three languages. In these
chapters I refine some of the principles of reanalysis and analogy in light of my data
on the way-construction, and to contribute to the debate as to whether reanalysis or
analogy (or neither) is the primary mechanism of language change. I show in these
chapters that reanalysis and analogy have worked in tandem (cf. Fischer 2007); the
reanalysis of way and its Dutch and German equivalent weg as a non-referential
object in the three languages has facilitated a long chain of analogical extensions (cf.
Israel 1996). Chapter 6 deals with frequency effects and exemplar representations in
the development of the way-construction. In this chapter I add to the growing body of
work which shows that frequency effects are abundant in language, and that part of
the development of the way-construction in the three languages can be attributed to
frequency effects, and that the verbs occurring in the way-construction in the three
languages can be grouped into exemplar clouds of semantically similar items. The
role of language contact and borrowing in the development of the Dutch and German
way-constructions is discussed in Chapter 7. I show that these concepts can be
incorporated into a Construction Grammar framework (as e.g. Höder 2012 has done),
and that the productivity and schematicity of the Dutch and German way-constructions has increased considerably as a result of contact with English. Chapter
8 concludes the thesis.