Construction Grammar and argument structure

[@JolaFallach]

I like your videos and the Construction Grammar concept. I am not a linguistic, just an English learner, yet you talk about those structures, which are probably nightmares for any English student. The sentence 'David has whiffled my borogoves completely vorpal again!' made me giggle, but also let me see teaching and learning a language from the new perspective. I can even imagine student's fun in the class when they try to replace the slots with 'normal' words. And I do appreciate that you do not use jargon that would be a barrier for the non-linguistic people to understand your ideas.

[@MartinHilpert]

Many thanks for your feedback, Jola!

[@SpeakLifeAndListen]

I just want to comment that it seems from your accent that you are a second language speaker of English, yet you are able to accurately judge the grammaticality of any English sentence. Incredible!

[@LeM502]

I digress here, but I'm always amazed at the ability of native speakers to assess whether a speaker is native or not, even when their pronunciation, as well as intonation, appears impeccable to my non-native ears.

[@pawelwysockicoreandquirks]

The problem with "John heard his ears deaf with heavy metal." is that the resultant state acts as a kind of completion point, which situations expressed by state verbs cannot have. That's probably slightly off the topic... :)

[@danielecatalano3841]

I would like to introduce my question saying that I'm a huge fan of your videos and a great fan of English language in general. I am having trouble with a tree diagram. The sentence is "She puts the car keys in the bag". I know this is a complex transitive verb structure with an adverbial prepositional phrase (right?). So "She" NP (pronoun), than there's a VP: puts (head verb), the car keys is a NP and what is car in this case? Is it an adj? So determiner , adj and noun? But the main question is: the adverbial prepositional phrase has to be linked to the VP or to the NP "the car keys". I linked it to the VP because we're talking about a verb that requires a direct object and and adverbial, is it right? Or it has to be linked to the NP? Thanks a lot for your videos and attention! Keep up with the great job.. Daniele

[@danielrdavilam3619]

Dear Mr Hilpert. I'd like to know why in a sentence like "We came to New York" the prepositional phrase is taken as an argument istead of being treated as complement or adjunct?

[@MartinHilpert]

Daniel R Dávila M The argument analysis is motivated by the observation that a goal argument is obligatory for the verb 'come'. You'll probably respond: But what about sentences like "Build it and they will come"? Even in those sentences, 'come' is not an intransitive verb. We know that because you can only use 'come' without an explicit goal argument if both speaker and hearer know what the goal is. Hence the oddness of sentences like ?"They will come, but I don't know where." If you have my CxG book, check out the section on DNI or 'definite null instantiation'.

[@danielrdavilam3619]

Martin Hilpert Thank you very much for the explanation!

[@tanmianhua]

Hi，Martin, thanks for these outstanding videos on CxG. I also read your paper 'historical linguistics' in which you used the construction 'seeing as though' to illustrate the relationship between the study of grammaticalization and cognitive linguistics (probably CxG in particular). In the construction, 'see' has definitely decategozied and lost most of its 'verbhood'. so the construction, as you indicated, may not be used with a copula and an explicit subject, may be followed by a that-clause but not by a canonical declarative clause, etc. My question is from the perspective of CxG, what determines these correct uses or incorrect uses of "seeing"? How does CxG accounts for these 'invidible' rules behind its usage"? Goldberg claims that constructions can be freely combined as long as they are not in conflict. But, what determines if they are in conflict or not?

[@MartinHilpert]

Hi, many thanks for your comments! I think that what you are wondering about is the question: How do speakers know that certain things 'don't work'. There is work by Adele Goldberg and Jeremy Boyd that addresses this question, and I talk about it in video 6 on processing. The key word is 'statistical preemption'.

[@tanmianhua]

Thank you very much!

[@tanmianhua]

Martin Hilpert Thanks for the explanations! Although statistical preemption is proposed to account for the rules as well as the constraints a child learns or generalizes in his acquisition of a language, the statistical-preemption approach seems to be confined to the synchronic phenomenon. My question is: how were these rules and constraints that a child generalizes formed diachronically? Do you think CxG can account for the diachronic formation of these rules or constraints concerning language use?

[@MartinHilpert]

Ruiliang Tang The short answer to your second question is 'yes, I think so', the longer version of that answer is my 2013 book on constructional change. ;)

[@ottazeta]

Hello, I have a question about the examples you make about the problematic cases of passive form: wouldn't sentences such as "*Children are looked to" be grammatical if using another preposition (e.g. "children are often looked after/at")? Apart from this, I wanted to thank you for the material on your channel, explanations are always very clear and the topics you treat are terribly fascinating. Thanks for sharing! Carlotta

[@MartinHilpert]

+Carlotta Isabella Yes, 'look after' and 'look at' can be passivized. Thanks for watching!

[@SabaEnayati]

Hi, I didn't get your example about "sally baked her sis a cake". In your book you said that there is a difference between the meaning of "bake" and "apply heat....", but why? In the video you said bake is bake, what does it mean? I could not understand the whole section about "bake". Tnx

[@SabaEnayati]

Or maybe everything is just about "transfer"....

[@holothuroid9111]

Those borogoves definitely became killer.