Overview

"The papers in this volume provide a contrastive application of Construction Grammar. By referencing a well-described constructional phenomenon in English, each paper provides a solid foundation for describing and analyzing its constructional counterpart in another language. This approach shows that the semantic description (including discourse-pragmatic and functional factors) of an English construction can be regarded as a first step towards a ""tertium comparationis"" that can be employed for comparing and contrasting the formal properties of constructional counterparts in other languages. Thus, the meaning pole of constructions should be regarded as the primary basis for comparisons of constructions across languages – the form pole is only secondary. This volume shows that constructions are viable descriptive and analytical tools for cross-linguistic comparisons that make it possible to capture both language-specific (idiosyncratic) properties as well as cross-linguistic generalizations."

Full Product Details

Author:   Hans C. Boas (University of Texas, Austin)
Publisher:   John Benjamins Publishing Co
Imprint:   John Benjamins Publishing Co
Volume:   10
Weight:   0.620kg
ISBN:  

9789027204325

ISBN 10:   9027204322
Pages:   244
Publication Date:   11 November 2010
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

1. Acknowledgments; 2. Comparing constructions across languages (by Boas, Hans C.); 3. Comparing comparatives: A corpus-based study of comparative constructions in English and Swedish (by Hilpert, Martin); 4. Contrasting constructions in English and Spanish: The influence of semantic, pragmatic, and discourse factors (by Gonzalvez-Garcia, Francisco); 5. Conditional constructions in English and Russian (by Gurevich, Olga); 6. Results, cases, and constructions: Argument structure constructions in English and Finnish (by Leino, Jaakko); 7. A contrastive study of the caused-motion and ditransitive constructions in English and Thai: Semantic and pragmatic constraints (by Timyam, Napasri); 8. On expressing measurement and comparison in English and Japanese (by Hasegawa, Yoko); 9. Revising Talmy's typological classification of complex event constructions (by Croft, William A.); 10. Index of constructions; 11. Index of languages; 12. Author index; 13. Subject index

Reviews

All in all, Contrastive Studies in Construction Grammar is a highly welcomed collection of studies that brings together the contrastive approach and the Construction Grammar approach. It highlights the primary role played by the semantic/functional/notional pole of constructions in linguistic research and theorizing, and presents cases of application of Construction Grammar to cross-linguistic investigation. This is the first book of its kind, and will be a recommended reading both for cognitive-functional linguists, typologists, students in the above fields, and scholars in related disciplines such as translatology and communication studies. -- Wei-lun Lu, Masaryk University, in Studies in Language Vol. 38:2 (2014), pp. 413-420

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