Hostname: page-component-68c7f8b79f-wfgm8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-01-01T07:37:02.487Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

On constructions as a pragmatic category

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2026

Betty J. Birner
Betty J. Birner*
Affiliation:
Northern Illinois University
*
[bbirner@niu.edu]
Get access

Abstract

When a language provides multiple syntactic options for conveying the same semantic content, these options generally serve distinct discourse functions. In some cases, however, they serve the same discourse function while being in complementary distribution syntactically. This article argues that in these instances, the syntactic variants constitute Alloforms of a single, more abstract construction. Pairs of such alloforms include inversion and long passives in English and two forms of postposing in Italian. Moreover, English inversion is argued to be an alloform of both preposing and postposing. This account explains the distributional difference between alloforms of a single construction and complex structures built up of multiple distinct constructions. Finally, the report considers the ramifications of this account for linguistic theory in general and the notion of a ‘construction’ in particular.

Keywords

alloformconstructioninformation structureinversionpassivepreposingpostposing

Information

Type
Research Report
Information
Language , Volume 94 , Issue 2 , June 2018 , pp. e158 - 179
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 Linguistic Society of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Berruto, Gaetano. 1986. Un tratto sintattico dell'italiano parlato: Il c'è presentativo. Parallela 2: Aspetti della sintassi dell'italiano contemporaneo, ed. by Lichem, Klaus, Mara, Edith, and Knaller, Susanne, 61–73. Tübingen: Gunter Narr.Google Scholar
Birner, Betty J. 1996a. Form and function in English by-phrase passives. Chicago Linguistic Society 32. 23–31.Google Scholar
Birner, Betty J. 1996b. The discourse function of inversion in English. New York: Garland.Google Scholar
Birner, Betty J. 1997. Discourse constraints on PP + there in English. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Chicago.Google Scholar
Birner, Betty J. 2006. Inferential relations and noncanonical word order. Drawing the boundaries of meaning: Neo-Gricean studies in pragmatics and semantics in honor of Laurence R. Horn, ed. by Birner, Betty J. and Ward, Gregory, 31–51. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/slcs.80.04birCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Birner, Betty J., Kaplan, Jeffrey P.; and Ward, Gregory L.. 2007. Functional compositionality and the interaction of discourse constraints. Language 83. 317-43. DOI: 10.1353/lan.2007.0056.10.1353/lan.2007.0056CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Birner, Betty J., and Mahootian, Shahrzad. 1996. Functional constraints on inversion in English and Farsi. Language Sciences 18. 127-38. DOI: 10.1016/0388-0001(96)00011-3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Birner, Betty J., and Ward, Gregory. 1996. A crosslinguistic study of postposing in discourse. Language and Speech (Special issue on discourse, syntax, and information) 39. 111-42. DOI: 10.1177/002383099603900302.Google ScholarPubMed
Birner, Betty J., and Ward, Gregory. 1998. Information status and noncanonical word order in English. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boas, Hans C., and Sag, Ivan A. (eds.) 2012. Sign-based construction grammar. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Calabrese, Andrea. 1992. Some remarks on focus and logical structures in Italian. Harvard Working Papers in Linguistics 1. 91–127.Google Scholar
Cappelle, Bert. 2006. Particle placement and the case for ‘allostructions’. Constructions, special volume 1. Online: https://journals.linguisticsociety.org/elanguage/constructions/issue/view/17.html.Google Scholar
Clark, Herbert H. 1977. Bridging. Thinking: Readings in cognitive science, ed. by Johnson-Laird, Philip N. and Wason, Peter C., 411-20. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Clark, Herbert H., and Haviland, Susan E.. 1977. Comprehension and the given-new contract. Discourse production and comprehension, ed. by Freedle, Roy O., 1–40. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Croft, William. 2001. Radical construction grammar: Syntactic theory in typological perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198299554.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Daneš, František. 1966. A three-level approach to syntax. Travaux linguistiques de Prague 1. 225-40.Google Scholar
Deal, Amy Rose. 2009. The origin and content of expletives: Evidence from ‘selection’. Syntax 12. 285–323. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9612.2009.00127.x.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fillmore, Charles J., Kay, Paul; and O'Connor, Mary Catherine. 1988. Regularity and idiomaticity in grammatical constructions: The case of let alone. Language 64. 501-38. DOI: 10.2307/414531.Google Scholar
Firbas, Jan. 1966. Non-thematic subjects in contemporary English. Travaux linguistiques de Prague 2. 239-56.Google Scholar
Goldberg, Adele E. 1995. Constructions: A construction grammar approach to argument structure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Goldberg, Adele E. 2015. Tuning in to the verb-particle construction in English. Syntax and semantics, vol. 41: Approaches to complex predicates, ed. by Nash, Léa and Samvelian, Pollet, 110-41. Boston: Brill.Google Scholar
Grice, H. Paul. 1975. Logic and conversation. Syntax and semantics, vol. 3: Speech acts, ed. by Cole, Peter and Morgan, Jerry L., 41–58. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Halliday, Michael A. K. 1967. Notes on transitivity and theme in English: Part 2. Journal of Linguistics 3. 199–244. DOI: 10.1017/S0022226700016613.10.1017/S0022226700016613CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Halliday, Michael A. K., and Hasan, Ruqaiya. 1976. Cohesion in English. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Haviland, Susan E., and Clark, Herbert H.. 1974. What's new? Acquiring new information as a process in comprehension. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 13. 512-21. DOI: 10.1016/S0022-5371(74)80003-4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Irwin, Patricia. 2018. Existential unaccusativity and new discourse referents. Glossa 3(1):X. DOI: 10.5334/gjgl.283.Google Scholar
Kay, Paul. 1997. Words and the grammar of context. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Kay, Paul, and Michaelis, Laura A.. 2013. Constructional meaning and compositionality. Semantics: An international handbook of natural language meaning, vol. 3, ed. by Maienborn, Claudia, Heusinger, Klaus von, and Portner, Paul, 2271-96. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Lambrecht, Knud. 1994. Information structure and sentence form. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511620607CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marantz, Alec. 2010. Locality domains for contextual allosemy in words. Talk presented at New York University, New York.Google Scholar
Marantz, Alec. 2013. Locality domains for contextual allomorphy across the interfaces. Distributed morphology today: Morphemes for Morris Halle, ed. by Matushansky, Ora and Marantz, Alec, 95–115. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pinto, Manuela. 1994. Subjects in Italian: Distribution and interpretation. Linguistics in the Netherlands 1994. 175-86. DOI: 10.1075/avt.11.18pin.Google Scholar
Prince, Ellen F. 1981. Toward a taxonomy of given/new information. Radical pragmatics, ed. by Cole, Peter, 223-54. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Prince, Ellen F. 1988. The discourse functions of Yiddish expletive es + subject-postposing. Papers in Pragmatics 2. 176-94. DOI: 10.1075/iprapip.2.1-2.08pri.Google Scholar
Prince, Ellen F. 1992. The ZPG letter: Subjects, definiteness, and information-status. Discourse description: Diverse linguistic analyses of a fundraising text, ed. by Mann, William C. and Thompson, Sandra A., 295–325. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prince, Ellen F. 1996. Constructions and the syntax-discourse interface. Talk presented at Brown University, Providence, RI. Online: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.32.345.Google Scholar
Saccon, Graziella. 1993. Postverbal subjects. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University dissertation.Google Scholar
Ward, Gregory. 1988. The semantics and pragmatics of preposing. New York: Garland.Google Scholar
Ward, Gregory. 1999. A comparison of postposed subjects in English and Italian. Function and structure, ed. by Kamio, Akio and Takami, Ken-ichi, 3–21. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/pbns.59.03warCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wood, Jim. 2015. Icelandic morphosyntax and argument structure. (Studies in natural language and linguistic theory 90.) New York: Springer.Google Scholar