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Resultativkonstruktionen, Partikelverben und syntaktische vs. lexikonbasierte Konstruktionen

Subject Areas: Construction Grammar, HPSG, complex predicate, verbal complex, secondary predicate, resultative construction, particle verb

This paper appeared 2006 in Kerstin Fischer and Anatol Stefanowitsch (Eds): Konstruktionsgrammatik. Von der Anwendung zur Theorie, Stauffenburg Linguistik, No. 40, Tübingen: Stauffenburg Verlag, 177–202.

In this paper, I compare approaches to the analysis of resultative constructions and particle verbs in the frameworks of Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) and Construction Grammar. Both frameworks are related and some of the analyses in the respective frameworks are motivated by analyses from the other one. Phonological, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic aspects of linguistic properties are represented in one structure in both frameworks. However, there is a tendency in Construction Grammar to treat phenomena with respect to phrasal configurations, while classical HPSG is more lexicon-oriented.

I argue that the resultative construction should not be covered at a phrasal level, since phrasal analyses either have to stipulate an enourmous number of Constructions to capture all interactions with other phenomena in a realisitic grammar or one has to assume transformations (which is something that is usually rejected by proponents of CxG). Apart from that, a phrasal approach has problems accounting for adjuncts in German, which can appear between parts of the resultative construction. The interaction between the resultatitve construction and derivational morphology cannot be captured either. If the resultative construction is analyzed as a phrasal construction, cross-linguistic generalizations regarding this construction cannot be captured, since the surface patterns of the Construction differ from language to language.

I argue that a lexicon-based approach does not run into the problems mentioned above and hence is more appropriate for the analysis of resultative constructions. I show that the lexical approach makes it possible to capture the commonalities between resultative constructions, the verbal complex formation, and the particel verb construction.

The suggested analysis is compatible with general assumptions made in CxG and can be adopted in this framework as well.

Draft of March 25, 2006:

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