Publicaties

© 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston 2019. In this paper, we present our Construction Grammar account of light verb constructions in the Indo-Aryan language Odia (earlier known as Oriya). These light verb constructions are asymmetric complex verb predicates that combine a main verb (MV) with a light verb (LV). While the LVs are form-identical with a lexical verb, they are "light" because they have lost their lexical content as well as ...

© 2018 John Benjamins B.V. This article provides a corpus-based diachronic constructional analysis of the three English cardinal posture verbs (hence CPVs) sit, stand and lie. Contrary to their equivalents in genetically related languages, the English CPVs have not grammaticalised into locative, progressive, or habitual markers or into copulas. The data reveal some degree of grammaticalisation in the earlier stages which suggests that the ...

© John Benjamins Publishing Company. This paper studies degrees of mirativity as grammaticalised in the Indo-Aryan language Odia by four light verb constructions, asymmetric complex predicates combining a lexical verb with a (partially) bleached light verb. As such, these light verb constructions can be considered non-parasitic expressions of mirativity. The present paper adds a number of important new insights to the discussion of mirativity. ...

This paper deals with asymmetric complex predicates (combining a main verb and a ‘light’ verb) in Odia, an Indo-Aryan language. The main focus is on the two most common light verbs jaa ‘go’ and de ‘give’. We argue that these light verbs are constructions in their own right affecting the interpretation of the event in two ways: (i) they necessarily refer to completion of the event (as opposed to the single verb construction) and (ii) they ...

This article presents a corpus-based comparison of the two most frequent progressive constructions in Dutch: the prepositional construction aan het INF zijn ‘be at the INF’ (PREP-progressive) and the posture verb construction liggen/zitten/staan te INF ‘lie/sit/stand to INF’ (POS-progressive). Both constructions have in common that they cannot occur with stative verbs, both are grammaticalised constructions with locative origins and both can ...

The growing interest in humour within the field of Cognitive Linguistics during the past few years has led to the conclusion that humour exploits inferences through linguistic imagery and is highly creative. Following Yus (2003: 1299), we assume that humour uses discourse markers that allow the audience to see that what is being said should not be taken seriously. In this study, based on a large corpus of examples extracted from two American ...

The present paper discusses the syntactic reanalysis and subsequent actualisation of ça va (‘okay’) that has recently taken place in (Belgian) Dutch and that of OK/oké in (Standard) Dutch, revealing how these two expressions have evolved quite comparatively. Both start out as interjections, but then set out to be used as predicative adjectives (N is ça va / oké), and subsequently move into attributive position. Moreover, in Belgian Dutch, ça va ...