PART I 2 Construction Grammar and the Usage-Based Model

CASE IN ICELANDIC

PART I 2 Construction Grammar and the Usage-Based Model 2.1 Introduction Before I present my empirical research into case in Icelandic, the linguistic theory employed in this work, i.e. Construction Grammar, should be introduced. This chapter gives a brief presentation of Construction Grammar, its background, basic assumptions, methods and objects of study. Section 2.2 gives the general background to Construction Grammar, while in 2.3 the basic ideas are laid out. Section 2.4 surveys how linguistic knowledge is assumed to be organized within the minds of speakers. Section 2.5 outlines how Radical Construction Grammar deviates from mainstream Construction Grammar. Section 2.6 contains a description of how the Usage-based model has been implemented into Construction Grammar, and section 2.7 presents how morphological case is viewed and what position is taken in this work. Section 2.8 is a summary.

2.2 Background Cognitive Linguistics is one branch of Cognitive Science, whose main research facet has been the study of the cognition of human beings and how their behaviour is affected by their cognitive skills. Cognitive Linguistics is the area of research which focuses on how human beings understand, perceive, organize and acquire language (see Tomasello 1998). Cognitive linguists believe that linguistic knowledge is fundamentally no different from other knowledge human beings possess, and that it is structured, and should therefore be represesented, like other knowledge of humans, i.e. in categories and networks of categories. Cognitive Linguistics rejects the idea that linguistic knowledge should be divided into different components, such as syntax and semantics, but opts for an integrated approach of all aspects of language. Cognitive linguists also emphasize the role of meaning in language, the meaning of both lexical items and grammatical items.

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CASE IN ICELANDIC Construction Grammar has its origin in Cognitive Linguistics and Lexical Semantics, more precisely in the works of Langacker, Fillmore, Kay, Lakoff and other followers of the Berkeley tradition (Fillmore, Kay and O'Connor 1988, Kay and Fillmore 1999, Langacker 1987, 1988, 1991, Lakoff 1987, Goldberg 1995, Michaelis 1998, etc.). Construction Grammar is a theory of language and grammar, and how it might be represented within the minds of speakers, aiming at giving an accurate picture of the psycholinguistic reality of language. It has been successfully applied in typological research (Croft 2001) syntactic research (Croft 2000, 2001), research within morphology (Bybee 1985, 1995) and phonology (Bybee 2001).

2.3 Basic Assumptions The main idea behind Construction Grammar is that constructions are the basic units of language, and therefore that constructions should be central to all linguistic descriptions and theories of language (Goldberg 1995, Croft 2001, Cruse and Croft in prep). A construction consists of a form and a meaning, or a function, connected with that form. A construction is therefore a form-meaning pair. Within Construction Grammar the following kind of formalism is used to illustrate this (from Cruse and Croft in prep: Ch. 10):

Figure 2.1: The form-meaning pairing. The pairing of form and meaning cannot always be derived from any general rules of the language, or from the components of the pair. As such this pairing is therefore often idiosyncratic. Furthermore, when there is an agreement in a language community on this idiosyncratic form-meaning pairing, then that pairing has become a convention of the language community. That is called conventionalization. A construction, for instance the noun phrase in English, would be graphically illustrated and formalized in the following way (from Cruse and Croft in prep: Ch. 10):

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Figure 2.2: The form-meaning pairing of an English noun phrase. The box indicates that the determiner with the form the has a semantic representation DET, and that the noun with the form ball has a semantic representation BALL. This is indicated with the dotted lines between the components of the syntactic representations and the elements of the semantic representation. Furthermore, as is indicated by the dotted line between the syntactic and the semantic representation there is a formmeaning correspondence between the two as a whole. The upper box is called the SYN-part (phonological pole in Langacker's terminology) and the lower box is called the SEM-part of the construction (semantic pole in Langacker's terminology). Within the framework of Construction Grammar, the idea that constructions are form-meaning correspondences was first used to account for idioms and idiomatic expressions, and was later developed to account for other aspects of linguistic knowledge, such as syntax and morphology. Construction Grammar, therefore, can account for different levels of linguistic knowledge in a uniform way. The following table is taken from Cruse and Croft (in prep: Ch. 10): Table 2.1:The syntax-lexicon continuum. Construction type Traditional name Complex and (mostly) schematic Complex, substantive verb Complex and (mostly) substantive Complex but bound Atomic and schematic Atomic and substantive

Examples

syntax

[SBJ be-TNS V-en by OBL]

subcategorization frame idiom

[SBJ consume OBJ]

morphology syntactic category word/lexicon

[NOUN-s], [VERB-TNS] [DEM], [ADJ] [this], [green]

[kick-TNS the bucket]

When studying idioms and idiomatic expressions, it has been noted that idioms are not a homogeneous class of expressions (Fillmore, Kay and O'Connor 1988, Nunberg, Sag and Wasow 1994). Rather, idioms can differ in terms of which of their properties are idiosyncratic. For instance, some

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CASE IN ICELANDIC idioms are completely idiosyncratic, in the sense that the meaning of the parts added together does not correspond to the meaning of the whole. One such example is kick the bucket, which simply means 'die', of which it is the whole phrase kick the bucket which yields the meaning, while the individual parts of the phrase do not contribute to the meaning. Another subgroup of idioms are those in which only a part of the expression is used with a different meaning from its meaning in isolation, while the other parts have the same conventional meaning as they do in regular expressions. An example of that is answer the door, where door means 'door', while answer does not mean 'answer' in its regular sense, but rather to 'open' the door. Idioms are conventionalized units and traditionally treated as if it is only their meaning that is idiosyncratic and therefore not necessarily derivable from the meaning of the parts, or from any other general interpretation rules. However, it is also an idiosyncratic property of idioms whether they conform to the general syntactic rules of the language or not. Examples of idioms conforming to syntactic rules are, for instance, answer the door and kick the bucket, where the verb is in second position, and the object follows the verb, in accordance with general rules of English syntax. However, there are idioms that do not conform to general syntactic rules, such as Be that as it may, where the verb is in first position and the subject is in an inverted position, even though this is not a question. Idioms can come both as lexically completely fixed, such as The bigger they come, the harder they fall, and also as partly lexically filled, as in The X-er, the Y-er, where the syntax is completely fixed, while the syntactic slots are partly unfilled lexically, and can be filled by the speaker in various ways depending on the context. In this case we can speak about an idiomatic pattern, The X-er, the Y-er, and we also have an example of that same idiomatic pattern being idiomatically filled, as in The bigger they come, the harder they fall. Lexically unfilled instantiations of constructions do thus not exclude the existence of lexically filled instantiations of the same schematic constructions (Fillmore, Kay and O'Connor 1988, Cruse and Croft in prep: Ch. 10). Finally, idioms can have a pragmatic value which is not derivable from any pragmatic or discourse functional rules. One such example is Him be a doctor?! (Kay and Fillmore 1999). All of this has to be accounted for in a coherent way and cannot be excluded from a theory of grammar which aims at representing the speaker's knowledge of his/her language. This should be obvious, taking into consideration the fact that conventionalized lexical units (on a higher level than the word level) in the language can constitute as much as 55% of uttered speech, according to the definition in Warren (forthcoming) of prefabs or prefabricated material. 24

CASE IN ICELANDIC Construction Grammar was originally designed to give an account of idioms and idiomatic expressions, as conventionalized form-meaning pairs, and their relation to the language as a whole. Table 2.1 above demonstrates that all linguistic entities can be accounted for within Construction Grammar as form-meaning pairs: What is traditionally called syntax, or a sentence, and expressed as syntactic rules, is here regarded as complex, since a simple sentence is compositionally formed, and schematic, in the sense that the slots are not lexically filled in advance. In other words, the speaker has a choice of which lexemes to put in a sentence when s/he is forming one. The subcategorization frame is also a complex, schematic construction but it is partly lexically filled, i.e. with the relevant verb, and therefore it is called partly substantive. An idiom can also be complex and schematic but often idioms are lexically filled. Morphological entities are complex constructions but they are not schematic like the sentence but bound. A syntactic category like the demonstrative is schematic since it is not lexically filled in advance but atomic since it cannot be further divided into smaller units. Finally, the word is also a construction, but atomic and substantive. Within Construction Grammar, therefore, it is assumed that there is no fundamental difference between the syntax and the lexicon. Rather, the units of these are treated as linguistic equivalents, i.e. as constructions, consisting of a form and a corresponding meaning. This concept of how linguistic knowledge is modeled within Construction Grammar can be illustrated as in the following figure from Cruse and Croft (in prep):

Figure 2.3: The Constructicon. The constructicon, i.e. the inventory of constructions at all levels existing in a language, and their interrelations, is construed with the construction as the basic unit of language, where phonological properties, syntactic properties and semantic properties are not independent modules but are present in all constructions.

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CASE IN ICELANDIC Finally it should be emphasized that the concept of the construction in Construction Grammar differs from the traditional concept of construction. Traditionally the term construction is used to denote a complex syntactic structure that deviates from the most general structure, for instance the passive construction as opposed to the ordinary transitive clause. There is also a general misconception in the linguistic research community that a construction, within Construction Grammar, has to be semantically non-derivable from the general semantic interpretation rules of the language, i.e. we only stipulate that a linguistic object is a construction of its own if some parts of the meaning of the construction as a whole cannot be derived from the meaning of the parts. This is a misconception. In Construction Grammar, every linguistic unit is a construction of its own, with a form and a corresponding meaning/ function, irrespective of whether the meaning of the construction is general or specific. Some constructions are highly specific, like idioms. It is impossible to derive the meaning of the whole from the meaning of the parts. Other constructions are highly general, like the ditransitive construction. The meaning of the ditransitive as a whole is a sum of the meaning of the parts. However, all of these are constructions (see Tomasello 1998, Cruse and Croft in prep: Ch. 10).

2.4 Network Models The speaker's knowledge of his/her language is assumed to be organized in taxonomic hierarchies. Substantive constructions are viewed as instances of more abstract schematic constructions, with many possible intermediate levels (Croft 2000, Cruse and Croft in prep):

Figure 2.4: Different levels of schematicity. The verb phrase can be realized as a verb together with an object. A verb that selects for an object is for instance the verb kick. The object of kick can 26

CASE IN ICELANDIC further be realized as the noun phrase the bucket. Furthermore, constructions and their interrelations are captured by assuming taxonomic hierarchies of constructions:

Figure 2.5: Taxonomic hierarchies of relations between constructions. Figure 2.4 may be taken to imply that constructions only have one parent in the tree, i.e. that lower level constructions are instances of the higher level constructions and only them, but that is not true. For instance the Did Subj go? is both an instance of the Question construction and an instance of the Auxiliary do construction. That can be illustrated in the following way:

Figure 2.6: Multiple parents of a construction. The consequence of this is that constructions, in fact, often have multiple parents, and that the network model can be quite complex. There are various ways of representing the necessary and sufficient information about constructions that has to be included in the taxonomies. One such way is to assume that all information about a construction is stored at the highest level of schematicity and that it is inherited at the lower levels. This model is called the complete inheritance model (see Kay and Fillmore 1999). Another way to account for the necessary and sufficient information is to assume that all information is stored at all levels in the taxonomy. Such a model is called the full-entry model (see Goldberg 1995). Depending on which model is assumed, the processing procedures which accompany it also vary. If we assume the complete inheritance model, we also have to assume that the processing procedure is maximized,

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CASE IN ICELANDIC while assuming the full-entry model, the processing procedure is minimized (Cruse and Croft in prep: Ch. 11). Like other linguistic categories, constructions form a radial category with one construction as the prototype construction and other constructions as polysemous to the central instance. Goldberg identifies four network links in her work on argument structure constructions: polysemy links (IP), metaphorical extension links (IM), subpart links (IS) and instance links (II). Polysemy links are used to capture the relation between any particular sense of a construction and the extensions from this sense. Metaphorical extension links are used to capture the relation between two constructions related metaphorically. Subpart links (or meronomic links) are used to show that a construction exists independently of another construction but is yet a proper subtype of that construction. Instance links (or taxonomic links) are used if one construction is truly an instance or a special case of another construction (see Goldberg 1995: Ch. 3). Similarities of certain apparently unrelated constructions can easily be expressed in terms of this machinery. Consider the following examples from Goldberg (1995: Ch. 3) of the Resultative (1a), the Caused-motion construction (1b), the Transfer construction (1c), the Intransitive motion construction (1d) and the Intransitive resultative construction (1e): (1)

a) b) c) d) e)

Pat hammered the metal flat. Pat threw the metal off the table. Pat gave the metal to Kim. The metal flew out of the room. The metal went flat.

Because of some similar semantic and syntactic constraints on the Resultative and the Caused-motion construction the first can be seen as a metaphorical extension of the latter, and they can therefore be linked together with an IM-link. In that way, generalizations across constructions are easily captured. Figure 2.7 is a diagram of the Caused-motion construction in English and all the other possible senses or constructions related to it in different ways, according to Goldberg's analysis (1995:109). The different senses derived from the basic sense are marked with polysemy links (IP). The Resultative and the Transfer constructions are analysed as metaphorical extensions of the basic Caused-motion construction (1b above) and are marked accordingly (IM). In the Transfer construction (1c) the transfer is basically transfer of possession, analysed as a metaphorical extension of the basic Caused-motion construction. The Intransitive motion construction (1d) is analysed as a special case of the Caused-motion construction, marked (IS). Finally, the Intransitive

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CASE IN ICELANDIC resultative construction (1e) can either be analysed as a special case of the Resultative construction (IS) or as a metaphorical extension of the Intransitive motion construction (IM).

Figure 2.7: The Caused-motion construction and its interrelations.

2.5 Radical Construction Grammar Croft (2001) has proposed a variant of Construction Grammar, called Radical Construction Grammar, which differs from mainstream Construction Grammar in that it takes the complex schematic construction to be the basic unit of language, and not atomic primitive constructions as is done within mainstream Construction Grammar. In other words, mainstream Construction Grammar assumes complex schematic constructions, like for instance the transitive construction, to be built up from atomic constructions, like the subject, the verb and the object. Thereby, the subject exists both as an atomic construction [Subj], and as a part of a larger construction, namely, the Transitive construction [[Subj]-[Verb]-[Obj]]. 29

CASE IN ICELANDIC Radical Construction Grammar, however, does not adhere to the existence of [Subj] as an independent unit, irrespective of the larger construction it occurs in. This assumption of Radical Construction Grammar is motivated by the fact that the atomic constructions do not occur by themselves in isolation from the larger complex constructions, but instead a subject is always a subject of a predicate. Hence, the atomic units can easily be derived from the complex constructions. Mainstream Construction Grammar thereby assumes both part-whole relations and part-part relations, while Radical Construction Grammar assumes only part-whole relations. A consequence of this is that Radical Construction Grammar does not employ meronymic links to represent relations between constructions, but uses instead only taxonomic links to reproduce constructional relatedness. Furthermore, Radical Construction Grammar assumes that syntactic relations can be derived from semantic and symbolic relations already present in the construction. This can be graphically illustrated as in Figure 2.8 (from Cruse and Croft, in prep: Ch. 11):

Figure 2.8: The symbolic and semantic relations of constructions in RCG. As is obvious from the diagraph above, there are symbolic relations (indicated by s and the dotted lines) between the elements of the syntactic representation (in the upper boxes) and the components of the semantic representation (in the lower boxes), and there is a symbolic relation between the syntactic and the semantic representations as a whole (indicated by s and a dotted line between the two boxes). Further, there is a semantic relation r between the components of the semantic representation, i.e. between [DEF] and [SONG], and given that, syntactic relations need not be postulated, they can be retrieved from the symbolic and semantic relations already present in the representation of the construction. This is the radicality of Radical Construction Grammar.

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2.6 The Usage-Based Model The Usage-based model is a model of language use, and of how linguistic knowledge is represented and stored in the minds of speakers. The usagebased model also takes into consideration the effects of frequency in language use. It has been advocated by, amongst others, Langacker (1987, 1988, 1991, 1999), Bybee (1985, 1995, 2001), Goldberg (1995) and Croft (2001). Two basic concepts within the Usage-based model are the concepts of type frequency and token frequency. A construction is high in type frequency if it is instantiated by many lexemes, i.e. if it occurs with many different lexical items, and low in type frequency if it only occurs with a few lexical items. On the other hand, a construction is high in token frequency if it is instantiated many times by the same lexical item, and low in token frequency if the construction, together with the lexical item, is infrequent in use. Another important concept within the Usage-based model is the concept of entrenchment (lexical strength in Bybee's terminology). If a schematic construction is very frequent, i.e. high in type frequency, then it can be said to be entrenched in speakers' minds. If only one instance of the construction is very frequent, i.e. high in token frequency, then only that instance will be deeply entrenched in speakers' minds, while the more abstract, schematic construction it represents will not be well-entrenched. Entrenchment is a consequence of high frequency, either of types or of tokens. Differences in type frequency, and hence entrenchment, of two schematic constructions, for instance the transitive and the ditransitive constructions, can be illustrated in the following way:

Figure 2.9: Difference in type frequency of two constructions. In this case, the lines indicate the types that can occur in the constructions, and since there are more lines, and therefore more types, of the transitive construction then the transitive construction is more entrenched than the ditransitive. The difference between an entrenched schematic construction and an entrenched token of a construction can be graphically illustrated in the following way: 31

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Figure 2.10: Entrenched schematic construction vs. entrenched token. The boxes in bold indicate higher degrees of entrenchment. The leftmost diagram shows a schematic construction which exhibits a relatively high degree of entrenchment because there are many types that instantiate it. The rightmost diagram shows that an instance of a more schematic construction, i.e. one token of the construction is very frequent, and therefore that instance is more entrenched than its superordinate construction since the more abstract construction is instantiated by only one token. Productivity is assumed to be a consequence of a construction's (phonological/lexical/semantic) coherence and its high type frequency. The more open a construction is, and the more lexical items that instantiate it the more productive it is. Thus, the more likely it is that the construction attracts new items and that it spreads to other existing items that otherwise fulfill the relevant criteria for occurrence in that particular construction (Bybee 1985, 1995, Goldberg 1995: Ch. 4). Highly entrenched schematic constructions are productive since their type frequency is high. However, high token frequency of an instance does not contribute to the overall productivity of a schematic construction. Rather, it is only the token that is entrenched, as an independent unit in its own right, and not the superordinate schematic construction, as can be seen in Figure 2.10 above. The example Bybee (1995) gives is from morphology: weak verbs are very high in type frequency in English, thus the -ed preterite is highly productive. On the other hand, strong verbs are low in type frequency but extremely high in token frequency. However, the fact that they are high in token frequency does not contribute to the productivity of the non -ed preterite, since high token frequency only yields the token itself as entrenched and not the schematic construction. The view of the Usage-based model on how linguistic knowledge is stored in the mind of speakers differs from generative models. Within the Usage-based model regular behaviour of linguistic items is captured by schematic constructions and their instances. This knowledge is assumed to be stored in the mind of speakers, with some constructions being more entrenched in speakers' minds than others. Also, as stated above, the entrenchment is a consequence of frequency effects. Generative models,

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CASE IN ICELANDIC also known as dual processing models, of language acquisition and processing assume that only irregular items are stored in the lexicon while completely regular behaviour is assumed to be generated, while processed, with rules (see Pinker 1999 and the references therein). As pointed out by, for instance, Bybee (1995) these generative models, therefore, do not assume any frequency effects and thereby wrongly predict that storage in the lexicon should be evenly divided across irregular lexical items, thus preventing infrequent irregular items from becoming regular. It is, however, a fact that infrequent irregular items have a tendency to become regular, i.e. historically, in psycholinguistic experiments, and in child language (see Bybee and Slobin 1982, Cruse and Croft in prep and the references therein). Bybee (1995) points out that generative models also predict that regular highly frequent word forms should not be stored in the lexicon since they can be generated on-line with a rule. However, psycholinguistic experiments on word production tasks have shown that highly frequent regular word forms are produced faster than regular word forms that are low in frequency, and the difference is highly significant (see Bybee 1995 and the references there). This evidence speaks for the Usage-based model.

2.7 Morphological Case Within Construction Grammar there are basically two ways of viewing morphological case; first as an indistinguishable part of an argument structure construction, and secondly as a construction of its own. On the first account, different case frames in a language belong to the SYN-part of different argument structure constructions, the semantics of which are defined on the basis of the verbs occurring in these. On the latter account, a morphological case, for instance the dative subject case or the accusative subject case, is considered a construction of its own, a form-meaning correspondence, in this case defined on the basis of the meaning of the schematic construction and the semantic relation that holds between it and its subject argument (see for instance Wierzbicka's (1981:48) discussion of the German Dative of misfortune). These two views do not exclude each other, since constructions can be nested within constructions. Instead, these two representations can be seen as complementing each other in that they capture different aspects of morphological case. In the first representation, different case constructions are compared with each other, whereas in the latter the differences in meanings of one and the same case construction are examined. I now discuss each in turn.

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CASE IN ICELANDIC Icelandic exhibits various case constructions, such as the transitive Nom-Acc, Nom-Dat, Nom-Gen, Acc-Acc and Dat-Nom, ditransitive constructions such as Nom-Dat-Acc, Nom-Acc-Dat, etc. Argument structure constructions with different types of complements, as for instance prepositional objects and clauses are also found, such as Nom-PP, Acc-PP, Dat-PP, Gen-PP, Nom-S (where S stand for sentence), Acc-S, Dat-S and Gen-S. Icelandic also has intransitive constructions with Nom, Acc, Dat and Gen subjects. This knowledge of the Icelandic speaker can, for instance, be represented as in Figure 2.11. In Figure 2.11 the Nom Subject construction is represented in a bold box as compared to the various Oblique Subject constructions, which are represented in normal mode boxes. This is meant to capture the differences in type frequency between the four subconstructions, in that the Nom Subject construction has higher type frequency than the Oblique subject constructions, and is therefore more entrenched.

Figure 2.11: Some Argument structure constructions in Icelandic.

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Figure 2.12: Differences in entrenchment of the various oblique subject constructions. There is also a difference in frequency between the different oblique subject constructions, which can be represented in a similar fashion, shown in Figure 2.12. Figure 2.12 is a detail of Figure 2.11 and is meant to capture the fact that the Dat subject construction is by far the highest one in type frequency of the oblique subject constructions in Icelandic (approx. 700 types for the Dat subject construction vs. approx. 200 for the Acc subject construction), hence it is represented in bold. Regarding the meaning of these constructions, the Nom subject construction has the widest semantic scope of all the case constructions in Icelandic, in that there are no restrictions on what kind of verbs can occur in it. The Oblique subject constructions, on the other hand, are restricted in their meanings since agentive verbs cannot instantiate them (see Zaenen, Maling and Thráinsson 1985, Sigurðsson 1992, Jónsson 1997-98, Barðdal 1999a, 2001a). This can be illustrated in the following way for the Nom, Acc and Dat subject constructions:

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CASE IN ICELANDIC Nom |-----------------------------------------------------------------------------| Dat

|-----------------------------|

Acc

|---------------|

The Nom subject construction covers the whole semantic range, the Dat subject construction covers only the non-agentive semantic ranges, with most of the verbs occurring in it denoting human experience, whereas the Acc subject construction covers partly the experience-based semantic range and partly the semantic range of changes within nature and landscape. This is exemplified in (2) below: (2)

a.

Mig dreymdi ömmu. I.acc dreamt grandma

b.

Ána lagði. river-the.acc froze

Thus, the three constructions partly share the same semantics. The exact semantic range covered by the different constructions can also be put forth, but that requires a detailed semantic analysis of all the predicates occurring in each construction, a task beyond the scope of this research. However, a preliminary investigation (Barðdal in prep) reveals that Dat subject verbs are of various types in Icelandic: they can denote cognition, perception, bodily states, changes in bodily states, emotion, intention, permission, obligation, inclination, property, gain, completion, hindrance, and they even denote meanings such as advancing, diminishing, and saying, etc.: (3)

Cognition:

Honum er þetta kunnugt. he.dat is this.nom known 'This is known to him.'

Perception:

Honum smakkaðist maturinn. he.dat tasted food-the.nom 'The food tasted good to him.'

Bodily states:

Honum er illt. he.dat is ill 'He's feeling sick.'

Changes in bodily states:

Honum batnaði. he.dat got-better 36

CASE IN ICELANDIC 'He got better.' Emotion:

Honum leiðist. he.dat be-bored 'He's bored.'

Intention:

Honum gekk gott eitt til. he.dat went good one to 'His intentions were good.'

Permission:

Honum leyfist allt. he.dat be-allowed everything.nom 'He is allowed everything.'

Obligation:

Honum ber að hlýða. he.dat be-obliged to obey 'He is obliged to obey.'

Inclination:

Honum hættir til að ýkja. he.dat tends to at exaggerate 'He tends to exaggerate.'

Property:

Honum liggur hátt rómur. he.dat lies loud voice.nom 'He's got a loud voice.'

Gain:

Honum áskotnaðist byssa. he.dat received gun.nom 'He got a gun.'

Completion:

Honum tókst þetta. he.dat managed this.nom 'He managed to do this.'

Hindrance:

Honum seinkaði. he.dat got-late 'He was late.'

Advancing:

Honum fór fram í ensku he.dat went forward in english.dat 'His English improved.'

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CASE IN ICELANDIC Diminishing:

Þeim fækkaði. they.dat got-fewer 'They became fewer.'

Saying:

Honum hraut þetta af vörum he.dat fell this.nom of lips.dat 'He accidentally spoke.'

It is important to notice that the Dat subject predicates that are "actional", such a as hrjóta af vörum 'accidentally speak' as in the last example above, cannot be interpreted as intentional action, although the speaker is the "doer" the activity is not volitional. Thus, it seems that agentive predicates can occur in the Dative subject construction, however not with the canonical interpretation that the activity has been volitionally carried out. More research needs to be done on this. The fact that verbs occurring in the Dat subject construction are of various semantic types can be represented as in Figure 2.13. The figure is not intended to be an exhaustive representation of the semantics of the Dat subject construction, it is only intended to illustrate how the meanings of the construction can be represented. This semantic map has two axes, namely, an axis of intention and an axis of action. In the top right part of the map the verbs lowest in actionality and intentionality are located, such as property verbs and verbs of gaining. Emotion, Perception and Cognition verbs can be viewed as more actional than property verbs since property verbs only describe a property of the subject while Emotion, Perception and Cognition verbs denote a feeling or an internal activity of some sort. Changes in bodily states are inchoative and therefore more actional, thus they are located more to the left than their corresponding stative verbs. Verbs of (unintentional) saying are situated in the upper leftmost corner, because they are high in actionality and low in intentionality. Notice that the bottom left part of the map is empty. That is the space allocated to predicates which are high in transitivity and thus actionality, of which the referent denoted by the subject has voluntarily carried out the action. Examples of such verbs occurring in the Dative subject construction are extremely few, although some examples have been reported in the literature, as the ones in (4) below:

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Figure 2.13: A semantic map of the verbs occurring in the Dat subject construction. (4)

a.

Sveini talaðist vel á fundinum. Sveinn.dat spoke well on meeting-the.dat 'Sveinn spoke well at the meeting.'

b.

Sveini mæltist þannig. Sveinn.dat spoke thus 'Sveinn said that.' (Barðdal and Eythórsson 2001:70)

However, verbs of speaking are not highly transitive verbs in that the subject does not affect the object in a significant way since these verbs are often intransitive, and when occurring in the transitive construction the object is usually the content of the verb, i.e. the spoken material, which cannot be affected at all (see also the discussion in footnote 2 in Chapter 3 and in section 6.9 below). Finally, I assume that all case constructions in Icelandic are stored as independent constructions in the Constructicon, and that all verbs occurring in each construction are linked to those via II-links. Thus, verbs occurring in the Nom-Acc construction are stored as such, verbs occurring in the Nom-Dat construction are stored as such, and verbs occurring in the DatNom construction are stored together with the Dat-Nom construction. On 39

CASE IN ICELANDIC the basis of this, it is inevitable that nominative and accusative case are "word-bound" as are the dative and the genitive. In summary, morphological case is either regarded as a part of an argument structure construction, which distinguishes itself from other argument structure constructions with different case frames, or as an independent construction of its own. A consequence of this view is that nominative and accusative do not have any special status in the grammar, as is the case within generative theories, where they are assumed to be structural cases (Zaenen, Maling and Thráinsson 1985, Sigurðsson 1989, Jónsson 1996, 1997-98), and thus structurally and qualitatively different from, for instance the dative. On a constructional account the Nom-Acc construction has the widest semantic scope and the highest type frequency, while the other constructions are restricted in their semantics and thus lower in type frequency.

2.8 Summary This chapter has given a presentation of the theoretical framework adhered to in this book. Construction Grammar is the syntactic theory of Cognitive Linguistics, originally designed to account for idioms and their idiosyncratic properties, and later to be extended to cover syntax, and all linguistic knowledge of speakers. The main idea within Construction Grammar is that a construction is a form-meaning pairing, and that the construction is the basic linguistic entity central to all linguistic descriptions and theories of language. The meaning of constructions is either general, i.e. derived from the meaning of the parts, or specific, i.e. not derivable from the meaning of the parts, and hence idiosyncratic. Construction Grammar treats all linguistic entities alike, i.e. linguistic entities ranging from the abstract schematic complex construction, traditionally called sentences, to the smallest morphological units, traditionally called morphemes. Constructions are organized in taxonomic networks that contain constructions at different levels of schematicity, ranging from highly abstract constructions to concrete substantive constructions, with the relevant intermediate levels in between. Relations between constructions are captured with polysemy links and metaphorical extension links. Radical Construction Grammar differs from mainstream Construction Grammar in two ways: the complex syntactic construction is assumed to be the basic construction with all atomic constructions treated as derivatives. Furthermore, Radical Construction Grammar dispenses with syntactic relations since they can be derived from semantic relations between the components of the SEM part and the symbolic relation between 40

CASE IN ICELANDIC the SYN and the SEM parts. The Usage-based model can also be implemented into Construction Grammar since the basic assumptions of the Usage-based model, i.e. that frequency affects how linguistic units are stored in the mind of speakers, is compatible with the basic assumptions of Construction Grammar. On a constructional approach morphological case can either be viewed as an indistinguishable part of an argument structure construction, i.e. a part of its form, or it can be regarded as a construction of its own. The former view entails that case constructions, such as for instance the Nom subject construction, are contrasted with other case constructions, such as the Dat subject construction. The latter view entails that for instance the Dat subject construction can exhibit a wider meanings that has to be accounted for in a coherent way. It is furthermore assumed that all constructions are stored in the constructicon with a link to the verbs occurring in them, thus the case frames of all verbs are treated in a uniform way, not giving nominative and accusative a primary status in the grammar. Instead it is assumed that the Nom-Acc construction is only one of many which differs from the others only in terms of being semantically unrestricted and having the highest type frequency. I now proceed to the first one of my main investigations on morphological case in Icelandic, and the syntactic and semantic criteria used when analysing the texts in the corpora.

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