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Delimiting narrow ranges of productivity: subconstructions
[Ray, I left all three constructions here—we can easily trim this down as needed]
While our earlier work has, we think, justified the notion of constructional meaning for
resultatives, we have not previously been so explicit about resultatives forming a family of
constructions. Before turning directly to resultatives, we would like to motivate the notion of a
family of constructions with some clear and simple examples. The goal is to show that English
contains such families elsewhere, so that our proposal that the resultative is not an entirely
productive phenomenon does not come entirely out of the blue.
This idea is not without precedent. Lakoff (1987) proposes a family of constructions that
capture the fined-grained distribution of existential and deictic there constructions. Michaelis
and Lambrecht (1996) likewise analyze exclamatives as forming a family of constructions.
Much work in Cognitive Grammar has also posited networks of systematically related
constructions for both morphological and phrasal patterns (REFS).
The first two examples discussed below are N-P-N constructions and English serial verb
constructions, neither of which has received much attention in the literature as far as we are
aware. The third example discussed below involves the much more familiar ditransitive
construction. In section 5, we apply the same type of analysis to English resultative
constructions, and explicitly compare our analysis with the empirical coverage of HR&L in
section 6.
4.1. N-P-N constructions. Williams 1994 briefly discusses a group of English expressions that
take the form N-P-N, for instance man for man, day after day, and inch by inch. These
expressions are intriguing because, on one hand, they have totally nonstandard syntax, and on the
other, they appear to some degree productive. We would like to look a little more closely at
them here.
The overwhelming majority of these examples have N-P-N syntax, with two identical
nouns: *man for boy, *day after week, *inch by foot. However, a few idiomatic cases have nonidentical nouns: cheek by jowl, hand over fist, head over heels come to mind.
With a few exceptions, the nouns must be totally bare. There are no determiners (*the
man for the man, *a day after a day, *some inch by some inch), no plurals (*the men for the
men), and no complements or postnominal modifiers (*father of a soldier for father of a soldier,
*day of rain after day of rain, *inch of steel pipe by inch of steel pipe).
Prenominal adjectives are only minimally possible. When they are possible they can
occur before the second noun alone or before both: (miserable) day after miserable day,
(painful) inch by painful inch; they cannot occur before the first noun alone: *miserable day
after day, painful inch by inch.
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The construction begins to fractionate into discrete members of a family (perhaps
"subconstructions" would be an appropriate term) when we consider different prepositions.
Some seem totally impossible: *house between house, *teacher above teacher, *foot under foot.
Some appear to occur only in particular isolated idioms: limb from limb but *leg from leg; one
on one but *two on two, *player on player.
An interesting case arises with the preposition to. It is totally predictive with nouns
denoting time periods: minute to minute, day to day, week to week, month to month, year to year
are all fine, and even century to century, which we believe we have never heard, sounds perfectly
acceptable. The meaning has to do with temporal succession, and generalizes to expressions like
search house to house, which are also productive. At the same time, another meaning of N to N
has to do with close symmetric contact, as in hand to hand, cheek to cheek, face to face, eye to
eye, bumper to bumper. But each of these is a bit idiosyncratic in its usage, and generalization to
further cases is somewhat dubious: toe to toe but *foot to foot and *finger to finger; shoulder to
shoulder but *arm to arm and *wrist to wrist. Side to side has yet another idiosyncratic
meaning, having to do with oscillating motion.
A close contact meaning with side does, however, appear in side by side. But this is
idiosyncratic for the preposition by. The productive use of by in this construction again
expresses some notion of succession with an implicit or explicit point of culmination: piece by
piece, bit by bit, day by day, layer by layer, house by house, etc. We can see this is productive
by inventing perfectly good novel examples such as We went through the reptile house snake by
snake; We examined the moon crater by crater. The aspectual constraint explains why N by N
expressions are more felicitous with goal-oriented events; the N to N subconstruction appears to
have the opposite aspectual constraint in that it is less felicitous with goal oriented events as
compared with unbounded activities:
(21)
a. ?? We walked around town house by house.
b. We canvassed the town house by house.
(22) a. ??We sunbathed little by little.
b. We tanned ourselves little by little.
(23)
a. We walked around town house to house.
b. ??We canvassed the town house to house.
(24)
a. We passed time day to day.
b. ??We circled the globe day to day.
While aspectual constraints play a role in the choice of preposition and in the distribution of
particular NPN phrases, the syntactic pattern NPN defined broadly is compatible with either
aspectual interpretation.
Another productive preposition in this construction is for, which expresses some sort of
comparison: man for man, dollar for dollar, etc. Again novel examples are perfectly acceptable:
Snake for snake, this is the best reptile house in the world.
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The behavior of numerals with these three prepositions is telling. With to, the
construction expresses a ratio and the numerals can be different: a five-to-four ratio, We
outnumber them three to two. With by, the construction expresses its usual meaning of
succession, and the numerals, which must be identical, express the size of successive groups:
The animals came in two by two/nine by nine/*four by three. Another possibility with by,
possibly not an instance of this construction, expresses measures of orthogonal dimensions: a 3
by 5 matrix, a 3-foot by 6-inch beam. Finally, for with numerals expresses some sort of
exchange: a three-for-two swap -- not exactly its normal meaning in this construction.
As can be seen from the examples above, N-P-N constructions can occur in two sorts of
positions in syntax. One is in the position of prenominal adjectives: a face-to-face encounter,
my day-to-day progress, a five-to-four ratio, etc. The other is as an adjunct in positions typical
of PPs:
(21)
(22)
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
f.
a.
b.
They talked one on one.
They danced cheek to cheek/side by side.
They went through the house cabinet by cabinet.
We outnumber them three to two.
We exchanged prisoners three for two.
We went house to house. [note N-P-N is an argument here!]
Point for/by point, we answered their arguments.
Day to/by day, the patient got better.
However, one choice of preposition, after, has a much broader distribution, although it too
expresses some sort of succession. (23a,b,c) parallel (21)-(22), but (23d,e,f) offer possibilities
not available with other prepositions (23g,h,i).
(23)
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
f.
g.
h.
i.
a day-after-day horror
We crawled on, mile after mile.
Day after day we suffered.
Mouse after mouse emerged from the hole. [subject]
We filled crack after crack. [object]
We looked for dog after dog. [object of P]
* Mouse by mouse emerged from the hole.
[cf. Mouse by mouse, the little monsters emerged from the hole.]
* We filled end to end.
[cf. We filled the ditch end to end.
* We looked for dog by dog.
[cf. We looked for the dogs one by one.]
That is, N after N, unlike all the other examples of this construction, can also act as an NP.
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On the other hand, it cannot occur with numerals at all: *one after one, five after five.
Instead it has a "pronominal" form one after another, unavailable with any of the other
prepositions. And this form expands into productive possibilities with more than bare nouns:
one happy kid after another, one patient with severe heart disease after another. However, the
productivity is limited to the first noun: *one happy kid after another kid, etc.
What does this little corner of English tell us about the nature of the grammar? First,
there exists this N-P-N construction that does not follow from any general principles of X-Bar
theory, whether phrasal or morphological.1 There would be nothing unusual about a language
Williams (1994) suggests that the pattern has the syntax of a
more general compound PP pattern where the first P is optionally
omitted, citing the following example:
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(28) I do not know what he is doing (from) one day to the next.
However, there are several differences between the two
constructions. The first P in compound PPs is not generally
omissible:
(b) *She went Chicago to New Orleans.
The compound PP construction requires full NP arguments, not
bare Ns or N’s:
(c) She went from the hotel to the store.
(d) *She went from hotel to store.
[this is ok if you add “and back again”—there’s more to say
about the semantics of these bare Ns..will think about it]
While the meaning of from is arguably present semantically in
certain N P N expressions, for other N P N expressions there is
no relevant preposition that could be said to be omitted, as
illustrated in (e):
(e) He struggled with depressions (*from/*to/*after/*in) day
after day.
Finally the N-P-N construction can appear as a pronominal
modifier as in the examples above whereas the compound PP
construction cannot:
(e)
*The from the hotel to the shore route is short.
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just like English except that it lacked this construction. It is just an oddity of English that such
phrases exist. [similar patterns exist in Arabic!! There must be some strong motivation for the
pattern..]
Second, having a little phrase structure N-P-N does not tell us enough about the
construction. Although (generally) the nouns must be bare and identical, each preposition has to
specify the range of meanings it takes in the construction, and, within that meaning, what broad
or narrow semantic range of nouns it selects. Moreover, some cases have to be listed in full as
idioms, even if some of their properties are derivable from the general case. Finally, part of the
syntactic specification of the construction is what syntactic slots it can fill. The general case can
specify that the construction counts as a prenominal AP or an adjunct PP/AdvP. But after must
add the further stipulation that N after N can also count as an NP.
This is horrible! But unfortunately the facts force us to this conclusion. We see no
choice but to treat the N-P-N construction as made up of a family of subconstructions, united by
common syntax and by related but not identical semantics. Moreover, among the
subconstructions are cases with only a single example, i.e. classical idioms. Like classical
idioms, N-P-N idioms have the syntax of the (more) productive class and share to some degree in
the semantics, yet have to be learned one by (*for) one.
Note that the problem is horrible for the language learner too. We differ to some degree
in our optimism that a learning theory capable of assimilating these facts is imminent (RJ more
pessimistic than AG). But we are in solid agreement that no learning theory based purely on
setting universal parameters or purely on ranking universal violable constraints is going to come
up with anything close to this pattern.
4.2. English serial verb constructions. Consider expressions such as those in (31), which to our
knowledge, have not been treated in the generative literature:
(31)
a.
b.
c.
Bill went whistling down the street.
Bill came beaming into the room.
Bill took off screaming toward the cops.
We will refer to this as the V Ving construction. It involves a motion verb followed by a verb in
progressive form and a directional complement. Although it is superficially similar certain other
motion constructions it has its own peculiar constraints. The directional is an argument of the
main verb, not of the second verb. In fact, unlike the usual paraphrase of motion predicates
involving a subordinate clause (illustrated in 33), the progressive verb in the V Ving construction
may not appear with its own arguments:
Therefore the N-P-N construction requires syntactic
specification of its own and does not follow from any general
parametric settings of English.
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(32)
a. *Bill went whistling a tune down the street.
b. *Bill took off screaming at the thief toward the cops.
(33)
a. Bill went down the street whistling a tune.
b. Bill took off toward the cops screaming at the thief (all the while).
The main verb in the V Ving construction is not very productive. Acceptable examples involve
intransitive motion verbs with a very general meaning, namely come, go, run and take off. With
these verbs, the Ving slot is quite open:
(34)
Bill went singing/grinning/waving/laughing down the street.
Other intransitive motion verbs are unacceptable:
(34)
a. *Bill raced whistling down the street.
b. *Bill walked whistling down the street.
Transitive verbs take, carry and bring are also acceptable to varying degrees, depending on the
choice of Ving. The coordinated Ving phrase, kicking and screaming seems to be particularly
free in its distribution:
(35) Bill took him kicking into the room.
(36) Bill brought him kicking and screaming into the room.
(37)Bill carried him kicking and screaming into the room.
(38)?? Bill took him whistling into the room.
(39) ?? Bill brought him grinning into the room.
(40)??Bill carried him grinning into the room.
The progressive form of the complement bears its normal semantics such that the activity
described must be construed as obtaining over a period of time or as being iterative:
(41)A. Bill jumped off the bridge. ≠
b. Bill went jumping off the bridge.
While 39a is interpreted as a one time, telic action, 39b is necessarily interpreted as iterative.
The syntax of the active construction appears to be analyzable either as [Subj [V Ving PP]] or as
[Subj [V [Ving PP]]]:2
2
The second verb has an adverbial meaning and its distribution mirrors to some extent
that of adverbs.
(35)Down the hill the barrel rolled quickly.
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(42)Down the hill Bill took off screaming.
(43)Screaming down the hill Bill took off.
Given the fact that the directional is an argument of the main verb and not of the verb in the
progressive form, the syntactic analysis [Subj [V Ving PP]] is preferable, since it allows the PP
to be a sister of the main verb. [this doesn’t account for (41)—actually 41 isn’t great with simple
“went” -AG] Thus the V +Ving construction appears to be a serial verb construction of English,
despite the fact that English does not allow serial verbs in general. The V Ving construction
represents a special form with its own special semantic and syntactic constraints: a
conventionalized construction that presumably must be learned from the input the learner
receives.
In fact a close look at the data reveals a family of serial verb constructions in English, just as
there exists a family of N-P-N constructions and ditransitive constructions. The V + Ving
construction is superficially similar to another conventionalized construction exemplified in (46),
which we will label the Go Ving construction. There are several important reasons to distinguish
the two constructions. Unlike the verbs in the V Ving construction, go in the Go Ving
construction is not interpreted as a motion verb and therefore does not subcategorize for a
directional. The direct object in (46) is a complement of read not go:
(46) You shouldn’t go reading the newspaper all day.
Further differentiating the Go Ving construction from the V Ving construction formally, the
former only allows the main verb go, and it appears to prefer that go appear in infinitival form:
(46)Pat’ll go telling Chris what to do, you’ll see.
(47)?Pat went telling Chris what to do.
The semantic properties of the two constructions also differ. Unlike the V Ving construction, the
Go Ving construction may refer to an instantaneous action:
(48)Don’t go spilling your drink!
(49)Don’t go jumping off the bridge now!
(36)Quickly down the hill the barrel rolled.
However, adverbs and not V-ing forms can appear preverbally:
(37)The barrel quickly rolled down the hill.
(38)* Bill screaming went down the hill.
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There is additionally a semantic constraint only associated with the Go Ving construction: it
implies that there is something negative about performing the action designated by the
complement. For example, (46) requires a context in which the speaker disapproves of Pat’s
telling Chris what to do.
Finally while the V Ving construction is part of Standard English, the Go + Ving construction is
restricted to informal speech.
There is still another distinct, although clearly related construction in which both verbs are in
bare form: the Go V construction [need to look up Geoff Pullum paper on this]. In this
construction, go, come and run are all acceptable. Unlike the Go Ving construction but like the V
Ving construction, the verbs in this construction retain their usual motion interpretations:
(50) Go tell your sister to come here.
(51)Won’t you come sit with me?
(52)
She wanted her dog to go bring the paper.
Like the Go Ving construction and unlike the V Ving construction, tensed forms of the verbs are
unacceptable:
(53)
(54)
*She came sat/sit with me.
*He goes bring/brings the paper.
The negative implication associated with the Go Ving construction is absent from the Go V
construction:
(55) She had better go tell her what to do.
(56)
Go do your homework!
Thus there are at least three separate serial verb constructions in English. Each must be described
on its own terms, with its particular syntactic and semantic constraints. It is outside the scope of
the present paper to detail the relationships among these subconstructions, but it is possible to
capture generalizations across subconstructions via a default inheritance hierarchy (Hudson
1984; Pollard and Sag 1987; Goldberg 1995; to appear; Michaelis and Lambrecht 1996;
Jackendoff XX, 2002).
4.3. Two ditransitive constructions. Now, lest the distributions of N-P-N and serial verb
constructions be thought to be just a matter of the "periphery," hence not an issue of Universal
Grammar, we turn to a phenomenon long treated as part of "core grammar." There is a class of
verbs that inherently denote transfer of something (the "theme") from a source to an animate
recipient. The prototypical verb of this class is give, and it predictably has a syntax with three
arguments. The interesting realization for our purposes at the moment is the ditransitive form,
Sue gave Fran a pencil. Plenty of verbs expressing transfer (or intended transfer) occur with
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ditransitive syntax: send, sell, serve, offer, and so on. On the other hand, others do not: explain
and provide are well-known examples. Thus apparently it is partly a matter of lexical
idiosyncrasy whether a verb of transfer may use ditransitive syntax.3
On the other hand, there are at least two classes of cases in which verbs that do not
inherently express transfer occur with ditransitive syntax. One case involves verbs of caused
motion such as throw, toss, and kick. Just throwing something carries no implication of an
intended recipient: I threw the ball to see where it would fall. But throwing the ball to someone
implies that that someone is an intended recipient of the ball. So here we can see the sense of
recipient coming from the preposition to. On the other hand, a similar sense occurs with
ditransitive syntax: I threw Bill the ball implies that Bill is the intended recipient. Yet there are
no words that convey this semantic relation.
Classical transformational grammar of course said that to is present in underlying
structure to carry this meaning, and that the rule of Dative Shift accounts for the superficial
ditransitive syntax and the obliteration of to. One of the many difficulties of this approach was
that the transformation had to be sensitive to the semantics of both the verb and the object of to.
The ditransitive is possible only when the object of to is animate (24a) and when the verb
expresses motion caused by impetus at the onset of motion, such as throwing and kicking but not
dragging and pushing (24b).
(24)
a.
b.
I kicked the ball to the post office.
* I kicked the post office the ball.
I dragged/pushed/pulled the ball to Bill.
* I dragged/pushed/pulled Bill the ball.
Transformations, supposedly insensitive to such semantic distinctions, are therefore not up to the
task of predicting the distribution of these ditransitives.
Another popular approach posits a lexical rule that augments the argument structure of
verbs of caused motion, systematically adding a recipient argument that can be expressed with
ditransitive syntax. Such a rule unlike a transformation, can be constrained by semantics, so it
can stipulate the semantic restrictions illustrated in (24). In this case, the notion of recipient is
conveyed by the word throw itself, in its three-argument incarnation.
However, consider what it means to say such a rule is "in the lexicon." Consider the
lexical rule for the formation of denominal verbs such as butter and pocket. This offers
possibilities for new verbs formed from nouns, but it does not tell us which forms actually exist:
there could be a verb mustard 'put mustard on', but there isn't. So here all the actual forms have
to be listed (see also Lakoff 1965).
3
Donate is not acceptable in ditransitives in Chinese (Chung and
Gordon 1998) or Arabic Arabic (Al-Osaili 1993), which indicates that something
about its semantics makes it ill-suited for the construction.
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By contrast, a well-known argument for the productivity of the dative alternation
(Marantz 1984) involved verbs of caused motion. Marantz points out that if we invented a new
verb (say a soccer term) shin, 'to set (a ball) in motion with one's shin,' we know we could
automatically say I shinned Bill the ball -- it does not have to be ascertained whether this is a
genuine word. (And, as noted by Jackendoff 1990, the ditransitive is possible only if shin means
something like kick and not something like dribble in basketball, which involves continuous
application of force.) That is, within the narrow semantic domain, the ditransitive is totally
regular. Thus in order to capture the alternation and to embody the recipient meaning in a word,
we have to give up the idea that the lexicon consists of what one must memorize. (See
Jackendoff 2002, chapter 6 for amplification of this argument.)
A third approach is the constructional approach (Jackendoff 1990, Goldberg 1995). Here
the ditransitive syntax itself -- the configuration V - NP1 - NP2 -- carries the meaning that NP1 is
the intended recipient of NP2 at the culmination of its motion. All the verbs of transfer
redundantly contain this stipulation; since one must learn which verbs of transfer can be
ditransitive, the actually ditransitive verbs are related by a lexical rule to the general properties of
the construction. But another subconstruction of the ditransitive stipulates that if the verb
expresses causation of the onset of motion, the constructional meaning can also be applied, and
NP1 can be identified as intended recipient. Thus on this account, the semantic relation of
recipient is not encoded in any of the words, but rather in the construction. It is here that the
constructional account breaks with the standard dogma. (Goldberg 1995 and Jackendoff 1990
are both far more explicit about how the constructional account is stated than we have room for
here.)
The argument structure of the ditransitive is a result of the unification of the verb's
argument structure -- an agent who is also at the origin of motion and a theme -- with the
argument structure of the construction -- an agent who is also source of transfer, a theme, and an
intended recipient. The ditransitive syntax follows from principles of syntactic realization
applied to the meaning of the construction.
Notice however that there is no inherent reason why the ditransitive construction should
be prohibited for verbs of continuously caused motion -- it is just a fact of English. We do not
see that the language would be either simpler or more complex if such verbs were allowed in
ditransitives. In particular, we do not see this prohibition following from any general
parametrization or ranking of universal constraints. Rather, the restriction to the narrow class of
caused onset of motion verbs is an idiosyncratic restriction, parallel to a selectional restriction on
a verb's arguments (see arguments in Pinker 1989 for essentially the same point).
Another class of verbs occurs in ditransitives, with a slightly different meaning, for
instance We sang Bill a song, We cooked Bill a steak. These normally paraphrase with for
instead of to (sing a song for Bill, cook a steak for Bill). Again, there is nothing inherent about
singing or cooking that implies this extra character, the intended beneficiary of the act.
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The early transformational analysis in terms of a for-dative transformation floundered on
the fact that the ditransitive is possible only when the verb expresses creation or preparation;
there are minimal pairs like fix Bill a drink versus *fix Bill the sink, where the former expresses
creation and the latter repair. A lexical redundancy rule account permits the semantic constraints
to be stated, but misses the fact that, within the appropriate semantic domain, the ditransitive is
perfectly productive.
A constructional approach takes the beneficiary ditransitive to be a further
subconstruction of the general ditransitive -- one that contributes the idiosyncratic meaning of
beneficiary to the additional argument, in case the verb is of the appropriate class.
We thus see the ditransitive as a family of constructions, not unlike the N-P-N
construction. One subconstruction entails actual successful transfer and is used with verbs of
transfer and verbs of ballistic motion. Another subconstruction entails only intended transfer and
is used with verbs of creation and preparation. Different verb classes are productive to different
extents. While the class of verbs of ballistic motion and the verbs of creation and preparation are
generally productive, verbs that lexically designate transfer are somewhat less productive.
This way of viewing the system is impossible in mainstream generative grammar,
precisely because of its insistence that elements of meaning such as "intended recipient" and
"intended beneficiary" must be represented by words in the sentence. Moreover, the spirit of
mainstream generative grammar inclines one to believe that the solution to the ditransitive
cannot be this idiosyncratic. Surely the poverty of the stimulus prevents the child from learning
a system like this; surely there must be general principles of UG that predict just these properties.
Our reply is that the ditransitive system is not nearly as horrible as the N-P-N system.
Children learn the intricacies of the N-P-N system, even though examples are surely far less
frequent in the primary linguistic input. If the child's acquisition device can pick out the
complexity of N-P-N, it is surely sufficient for the ditransitive as well. (This argument is
mounted in detail for a range of other phenomena by Culicover 1999 and Fillmore et al.
forthcoming.)
7. Conclusion
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