In:Corpus-based Approaches to Construction Grammar
Edited by Jiyoung Yoon and Stefan Th. Gries
[Constructional Approaches to Language 19] 2016
► pp. 39–64
Development and representation of Italian light-fare constructions
Published online: 8 September 2016
https://doi.org/10.1075/cal.19.03quo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cal.19.03quo
This contribution analyzes the development and use of light fare ‘do’ constructions
in Child-directed Speech and in Child Language with the twofold goal
of showing that a Construction Grammar approach is viable, and of providing
support to usage-based, functional predictions on language acquisition. The
analysis of naturalistic data derived from the CHILDES database lead to two
main findings: first, a representation of fare Light Verb Constructions as a family
of constructions organized like a radial category is possible, second, there
exists a fare pivot schema that children generalize at an early stage because it
serves the purpose of naming new events, activities or situations.
References (32)
Alba-Salas, J. (2002). Light verb constructions in romance: A syntactic analysis. Cornell University. Unpublished PhD Dissertation.
Bates, E., & Goodman, J.C. (1997). On the inseperability of grammar and the lexicon: Evidence from acquisition, aphasia and real time processing. Language and Cognitive Processes, 12, 507–586.
Cameron-Faulkner, T., Lieven, E., & Tomasello, M. (2003). A Construction based analysis of child directed speech. Cognitive Science, 27, 843–873.
Cantarini, S. (2004). Costrutti con Verbo Supporto: Una Descrizione contrastiva Italiano – Tedesco. Ferrara: PhD Dissertation. (published as Costrutti con verbo supporto: italiano e tedesco a confronto. Bologna: Pàtron).
Croft, W. (2001). Radical construction grammar: Syntactic theory in typological perspective. Oxford: OUP.
D’Agostino, E., & Elia, A. (1997). Il significato delle frasi: un continuo dalle frasi semplici alle forme polirematiche. In F.A. Leoni, D. Gamabarara, S. Gensini, F. Lo Piparo, & R. Simone (Eds). Ai limiti del linguaggio (pp. 287–310). Bari: Laterza.
Doğruöz, S.A., & Backus, A.D. (2009). Innovative constructions in Dutch Turkish: An assessment of ongoing contact-induced change. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 12(1), 41–63.
Family, N. (2009). Mapping semantic spaces: A constructionist account of the “light verb” eat in Persian. In M. Vanhove (Ed.), From polysemy to semantic change: Towards a typology of lexical semantic associations (pp. 139–161). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Fried, M., & Östman, J-O. (2004). Construction grammar: A thumbnail sketch. In M. Fried & J-O. Östman (Eds.), Construction grammar in a cross-language perspective (pp. 11–86). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Giry-Schneider, J. (1987). Les Prédicats Nominaux en Français. Les Phrases Simples à Verbe Support. Geneva: Droz.
. (1995). Constructions: A construction grammar approach to argument structure. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Iacobini, C. (2000). Base and direction of derivation. In G. Booij, C. Lehmann, & J. Mugdan (Eds.) Morphology. An international handbook on inflection and word formation, Vol. 1 (pp. 865–876). Berlin & New York: De Gruyter.
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. (2nd ed. 2008).
MacWhinney, B. (2000). The CHILDES project: Tools for analyzing talk (3rd ed.). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Moon, R. (1998). Fixed expressions and idioms in English: A corpus-based approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Namer, F. (1998). Support verb constructions. In F. van Eynde & P. Schmidt (Eds.), Linguistic specifications for typed feature structure formalisms (Studies in MT and NLP). Brussels: CEC.
Ninio, A. (1999). Pathbreaking verbs in syntactic development and the question of prototypical transitivity. Journal of Child Language, 26, 619–653.
Palancar, E.L. (2003). La polisemia dei verbi dar, pegar e meter in spagnolo. In L. Gaeta & S. Nuraghi (Eds.), Introduzione alla Linguistica Cognitiva (pp. 197–211). Roma: Carocci.
Quochi, V. (2007). A usage-based approach to light verb constructions in Italian: Development and use. University of Pisa. Unpublished Dissertation.
Theakston, A.L., Lieven, E.V.M., Pine, J.M., & Rowland, C.F. (2004). Semantic generality, input frequency and the acquisition of syntax. Journal of Child Language, 31, 61–99.
Cited by (5)
Cited by five other publications
Th. Gries, Stefan
GRIES, STEFAN T.
Hennecke, Inga & Evelyn Wiesinger
2023. Construction Grammar meets Hispanic linguistics. In Constructions in Spanish [Constructional Approaches to Language, 34], ► pp. 2 ff.
Jiménez Martínez, María Isabel & Chantal Melis
2023. A constructional approach to causative support verbs in
Spanish. In Constructions in Spanish [Constructional Approaches to Language, 34], ► pp. 78 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 15 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.
