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Article published In: Constructions and Frames
Vol. 13:2 (2021) ► pp.193–229

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Slovak comparative correlatives

A usage-based construction grammar account

 | Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt
Published online: 21 December 2021
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/cf.00051.hor
Abstract
Comparative Correlatives (CCs) are biclausal constructions (e.g. The harder you work, the more you earn) that have complex semantics and form. This is the first construction grammar-based corpus study to investigate Slovak CCs, based on a 500-token sample. I argue that intra-clausal word-order phenomena can be explained through processing efficiency, based on Hawkins’ principle of Early Immediate Constituents (2004), and I use covarying-collexeme analysis (Stefanowitsch, A., & Gries, S. Th. (2005). Covarying collexemes. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, 1(1), 1–43. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) to provide evidence for the existence of meso-constructions. The findings of this study contribute to construction grammar’s “aspirations toward universal applicability” (Fried, M. (2017). Construction grammar in the service of Slavic linguistics, and vice versa. Journal of Slavic Linguistics, 25(2), 241–276. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar: 249), proving that the theory is also suitable for analysis of syntactic patterns in Slavic languages.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The Slovak CC construction
  • 3.Corpus study: Results and analysis
    • 3.1filler type
    • 3.2lexical filler
    • 3.3verb presence
    • 3.4Comparative element position
    • 3.5Covarying collexeme analysis of the data
      • 3.5.1Covarying-collexeme analysis of filler types
      • 3.5.2Covarying-collexeme analysis of lexical fillers
      • 3.5.3Covarying-collexeme analysis of verb presence
      • 3.5.4Covarying-collexeme analysis of comparative element position
  • 4.Discussion of the results
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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