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Article published In: Languages in Contrast
Vol. 25:1 (2025) ► pp.83–121

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English tough-constructions and their analogues in French and Russian

A parallel corpus investigation

ORCiD logo with link | University of Lille, France | STL lab – Savoirs, Textes, Langage – UMR 8163, France
ORCiD logo with link | University of Lille, France | STL lab – Savoirs, Textes, Langage – UMR 8163, France
ORCiD logo with link | University of Lille, France | STL lab – Savoirs, Textes, Langage – UMR 8163, France
Published online: 13 August 2024
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/lic.00041.tsi
Abstract
Evaluative constructions involving tough-predicates (e.g., This hill is difficult to climb) present atypical structure-to-meaning mappings and vary across languages: in some languages (e.g., English/French), speakers typically use so-called tough-constructions (TCs) in which the syntactic subject of the matrix sentence is logically the missing object of the infinitive; in others (e.g., Russian), speakers opt for a variety of functional analogues (e.g., passive, impersonal constructions). The aim of this paper is to explore English TCs involving difficult and easy adjectives, compare them to French and Russian analogues based on a parallel-corpus, and investigate how specific semantic properties (animacy, transitivity, adjective scope) relate to specific (more or less compact) configurations. The results show that French and Russian have similar functional analogues and only partially share the structural properties of English TCs. The findings support a multidimensional account based on the inherent semantic properties of evaluative constructions and their degree of compactness.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Tough-constructions and their structural characteristics
    • 1.2Tough-constructions and their semantic properties
    • 1.3Tough-constructions, variants, and functional analogues
  • 2.Scope and aims of the study
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1The data set
    • 3.2Data annotation
  • 4.Findings
    • 4.1TCs and their analogues in French and Russian
    • 4.2TC semantic components in English and contrastive analysis
  • 5.Discussion
    • 5.1General remarks
    • 5.2Towards a classification
    • 5.3Limitations and future perspectives
    • 5.4Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
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