How do words mean? What is the nature of meaning? How can we grasp a word’s meaning? The frame-semantic approach developed in this book offers some well-founded answers to such long-standing, but still controversial issues. Following Charles Fillmore’s definition of frames as both organizers of… read more
The comparison of constructions across languages faces a major challenge: Both similarities and differences can appear on the whole scale from form to meaning. In this paper, we propose an approach combining the descriptive and explanatory power of Construction Grammar and Frame Semantics by… read more
The German Constructicon Project (www.german-constructicon.de) aims at documenting grammatical constructions in contemporary standard German on the basis of annotated corpus examples, including relations between constructions and between constructions and evoked semantic frames. So far, the… read more
This chapter discusses a number of important issues underlying and motivating the development of a constructicon for German. More specifically, it presents an overview of some typologically interesting facets of German syntax such as word order, topological fields, case, and passives. Taking a… read more
Bringing together insights from cognitive schema theories and studies on vocabulary acquisition in a foreign/second language (L2), this chapter singles out the importance of semantic schemas for teaching and learning word meanings. Its main theoretical hypothesis is that cognitive schemas… read more
The chapter focuses on the problem of meaning determination of German idioms that consist of at least two words and contain a body part term as a constituent. Such so-called “somatisms” make up a considerable part of the phrasemes in German and English. What do these terms in idiomatic somatisms… read more
