Constructions in Role and Reference Grammar

Framed within Role and Reference Grammar, this chapter provides a finer-grained account of the English resultative constructions (e.g. He hammered the metal flat/into a knife), which enriches the constructional schema suggested in Van Valin (2005). In so doing, we mainly follow the work carried out by Nolan (2011a, b) and Diedrichsen (2010, 2011), while also drawing on insights coming from the family of Construction Grammars (e.g. Goldberg 1995; Goldberg & Jackendoff 2004, inter alios). In turn, a further step is taken here by proposing the incorporation of additional features such as the motivation of the construction and its family resemblance connection; two essential issues which heavily depend upon the role of metaphor and metonymy (Ruiz de Mendoza & Mairal 2011).