Danish verb prefixes and the schematizing transitive prefix construction.

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In a constructionist approach to grammar, morphological constructions and clausal constructions may have the same theoretical status as argument structure constructions (e.g., Goldberg, 1995, pp. 22–23; Croft, 2001; Booij, 2010). In this chapter, the author argues that the Danish verb prefixes be- and for-, in addition to verbal derivation, impose a lexeme-independent transitive argument structure construction with three meaning variants. In a large-scale corpus study, a distributional analysis of the prefix construction and its association with verbal base lexemes shows that the two constructional variants have a different semantic profile. While the potential productivity of be- and for- constructions is restricted, authentic examples of creative usage show that all constructional variants are partially productive in present-day Danish.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationConstructional approaches to Nordic languages (CAL)
EditorsEvie Coussé, Steffen Höder, Benjamin Lyngfelt Lyngfelt, Julia Prentice
Place of PublicationAmsterdam
PublisherJohn Benjamins Publishing Company
Publication date2023
Pages212-246
ISBN (Print)9789027249302
Publication statusPublished - 2023
SeriesConstructional Approaches to Language
Volume37
ISSN1573-594X

ID: 256902585