Some Thoughts on "Allostructions" (Research Data)

Minami Yusuke

doi:10.24546/0100485331

Cappelle (2006) formulated the “allostruction” model to capture the close link between two word-order variants of the particle placement alternation in transitive English verb-particle combinations (i.e. [verb – particle – object] vs. [verb – object – particle]). The model has raised awareness of the possibility that paradigmatic (“horizontal”) links across constructions with formal differences, in addition to long established “vertical” links, play a key role in pursuing the speaker’s knowledge of language in the Construction Grammar enterprise; it has generated a number of analyses, and has also sparked considerable discussion on its viability and limitations. Against this background, this paper will take up two recent critical arguments about the allostruction model, which claim that the model should not be applied as widely (or freely) as originally envisioned by Cappelle. In light of these, I present a tentative hypothesis that, as for linguistics units (“constructions”) larger than the phrasal level, the allostructional relation only holds between exactly two variants which are minimally distinguished in form. This, I argue, will avoid the problem of the allostructional “inflation” under one and the same supercategoy (“constructeme”). I then suggest that some restrictions are required for this model to be more of a viable theoretical tool to investigate the “constructicon” of the speaker.

Some Thoughts on "Allostructions" (Research Data)

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