2  Argument structure

constructions

2.1  Analysing ‘simple sentences’

The last chapter made the point that language use is full of idi-
omatic expressions that exhibit idiosyncrasies with regard to form
and meaning. Constructions of this kind have been addressed in many
classic studies in Construction Grammar, for instance in Fillmore et al.
(1988), who focus on sentences such as I don’t eat fish, let alone raw oysters.
Idiomatic expressions constitute the central theoretical motivation
for Construction Grammar as a theory of language: if speakers have
to memorise a large number of idiosyncratic, semi-fixed construc-
tional schemas, then the dictionary-and-grammar model of linguistic
knowledge cannot be maintained. Given the importance of idioms, it
may come as a surprise to you that one of the most influential studies
in Construction Grammar addresses ‘simple sentences’ that at first
glance appear to behave much more regularly than constructions such
as let alone. In her book Constructions: A Construction Grammar Approach to
Argument Structure, Adele Goldberg (1995) discusses expressions such as
the following.

  (1) Pat gave Bill a book.

John threw the ball over the fence.
Bob hammered the metal flat.

On the face of it, these sentences seem to fail the most important criteria
for constructionhood that were developed in the last chapter, as there
does not appear to be anything unusual about either the form or the
meaning of these examples. A learner of English who knew all of the
words in these sentences would have no trouble understanding what
they mean. Still, there is good evidence for viewing these examples as
instances of a special kind of construction, namely argument structure
constructions. This chapter will discuss what these constructions are
25
26 construction gr ammar and its application to english

and it will explain why these constructions continue to attract substan-

tial attention in current research.
The remaining sections of this chapter are organised in the follow-
ing way. The next section will introduce the term argument structure
and flesh out its role in a constructionist theory of linguistic knowledge.
The subsequent section will discuss a number of valency-increasing
constructions, that is, constructions that can add arguments to the event
structure of a verb. The Resultative construction is one such construc-
tion, but there are quite a few more of them in English. The section after
that will focus on the inverse process and discuss valency-decreasing
constructions. In such constructions, a role that is present in the event
structure of a verb is ‘suppressed’, that is, it is not overtly expressed.
Perhaps the most conspicuous example of a valency-decreasing con-
struction is the Passive. In a sentence such as Mistakes were made, which
passivises the verb make, the person making the mistakes is not identi-
fied. The Passive construction thus reduces the valency of make by
suppressing its agent argument. As this chapter will discuss, there are
other constructions that behave in similar ways. The final section of this
chapter will discuss relations between argument structure construc-
tions, introducing the concept of syntactic alternations.

2.2  Argument structure

The phenomenon that is described by the term argument structure is
often also referred to as valency. The term ‘valency’ is borrowed from
chemistry, where it describes how many different atoms a chemical
element can bind to itself to form a complex molecule. Chemical ele-
ments differ in this regard, such that hydrogen for instance can only
bond with a single other atom, whereas carbon can bond with several
others, thus forming larger molecules. The words of a language can be
likened to this behaviour of chemical elements: the verb yawn usually
forms a bond with just one element, namely its subject (The cat yawned).
The verb send typically bonds with three elements, namely its subject
and two objects (Sylvia sent me a message). Valency is first and foremost a
characteristic of verbs, but the concept can also be applied to adjectives
and nouns. For instance, the adjective certain can form a bond with a
that-clause (I’m certain that he left) or an infinitival clause (John is certain to
win the election). Nouns such as fact or suspicion can bond to that-clauses as
well (the fact that he left, the suspicion that sausages contain dog meat). Hence,
the terms ‘argument structure’ and ‘valency’, as used in linguistics, refer
to a relationship that holds between a predicate denoting an activity,
state, or event and the respective participants, which are called argu-
 argument structure constructions 27

Table 2.1  Thematic roles

Role Definition Example
AGENT the initiator of an action Pat ate a waffle.
PATIENT the participant undergoing an Pat ate a waffle.
action or a change of state
THEME the participant which is moving Pat threw the rope over.
EXPERIENCER the participant who is aware of Pat heard a sound.
a stimulus
STIMULUS the participant that is Pat heard a sound.
experienced
BENEFICIARY the participant who benefits Pat sang for me.
from an action
RECIPIENT the participant receiving an item Pat gave me a waffle.
INSTRUMENT the participant serving as a Pat opened it with a
means to an action knife.
LOCATION the place of an event Pat was born in Florida.
GOAL the end point of a movement Pat threw it into the fire.
SOURCE the starting point of a movement Pat came home from
work.

ments. In the sentence John threw the ball over the fence, the verb form
threw is the predicate, and John, the ball, and also the prepositional phrase
over the fence would be its arguments. Arguments are thus not only
expressed by nominal structures; other phrase types and clauses may
also express them.
What makes argument structure a difficult term to deal with is that it
can be understood in two ways: semantically and syntactically. A verb
such as eat evokes a scene with two participants, someone who is eating
and something that gets eaten. This would be the semantic argument
structure of eat, which is sometimes also called its event structure. In
order to talk about event structure, linguists have developed a vocabu-
lary that abstracts away from individual verbs and describes different
semantic roles, which are sometimes also called thematic roles. Table
2.1 lists eleven semantic roles that are frequently referred to (Saeed
2003: 153).
Naturally, this list is open-ended, the roles are not necessarily mutu-
ally exclusive, and it would be possible to make finer distinctions or to
construct more abstract roles. For instance, recipients and beneficiaries
share certain characteristics with patients, and goals and sources both
encode locations. The event structure of a verb specifies the kinds of
roles that may appear with that verb. As is illustrated by the first two
examples in the table, the verb eat typically occurs with an agent and
28 construction gr ammar and its application to english

with a patient, but other configurations are possible. Importantly, eat

also has a syntactic argument structure. Speakers know that the verb
eat usually occurs with a subject and a direct object, but they also know
that eat is sometimes used intransitively, as in Thanks, I have already eaten.
In the dictionary-and-grammar model of linguistic knowledge, the dic-
tionary entry for a lexical element such as eat would include information
on its event structure, including the roles of someone who is eating and
something that is eaten, and information on syntactic argument struc-
ture patterns. Typically, there will be several patterns. For instance, the
entry for sweep would list the following ones, amongst others:
  (2) We still have to sweep.
We still have to sweep the tiles.
We still have to sweep the tiles squeaky clean.
We still have to sweep the mud off the tiles.
It seems very natural to assume that speakers’ knowledge of a verb
such as sweep includes knowledge of the structures in which that verb
typically appears. However, Goldberg (1995) argues that argument
structure cannot be wholly explained in terms of lexical entries alone.
An important piece of evidence in this regard is that speakers occasion-
ally use verbs ‘creatively’, that is, with argument structures that are
not conventionally associated with the respective verbs. The following
examples illustrate that phenomenon.
  (3) John played the piano to pieces.
He pulled himself free, one leg at a time.
No matter how carefully you lick a spoon clean, some goo will
cling to it.
The verb play can be used intransitively (The kids were playing),
transitively (Sylvia played a Schubert sonata), and in the Prepositional
Dative construction (John played the ball to the centre forward), to illustrate
just three of its conventional argument structure patterns. It is typi-
cally the case that the meaning of a verb is not quite the same across
different patterns. In the examples just mentioned, intransitive play
evokes the idea of ‘interacting with toys’, transitive play conveys the
meaning of ‘using a musical instrument’, and play in the Prepositional
Dative construction simply means ‘pass’. Despite these differences, the
respective activities of the kids, Sylvia, and John all count as instances
of playing. With the use of play that is given in (3), things are not quite
as straightforward. The example conveys that John’s playing had an
effect on the piano, such that it fell to pieces. This meaning cannot
be explained as a conventional sense of the verb play. Rather, it is the
 argument structure constructions 29

syntactic form of the sentence that leads hearers to understand this non-
compositional meaning. Goldberg (1995) calls this form the English
Resultative construction. Compare the phrase played the piano to pieces
to pulled himself free and lick a spoon clean. In each case, the verb combines
with a direct object and a predicate that expresses a resultant state.
The Resultative construction is an argument structure construction,
because it ‘adds’ an element to the conventional argument structure of
verbs such as play, pull, or lick. In the case of the above example with play,
this extra element is the prepositional phrase to pieces. Goldberg argues
that syntactic constructions, such as the Resultative construction, are
not just structural templates that are used to arrange words into phrases
and sentences, but carry meaning. That is, speakers of English know
that there is a syntactic pattern that conveys the meaning ‘X causes Y to
become Z’, independently of the actual verb that is found in this pattern.
This pairing of form and meaning is stored in the construct-i-con, and
it allows speakers to create and understand sentences in which verbs
are used resultatively, regardless of whether their conventional argu-
ment structure specifies a result, or even a direct object. The verbs play,
pull, and lick frequently occur with direct objects, but even intransitive
verbs such as run, sneeze, or worry can be inserted into the Resultative
construction, as the following examples show.
  (4) John ran his feet sore.
Frank sneezed his cat soaking wet.
Bob’s mother worried herself sick.
In these examples, the Resultative construction contributes not
only a result argument, but also a patient argument. The phrases his
feet, his cat, and herself denote patients, which undergo a change of state
as a result of an action. One can take the argument even further and
construct example sentences with invented words, which are associated
neither with a conventional argument structure nor with a particular
semantic event structure. The following examples draw on some nonce
words that Lewis Carroll used in his famous poem Jabberwocky.
  (5) The children were gimbling the cat frumious.
Chortle the toves into small pieces. Season liberally with salt and
pepper.
David has whiffled my borogoves completely vorpal again!
Naturally, the interpretations of these sentences depend on contextual
cues, such that hearers try to link the words gimbling and frumious to
activities and states that ensue when children and cats interact in pro-
totypical ways. Note, however, that the third example is largely devoid
30 construction gr ammar and its application to english

of such contextual cues, and still, you are likely to have come up with
an idea of what David might have done. Regardless of the specifics,
your interpretation of the sentence will be consonant with the idea that
David whiffled the borogoves, and that this act of whiffling made them
vorpal again. Given that you have no idea what the words by themselves
mean, this is a remarkable achievement!
To summarise these observations, the ‘simple sentences’ of English
matter deeply to Construction Grammar because they instantiate argu-
ment structure constructions. These constructions have to be part of
speakers’ knowledge of language for two reasons. First, they can change
the conventional valency patterns of verbs, thus generating expressions
that are formally idiosyncratic. A verb such as sneeze does not usually
take a patient argument, but it does take one in the Resultative con-
struction. Second, argument structure constructions convey meanings
that cannot be explained compositionally. The resultative meaning
of the example sentences in (4) and (5) does not simply follow from
combining the individual word meanings. Rather, it is the syntactic
construction as such that imposes this meaning on the words. Goldberg
(1995) points out that the combination of verbs and constructions is not
entirely unconstrained. A verb can only be inserted into a given con-
struction if the event structure of that verb and the argument structure
of the construction match semantically. To illustrate, it is possible to
insert sneeze into the resultative construction because both sneeze and
the resultative construction require an agent argument in the subject
position. Hence, the respective roles can be ‘fused’. This idea is ren-
dered more precise in what is called the semantic coherence principle
(Goldberg 1995: 50):
Only roles which are semantically compatible can be fused. Two roles
r1 and r2 are semantically compatible if either r1 can be construed as an
instance of r2, or r2 can be construed as an instance of r1.
The semantic coherence principle explains why verbs such as hear
or sink cannot readily be inserted into the resultative construction.
Sentences such as *John heard his ears deaf with loud heavy metal or *John
sank himself drowned are odd because neither of the verbs specifies in its
conventional event structure the agent role that the resultative con-
struction requires for its subject. The verb hear specifies an experiencer
in its event structure, and the verb sink specifies a theme.
Argument structure constructions are important to the Construction
Grammar enterprise for yet another reason. The ‘simple sentences’
of a language tend to have very basic meanings that reflect recurrent
types of everyday experience. In other words, languages have a simple
 argument structure constructions 31

sentence pattern to express the result of an action because acting on

one’s environment in order to bring about a result is a basic, recur-
rent, and important pattern of human behaviour: on any given day,
you will probably start your morning by dragging yourself out of bed,
drawing the curtains open, and getting the coffee maker up and running.
Several other resultative actions may follow before you have even had
a shower. Similarly, languages have ditransitive constructions because
situations of giving, sending, offering, and showing are just so central
to the interaction between human beings. The general idea that gram-
matical structures reflect the realities of daily life has been captured in
the slogan that ‘Grammars code best what speakers do most’ (Du Bois
1985: 363). Goldberg (1995: 39) translates this idea into what is called
the scene-encoding hypothesis:
Constructions which correspond to basic sentence types encode as their
central senses event types that are basic to human experience.
The scene-encoding hypothesis predicts that across many languages,
there should be basic syntactic patterns that express ideas such as
bringing about a result, transferring an object, moving along a path,
undergoing a change of state, or experiencing a stimulus. Of the
English argument structure constructions that Goldberg discusses,
the Resultative construction, the Ditransitive construction, and the
Caused Motion construction do correspond closely to basic scenes of
human experience.

2.3  Valency-increasing constructions

Across languages, constructions that increase the valency of verbs tend
to have similar kinds of meanings, most notably Resultative con-
structions, Causative constructions, and Applicative constructions
(cf. Payne 1997 for a cross-linguistic overview). In English, valency-
increasing constructions are exemplified by the Resultative construc-
tion that was discussed above, the Ditransitive construction (Sylvia
wrote me an email), the Caused Motion construction (John sneezed the
napkin off the table), and the Way construction (Frank cheated his way into
Harvard). The following sections will discuss each of these in turn.

2.3.1 The Ditransitive construction

The Ditransitive construction is exemplified by the following
sentences.
32 construction gr ammar and its application to english

  (6) I gave John the keys.

Sylvia wrote me an email.
Sally baked her sister a cake.
Could you draw me a picture of the suspect?

The construction links a verb with three arguments, that is, a subject
and two objects. These arguments map onto three distinct semantic
roles. The subject argument is understood to be the agent of a transfer.
This action involves the second object, which receives the role of the
transferred object. This object is transferred from the agent to a recipi-
ent, who is expressed by the first object. Whereas give, send, offer, and
many other English verbs conventionally include two objects in their
argument structure, the same cannot be said of other verbs that occur
with the Ditransitive construction. The verbs bake and draw, although
perfectly acceptable in the construction, only rarely occur with two
objects in corpus data. In order to explain the acceptability of such
examples, it is thus necessary to posit a construction that forms part of
speakers’ grammatical knowledge. By the same token, the verbs bake and
draw can in no way account for the overall meaning of the respective
examples, which convey the idea of a transfer. If Sally baked her sister
a cake, that means that Sally produced a cake so that her sister could
willingly receive it. Unless we assume an ad-hoc sense of bake along the
lines of ‘apply heat to an item of food with the purpose of creating a
product that can then be transferred to a willing recipient’, the overall
meaning of the example cannot be derived from the respective word
meanings. Alternatively, we can posit the Ditransitive construction
as a symbolic unit that carries meaning and that is responsible for the
observed increase in the valency of bake. In this case, bake contributes
its usual lexical meaning while the construction augments its argument
structure to include a recipient argument.
Several semantic idiosyncrasies of the construction are worth point-
ing out. First, it appears that the agent needs to carry out the transfer
consciously and willingly. For instance, it would be highly misleading
to state that Sylvia wrote me an email when in fact Sylvia unintention-
ally hit ‘reply to all’, sending out a private message that I was never
supposed to read. Second, it is equally necessary that the recipient be
willing to receive the transferred objects. The sentence We threw the
squirrels some peanuts evokes the idea of squirrels willingly accepting
their peanuts. The example could not be used to describe the activity
of throwing peanuts at dead squirrels. In the following examples, the
respective recipients fail the criterion of being ‘willing to accept’. The
examples are therefore judged as odd by proficient speakers of English.
 argument structure constructions 33

  (7) ?Bill threw the coma victim a blanket. (I threw John a blanket.)
?John gave the house new windows. (I gave John a new key.)
?I left the baby some beer in the fridge. (I left John some beer in
the fridge.)
One might of course object that there are many uses of the
Ditransitive construction in which the recipient does not want to
receive the transferred object, and which are nonetheless perfectly
acceptable.
  (8) The professor gave the student an F.
The plumber mailed me another invoice.
The criminals sent him a ransom note, asking for a million
pounds.
It is probably fair to say few people enjoy receiving bad grades, unex-
pected bills, or ransom notes. In the light of these examples, it seems
more adequate to say that the recipient has to be able to receive the
transferred object, and perhaps conventionally expected to do so, which
motivates the label of a ‘socially qualified recipient’. But even so, there
are further examples that seem to contradict what we have said so far
about the Ditransitive construction.
  (9) The noise gave me a headache.
The music lent the party a festive air.
The flood brought us the opportunity to remodel our old
bathroom.
A first thing to notice about these examples is that the ‘transferred
object’ is immaterial. Headaches and opportunities are not the kind
of thing that could be physically exchanged. Likewise, the examples
contain subject noun phrases that refer to noise, music, and a flood,
none of which can be said to be a volitional agent. Goldberg (1995: 144)
argues that these examples metaphorically extend the basic meaning
of the Ditransitive construction. Whereas the basic meaning of the
construction conveys the idea of a physical transfer, the examples in
(9) express the relation between a cause and an effect. Causal relations
are thus metaphorically understood as events of giving and receiving. A
noise that causes a headache can be described as ‘giving me a headache’.
A flood that causes the destruction of a bathroom could, under a rather
optimistic outlook on life, be construed as ‘bringing an opportunity for
remodelling’. The semantic spectrum of the Ditransitive construction
further includes transfers that will only occur in the future, acts that
facilitate reception of an object, and acts that block a potential transfer.
34 construction gr ammar and its application to english

(10) John ordered Margaret a gin and tonic.

The doctor allowed me a full meal.
The banks refused him a loan.
So far, we have identified a number of semantic idiosyncrasies that
pertain to the Ditransitive construction. Other idiosyncrasies of the
construction concern the collocational behaviour of the construc-
tion. Specifically, there are certain verbs that do not occur in the
Ditransitive construction despite having a lexical meaning that would
fit the constructional meaning.
(11) *Sally shouted John the news.
*John explained me the theory.
*Margaret donated the Red Cross £100.
Why do these verbs ‘not work’ in the Ditransitive construction? While
it could be suspected that we are seeing verb-specific idiosyncrasies here,
some generalisations have been found. For instance, shout behaves just
like a range of other verbs that describe manners of speech, including
scream, murmur, whisper, or yodel (Goldberg 1995: 128). The verbs explain
and donate have in common that they represent Latinate, specialised
vocabulary. Gropen et al. (1989) show that a number of morphophono-
logical traits that characterise Latinate vocabulary, notably involving
stress patterns and affixation, can to some extent predict which verbs
do occur in the Ditransitive construction and which ones do not.
However, many open questions remain, and there is even considerable
inter-speaker variation with regard to the acceptability of verbs such as
obtain or purchase. Goldberg (1995: 129) marks *Chris purchased him some food
as ungrammatical, but Hannah purchased him a microscope is one of several
attested examples from corpus data. In Construction Grammar, idiosyn-
cratic lexical preferences of constructions and even differences between
speakers with regard to such preferences can be modelled as part of indi-
vidual speakers’ linguistic knowledge. Constructions will exhibit some
regularities with regard to the kinds of verbs that they accommodate, but
some amount of collocational idiosyncrasy is fully expected.
Summing up, the Ditransitive construction conveys, as its basic
sense, the meaning of a transfer between an intentional agent and a
willing recipient. The construction conventionally occurs with verbs
such as give, send, and offer; its occurrence with verbs such as bake, feed,
or leave demonstrates that the construction can actively increase the
valency of verbs that do not usually occur with two objects. Besides its
basic sense, the construction metaphorically expresses relationships of
cause and effect; additional meanings include future transfers, ‘enabled’
 argument structure constructions 35

transfers, and blocked transfers. The construction exhibits collocational

restrictions so that it does not readily combine with several specific
classes of verbs.

2.3.2 The Caused Motion construction

The following examples illustrate the Caused Motion construction.
(12) The audience laughed Bob off the stage.
John chopped carrots into the salad.
The professor invited us into his office.
Like the Ditransitive construction, the Caused Motion construction
can alter and augment the argument structure of the verbs with which
it combines. In the examples given above, the construction adds argu-
ments to the verbs laugh, chop, and invite. Whereas the event structure
of laugh merely specifies someone who is laughing, the example with
laugh adds an argument of someone who is being moved, what is called
a theme, and the goal of that movement. The event structure of chop
includes a patient argument, that is, something that is being chopped.
In the example above, this argument has a double role: the carrots are
being chopped, for sure, but in addition to being a patient argument,
they are further understood to be moving towards a goal, in this case
into the salad. It is therefore appropriate to characterise the role of the
carrots as both patient and theme in the context of the Caused Motion
construction. The construction can thus increase the valency of verbs,
either by adding a path/goal argument, or by adding a theme and a
path/goal argument.
Semantically, the construction indicates that an agent carries out an
activity that causes a theme to move along a path or towards a goal.
More succinctly, the construction conveys the meaning that ‘X causes
Y to move along or towards Z’. Laughter is hence presented as the
ultimate cause of Bob’s movement off the stage, even if it is presum-
ably the case that Bob was walking. The Caused Motion construction
thus harmonises best with verbs such as throw, kick, or pull, which are
conventionally associated with an event structure containing a theme
argument and a path/goal argument:
(13) John threw the ball over the fence.
Franz kicked the ball into the goal.
She pulled a handkerchief out of her pocket.
Besides its central sense, the construction conveys the meanings of
assisted motion (John helped Mary out of the car), prevented motion (John
36 construction gr ammar and its application to english

locked the dog into the bathroom), enabled motion (Mary allowed the dog out of
the bathroom), and prompted motion (The professor invited us into his office).
Speakers’ knowledge of the Caused Motion construction includes
knowledge of the following constraints. First, the agent argument
cannot be an instrument. Whereas instruments are commonly found as
subjects of active clauses such as The key opened the door or This knife chops
and slices beautifully, the Caused Motion construction requires that the
agent act autonomously.
(14) *The key allowed John into the house.
*The gun threatened the hostages into the back office.
*The knife chopped the carrots into the salad.
Another constraint on the Caused Motion construction is that the path
of the theme is usually intended. Hence, it is not possible to chop carrots
onto the floor or pour milk next to one’s glass. However, if the action
that is specified by the verb is unintentional to begin with, as for instance
with the verb sneeze, unintended paths do not pose any problem.
(15) *John chopped the carrots onto the floor.
*Bob poured milk next to his glass.
He sneezed his tooth right across town. (Goldberg 2006: 6)
The Caused Motion construction is further constrained with regard
to the path of the motion. Specifically, the causal event must fully
determine the path of the theme. Paths with very specific goals, or goals
that require independent movements along a path, therefore lead to the
unacceptability of the following examples.
(16) *The audience laughed Bob home.
*Mary allowed the dog to the next village.
*Bob threw the stone to the bottom of the lake.
To summarise, the Caused Motion construction conveys the
meaning that ‘X causes Y to move along or towards Z’. The construction
can add the arguments of a theme and a path or goal to the event struc-
ture of a verb, and it is associated with a range of senses that relate to the
basic scenario of caused motion. The construction is chiefly constrained
with regard to the subject, which cannot be an instrument, and the path,
which must be fully determined by the causal action.

2.3.3 The Way construction

The English Way construction differs from the constructions that have
been discussed up to now in this chapter because it specifies the lexical
 argument structure constructions 37

element way and a possessive determiner such as his, her, or their, in its
form. The following examples serve to illustrate the construction.
(17) Frank dug his way out of prison.
John elbowed his way across the room.
She slowly climbed her way up through the branches.
Just like the previously discussed constructions, the Way construction
can add arguments to the event structure of lexical verbs. The construc-
tion evokes a scenario in which an agent moves along a path that is
difficult to navigate. The verbs that occur in the Way construction can
be verbs of directed movement, such as climb, but also verbs such as dig
or elbow, which do not inherently convey the idea of movement along
a trajectory. The Way construction thus imposes this meaning on its
component words, adding up to two arguments in the process: the way
argument and a path/goal argument not unlike the argument that was
discussed in connection with the Caused Motion construction. With
a verb such as dig, which conventionally takes a direct object (digging a
hole, digging your own grave), it could be argued that ‘his way out of prison’
is simply a noun phrase instantiating a direct object, so that nothing out
of the ordinary would be going on with that example. However, the
example states more than that Frank has dug a tunnel out of prison.
What the example conveys is that Frank succeeded in actually travers-
ing the tunnel, thus escaping from prison. Goldberg (1995: 200) points
out that the Way construction entails motion, so that examples such as
the following are nonsensical.
(18) *Frank dug his way out of prison, but he hasn’t gone yet.
*Staying behind the counter, the bank robbers shot their way
through the crowd.
Verbs such as climb do specify a path argument in their event structure,
but the construction adds the way argument, which cannot be replaced
by other lexical elements that refer to paths or trajectories more
broadly. The following examples are therefore unacceptable, despite
their superficial similarity to the example with climb given above.
(19) *She quickly climbed her escape route down the stairs.
*She steadily climbed her track up to the summit.
In the basic sense of the Way construction, the verb conveys the
means by which a path is being forged: through digging, climbing,
elbowing, or even shooting. In many instances of the Way construc-
tion, the path along which the agent moves is thus not pre-existing, but
has to be created, prototypically with some effort. This aspect of the
38 construction gr ammar and its application to english

c­ onstructional meaning explains that basic motion verbs such as move or

step are not acceptable in the Way construction.
(20) *She moved her way into the room.
*She stepped her way down the stairs.
The Way construction is very commonly used metaphorically, such
that completing a demanding task is talked about in terms of the crea-
tion of a path and movement along that path. The following examples
illustrate metaphorical usages of the construction.
(21) Sally was crunching her way through a bag of potato chips.
Bob worked his way to the top of his profession.
The three girls sang their way into the hearts of the audience.
The Way construction is further used with a meaning that does not
make reference to the means by which a path is created, but that
rather describes the manner in which a movement is performed. In the
examples below, the action denoted by the verb occurs simultaneously
to a movement, but that action neither causes nor enables that move-
ment. Discussions of the Way construction hence distinguish the more
common means interpretation from the manner interpretation of the
construction.
(22) Sam joked his way into the meeting.
John was whistling his way down the street.
Triathlete Paula Finlay cried her way across the finish line.
Goldberg (1995: 212) identifies several semantic constraints on the
Way construction that have to do with the difficulty of creating a path
or moving along that path. First, the activity denoted by the verb has
to be unbounded or repetitive. Hence it is possible to climb one’s way up
a cliff but not *to jump one’s way off a cliff. A second constraint pertaining
to the movement demands that it be self-propelled. Speakers therefore
reject *The snow melts its way into the river, in which the movement is not
self-propelled, but they accept The probe melts its way through the glacier, in
which the probe moves of its own accord. Third, Goldberg (1995: 214)
suggests that the Way construction encodes motion that is directed,
not aimless. This is certainly the prototypical case, but many examples,
including James Bond womanising his way across the globe or young people
drifting their way through life, suggest that this constraint can be violated
fairly easily.
To conclude this section, the Way construction can be characterised
as an argument structure construction that can increase the valency of
a verb to include a lexically specified way argument and another argu-
 argument structure constructions 39

ment that expresses a path or a goal. There are two basic interpretations
of the Way construction, namely the more common means interpreta-
tion, in which the verb encodes the means by which a path is created
and/or traversed, and the manner interpretation, in which the verb
specifies the manner of an action that occurs simultaneously to a move-
ment. In the means interpretation of the construction, the agent’s action
is commonly quite difficult, which imposes a number of constraints on
the kinds of movements that can be expressed by the Way construction.

2.4  Valency-decreasing constructions

In the Construction Grammar literature, the discussion of argument
structure constructions has been dominated by the topic of valency-
increasing constructions. It is not hard to see why this should be the
case: constructions that can add multiple arguments to the event
structure of otherwise intransitive verbs provide compelling evidence
for the idea that knowledge of language must include knowledge of
constructions and for the idea that constructions can override lexical
meanings. Specifically, speakers must know that it is acceptable to utter
a sentence such as Sally baked her sister a cake and that the lexical meaning
of the verb bake is enriched by the constructional context to convey
the idea of a transfer. In the introductory chapter, the constructional
override of lexical meaning was discussed as the principle of coercion
(Michaelis 2004). Yet valency-increasing constructions only represent
one half of the set of valency-changing constructions in English. It will
be argued in this section that valency-decreasing constructions are no
less important to the Construction Grammar enterprise than their more
famous relatives.
Cross-linguistically common constructions that decrease the valency
of a verb are Passive constructions (Mistakes were made), Reflexive
constructions (John shaved), Reciprocal constructions (Let’s meet again
soon), and Imperative constructions (Go!). This section will further
discuss Null Instantiation constructions, which can be illustrated
with examples such as Tigers only kill at night or I know. In these examples,
central participants of the actions that are described are left unex-
pressed, but are nonetheless understood.

2.4.1 The Passive
The English Passive construction with be is most often discussed as
the marked counterpart of Active sentences with transitive verbs. The
­following examples thus form corresponding pairs.
40 construction gr ammar and its application to english

(23) The reviewer rejected the paper.

The paper was rejected (by the reviewer).
John paid the bill.
The bill was paid (by John).
Because of the close relation between pairs such as these, and because
the Active clearly represents a construction that is applicable in a much
wider set of contexts, characteristics of the Passive are typically phrased
in terms of how Passive sentences deviate from the less marked Active
sentences. Huddleston and Pullum (2002: 1428) point out three corre-
spondences. First, the subject of the Active (the reviewer, John) appears
in the corresponding Passive sentences as an oblique object marked
with the preposition by. As the parentheses in the examples indicate, it
is possible, and indeed the default option in actual language use, to omit
this argument in the Passive. It is this type of omission that justifies
categorising the Passive as a valency-decreasing construction. Second,
the object of the Active (the paper, the bill) appears as the subject of the
corresponding Passive sentences. The Passive thus functions to reverse
the relative prominence of the two arguments in the event structure of
a transitive verb. Whereas normally the agent of a transitive verb has to
be expressed and the patient argument can be omitted under certain cir-
cumstances (Thanks, I have already eaten), the Passive construction makes
the patient argument obligatory and the agent argument optional.
Third, the verb of the Passive construction is more complex in form
than the corresponding verb in the Active. It appears in the form of a
past participle that is preceded by a form of the auxiliary be.
Given these clear-cut correspondences, it is a tempting idea to think
of the Passive as a grammatical rule that takes a transitive Active
sentence as its input and yields a passivised counterpart. However,
Huddleston and Pullum offer a range of examples that differ from the
above description in several respects, but that arguably still instantiate
the Passive construction.
(24) John was given a large data set for the analysis.
*A large dataset was given John for the analysis.
Sally’s papers are referred to a lot.
*The children are looked to a lot.
In the first example, the verb give is a ditransitive verb, not a transitive
one. As the second example shows, only the recipient, not the theme,
can appear as the subject of a Passive sentence. This is not per se a
problem for a putative passivisation rule: the rule would just have to
include the additional information that theme arguments are not avail-
 argument structure constructions 41

able for passivisation. The example with Sally’s papers illustrates what is
called a prepositional passive. In the example, the prepositional object
of the verb refer appears as the subject of a passivised sentence. By con-
trast, this does not work with look. The difference between refer and look
is difficult to explain with recourse to a general grammatical rule, but
it can be made sense of if the Passive is viewed as a construction that
has distinct collocational preferences. As a rule of thumb, it appears that
prepositional passives work well with highly entrenched or idiomatic
combinations of verbs and prepositional objects. Hence, approve of a plan,
pay for everything, or deal with issues are good candidates for prepositional
passives, whereas search under a bed, walk across a hallway, or choose between
two theories yield questionable examples.
(25) The plan was approved of by my mother.
Everything was paid for in advance.
These issues will be dealt with in another paper.
?The bed was thoroughly searched under.
?This hallway was walked across by George Washington.
?These two theories have to be chosen between.
Examples of the Passive also show varying degrees of acceptability
in cases where clausal structures appear as the subject of the passivised
sentence. The following examples show instances of -ing clauses, infini-
tive clauses, and wh-clauses. For each of these categories, it is possible to
find examples that sound fully idiomatic and, conversely, other exam-
ples that seem rather unacceptable.
(26) Texting a marriage proposal is not recommended.
*Texting a marriage proposal was remembered (by John).
Not to go would be considered rude.
*Not to go was decided (by John).
Whether it was feasible had not yet been determined.
*Whether it was feasible was wondered (by John).
A general passivisation rule would be of limited use to account for such
asymmetries. The only viable solution in a dictionary-and-grammar
model of linguistic knowledge would be to inscribe these restrictions
into the lexical entries of the respective verbs in an ad-hoc fashion.
This, however, raises further questions, specifically with regard to novel
verbs. Take for instance the recent verb blog. The verb is regularly pas-
sivised, and even if your experience with such examples is limited, you
will probably agree that Our wedding was blogged about! is an idiomatic
sentence of English whereas *That we married was blogged by John is
not. If you do, this suggests that your knowledge of language includes
42 construction gr ammar and its application to english

k­ nowledge of how blog behaves as a verb, how this behaviour compares

to that of other verbs, and in what kind of Passive constructions those
verbs appear. This kind of knowledge can be accommodated by the
construct-i-con in a straightforward way.
Finally, Huddleston and Pullum (2002: 1435) note that there are
verbs which seem to be restricted to the Passive, among them be reputed
to, be said to, and be rumoured.
(27) Pat is reputed to be very rich.
Kim is said to be a manic depressive.
It is rumoured that there will be an election before the end of the
year.
The fact that some examples of the Passive cannot be transformed into
a corresponding Active clause makes it difficult to maintain the idea
of a grammatical rule that systematically links both constructions. To
be sure, speakers will be aware that the two constructions correspond
in important ways, that they often paraphrase one another, and that
they express similar states of affairs. All of this does not run counter to
the idea that the Passive is a construction in its own right, a generalisa-
tion that speakers have to learn as an independent unit of grammatical
knowledge.

2.4.2 The Imperative construction

The English Imperative construction is shown in the following
examples.
(28) Call me after lunch.
For next time, please read chapters three and four.
Take one of these in the morning, and another one before
bedtime.
The Imperative is a valency-decreasing construction because it sup-
presses a central argument of the respective verbs, namely the agent.
It is easy to construct paraphrases of the above examples in which such
an agent is overtly expressed. The sentence I would ask you to call me after
lunch makes explicit that it is the addressee who is expected to perform
the action denoted by the verb. The meaning of the Imperative
construction is thus non-compositional. It cannot be derived from the
lexical meanings of the words alone that the agent of Call me after lunch
should be the addressee. Besides this basic observation, there are several
other pieces of evidence that the Imperative is a construction. Most
importantly perhaps, there are constraints on the combination of the
 argument structure constructions 43

Imperative with other constructions. Proficient speakers of English find

the following examples questionable.
(29) *Must/should/got to leave!
*Be called later!
The first example suggests that combining the Imperative with a modal
auxiliary yields an intelligible but ungrammatical utterance. There is
nothing semantically odd about such a request; it is the structure that
speakers find unacceptable. Second, Takahashi (2012: 124) observes
that some combinations of the Imperative with the Passive yield unac-
ceptable examples. Examples that do work would include Be checked
over by a doctor or Stand up and be counted for what you are about to receive.
The Imperative further occurs relatively rarely with the perfect (Have
your homework done by 5!) and the progressive (Be waiting in the lobby at
9!). Huddleston and Pullum (2002: 932) explain this by pointing out
that requests typically prompt dynamic actions rather than states. The
grammatical behaviour of the Imperative in this regard is thus a conse-
quence of real-world circumstances.
An unpredictable semantic trait of the construction concerns its
interpretation in coordinations of imperative clauses and declarative
clauses. In the following examples, the initial Imperative clauses are
understood as having conditional meaning.
(30) Take an aspirin and you’ll feel better.
Ask him about his dissertation and he will be rambling on for
hours.
Do that again and you will regret it for the rest of your life.
What is noteworthy about these examples is that quite often, their
overall meaning directly contradicts the Imperative clause. Whereas
the first example suggests that the hearer take an aspirin, the two other
examples are meant to discourage the hearer from complying with the
initial request.
The English Imperative further exhibits strong collocational prefer-
ences. Takahashi (2012: 24) observes that the verbs let, tell, look, and come
are among the most frequently used verbs in the construction. Some of
these even have preferred argument realisation patterns, for instance
tell, which usually combines with me, as in the example below.
(31) Let’s not argue any more.
Tell me about it.
Look, we all make mistakes sometimes.
Come on!
44 construction gr ammar and its application to english

Takahashi’s frequency results indicate that the function of the

Imperative is not so much that of a vehicle for giving orders as that of
the rather polite organisation of discourse, as in expressions such as let’s
see, look, listen, trust me, or guess what. This observation echoes a similar
finding by Stefanowitsch and Gries (2003).

2.4.3  Null Instantiation

The term Null Instantiation refers to the phenomenon that not all
arguments that a verb has in its event structure are overtly expressed.
In many cases, the possibility of Null Instantiation has to be seen as
a property that is inscribed in the lexical entry of a verb. For instance,
the verb eat allows omission of the patient argument (The children ate
noisily) whereas the verb devour does not (*The children devoured noisily).
An interesting aspect of Null Instantiation is that verbs differ
with regard to the definiteness of the argument that can be omitted.
Ruppenhofer (2005) distinguishes Indefinite Null Instantiation
(INI), which can be observed with the verb read, from Definite Null
Instantiation (DNI), which shows itself in uses of the verb understand.
The crucial difference is whether the speaker knows the exact identity
of the omitted argument. Compare the following examples:
(32) Kim was reading. I just don’t remember what.
Kim understood. *I just don’t remember what.
While it is perfectly acceptable for me to say that Kim was reading and
to have only a vague idea of what it was that she was reading, saying
that Kim understood conveys that I know more or less exactly what she
understood. The behaviour of INI verbs and DNI verbs makes for an
interesting topic, but this section will focus instead on a third type of
Null Instantiation, namely cases in which a construction licenses
the omission of an argument. Ruppenhofer and Michaelis (2010) report
on several such constructions, which they find to be genre-specific, that
is, tied to very specific communicative situations. Consider, for instance,
the Labelese construction.
(33) Contains sulphites.
Creates visibly fuller, thicker hair.
Eliminates pet odours.
The Labelese construction suppresses the subject argument of a verb.
This does not create any communicative problems because the con-
struction can only appear printed on the very referent that is left unex-
pressed by the construction. The Labelese construction not only occurs
 argument structure constructions 45

with verbs but also works with a whole range of Predicative construc-
tions, as is evidenced by statements such as easy to use, for children 4
years and up, made in China, and dietary supplement. In these examples, the
reader understands that an expression such as made in China describes a
characteristic of the product on which the expression is found.
Another Null Instantiation construction is confined to the lan-
guage of cooking recipes.
(34) Season liberally with salt and pepper.
Chill before serving.
Cut into one-inch-thick slices.
Ruppenhofer and Michaelis (2010: 181) call this the Instructional
Imperative construction. Like the Labelese construction, it represents
a generalisation that speakers must have learned. Whereas it might be
argued that quite generally, an argument can be omitted in contexts
where its identity is glaringly obvious, this theory fails to explain why
Cut into one-inch-thick slices is fine as a written instruction but decid-
edly odd as a spoken request. The next time you are preparing a meal
together with a friend, sprinkle your conversation with something like
Fry until lightly brown, and see what happens.

2.5  Relations between argument structure constructions

Many argument structure constructions in English can be paraphrased
in terms of another, formally and semantically related argument struc-
ture construction. The previous section has discussed the example of
Active and Passive sentences, which are mutually linked through a
number of correspondences. A further example of an argument struc-
ture construction with a close paraphrase is the Ditransitive construc-
tion, which has a ‘twin’ construction in the Prepositional Dative
construction. Consider the following examples.
(35) John gave Mary the book.
John gave the book to Mary.
Another close relation exists between the Caused Motion construc-
tion and what one might call the With-Applicative construction.
(36) John brushed barbecue sauce onto the ribs.
John brushed the ribs with barbecue sauce.
Linguists of different theoretical persuasions have long been inter-
ested in the relations between these constructions. Pairs of construc-
tions such as the ones given above have come to be known as syntactic
46 construction gr ammar and its application to english

alternations; the pairs in (35) and (36) are known respectively as the
Dative Alternation and the Locative Alternation. As with
Active and Passive sentences, the correspondences between the two
members of those pairs invite the idea of a grammatical rule that sys-
tematically links one to the other. In a dictionary-and-grammar model
of linguistic knowledge, such a rule would allow speakers to use one
member of the pair as the input from which the second member of the
pair can be derived as an output. The rule would apply across the board,
for all manners of verbs, unless the lexical entry of a verb specifically
disallows its application. For both the Dative Alternation and the
Locative Alternation, there are what are called non-alternating
verbs, as shown in the following examples.
(37) John took his son to the doctor.
*John took the doctor his son.
John filled the glass with water.
*John filled water into the glass.
The verb take does not readily enter the Ditransitive construction,
and the fact that fill cannot be used in the Caused Motion construc-
tion is even being taught to learners of English as a second language.
As you may guess, researchers in Construction Grammar view the idea
of a grammatical rule linking the members of a pair of constructions as
problematic. The alternative view is expressed by Goldberg under the
heading of the surface generalisation hypothesis (2006: 25):
[T]here are typically broader syntactic and semantic generalizations
associated with a surface argument structure form than exist between
the same surface form and a distinct form that it is hypothesized to be
syntactically or semantically derived from.
The phrase ‘a surface argument structure form’ here paraphrases the
term ‘construction’ in a theory-neutral fashion. What the hypothesis
claims is that each member of a pair of paraphrasable constructions is
best analysed on its own terms, all correspondences notwithstanding.
The hypothesis further predicts that each member of such a pair will
exhibit systematic differences with regard to the other member and sys-
tematic generalisations that pertain to its own form and meaning. Both
of these points can be illustrated with the behaviour of the Ditransitive
construction. Interestingly, examples of the Ditransitive construction
correspond not only to examples of the Prepositional Dative con-
struction, but also to examples of the For-Benefactive construction.
(38) John gave the book to Mary. John gave Mary the book.
John poured a scotch for Mary. John poured Mary a scotch.
 argument structure constructions 47

On the dictionary-and-grammar view of linguistic knowledge, these

pairs would need to be linked by two separate rules, which implies
that the two Ditransitive sentences on the right would in fact not
instantiate the same construction, despite having the same surface
argument structure form. This conclusion, however, is questionable.
Goldberg (2006: 27) presents the examples shown in (39) to make the
case that Ditransitive sentences corresponding to Prepositional
Dative examples and Ditransitive sentences corresponding to For-
Benefactive examples show exactly the same behaviour. When one is
fine, so is the other; when one is questionable or ungrammatical, so is
the other.
(39) Ditransitives Paraphrases
Mina bought Mel a book. Mina bought a book for Mel.
Mina sent Mel a book. Mina sent a book to Mel.
??Mina bought Mel it. Mina bought it for Mel.
??Mina sent Mel it. Mina sent it to Mel.
??Who did Mina buy a book? Who did Mina buy a book for?
??Who did Mina send a book? Who did Mina send a book to?
*Mina bought Mel yesterday a book. Mina bought a book yesterday
for Mel.
*Mina sent Mel yesterday a book. Mina sent a book yesterday to
Mel.
Goldberg concludes that the similarities between examples that show
the surface form of the Ditransitive construction are greater than sim-
ilarities between the member constructions of a syntactic alternation. In
her own words, ‘[t]he robust generalizations are surface generalizations’
(2006: 33).

2.6  Summing up
This chapter introduced the idea of argument structure, which is a
synonym for the term ‘valency’. Argument structure describes the
number and character of elements that can bond to a given linguistic
item, and is a term that pertains both to the meaning of the bonding ele-
ments and to the form of those elements. The former aspect was called
the event structure; the latter was called syntactic argument structure.
The chapter introduced thematic roles such as agent, patient, and expe-
riencer. It was argued that argument structure constructions are items
of linguistic knowledge that allow speakers to use verbs in syntactic
contexts in which they are not conventionally used. ‘Famous’ examples
such as John sneezed the foam off his capuccino illustrate this phenomenon.
48 construction gr ammar and its application to english

Argument structure constructions are syntactic constructions that can be

filled by all manners of lexical material and that convey some meaning
of their own that goes beyond the meaning of their component words.
There are hence two main pieces of evidence for argument structure
constructions: first, they allow non-conventional combinations of verbs
and syntactic contexts; second, they convey non-compositional mean-
ings. The combination of verbs and argument structure constructions
is not unconstrained: Goldberg’s semantic coherence principle states
that a verb can only be combined with a construction if the participants
that are evoked by the verb and the construction match semantically.
There are hence limits on the possible combinations of verbs and
constructions. The importance of argument structure constructions to
Construction Grammar at large was discussed in connection with the
scene encoding hypothesis, that is, the idea that the basic syntactic pat-
terns of a language encode recurrent event types that are basic to human
experience.
The chapter then drew a distinction between valency-increasing con-
structions and valency-decreasing constructions. Valency-increasing
constructions such as the Resultative construction, the Ditransitive
construction, the Caused Motion construction, and the Way con-
struction can augment the argument structure of lexical verbs. The
constructions thus add participants to the event structure of the verb.
By contrast, valency-decreasing constructions such as the Passive,
the Imperative, the Labelese construction, and the Instructional
Imperative construction suppress the expression of participants that
are there in the event structure of the respective verb. Quite often,
the suppressed arguments are easily recoverable from the context.
Examples of the Labelese construction such as Contains sulphites, read
on a bottle of red wine, leave little doubt as to what could be meant.
However, it was argued that contextual recoverability is not the only
constraint on the use of these constructions.
The chapter closed with a discussion of relations between paraphras-
able constructions, called syntactic alternations. In contrast to the idea
of grammatical rules that systematically link argument structure pat-
terns with similar meanings, what is called the surface generalisation
hypothesis expresses the view that argument structure constructions
are best analysed in their own right because similarities will be greater
between examples with the same surface form than between members
of a syntactic alternation.
In summary, despite the fact that ‘simple sentences’ such as Pat gave
Bill a book or Bob hammered the metal flat give the initial impression of being
completely regular and semantically compositional, they illustrate
 argument structure constructions 49

constructions that yield strong evidence for a constructional view of

linguistic knowledge. Any theory of grammar needs to have an explana-
tion for the fact that John cut the rope in half with a knife is a fine sentence
of English whereas *John heard his ears deaf with loud heavy metal is not.
Positing argument structure constructions, in connection with princi-
ples that constrain possible combinations of verbs and constructions,
provides an intuitive and testable account.

Study questions
• What is argument structure?
• Can you give an example of an expression where the event structure
of a verb and its syntactic argument structure do not match?
• What are thematic roles?
• What does the surface generalisation hypothesis predict? What data
would cast doubt on the hypothesis?
• What are the two main pieces of evidence for recognising argument
structure constructions?
• What is the principle of semantic coherence?
• What is meant by the term Null Instantiation?
• Can you come up with an example of an English valency-changing
construction that was not discussed in this chapter?

Further reading
The central reference for this chapter is Goldberg (1995). Chapters 2
and 9 in Goldberg (2006) represent continuations of that work. Boas
(2003, 2005) and Goldberg and Jackendoff (2004) discuss English
Resultative constructions. Foundational work on the topic of verbs
and their argument structure is found in Pinker (1989), Levin (1993),
and Levin and Rappaport Hovav (2005). A very useful resource is the
Valency Dictionary of English (Herbst et al. 2004); see also Herbst and
Götz-Votteler (2007). General overviews of valency-changing con-
structions are found in Payne (1997) and Haspelmath and Müller-
Bardey (2004). These include many examples from languages other
than English, which helps to put the English data into perspective.