Unexpected and innovative uses of constructions: is there a need to supplement a dictionary with constructional information?

Conference item

Consider the sentences (1a-b), from the TIME Corpus: (1) a ... the others ... bullied him into leaving the jury room. (1928) b ...railroads ... had thumbscrewed the mine operators into thumbscrewing the miners. (1928) (1a) and (1b) illustrate the transitive into -ing pattern, where a matrix verb selects an object and a sentential complement that consists of into and an -ing clause. The paper identifies the transitive into -ing pattern, and then turns to the OED treatment of verbs selecting it. The availability of the transitive into -ing pattern for bully is implicitly recognized in the resultative (or causative) sense 'to frighten into a certain course' (OED, s. v. bully, under sense 2) By contrast, as regards thumbscrew, the sense of the verb is given as 'to torture by screwing the thumbs by torture; to torture with or as with thumbscrews' (OED, s. v. thumbscrew), and there is no resultative sense given. The paper raises the question of whether additional resultative senses should be postulated for verbs of the type of thumbscrew or whether a reference to the transitive into -ing pattern might be appropriate. Using the TIME Corpus, the paper also explores the questions of how frequent unexpected or innovative resultative usages have been in recent English. Other verbs analogous to thumbscrew are identified. It is also observed that there are verbs converted from proper names selecting the transitive into -ing pattern. Such conversions, it is suggested, are unlikely to enter the lexicon, especially when decades old, but they are still easily interpreted in their contexts. It is suggested that a model of construction grammar is helpful in their analysis.

Authors: Rudanko, J

• Alternative title: Presented at Dictionaries and Text Corpora session
• Publication status: Not published
• Peer review status: Reviewed (other)
• Edition: Author's Original
• Language: English
• Keywords: dictionary; constructions
• Subjects: English Language and Literature