6.7 Generalizing the notion of construction
Thelastsectiondescribed a familyofconstructionalidioms inEnglishinwhichthemainverbofthesentenceservesas
an argument. Most of these idioms are not attested in other languages. The resultative, the most intensively
investigated of them, seems to appear only in a relatively limited range of languages (Levin and Rappaport Hovav
1991). Theothers have hardlybeen looked for (though Toivonen1999)finds a close parallelto thewayconstructionin
Swedish, using a reflexive instead ofway). But perhaps other languages haveconstructiontypes notattested in English.
Noun Incorporation (section 4.3) might be such a case. Nikanne (2000b) offers some possibilities for Finnish, and
Maling and Sigurjónsdóttir (1997) for Icelandic.
Derivational (i.e. Chomskyan) generative grammar has discouraged recognizing constructions as of any theoretical
interest—for a principled reason. In this approach, a construction such as passive, question, or free relative is the
product of a sequence of movement rules applying to an underlying structure. By definition, the application of a
movement rule is free: it is determined only by the rule's own input constraints, not by what sequence of prior
movements gave rise to that input. Therefore the emergence of a complex construction can be regarded only as the
application of a fortuitous sequence of independent movement rules. In later versions of Chomsky's framework (e.g.
Chomsky 1981), a number of interacting sets of constraints together constrain the outputs of derivations. In either
case, constructions must be regarded as epiphenomena: the theoretical interest can lie only in the constraints on
application of individual movement rules.
By contrast, in the present approach, constructions turn out to be slightly unusual but perfectly respectable lexical
items that combine with ordinary words according to ordinary procedures. As further evidence for this alternative, we
observe (with Fillmore et al. 1988) that English has some constructions that, like the idioms in (13), are syntactically
deviant.
(29) a.One more beer and I'm leaving.
(General form: NP conj S) (Culicover 1972; Culicover and Jackendoff 1997
b. The more you eat, the fatter you get.
(General form: [the [comparative phrase]i[s...ti...]], [the [comparative phrase]j[s...tj]])
(Fillmore et al. 1988; McCawley 1988;Culicover and Jackendoff 1999)
c. Off with his head! Up to your roo mwith you!
(General form: PP with NP!) (Jackendoff 1973)