Revisiting Hudson’s (1992) OO = O2 hypothesis: A usage-based variationist approach to the English ditransitive construction

TY - JOUR

T1 - Revisiting Hudson’s (1992) OO = O2 hypothesis

T2 - A usage-based variationist approach to the English ditransitive construction

AU - Shibuya, Yoshikata

AU - Jensen, Kim Ebensgaard

PY - 2018/1/2

Y1 - 2018/1/2

N2 - In an important paper on the English “double-object”, or ditransitive, construction, Richard Hudson proposes a hypothesis that conflates the ditransitive direct object, or O2, and the monotransitive direct object, or OO, into the same syntactic functional category. While making important departures from a number of unfortunate assumptions within mainstream formal theories of linguistics at the time, the OO = O2 hypothesis itself is problematic in the perspective of contemporary cognitive linguistics. This paper addresses the hypothesis from the perspective of usage-based construction grammar. Applying simple collexeme analysis and multifactorial heatmap analysis to instances of OOs and O2s in ICE-GB, this paper shows that the usage-patterns of both are far too complex, displaying cross-register variation, for the OO = O2 hypothesis to be tenable. The findings provide support for a usage-based variationist account in defining syntactic functional categories.

AB - In an important paper on the English “double-object”, or ditransitive, construction, Richard Hudson proposes a hypothesis that conflates the ditransitive direct object, or O2, and the monotransitive direct object, or OO, into the same syntactic functional category. While making important departures from a number of unfortunate assumptions within mainstream formal theories of linguistics at the time, the OO = O2 hypothesis itself is problematic in the perspective of contemporary cognitive linguistics. This paper addresses the hypothesis from the perspective of usage-based construction grammar. Applying simple collexeme analysis and multifactorial heatmap analysis to instances of OOs and O2s in ICE-GB, this paper shows that the usage-patterns of both are far too complex, displaying cross-register variation, for the OO = O2 hypothesis to be tenable. The findings provide support for a usage-based variationist account in defining syntactic functional categories.

KW - Faculty of Humanities

KW - construction grammar

KW - cognitive linguistics

KW - corpus linguistics

KW - ditransitive

KW - constructional variation

KW - direct objects

KW - usage-based grammar

KW - usage-based linguistics

KW - ICE-GB

KW - language register

KW - cognitive sociolinguistics

U2 - 10.1080/03740463.2017.1333873

DO - 10.1080/03740463.2017.1333873

M3 - Journal article

SN - 0374-0463

VL - 50

SP - 73

EP - 101

JO - Acta Linguistica Hafniensia: International Journal of Linguistics

JF - Acta Linguistica Hafniensia: International Journal of Linguistics

IS - 1

ER -