Swarm Construction

1. General

1.1. Label

swarm construction

1.2. Reasons for construction status

Independently meaningful partially productive argument structure construction

1.3. Examples

(1) The garden is swarming with bees. (Fillmore 1968: 48)

(2) The driver, now glowing with impatience, agreed volubly, You're absolutely right, he snarled. [BNC A06]

(3) Morgan fell to the ground, trembling with fear. [BNC B1X]

2. Language Information

2.1. Comments

Similar constructions exist in German, Italian, French and presumably also other related languages, although not all of the subtypes exemplified in (1)-(3) are conventionalised to the same degree.

2.2. Language

English

2.3. Variety

2.4. Speech Community

2.5. Language Contact

2.6. Time Period

2.7. Stage of Acquisition

3. Form

3.1. Syntax

3.1.1. Comments

3.1.2. Internal

3.1.2.1. Valency

The swarm construction consists of a subject, a semantically compatible intransitive verb (cf. Salkoff 1983; Zeschel 2007) and an oblique prepositional complement headed by with.

3.1.2.2. Constituency

[VP [NP__] [VP [V__] [PP [P with ] [NP__]]]]

3.1.3. External

3.1.3.1. Category

clause-level construction

3.1.3.2. Structural Position

3.2. Morphology

3.2.1. Comments

3.2.2. Internal

3.2.2.1. Morphological Properties of Elements

3.2.3. External

3.2.3.1. Morphological Properties of Construction

4. Meaning

4.1. Semantics

4.1.1. Comments

The swarm construction comes in three related functional variants:

• a construction for locative predication (cf. (1))

• a construction for abstract property ascription (cf. (2))

• a causal adjunct construction (cf. (3))

4.1.2. Internal

4.1.2.1. Frame

Property ascription

4.1.2.1.1. Event

4.1.2.1.2. Participants

variant (1): SUBJ = LOC, OBL = THM

variant (2): SUBJ = EXP, OBL = STIM

variant (3): SUBJ = EXP, OBL = STIM

4.1.2.2. Truth-Conditional Information

4.1.2.2.1. Negation

4.1.2.2.2. Scope

4.1.3. External

4.1.3.1. Semantic Class

4.1.3.2. Relation to Construction-External Semantic Elements

4.1.3.3. Truth Relations

4.1.3.3.1. Semantic Presuppositions

4.1.3.3.2. Semantic Entailments

4.2. Pragmatics

4.2.1. Comments

The construction carries a non-cancelable intensity implicature: All three subtypes convey the implication that the subject referent is associated with great quantities/strong degrees of the entity/phenomenon denoted by the head of the oblique NP.

4.2.2. Internal

4.2.3. External

4.2.3.1. Indexical Properties

4.2.3.1.1. Deixis

4.2.3.1.2. Intertextuality

4.2.3.2. Interpersonal Function

4.2.3.3. Speaker attitude

4.2.3.4. Speech Act Function

4.2.3.5. Rhetorical Function

4.2.3.6. Style

4.2.3.7. Pragmatic Presuppositions / Implicature

4.3. Discourse Properties

4.3.1. Internal

4.3.1.1. Turn Constructional Status

4.3.1.2. Within-Turn Position

4.3.2.External

4.3.2.1. Sequential Context

4.3.2.2. Position in Text- and Dialogue-Structure

4.3.2.3. Sequence Type

4.4. Information Structure

4.4.1. Internal

4.4.1.1. Topic - Comment

4.4.1.2. Focus

4.4.2. External

4.4.2.1. Signaled Information Status

4.4.2.2. Information Status Requirements

4.5. Data

4.5.1. Introspection

4.5.2. Authentic data

4.5.2.1. Source data properties

BNC and web data

4.5.2.2. Methods of Analysis

Large-scale quantitative corpus study (cf. Zeschel 2007)

4.6. Literature

Dowty, D. 2000. ‘The garden swarms with bees’ and the fallacy of ‘argument alternation’. In: Y. Ravin and C. Leacock (eds.), Polysemy. Theoretical and computational approaches. pp. 111-28. Oxford: OUP.

Fillmore, C. 1968. The case for case. In: Bach, E & Harms, R., eds. Universals in Linguistic Theory. NY: Holt Rinehart & Winston

Levin, B. 1993. English Verb Classes and Alternations. A Preliminary Investigation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Rohdenburg, G. 1974. Sekundäre Subjektivierungen im Englischen und Deutschen. Vergleichende Untersuchungen zur Verb- und Adjektivsyntax. Stuttgart: PAKS.

Salkoff, M. 1983. Bees are swarming in the garden: a synchronic study of productivity. Language 59, 2, 288-346.

Zeschel, A. 2007. Delexicalisation patterns: a corpus-based approach to incipient productivity in fixed expressions. Doctoral dissertation, Universität Bremen.

5. Relations to other constructions

5.1. Subtypes

5.1.1. Diachronic

5.1.2. Synchronic

5.2. Supertypes

5.2.1. Diachronic

5.2.2. Synchronic

5.3. Paradigmatic Relations