Goldberg defines the meaning of the verb with respect to a semantic frame. Knowing the meaning of a word requires knowing the structure and semantics of the frame that it is associated with. Petruck (1996) defines semantic frame as ‘any system of concepts related in such a way that to understand any one concept it is necessary to understand the entire system; introducing any one concept results in all of them becoming available’ (1996:1)27.
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Inheritance links can be of several types: polysemy links that stand for the particular sense of a construction and the extension from this sense, subpart links, when one construction is a subpart of another construction and exists independently, and also instance links, when a particular construction is a special case of another construction.
According to this distinction, sentence (8) can be considered a polysemic extension of the central sense of the ditransitive construction X causes Y to receive Z to X causes Y not to receive Z. Similarly, sentence (9) is an extension of the central sense of the construction, so that it is associated with the structure: X enables Y to receive Z. As an instance for subpart links, Goldberg mentions the relation of intransitive construction to the caused-motion construction, so that intransitive motion is taken as a subpart of a caused-motion construction (Goldberg, 1995).
(8) Joe refused Bob a cookie.
(9) Joe permitted Chris an apple. (Goldberg 1995: 71)
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The notion introduced by Fillmore (1970) and then further developed in his theory of case grammar was understood as characterizing a certain sceneorsituation characteristic of the meaning of verbs. Dik (1997) defines a predicate frame as containing all the irreducible, unpredictable
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In Goldberg’s interpretation (2006) verbs are defined according to rich frame- semantic meanings, where the semantics of the verb is defined with respect to elements of cultural and world knowledge. Positing rich frame-semantic knowledge for verbs accounts for their novel uses, which could hardly be interpreted without this background knowledge. To illustrate this, Goldberg (1995) gives as an example sentence (10). In order to understand this sentence, it is important to know that sneezing implies a forceful expulsion of air which can make the napkin fall off the table. Such background information is not covered by a simple decompositional lexical entry of a verb, as e.g. X acts. Lexical decompositional structures such as X acts, X causes Y to receive Z etc., do not capture all of what is intuitively the verb’s meaning. They rather represent the syntactically relevant aspects of verb meaning, which in a constructional approach will be regarded as the verb’s constructional meaning.
(10) Sam sneezed the napkin off the table. (Goldberg 1995:9)
Concerning the syntactic realization of the verb and its participant roles, Goldberg (1995, 2006) makes use of the notion of ‘lexical profiling’. Lexical profiling indicates what participant roles associated with a verb’s meaning are obligatorily accessed and function as focal points within a scene, gaining a special degree of prominence in a certain situation (Langacker, 1987). It can be defined as ‘the representation of the foregrounded part of a frame, the participant, prop, phase or moment which figures centrally in the semantic interpretation of a sentence within which the frame is evoked’ (Fillmore and Johnson, 2000:14).
The relation between an ‘evoked frame’ and a ‘profiled entity’ is a close one: the former provides the background information necessary for the understanding of a given lexical or phrasal item, the latter foregrounds a part of the frame that fits the
properties of predication that appears in the lexicon, with all the semantic and syntactic information that is necessary for the definition of the predicate. A predicate frame specifies the form and type of the predicate, the number of arguments the verb takes to form nuclear predications, as well as the semantic function of arguments (whether they are agents, patients or recipients etc.)
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semantic structure of the surrounding text or sentences (Fillmore and Johnson, 2000).
Goldberg (1995) states that the differences in the semantics of verbs are to be attributed in the first place to the semantic frames they evoke; the difference in the semantic frame leads to a difference in profiling.
The example Goldberg brings to illustrate this involves the verbs ‘rob’ and ‘steal’: although the two verbs may appear to be synonymous (so that both of them may evoke the thief, the valuables and the target), they take different arguments (sentences 11-16), which can be attributed to the fact that these verbs are semantically different and this results in a difference in profiling. While ‘rob’ necessarily entails that the person robbed is seriously negatively affected, this is not true of ‘steal’ (11-12). According to Goldberg (1995), the verbs ‘rob’ and ‘steal’ have different semantic frames and as such different participant roles. While in the case of ‘rob’ the argument roles that are obligatorily accessed are ‘thief’ and the ‘target’ (the victim) (13), in the case of steal it is the thief and the valuables that are profiled (15). The ungrammaticality of (14) and (16) points to the different values of ‘rob’and ‘steal’: while ‘rob’ specifies the source (but not the quantity), ‘steal’ specifies the quantity:
(11) I stole a penny from him.
(12)*I robbed him of a penny. (Goldberg: 46) (13) Jesse robbed the rich (of all their money).
(14) *Jesse robbed a million dollars (from the rich). (15) Jesse stole money (from the rich).
(16) *Jesse stole the rich (of money). (Goldberg: 45)