Lexicalized forms of the Russian perception verbs as a constructional family

In the present study, lexicalized forms of the Russian perception verbs are treated from the construction grammar perspective. The lexicalized forms were drawn from the modern dictionaries of Standard Russian and supplied with appropriate usage examples from the Russian National Corpus. The paper presents a detailed overview of the forms concerned, encompassing both their formal and semantic features. Each lexicalized form is argued to be a construction, in the special sense accorded to the term in construction grammar. Moreover, not only lexicalized forms as listed in the dictionaries but also their specific instantiations (allowing for the variability of the verb form and the addition of extra elements, e.g., particles) are claimed to be constructions. The paper particularly focuses on the analysis of manifold relations between constructions. In construction grammar, this problem has been given scanty coverage, scholars largely concentrating on taxonomic relations between more and less schematic constructions. This particular type of relations can be said to manifest itself in the links between lexicalized forms and their instantiations. However, the data at hand make it possible to identify a number of other relations. These include the links between lexicalized forms and the corresponding verb as well as semantic relations including homonymy and polysemy, complete and partial synonymy. Taken together, they form an integrated network of relations, both formal and semantic. This is natural, given the fact that the corresponding verbs belong to the same lexical group. The paper argues for the term constructional family to be used in such cases. The constructional family is thus a subset of constructional networks.

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