Secondary-predicate Constructions in English: from a Critique of Small Clauses to a Construction-grammar Account

Sentences with secondary predicates pose major problems for syntactic theories. Apart from the highly controversial Small Clause Theory, there have been complex-transitive, complex-predicate and Predication-Theory analyses of such sentences. In his corpus-based study, Holger Saurenbach argues that none of these syntactic proposals is empirically tenable. He suggests that only the alternative approach of Construction Grammar offers empirically and semantically convincing analyses. Sentences with secondary predicates can be divided into three groups of constructions: RESULTATIVE Constructions (e. g. John wipes the table clean), which can be understood against the model of force dynamics; DEPICTIVE Constructions (e. g. Mary drinks the tea hot), which conceptualise a figure/ground-relationship; and QUALIFYING Constructions (e. g. John finds Mary attractive), which can be modelled along the lines of mental-space theory. The author provides functional maps for these groups of constructions and compares their semantics to functionally related constructions. This book is addressed to linguists and students of linguistics who are interested in English syntax and modern syntactic theories.