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This article shows what may be gained by a pattern-based analysis and lexicographic representation of argument structure patterns as compared to one based solely on the valency properties of verbs. The pattern analysed expresses a state whereby two or more entities are positioned on a scale of distinct values. Formally it minimally comprises a verb expressing a state or event and two NPs expressing the entities ranked. The NP referring to the entity occupying the lower position on the scale is embedded in a PP headed by vor. Allowing the identification of instances comprising verbs whose meaning is not straightforwardly related to that of the pattern, the pattern-based analysis employed raises the question of how the metaphorical state meaning of the pattern comes about. Since the verb does not express a ranking and / or a state in a large number of instances, the metaphorical state meaning of the pattern is argued to originate in these cases within the scalar meaning of the preposition and / or to be associated with the pattern itself.
In German linguistics, a traditional distinction is made between (i) prepositional objects (POs) and prepositional adverbials, and (ii), among the latter, between adverbial complements and adjuncts. As a contribution to the debate on points of contact and possible syntheses between valency-based and construction-based approaches to verb argument structure, a corpus-based constructionist account of German PO and PP adverbial verb argument structures involving the preposition vor ‘in front of’ is developed. It is argued that ‘desemanticised’ PO-uses of vor are markers of inherently meaningful verb argument structure constructions that form a transparently motivated network comprising both PO and PP adverbial patterns. Analyses are presented for five interrelated families of vor constructions within the overall network thus defined. Their meanings are shown to reflect an interplay of more concrete spatial meanings of the preposition and the lexical semantics of verbal fillers of these constructions. Once conventionalised, they are subject to regular processes of metaphorical and metonymic semantic extension that are tentatively unravelled to create an integrated semantic map of verbal vor-constructions in present day German.
In this article, we investigate the semantics of causal modifiers headed by vor (‘with’, ‘from’) in adjectival copular sentences with sein (‘to be’). We distinguish two readings of the causal vor-phrases: a pure causal reading as in rot vor Wut (‘red with rage’), sprachlos vor Freude (‘speechless with joy’), and a causal-local reading as in rot vor Blut (‘red from blood’) or schwarz vor Menschen (‘black with people’). Based on corpus data, we provide descriptive generalisations for the use and meaning of vor and its two readings. A uniform formal semantics analysis is presented to account for both readings, according to which the meaning of vor can be captured with a cause relation between two tropes. In the case of the causal-local reading, the causing trope is interpolated via coercion from the compositionally provided concrete object. Finally, we compare vor and von (‚from‘).