Syntactic Productivity

Summary
74
• The nominative subject construction is highest in type frequency of
all argument structure constructions containing two-place predicates
• The Nom-Acc subconstruction is approximately 58–64% of
nominative subject predicates
• The Nom-Dat subconstruction is approximately 34–35% of
nominative subject predicates
• Both constructions exist at a high level of schematicity, although the
semantic domain of the Nom-Acc construction is much wider than
that of the Nom-Dat construction, and hence its productivity domain
is also larger
• Both constructions are productively assigned to borrowed verbs, by
Icelandic speakers, within their semantic domains
Bergen Jóhanna Barðdal June 5, 2008