FROM SYNTAX TO PHRASEOLOGY: A PHRASEOLOGICAL APPROACH TO

SCHEMATIC CAUSED-MOTION CONSTRUCTIONS IN ENGLISH

Rodrigo Garcia Rosa

Department of Modern Languages, University of Sao Paulo
[email protected]

ABSTRACT. This article presents the main grammatical characteristics of English constructions
generally referred to as complex transitive constructions (Quirk et al., 1985), causative resultatives (Goldberg
& Jackendoff, 2004) and caused-motion constructions (Goldberg, 1995, 2006, 2018). It is claimed, in
light of some empirical corpus-based studies (Hampe, 2010; Rosa, 2020; Xia, 2017) that low-level
phraseological constructions such ‘talk some sense into somebody’ play a crucial role in motivating the
entrenchment and use of highly schematic caused motions such as ‘Frank sneezed the foam off the
cappuccino’. In order to support this view with empirical data, we present the analysis of 1284 caused-
motion utterances extracted from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), out
of which we were able to identify 12 fixed expressions and 9 statistically attested phraseologisms.
At last, we discuss the implications that such relationship between grammar and phraseology may
present in the understanding of schematic structures such as the caused motion.
Keywords: Caused-motion constructions, phraseologism, teaching, get.

1. INTRODUCTION
The role played by formulaicity in real communication is of indisputable importance in
current linguistic theory (Ellis, 2008, 2013; Moon, 1998; Wray & Perkins, 2000; Wray, 2002, Wulff,
2008). However, not until recently had cognitive models of language recognized its importance in
speakers’ cognition. This may be due to the long-lasting commitment to a modular view of
language, which pulled syntax and the lexicon apart as independent modules. Contrary to this belief
are the various current cognitive linguistic approaches (Goldberg, 1995, 2006, 2013; Langacker,
2013) for which no clear-cut boundaries can be drawn in the structure of language (Evans, 2012;
Lakoff, 1991). Instead, for cognitive linguistics, as well as for other empirical approaches to
language such as corpus linguistics (Gries, 2006, 2008, 2012; Sinclair, 1991, Wulff, 2008), syntax
and the lexicon are believed to form a continuum of conventional symbolic units (Langacker,
1987), or constructions (Goldberg, 1995), which exhibit different levels of complexity, specificity
and schematicity (Evans, 2012).
In other words, these nonmodular views of language are able to accommodate, within the
same theoretical framework, highly schematic argument structure constructions such as the
caused-motion construction in (1) as well as conventional phraseologisms that instantiate these
schematic constructions as (2).

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 (1) She takes after my dad’s side of the family, which is a drag because they’re all alcoholics
and drink themselves into an early grave. (MAG/2002) 1
(2) First, we’ll invest in the American worker. We will breathe new life into your very rundown
highways, railways, and waterways. (SPOK/2018)

Constructions in (1) and (2) are analyzed as two ends of a continuum. In (1), considering
that the oblique argument into an early grave is not subcategorized by the prototypical argument
structure of the predicate drink, this oblique argument can be said to respond to demands at a
more schematic, abstract, constructional level. In spite of instantiating the schematic and abstract
[Subj V Obj Obliq] construction, expressions like [they] drink themselves into an early grave may thus
serve as evidence of speakers’ constructional knowledge of this syntactic structure. In (2), on the
other hand, breathe new life into your very rundown highways, railways, and waterways, which is also a
structural instance of the scheme [V Obj Obliq], seems to be a rather stable, fixed and semantically
condensed version of this scheme, that is, a phraseologism. Evidence to that is that breathe is the
first lemmatized collocate in the verbal slot of the scheme V life into on COCA Corpus (Table 1),
as well as the fact that breathe life into is recognized as an idiom2, thus a kind of phraseologism, in
some dictionaries3.

Table 1. COCA search for Verb ‘life into’

Verb Freq. V + ‘life into’ General Freq. of V % of V + ‘life into’ MI score

breathe 886 20288 0.34 9.11
bring 813 197497 0.01 4.13
inject 812 2883 0.14 7.84
pour 419 15385 0.03 4.42
blow 391 37579 0.01 4.13
pump 345 14814 0.01 4.48
divide 207 15899 0.01 4.37

As the data above show, breathe life into shows a considerable level of syntactic fixedness
which is evidenced by the high level of attractiveness between breathe and life into. The MI score4
of 9.11, way above the conventionally accepted 3.0 for statistical significance, indicates a strong
probability for breathe and life into to co-occur in the data (McEnery & Hardie, 2012; Brezina, 2018).
Therefore, the constructional approach to the expressions exemplified in (1) and (2) is able
to provide an integral account of their form-functional properties under the same framework by
positing that the schematic caused motion in (1) and the caused-motion phraseologism in (2) are

1 The examples provided here have all been taken from COCA. The information at the end of the sample refers
respectively to the textual genre the sentence was taken from as well as the year of publication.
2 The word life in breathe life into something can be modified by the adjectives new or fresh. Thus, the phraseologism is a

type of formal idiom (Fillmore, Kay & O’Connor, 1988) in which not all slots are lexically fixed.
3 Breathe life into something appears as a conventional idiom in the following online dictionaries: Longman Dictionary of

Contemporary English, Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary and Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary.

4 McEnery & Hardie (2012: 247) define MI score as “a statistic that indicates how strong the link between two things

is. Mutual information can be used to calculate collocations by indicating the strength of the co-occurrence relationship
between a node and collocate”.

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two ends on a continuum, that is, the completely schematic (1) on one end and completely
lexicalized (2) on the other end. Additionally, empirical studies on corpora data (Gries, 2006, 2008,
2012; Hampe, 2010; Sinclair, 1991, Wulff, 2008) show that low-level phraseological constructions
play an essential role in the entrenchment and use of grammatical structures in adult language use
(Hampe, 2010), in learner production (Rosa, 2020) as well as in first language acquisition contexts
(Goldberg, 1995; Israel, 2004, Tomasello, 2003). All things considered, this paper adopts a
constructional “what you see is what you get” approach (Goldberg, 2003: 229) to the relationship
between schematic constructions and phraseologisms and seeks to contribute to this literature by
claiming that phraseologisms – crystalized instances of schematic constructions – contribute to
the entrenchment of abstract structures, along the lines of what has been claimed in Rosa (2023)
in the context of English language teaching.
The following sections advocate for the significance of phraseology to the entrenchment of
abstract grammatical constructions (the caused-motion construction) by showing that English has
a number of prefabricated caused-motion phraseologisms which are independent from their
corresponding abstract structures. After that and in the form of a case study, the paper then offers
an empirical discussion of the highly polysemous predicate get and its most frequent
phraseologisms based on the compilation and analysis of 1284 utterances extracted from COCA
Corpus.

2. BACKGROUND TO CAUSED MOTIONS: COMPLEX TRANSITIVE CONSTRUCTIONS

Transitive complementation has been one of the main foci of attention in grammatical
studies due to the centrality that verbs have always had in the analysis of grammar. Dating back to
Fillmore’s case grammar (Fillmore, 1968), the canonical analyses aimed at identifying the semantic
roles (called cases in Fillmore’s theory) required by different verbs. These semantic requirements,
determined in the deep structure, would be held responsible for the wellformedness and/or
(un)grammaticality of the surface structure constructions. With that in mind, sentences such as (3)
and (4) below would be rendered ungrammatical as a result of the omission of essential cases
demanded by the predicative relations established by the verb.

(3) *Mary gave the book.

(4) *I saw.

In case grammar parlance, the ungrammaticality (or unacceptability) of the sentences above
results from what the conceptual structures of the verbs give and see require as complements. Give
is a three-place predicate that demands a subject, a direct object and an indirect object, whereas see
is a two-place predicate that requires a subject and an object. The ungrammaticality of (3) and (4)
was accounted for by the absence of all the case relations established in the deep structure. As
such, the semantic relations could not be mapped onto the syntax on the surface structure, thus
affecting the wellformedness of the sentences. These predicative relations, as established by verbs
and their semantic-syntactic requirements, have been the norm in mainstream linguistics

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(Chomsky, 1965, 1981; Lyons, 1968, 1977) ever since, but they have also been widely adopted in
general language studies, from descriptive grammars (Carter & McCarthy, 2006; Quirk et al., 1985)
to pedagogical grammars of English (Celce-Murcia; Larsen-Freeman, 1999).
Based on the lexicalist approach exemplified in (3) and (4), valency relations were determined
by specific classes of verbs and their complementation patterns. For instance, by the name of
complex transitive complementation, Quirk et al. (1985) analyze sentences such as (5) and (6) below by
projecting the semantic relations of specific verbs onto the structure of clauses.

(5) She presumed that her father was dead.

(6) a. She presumed her father to be dead.
b. She presumed her father dead.

(Quirk et al., 1985: 1195)

In the analysis proposed, Quirk et al. (1985) claim that the italicized elements in (6b) are to
be analyzed in association with the predicative relations between a nominal subject and a predicate
in simple nominal clauses. The post-verbal complements her father and dead are then analyzed
respectively as an object and an object complement. Thus, her father dead in (6b) would be a small and
reduced version of the infinitive clause in (6a), which could in turn be expanded into the that-clause
in (5). The complementation of dead in relation to her father is exemplified below.

(7) She presumed [her father [dead]].

= object complementation

The same analysis is extended to complex transitive sentences in which the post-verbal
complements denote respectively a THEME and an oblique complement with a directional
interpretation, as (8) and (9) below.

(8) In a normal setting, she would push them out of the way with a flick of the fingers
(Fiction/2017)
(9) Men’s Central? Yeah. I want to get him into protective custody. (TV/2016)

According to Quirk et al. (1985), in sentences such as (8) and (9), the italicized PPs following
the direct objects are predication adjuncts which, say the authors, are customarily of two types: 1)
prepositional phrases of space; and 2) prepositional phrases of direction. The examples provided
are given below.

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 (10) I slipped the key into the lock.
(11) He stood my argument on its head.
(12) The attendant showed us to our seats.
(13) May I see you home?
(14) They talked me into it.
(Quirk et al., 1985: 1201)

Sentences (10), (12), (13) and (14) all exemplify adjuncts denoting direction, whereas (11)
presents a spatial adjunct with a metaphorical reading. The authors draw attention to the fact that
this clause pattern takes causative verbs (e.g. put, get, stand, set, lay, place, send, bring, take, lead, drive,
etc.), but also accepts non-causative events such as the ones in (12), (13) and (14), whose verbs
could, respectively, be paraphrased as conducted, escort and persuaded.
The analysis satisfactorily accounts for data of the type exemplified in (10) and (11), given
that the clause patterns are mirrored by the verbal semantics. That is, one need not even posit
directional or locative phrases labelled adjuncts, since they are predicted by the lexical-semantic
demands of the main predicate. Instead, these directional and locative expressions could be
considered complements. On the issue of PPs as complements, Lyons (1977: 495 - 496) states that
“most recent treatments of case-grammar tend to give the impression that only nominals may fulfill valency-
roles in the propositional nuclei of sentences. This is not so. Locative (and directional) adverbs may also
occur as the complements of the appropriate verbs […]”.
Should one consider that the predicative relations in clauses are derived from the conceptual
structure of verbs, the directional in (10) and the locative in (11) cannot be adjuncts since adjuncts
are circumstantial and non-core elements in the structure of sentences. Another descriptive problem
that emerges from considering directional expressions, this time in (12), (13) and (14), as adjuncts
lies in the fact that, as Quirk et al. (1985) themselves stated, verbs such as show, see and talk are not
causative in their prototypical use. If to our seats, home and into it, respectively in (12), (13) and (14),
were real adjuncts, hence non-core sentence elements, their deletion would not jeopardize the
grammaticality and/or acceptability of the sentences, which is what the sentences below seem to
demonstrate, with the exception of talk, which is intransitive.

(15) The attendant showed us to our seats.

(16) May I see you home?
(17) *They talked me into it.

As the examples above show, the deletion of the so-called adjuncts does not compromise
the acceptability of the sentences, considering that the valency of showed and see is satisfactorily
completed by us and you functioning as complements. However, in spite of the grammaticality
maintained in (15) and (16), can we still paraphrase the verbs in (15), (16) and (17) to mean conducted,
escort and persuaded? The answer is clearly “no” and this seems to suggest that such verbs only accept

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new meanings when they are integrated with sentential structures that predict the realization of
directional PPs as sentence arguments. In order to reconcile the analysis of directional PPs as
adjuncts and non-causative verbs that conform to the patterns in (15), (16) and (17), the
explanation should posit that the verbs show, see and talk, for instance, would respectively mean:

(i) to conduct someone up to a place by showing the way;

(ii) to escort someone somewhere;
(iii) to persuade someone to do something by talking to them.

Such an explanation, though efficient with the data above, would face empirical problems,
given the number of verbs which could conform to such a pattern. Also, should the verbs really
encapsulate the meanings in (i), (ii) and (iii), the directional PPs would have to be essential elements
for the grammaticality of the sentences with such verbs and their deletion would render the
constructions unacceptable. As (15), (16) and (17) showed, this is not the case. Instead, these data
seem to be on better descriptive grounds if we propose a rather simple and intuitive explanation.
That is, as we have discussed before, such verbs seem to mean what they mean only when the
sentential pattern, one with a caused-motion meaning, coerces them to denote a causative event. In
other words, the schematic [Subj V Obj Obl] frame, rather than the verb, subcategorizes an oblique
argument which can be instantiated by a directional PP. This seems to elegantly account for the
type of expressions exemplified thus far, especially those of a more schematic nature such as (1).
Proposals of schematic events at the semantic level that operate with pre-event notions of
MOTION, EFFECT, RESULT, etc. and that do not rely on the verbs that instantiate these relations,
had already been put forward (Lyons, 1977), but not until the advent of construction grammar
(Fillmore, Kay & O’Connor, 1988; Goldberg, 1995; Langacker, 1987) did the idea of meaningful
sentential schemes gained momentum in linguistics. In the following section, we describe a
Cognitive Construction Grammar account of these complex transitive constructions.

3. FROM VERBS TO CONSTRUCTIONS

Goldberg (1995, 2006, 2013) also addresses the descriptive problems of accounting for the
data (15) to (17) through a postulation of extra verb senses or by compositionally explaining the
meaning of such constructions via processes of integration between the semantics of the verb and
the prepositional phrase. For the linguist, such impossibilities back up an alternative explanation
that defends the existence of an independent construction formally codified as [Subj [V Obj Obl]],
where V is a nonstative verb and Obl is a directional phrase. This independent construction
functionally portrays a central scene in which an X CAUSES Y TO MOVE Z encompassing all
expressions of the kind below.

(18) They laughed the poor guy out of the room.

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 (19) Frank sneezed the tissue off the table.
(20) Mary urged Bill into the house.
(21) Sue let the water out of the bathtub.
(22) Sam helped him into the car.
(23) They sprayed the paint onto the wall.

(Goldberg, 1995: 152)

To Goldberg, the expressions above behave quite idiosyncratically since their grammatical
properties cannot be satisfactorily explained via processes of compositionality. The first point of
refutation comes from the fact that certain verbs that appear in caused motions are not causative
per se ((24) to (26)), that is, they do not denote any sort of dislocated motion when they appear in
contexts other than the constructional pattern [Subj [V Obj Obl]]).

(24) Joe kicked the dog into the bathroom.

(25) Joe hit the ball across the field.
(26) Frank squeezed the ball through the crack.

(Goldberg, 1995: 153)

Kick and hit do not exhibit any trait of dislocated causation and squeeze does not imply any
sort of motion caused by the event on its object. Furthermore, verbs with different numbers of
arguments can be hosted by the construction. Caused motions can host and are licensed with one-
place predicates like laugh, sneeze, cry (27), two-place predicates like speak, drink, help (28) and three-
place predicates like put, get, add (29). These data reinforce the thesis that the constructional
properties of motion and causation found in the sentences cannot reflect the argument structure
semantics of the verb.

(27) a. But I guarantee he’s going to laugh you out of his office. (TV/2004)
b. Thought he’d sneeze himself right off the shrouds on the way up here
(Fiction/2007)
c. I think in some quite literal sense, he cried himself into a space where he couldn’t
continue (Fiction/2005)

(28) a. After all He created it and I figure anyone who can speak the universe into existence
also has the power to control climate. (Blog/2012)

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 b. You said your brother drank himself to death literally. (Spoken/2014)
c. Gavin helped him into the box. (Fiction/2012)

(29) a. We’re going to box these things up in just a minute and put them on some trucks
(Blog/2012)
b. I can get you into the house on two conditions. (TV/2010)
c. please share with me which ones you like, so I can add them to my list.
(Blog/2012)

In defense of a constructional explanation for independent caused motions, Goldberg also

discusses the treatment given by some analyses that aim to account for the data above based on
the association between compositionality and the pragmatic inference of the construction. Gawron
(1985) and Pustejovsky (1991) both defend that caused motions are the result of a compositional
co-predication between the verb and the directional PPs, the latter being either considered adjuncts
or arguments, while the reading of causation would be pragmatically inferred. Goldberg refutes
the idea that the directional PPs are arguments required by the conceptual structure of verbs
because, as we have already discussed, this could only be envisaged in a model that would force
verbs to have extra senses (see (i), (ii) and (iii) above). This model would even force one-place
predicates like the ones in (27) to have an additional meaning to account for the two internal
arguments (= Obj and Obl), none of which are licensed by the actual meaning of laugh, sneeze or
cry. On the other hand, treating the directional PPs as adjuncts could not be the case, since these
do not have the semantic reading of usual PP adjuncts (as in she left the note in the room); also, as
discussed previously, were these adjuncts, we could expect them to allow for deletion without
compromising the meaning of the verb. Lastly, on the idea that the causation is pragmatically
inferred, this analysis would not rule out the fact that certain verbs are not allowed in the caused-
motion construction like encourage, persuade or convince.

(30) *She encouraged/persuaded/convinced me into the room.

The refutations to a lexicalist view, that is, that such constructions are operated by the
semantics of the verbs or licensed by general pragmatic principles, corroborate the idiosyncratic
nature of the caused-motion construction and reinforce the constructional thesis, for which (27)
to (29) exemplify an independent kind of structure that features in the grammatical knowledge of
speakers. Caused motions are then one independent kind of construction and are schematically
represented in the matrix below.

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 Figure 1. Central caused-motion construction (Goldberg, 1995, p. 160)

The matrix above represents the central sense of the caused motion, that is, the construction
is a form-function pairing in which the Sem(antics) specifies a scenario in which X CAUSES Y TO
MOVE Z and the Syn(tax) is structured as [Subj [V Obj [Obl]]]. The PRED(icate) position in the
matrix above is meant to host the main verb of the construction.
As was said previously, the central meaning of the caused motion is one in which an X
CAUSES Y TO MOVE Z, but the construction also exhibits different and extended senses. These
distinct senses result from the integration between a prototypical kind of causation presented in
Fig.1 and different verb classes. Goldberg (1995) presents three extended senses that are motivated
by the central meaning and claims that each particular sense represents a modified extension of
the causation in the central construction, that is, the central caused-motion construction motivates,
via semantic linking rules of polysemy, all of the following types of caused motions: causes to
move by enabling (31), causes not to move by preventing (32) and causes to move by helping (33).

(31) a. …allow people out of the dark and into the sunlight as well. (News/2005)
b. We're not truly free unless we can release them into the world. (Movie/2016)

(32) a. …injuries kept him out of the ring for nearly two years. (News/2019)
b. This is the type of thing that can trap people into the lower classes. (Blog/2012)

(33) a. I wish I could show you out of my garden… (Blog/2012)

b. Telling you, man, I just walked her out of the bank. (TV/2007)

Therefore, the model is able to motivate the use of slightly different instantiations without
the need to postulate new and independent constructions. This is how the model sees the
relationship between schematic grammatical argument structure constructions, such as the caused
motion, and more conventional and lexicalized expressions, such as the caused-motion
phraseologisms get the message out, get the word out, etc. for instance.

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4. FROM CONSTRUCTIONS TO PHRASEOLOGISMS
Thus far we have examined the relationship between a central caused-motion construction
and its so-called extended senses. These are said to inherit their form-functional properties from
the central sense X CAUSES Y TO MOVE Z via semantic links of polysemy. Nevertheless, inheritance
relations can be mediated by different types of semantic links: polysemy, metaphorical extension
and instantiation.
The instance links (abbreviated Ii) occur when one construction in particular is considered to
be a special case of another construction, that is, an instance of a more general pattern, as the name
itself suggests. Thus, lexically specified constructions with a fixed and conventional/idiomatic
meaning, and which are formally similar to other more schematic constructions, are said to inherit
their formal and/or semantic properties from such more general constructions via links of
instantiation. Goldberg (1995) exemplifies this relation with the idiom drive X
crazy/bananas/bonkers/over the edge whose result argument is restricted to a group of words
connoting insanity. In drive x crazy, both the formal aspects and the semantics of the expression
resemble the more general resultative construction in that prototypical resultatives are formally
structured as [Subj V Obj OblAdj] while functionally representing a scene in which X CAUSES Y TO
BECOME Z, that is, exactly the scene portrayed by drive x crazy in (34) and (35) below.

(34) The whole women equality thing drives me crazy on a more personal level than the
workplace. (Web/2012)
(35) … and had a rattail in back to throw off the flattop and drive us crazy with mystery.
(Fiction/2019)

It is important to remember that, given Goldberg (2006) definition of constructions,

lexicalized expressions like drive x crazy can be considered constructions in their own right, as long
as they are conventionalized ways of conveying the ideas they express.

Any linguistic pattern is recognized as a construction as long as some aspect of its form or
function is not strictly predictable from its component parts or from other constructions
recognized to exist. In addition, patterns are stored as constructions even if they are fully
predictable as long as they occur with sufficient frequency. (Goldberg, 2006: 5)

To test whether drive x crazy empirically has a constructional status in language use, a search
on COCA for the lemmatized verbs co-occurring with the result argument crazy was conducted.
The search generated the figures in Table 2.

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 Table 2. COCA search for Verb Obj ‘crazy’

Verb Freq. V + ‘crazy' General Freq. of V % of V + ‘crazy’ MI score

know 886 2112737 0.04 0.69
go 813 1262075 0.06 1.31
think 812 1493360 0.05 1.06
call 419 371200 0.11 2.12
drive 391 120747 0.32 3.64
get 345 1744578 0.02 -0.39
make 207 1028279 0.02 -0.37
like 145 2368863 0.01 -2.09
say 142 969302 0.01 -0.83
see 138 1258974 0.01 -1.25

The search utilized to generate the results above established a span of three positions for the
occurrence of the result argument crazy. Therefore, many of the verbs contained in the table are
not grammatically related to the argument crazy in a causative relation. This is the case of know for
which most instances are sentences like I know you're crazy or I know it sounds crazy, but if you just...
Thus, drive is the first verb occurring with crazy which describes a CAUSE TO BECOME scene. On
top of that, drive is the only verb whose MI score is above the conventionally accepted 3.0 and,
which shows that it occurs statistically significantly with the result crazy. The figures for drive should
then be read as follows: drive occurs 120.747 times in the entire corpus, out of which 391
occurrences collocate with crazy. This corresponds to a general percentage of 0.32 and represents
a level of mutual attraction between drive and crazy of 3.64, which is above the conventionally
accepted 3.0 for statistical significance. Despite being fully predictable from the schematic caused
motion, these figures corroborate that drive x crazy is a frequent, conventional and entrenched
expression while also being an independent construction on its own, given its attested level of
discourse salience (Langacker, 2013; Boswijk & Coler, 2020). All things considered, one cannot
dispute the fact that the formal and functional properties are of the expression are inherited from
the more schematic resultative constructions though, since it also features a [Subj V Obj OblAdj]
form and a scene in which someone causes someone else to become something, exactly what
schematic resultatives represent. The relationship between resultatives and the idiom drive x crazy
is represented in the matrices below.

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 Figure 2. Resultatives and ‘drive X crazy’ (Goldberg, 1995, p. 80)

Inheritance links, claims Goldberg (1995), are an important aspect of language knowledge
in that they can be viewed as cognitive strategies that speakers make use of to generate new
linguistic material. Thus, recurring inheritance links that mediate processes between constructions
and that account for the motivation of certain constructions in light of others can be said to have
a high type frequency, thus having a determining role in the productivity of newly learned
constructions, especially in the context of L2 learning (Rosa, 2020). In other words, recurring
inheritance links can be the closest idea in Construction Grammar to general grammatical rules,
since they can be seen as the strategies that speakers will productively resort to in the creation of
new language expressions while extending these from other existing constructions.
Therefore, these inheritance operations, and instance links in special, are important
phenomena in the explanation of language use, both in general language description and also in
the foreign language learning and teaching contexts. In the context just mentioned, for instance,
learners may either fail to use some of the links recurrently applied by native speakers in certain
constructions or make use of different links when compared to the ones natives productively use.
We pursue this line of reasoning to defend that inheritance links of instantiation are the mediators
between generalized caused motions and specific phraseologisms, which will for its part serve as
important exemplar tokens for the entrenchment of the schematic type. This view is believed to
be endorsed by some empirical corpus-based analyses of constructions, such as Boas’ concept of
‘mini constructions’ for resultatives (Boas, 2003), as well as some theoretical usage-based positions
that claim for the relevance of verb-specific constructions such as Croft (2012).

In the usage-based, exemplar analysis, a speaker’s knowledge of language consists of a cluster of

occurring exemplars to which the speaker has been exposed. The exemplar cluster may license
novel Resultative constructions, with novel verbs and Result phrases (and combinations thereof)
if the cluster is large enough – i.e. high enough type frequency – and semantically sufficiently
coherent (Bybee 1995; Barðdal 2008) (Croft, 2012: 391)

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 The view defended above is that low-level, lexicalized expressions, as constructions
themselves, are capable of licensing novel uses of the schematic constructions to which they
correspond as long as they are sufficiently frequent and semantically coherent. The relevance of
low-level constructions, that is phraseologisms, for the constructional category as a whole has been
foregrounded in some corpus-based analyses, as we will show in the next section.

5. FROM PHRASEOLOGISMS BACK TO CONSTRUCTIONS

Hampe (2010) addresses the issue of causative resultatives, the term used by Goldberg and
Jackendoff (2004) to name constructions known as caused motions and resultatives in the
constructional tradition. Nevertheless, differently from Goldberg (1995), Goldberg and Jackendoff
(2004) and Barðdal (2006), Hampe (2010) claims about the relationship between schematic and
lexical constructions, as observed in children and adult language corpora, support a research
agenda that foregrounds the importance of the lexical material in the use and productivity of
general caused motions (Boas, 2003; Croft, 2003; Goldberg, 2006; Xia, 2017). For Hampe (2010),
though, the role of low-level lexical constructions is significantly relevant in the evaluation that
metaphors play in the interpretation of caused motions and resultatives. In special, Hampe (2010)
aims to reevaluate the role that metaphorical extensions play in the sanctioning of resultatives from
caused motions by proposing that such extensions are lexically motivated. In her own words,

Viewing metaphorical extensions as a strictly local, lexically determined phenomenon, and

emphasizing the role of verb-class based constructions (vis-à-vis totally schematic ASCs), this
study works towards an alternative account of the growth of a constructional network. (Hampe,
2010: 188)

In other words, the proposal aims to offer, in a similar fashion to what has been proposed
by Croft (2012), an alternative explanation for Goldberg’s metaphorical reading of the PP to anger
and boredom in (37) as a metaphorical extension from the spatial denotation of the directional out of
the way in (37) (Goldberg, 1995).

(36) The warm air pushes other air [PP out of the way] (literal motion)
(37) At times it drove his audience [PP to anger and boredom] (figurative motion)5

5 The terms figurative and metaphoric here are not being used interchangeably. Following Dancygier and Sweetser (2014),
figurative will be used to refer to the reading that certain expressions might have as a result of a metaphoric or
metonymic relationship maintained between that expression and another literal one. Dancygier and Sweetser (2014)
definition of the terms state that “figurative means that a usage is motivated by a metaphoric or metonymic
relationship to some other usage, a usage which might be labeled literal. And literal does not mean ‘everyday, normal
usage’ but ‘a meaning which is not dependent on a figurative extension from another meaning”.

13
 In metaphorical caused motions like (37), the host object, claim Goldberg and Jackendoff
(2004), is said to be caused to change its state, just like what happens to prototypical resultatives
(eg. she drives me crazy). Thus, in metaphorical caused motions, the PP argument is said to acquire a
resultative meaning. Goldberg and Jackendoff (2004) call these two types of constructions path (eg.
get you into the party) and property resultatives (eg. get you into trouble). The same sort of analysis had
already been put forward in Goldberg (1995), for whom these language data were explained in
terms of metaphorical link extensions, as we discussed previously. Hampe (2010) objects to this
reinterpretation of the data by stating that the unification of both constructions under the title of
causative resultatives represents a symbolic discrepancy for metaphorical caused motions, since they
are formally path and functionally property. Hampe (2010) seems to view the phenomenon in similar
fashion to some research (Boas, 2013; Xia, 2017), which shows that in cases where the
prepositional complement of a caused-motion construction has a non-spatial figurative reading (as
in (37))6, the PP complement seems to form a lexicalized expression with the verb (eg. put __ in
order). This can be evidenced by the intolerance caused by the substitution of in order by other
elements: *put _ in chaos, *put _ in disaster, *put _ right. In other words, this means that the lexicon is
preempting some form of general syntactic or semantic operation while sanctioning the expression
put _ in order. Were this not the case, that is, if put _ in order were a simple instantiation of the
schematic caused-motion construction, in theory, commutations of the PP argument should not
generate unacceptable sentences as they do for the verb put. The low-level constructional status of
put _ in order is also backed up by the fact that other verbs do not seem to be constrained as put is
in put _ in order. In push _ out of the way/the road/the car/the city/the universe, the verb accepts different
kinds of directional PPs without compromising the acceptability of the sentences.
Hampe’s analysis of the ICE-GB corpus with VPs parsed as <cxtr> returned a total number
of 4019 sentences out of which 3514 sentences contained complex argument structures (both
caused motions and resultatives) and 3707 resultative phrases (the number is higher than 3514 due
to multiple resultative phrases in cases of verbal ellipses). Of these, 1937 verb tokens occur with
one or more object-related adverbials and 908 with one or more adjectival predicates. 10,8% of
the lexical types used in the corpus are shared between caused motions and resultatives, showing
a clear case of overlap in the use of lexical material. Among these are put and make, which are said
to be “path-breaking” verbs in the acquisition of caused motions and resultatives respectively
(Goldberg, 2006: 77-79).

(38) Spatial caused motions: and we put lemon and cucumber and orange [PP in the Pimms]
(39) Metaphorical caused motions: I thought I’d be able to put his mind [PP at rest] very
easily
(40) Resultatives: But I think making people [AdjP aware that anybody can do it], uhm, is is
quite important.
(Hampe, 2010; 191)

6 The property resultative ‘get __ into trouble’ was also analyzed as a low-level construction in Rosa (2014). Based on
naturally occurring data extracted from COCA, the analysis showed a high level of statistical attraction between the
phrasal pattern ‘V __ into trouble’ and the lexeme ‘get’. The quantitative analysis motivated us to consider ‘get ___ into
trouble’ a recurring phraseologism, or a low-level construction.

14
 Put is not attracted by the resultatives, in the same way that make is not attracted by caused
motions. However, the collexeme analysis carried out in the ICE-BR corpus shows a great salience
of put __ right and make __ into y. This suggests that these are not instantiations of the general,
argument structure construction, but rather that they instantiate lower-level constructions, that is,
lexicalized instantiations of both constructions. These seem to be cases of rather fixed
phraseological units, or formal idioms in Fillmore’s terminology.
In the analysis of the caused motion data, two basic uses and also the verbs more frequently
used in the construction were identified:

I) Verbs taking directional adverbials (denoting causation of motion): put, place, bring, get,
set, take, turn, send, push, shove, force, lay;
II) Verbs taking locative adverbials (denoting prevention of motion): keep, leave, bear, hold,
base.

This difference is not said to be syntactic, but rather a lexical one that is made possible by
the non-adjacent interaction between a verb and an adverbial [V [NP] Adv]; that is, verbs and
adverbials in these low-level constructions seem to function similarly to how formal idioms are
structured (Fillmore, Kay & O’Connor, 1988), that is, as a semi-fixed expression in which one
syntactic slot is open. Another important aspect of the data analyzed in Hampe (2010) has to do
with the interpretation of the actual caused motion. Both types (those denoting causation of
motion and prevention of motion) were found to be denoting either a literal motion (physical
movement) or a figurative one. In the figurative cases, the adverbial will identify a state or condition,
but the construal will still be spatial, that is, a metaphorical construal that is motivated by primitive
metaphors such as STATES ARE LOCATIONS/BOUNDED REGIONS AND
CIRCUMSTANCES/CONDITIONS ARE SURROUNDING (Grady, 1997) will motivate the figurative
reading of caused motions. These metaphors are then thought to license the interpretation of the
caused motions below.

(41) She just needed to get her life [PP back in order].
(42) I’m not trying to get more people [PP in trouble].

(Rosa, 2014: 191)

(43) The clown laughed the boy [PP out of his depression].
(44) Coax a two-year old [PP from an incipient meltdown].

(Dancygier; Sweetser, 2014: 133)

15
 Following Hampe (2010) analysis of low-level caused motions and Rosa (2014) description
of phraseological caused motion units with get, examples (41) and (42) are analyzed as lexicalized
instances of the caused-motion construction, which display a figurative reading. No literal
movement is implied in the directional PPs back in order and in trouble. As for (43) and (44), both
laugh and coax do not take directional prepositional arguments and thus could not form lexicalized
expressions with these, like get can with back in order and in trouble. Language data show, though,
that the schematic caused-motion construction can itself be interpreted figuratively, irrespective
of the lexical material instantiating it. On this matter, Dancygier and Sweetser (2014: 133) state
that

[…] scenarios involving Caused Change of State, which is metaphorically understood as Caused
Motion, are expressed with the Caused-Motion construction (laugh someone out of their depression,
coax the two-year old away from an incipient meltdown). In some of these expressions, there is nothing
which expresses either spatial motion or change of physical state, and thus no motion words
which could be interpreted metaphorically to mean Caused Change of State […] The most
plausible hypothesis is therefore that the Caused-Motion Construction itself is interpreted
metaphorically in these cases, to mean Caused Change of State.

The effect that low-level, lexicalized phraseologisms have in the interpretation of caused
motions as well as the fact that schematic caused motions can generally be interpreted figuratively
are of utmost importance for constructional representation, as well as for other related matters
such as language processing and language learning.
With that in mind, the following section presents an analysis caused-motion phraseologisms
headed by get aiming at contributing to the relevance of phraseological knowledge in the
productivity and use of general constructions. The choice of the predicate get for the empirical
discussion was based on its high discourse salience in English as a whole7, as well as the attested
semantic and syntactic versatility of this verb. The aim, therefore, is to show whether or not the
data corroborate Hampe’s view on the lexical fixedness of certain verbs and oblique arguments,
such as put ___ in order, with a highly frequent, salient and polysemous verb as get.

6. A WAY INTO THE WORLD OF CAUSED MOTIONS: PHRASEOLOGISMS WITH GET

This analysis is based on a subset of data comprising 1284 instances of caused-motion
constructions headed by the predicate get in a universe of 2449 causative utterances extracted from
COCA (Rosa, 2014; Rosa & Tagnin, 2015). The syntax search on COCA used the lemmatized
form of get and determined a span of two positions to the right to search for the most frequent
nominal collocates. After that, the analysis selected the first fifty collocates for their semantic
variability and randomly extracted 5% of the total number of concordance lines for each of the

7 The lemmatized form of get is the fourth most frequent verb on COCA with 606659 occurrences.

16
fifty collocates. This amounted to 9210 concordance lines, which were then subjected to a manual
semantic classification in view of their argument structures. The argument-structure constructions
adopted as criteria for classification was based on Goldberg (1995).
From the 9210 occurrences, 2449 (= 26%) were instances of general causative structures.
The distribution of the different types of causative constructions in the data, of which the caused
motion is the biggest part, can be seen in Table 3 below.

Table 3. Distribution of causative constructions in the study corpus

Construction Absolute Frequency Relative Frequency

Caused motion 1284 52,42%
Analytic Causative 874 35,60%
Resultative 293 11,96%
Total 2449

As shown above, the semantic categorization applied to the 2449 utterances identified 1284
caused-motion constructions corresponding to 52.42% of all sentences exhibiting a form of
causation. The 1284 caused-motion constructions showed a range of prepositions of movement
forming a series of lexically underspecified sentence patterns such as get NP across, get NP away, etc.
Table 4 shows the most frequent patterns in the data.

Table 4. Patterns with get + NP + Prep. with a caused-motion reading

Pattern Abs. Freq. Rel. Freq. Pattern Abs. Freq. Rel. Freq.
get NP out (of) 260 20,24% get NP down 29 2,25%
get NP in 139 10,82% get NP away 24 1,86%
get NP off 81 6,30% get NP up 13 1,01%
get NP into 61 4,75% get NP through 12 0,93%
get NP on 47 3,66% get NP over 10 0,77%
get NP to 46 3,58% get NP across 9 0,70%
Total: 731 56,93%

In addition to the sentence patterns with prepositions, fully specified phraseologisms such
as get the story out, get one’s hands on and get the message across also emerged in our data. Table 5 below
shows phraseologisms with a caused-motion reading with more than two lexically specified items.

17
 Table 5. Caused motion phraseologisms with get

Phraseologism Abs. Freq. Rel. Freq. Phraseologism Abs. Freq. Rel. Freq.
get [det] message out 82 6,38% get [det] foot in the door 32 2,49%
get the word out 74 5,76% get [det] story out 21 1,63%
get one’s hands on 74 5,76% get SN back on track 17 1,32%
get [det] message across 58 4,51% get one’s hands off 15 1,16%
get [det] information out 37 2,88% get one’s hands around 12 0,93%
get [det] point across 34 2,64% get [det] shot off 11 0,85%
Total: 467 36,54%

Despite appearing a lot less frequently than simple sentence patterns with prepositions
(Table 5), both in absolute and relative terms, the phraseologisms in the table above demonstrate
a greater level of structural fixedness. The expressions identified in our data were subjected to a
calculation aimed at measuring the level of attraction between the predicate get and the phrasal
pattern in the entire corpus (Schmid, 2010), so as to determine whether they were attested
phraseologisms or not.

Attraction: Frequency of an item in a construction x 100

Total frequency of the construction in the corpus

Exemplifying with the phraseologism get the message across, we would have that (267 * 100) /
292 = 91.43%8, that is, in 91.43% of the times the sequence ___ the message across appears in the
corpus, it appears with the verb get occupying the verbal slot. In other words, get the message across is
a phraseological unit given that it is the co-occurrence of two or more linguistic items that form a
semantic unit and that shows frequency that is higher than expected by chance (Gries, 2008; Rosa,
2014). In Table 6 below the levels of attraction for phraseologisms with caused-motion readings
are presented.

8A search on COCA in September 2022 generated different figures, but the proportion was about the same. The
current numbers are (536 * 100) / 590 = 95.25%.

18
 Table 6. Statistical analysis of attraction of get-phraseologisms with a caused-motion reading

Phraseologism Pattern freq. Attraction Phraseologism Pattern freq. Attraction

get [det] message out 515 87,18% get [det] foot in the door 133 87,96%
get the word out 479 76,40% get [det] story out 175 48%
get one’s hands on 3624 32,28% get SN back on track 39 71,79%
get [det] message across 292 91,43% get one’s hands off 398 14,57%
get [det] information out 222 57,65% get one’s hands around 355 12,11%
get [det] point across 194 97,42% get [det] shot off 53 64,15%

As the table above shows, with the exception of get one’s hands on, get one’s hands off and get one’s
hands around, all the other phraseologisms show a level of attraction of about 50%, which speaks
in favor of their phraseological status. That is, the expressions analyzed in here do not seem to be
simple instantiations of the schematic caused motion, but independent low-level phraseological
constructions (Hampe, 2010; Rosa, 2014; Rosa & Tagnin, 2015; Xia, 2017).
Having both identified and attested the phraseological nature of the expressions in Table 6,
it is now possible to show the relationship between the schematic caused-motion construction and
one of their lexically crystalized instances. Below we exemplify with the phraseologism get the
message out, but the same analysis applies to the other phraseologisms as well.

(I ) Inheritance link of instantiation

i

Figure 3. Caused-motion construction and the phraseological instance get the message out

19
 As the matrices in Fig. 3 present, the phraseological unit get the message out inherits both of its
functional and formal properties from the schematic caused-motion construction via a link of
instantiation, that is, this expression, as well as the others in Table 6, have been conventionalized
in the language as frozen instances of the abstract X CAUSES Y TO MOVE Z construction, which
means that speakers, as well as language learners, might have access to these without necessarily
resorting to the schematic construction9. Below is a sample of some concordance lines from our
data.

Figure 4. Sample of concordances of the phraseological unit get the message out

The concordance lines above show lexical instantiations of the pattern get NP out in which
the NP is filled by the message. As shown in Tables 4 and 5, the pattern with the particle out was
quite productive in the data and that is reinforced by the fact that other expressions belonging to
the same semantic field of communication appeared to occupy the nominal position.

message
get word out
(45)
information
story

It is important to note that, as the concordances in Fig.4 exemplify, the caused-motion

phraseologism get the message out does not always specify the oblique argument, that is, the path along
which the metaphorical object of communication is dislocated. However, many of the occurrences
show that the oblique arguments are realized either by the adverbial there or by the preposition to
introducing the goal of the dislocation.
Although more data are needed in order to come up with overarching generalizations, the
occurrences of get NP out systematically occurred around terms of verbal communication. That is,
despite exhibiting a reading of figurative dislocation, the underlying structure is that of a [Subj V
Obj Obl] in which the Obj is instantiated by communication terms that are metaphorically interpreted
as objects. This has been extensively discussed in light of the productive conduit metaphor (Reddy,
1979). Also, the fixedness of the expressions above as attested in Rosa (2014) and the metaphorical
reading of the Obl argument discussed in Hampe (2010) and Dancygier and Sweetser (2014)

9 Rosa (2020) presents an analysis of English caused-motion constructions by EFL learners. The results show a great
reliance on lexicalized material by learners on the interpretation of the schematic caused motion.

20
reinforce the phraseological and constructional status of the expressions in (45). Similar form-
functional behavior was found in the other caused-motion phraseologisms with communication
terms, as samples of the concordance lines show.

Figure 5. Sample of concordances of the phraseological unit get the word out

Figure 6. Sample of concordances of the phraseological unit get the information out

Figure 7. Sample of concordances of the phraseological unit get the message out

As was discussed, both in the introduction and in section 5, this paper defends a “what
you see is what you get” approach (Goldberg, 2003: 229) to schematic caused motions by claiming
that the attested phraseologisms above are all fully lexicalized instances of the formal idiom (Fillmore,
Kay & O’Connor, 1988) get NPcommunication out. The open nominal slot in the structure of this semi-
fixed expression allows for the creation of new instances of the caused motion by lexically
specifying the NP in the domain of communication terms, but also by diversifying other parts of
the expression such as the verb and the oblique argument. This process of new token creations of
the construction leads to the entrenchment of the schematic type (Bybee, 2010), enhances the

21
productivity of the instance link (Jiang & Wen, 2022) and also increases the network of lexicalized
constructions.

Schematic caused
motion
(Subj V Obj Obl)

Caused motion
phraseologism (CMP)
(get NPcommunication out)

CMP CMP CMP

get the message out get the word out get the story out

CMP CMP
get the CMP CMP CMP CMP
get the
message put the word let the word get the best get a kick
message
(through) out out out out
across
to

Figure 8. Relations between schematic and phraseological caused motions

The network of caused-motion constructions above aims at exhibiting an example of the

process of instantiation between schematic and phraseological instances. That is, the
underspecified, formal idiom get NPcommunication out sanctions lexicalized phraseologisms such as get the
message out, get the word out and get the story out and these will in turn license other expressions while
speakers abstract from these fully specified constructions by replacing parts of the expression with
semantically coherent alternatives (eg. put in place of get, across in place of out and a kick in place of
the story). This is captured by the double arrows amongst the constructions at the bottom. Most
importantly, though, is that the network shows that lexicalized expressions such as get the message
out may not be seen only as instantiations of caused motion generalizations, but also as sources
from which speakers can derive and create new expressions by working with concrete lexical
material. This perspective has been used in Rosa (2023) as a theoretical support for teaching and
learning applications. However, in spite of being a reasonable account in L2 acquisition settings,
we side with Xia (2017), Croft (2012), Boas (2013) and Hampe (2010) who reinforce the
importance of the lexical material to the whole network of constructions.

22
7. CONCLUSION
This article aimed at providing an overview of the form-functional properties of the caused-
motion construction by discussing the treatment given to this language structure both in
descriptive grammars of English (Quirk et al., 1985) as well as in the constructional tradition
(Goldberg, 1995; Goldberg and Jackendoff, 2004). However, the role of low-level phraseological
instances has been emphasized both in the literature review (Hampe, 2010; Rosa, 2014; Rosa &
Tagnin, 2015) and in an analysis of 1284 caused-motion constructions taken from COCA. From
such data, we presented and discussed statistically attested caused-motion phraseologisms headed
by the predicate get reinforcing the relevance that lexically specified language units have in speakers’
grammatical knowledge. Most importantly, the data discussion and analysis aim at endorsing the
main claim of this paper that lexical phraseologisms can be the source for the creation of other
lexical instances as well as serving the purpose of contributing to the entrenchment of the schema.
The analysis with get-phraseologisms targeted a rather small set of language data, but we
believe it is sufficiently robust to advocate for the importance that crystalized language structures
have in language description as well as in language learning. Future developments aim at extracting
and analyzing more language data, possibly with different predicates, so as to contribute to the
understanding of this and other language constructions.

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