TY - BOOK ID - 101584009 TI - Changes in Argument Structure : The Transitivizing Reaction Object Construction. PY - 2021 SN - 9783034342650 9783034342667 9783034342674 9783034340953 3034342659 PB - Bern : Peter Lang AG International Academic Publishers DB - UniCat KW - English language KW - Transitivity. KW - Verb. UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:101584009 AB - This book deals with the characterization and history of the reaction object construction (ROC), as in Pauline smiled her thanks. The ROC consists of an intransitive verb followed by a nonprototypical object that expresses a reaction such that the whole syntactic unit acquires the extended meaning "express X by V-ing" (e.g. "Pauline expressed her thanks by smiling"). The hypothesis is put forward that ROCs follow a similar pathway as other valency-increasing constructions such as the cognate object construction and the way-construction, occurring first with more transitive-like verbs and then expanding to intransitives. Historical corpus evidence from several complementary data sources confirms this idea and reveals striking parallelisms with the way-construction. ER -