On the issue of the go Xing construction, I have little to quarrel with Johanna's
analysis.  It seems a perfectly good generalization that the verb must be some kind
of leisure activity as Johanna observes.

Johanna Rubba wrote:

>  a cultural category--a type of activity--has become part
> of the semantics of a syntactic construction.

I only hesitate in using the term "culture" for this semantic constraint.   The
verb run does not allow rock as its subject.  I am reluctant to say that this
constraint on run is a cultural category of English.  This is a minor quibble.

It is always good to read about theories of language with which I am unfamiliar.
In her previous post, Johanna told us Construction Grammar's  "basic
premise is that language comes in constructions which are wholes, and
often cannot be neatly analyzed into parts that can then be neatly
labeled or pigeonholed."  (She has already analyzed the "go Xing" construction in
this manner, however.   The X is a verb which identifies a leisure activity.)  In
her most recent, she explains a little more about why some find Construction
Grammar attractive.

>  Most analysts of language, including both modern
> linguists and traditional grammarians, approached language in the same
> way. They experienced language in wholes--utterances, texts. They tried
> to reduce the wholes to parts; they arrived at a set of parts that they
> then considered the 'atoms' of language, such as parts of speech. They
> then tried to explain language by coming up with syntactic rules to put
> the parts back together again. But of course, they were trapped by the
> set of parts they had come up with in the first place. The whole history of
> grammar and linguistics has been attempts to come up with the right set of atoms
> and the right set of rules for putting them together.

Of course, this criticized method is not unique to the study of language, and, as I
will show below, it is necessary for someone attempting to figure out what a
"construction" is.   All natural sciences proceed in this way with the same
possibility of being "trapped."  However, Western science has an important way to
escape the trap.  The descriptions (in our case here "the atoms and rules of
language") are a theory which makes predictions and linguists/scientists try to
find data which confirms or disconfirms the theory.

> The insight of this presentation, given by Bill Croft of the U. of
> Manchester, is that we should not try to reduce the wholes too far in
> the first place, but we should look at a language as a set of
> constructions, each of which has certain syntactic properties and
> expresses certain conventionalized meanings, such as passive
> constructions or reflexive constructions, etc.

To figure our whether a string is a construction or not, even Construction
Grammarians need to proceed by the method which it criticizes.  Let us consider a
reflexive construction.  It appears that the following string is a construction in
which the reflexive's antecedent is the subject of want.

1. Mary wants to feed herself.
2. Throckmorton wants to see himself on TV.
3. W. wants to shoot himself in the foot.
4. Liz wants to see herself in the mirror.

I think a person committed to "not trying to reduce the wholes too far in
the first place," but who "looks at a language as a set of
constructions" would see a construction here.

 5. NP  want to V -self

The reflexive pronoun's antecedent is the subject NP of want.

There is evidence which disconfirms this analysis.  In (6),  herself does not refer
to Mary, but who.

6.   I wonder who Mary wants to feed herself.

(Inserting "I wonder who" before 2-4 and obtains the same result as (6).)

The exact nature of 1-4 and 6 is less important than 5 makes a wrong prediction.
If (5) is a whole, then even in (6) herself should refer to Mary.

My analysis has proceeded using the method which constructive grammarians claim has
"trapped" previous analyses of language. On the other hand, if one proceeds by not
wanting "to reduce the wholes too far in the first place," then one would never
even think of (6) as a test of the claim of (5).   However, such an analysis must
done whenever a claim is made that a particular string is a "construction" and can
not be "neatly analyzed into parts."  Even for the constructive grammarians the
issue is to determine "how often" is "often."

Bob Yates, Central Missouri State University

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