Replication data for: Death of a construction: Old Church Slavonic touch verbs

Data set for a study of the locative argument structure construction in Old Church Slavonic. In this article I examine an argument structure construction on its deathbed, namely, the Old Church Slavonic (OCS) bare locative argument construction. Why does the construction even exist when the pattern it instantiates is otherwise dead? What happens to the verbs involved, and which argument structure constructions take over? I take a usage-based approach to syntactic productivity to examine what happens in such cases. In many ways, this approach can account for the observed development. The final stronghold of the locative construction was a small group of highly semantically coherent verbs. When the construction was lost, the verbs joined other argument constructions, preferably constructions that were also highly semantically coherent, but not necessarily very type frequent. However, syntactic productivity alone cannot explain the patterns of attraction: we must also look at the semantic and formal fit.

本数据集服务于一项针对古教会斯拉夫语（Old Church Slavonic, OCS）方位论元结构构式的研究。本文针对一门濒临消亡的论元结构构式展开考察——即古教会斯拉夫语裸方位论元构式。当该构式所体现的句法模式早已式微乃至消亡时，此构式为何仍能存续？涉事动词将发生何种变化，又会有哪些论元结构构式取而代之？本文采用基于用法的句法能产性研究路径，考察此类语言演变场景中的具体变化。该研究路径在诸多层面可对已观测到的语言发展轨迹作出合理解释。方位构式最后的残存阵地，是一组语义高度连贯的小型动词群。当该构式最终消亡时，相关动词将融入其他论元构式——优先选择同样具备高度语义连贯性的构式，即便此类构式未必拥有极高的型频。然而，仅依靠句法能产性这一维度，无法完全解释所观测到的吸引模式：我们还需同时考量语义适配性与形式适配性。