The so-called aggressively non-D-linked construction (ANDC) involving wh-the-hell phrases like what the hell is of empirical and theoretical interest due to its complex morphosyntactic and semantic/pragmatic properties. This paper focuses on the construction in general as well as in ellipsis phenomena. We first explore its grammatical properties on the basis of attested corpus data and show that the construction can occur more widely in elliptical constructions than suggested by previous literature. We then suggest that the licensing conditions of the ANDC in ellipsis are not solely syntax-based but due to tight interactions among a variety of grammatical components such as morphosyntax, semantics, and discourse/pragmatics. We also argue that the authentic uses of the construction favor a Direct Interpretation (DI) approach that can account for its uses in a variety of environments.

This study investigates to what extent there are collocational preferences in the verb–object combinations of a large corpus of Norwegian and how important recurrent combinations are in usage. The material has been extracted from a large web-corpus of 700 million tokens and consists of dependency-based verb–object combinations. The overall importance of collocational preferences is demonstrated by the fact that the most frequent 5% of the verb–object combinations account for as much as 64% of the verb–object tokens in the material. The database of verb–object combinations contains measures of collocational strength and thereby allows us to model the mutual strength between the exemplars in the clusters found with individual verbs. Based on some studies of individual verbs and verb pairs, it seems safe to assume that speakers do distinguish between and prefer certain conventional verb–object combinations to other equally grammatical, equally transparent and equally understandable alternatives, and that speakers have access to complementation information at the level of exemplars.

Drawing on a wide array of historical and contemporary corpora, this article provides one of the first empirical analyses of the intricately related functional changes that -ish underwent in the course of English language history. By investigating the distribution of -ish formations, the analysis sheds light on the productivity of the suffix, which does not only become evident in the numerous hapax legomena, but also in the trajectory of change itself in which -ish occurs with ever new base categories and new functions. Moreover, the article revisits theoretical claims made in the literature about the diachronic development and synchronic properties of -ish and reassesses them in the light of the corpus-based observations.

Structural priming is the phenomenon that speakers tend to re-use structures they have recently comprehended or produced themselves. Most studies on this topic are experimental and looked at within-language priming. However, there are now also many observational studies, a development that is inextricably related to new/larger corpora, new statistical methodologies, and new theoretical ideas. Second, there is a growing body of research on cross-linguistic structural priming, though mostly experimental. These developments lead to a new potential research avenue: cross-linguistic priming on the basis of observational data. Here, we will first summarize some fundamental studies of cross-linguistic priming, and then trace the historical development of observational studies of structural priming to showcase how statistical and theoretical developments have shaped research on priming in general and discuss what such observational priming research has offered to within-language priming research. We end with a discussion of how this research can inform cross-linguistic priming.