Resultative secondary predicates in cooking recipes: an empirical study of Germanic and Romance languages

The present article provides a contrastive corpus-based analysis of resultative secondary predicates in recipe contexts. Two Germanic languages (Dutch and English) and two Romance languages (French and Spanish) are investigated. Based on a sample of 4,000 (i.e., 1,000 per language) resultative const...

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Main Author: Métairy Justine
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: De Gruyter 2025-05-01
Series:Linguistics
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Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1515/ling-2022-0130
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author Métairy Justine
author_facet Métairy Justine
author_sort Métairy Justine
collection DOAJ
description The present article provides a contrastive corpus-based analysis of resultative secondary predicates in recipe contexts. Two Germanic languages (Dutch and English) and two Romance languages (French and Spanish) are investigated. Based on a sample of 4,000 (i.e., 1,000 per language) resultative constructions (RCs) retrieved from a tailor-made corpus of cooking recipes, this study sheds new light on Talmy’s typological dichotomy between satellite-framed and verb-framed languages. Specifically, it is shown that (i) Adjectival phrases (APs) are not totally excluded from Romance RCs but their occurrence is restricted in several ways. (ii) Prepositional phrases (PPs) can be headed by a whole range of prepositions (or ‘result markers’) which exhibit important differences in terms of semantic properties, token frequency, and distribution across verb classes: ‘weak’ result markers, which mainly consist of locative prepositions (viz. in ‘in’ in Dutch, in in English and en ‘in’ and a ‘to’ in Spanish) occur almost exclusively in RCs that contain achievements, which are argued to be less dynamic, depictive-like instances of the construction. By contrast, ‘strong’ result markers (e.g., tot ‘to/until’ in Dutch, to, into, and until in English, en ‘in’ in French and a punto de ‘to point of’ in Spanish) combine with various aspectual classes, including activities, and may therefore give rise to ‘strong’ (i.e., aspect-shifting) RCs. Finally, (iii) although they are both ‘satellite-framed’ languages, Dutch and English impose different restrictions on the formal encoding of APs, which are very often preceded by the preposition until in English as a result of discourse and internal language factors.
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spelling doaj-art-abe2b09792cb40d8be84b2b35bedb2b22025-08-20T02:11:11ZengDe GruyterLinguistics0024-39491613-396X2025-05-0163370175710.1515/ling-2022-0130Resultative secondary predicates in cooking recipes: an empirical study of Germanic and Romance languagesMétairy Justine026656Ghent University, Gent, BelgiumThe present article provides a contrastive corpus-based analysis of resultative secondary predicates in recipe contexts. Two Germanic languages (Dutch and English) and two Romance languages (French and Spanish) are investigated. Based on a sample of 4,000 (i.e., 1,000 per language) resultative constructions (RCs) retrieved from a tailor-made corpus of cooking recipes, this study sheds new light on Talmy’s typological dichotomy between satellite-framed and verb-framed languages. Specifically, it is shown that (i) Adjectival phrases (APs) are not totally excluded from Romance RCs but their occurrence is restricted in several ways. (ii) Prepositional phrases (PPs) can be headed by a whole range of prepositions (or ‘result markers’) which exhibit important differences in terms of semantic properties, token frequency, and distribution across verb classes: ‘weak’ result markers, which mainly consist of locative prepositions (viz. in ‘in’ in Dutch, in in English and en ‘in’ and a ‘to’ in Spanish) occur almost exclusively in RCs that contain achievements, which are argued to be less dynamic, depictive-like instances of the construction. By contrast, ‘strong’ result markers (e.g., tot ‘to/until’ in Dutch, to, into, and until in English, en ‘in’ in French and a punto de ‘to point of’ in Spanish) combine with various aspectual classes, including activities, and may therefore give rise to ‘strong’ (i.e., aspect-shifting) RCs. Finally, (iii) although they are both ‘satellite-framed’ languages, Dutch and English impose different restrictions on the formal encoding of APs, which are very often preceded by the preposition until in English as a result of discourse and internal language factors.https://doi.org/10.1515/ling-2022-0130resultative secondary predicatesprepositionscorpus-based linguisticsromancegermanic languagescooking recipes
spellingShingle Métairy Justine
Resultative secondary predicates in cooking recipes: an empirical study of Germanic and Romance languages
Linguistics
resultative secondary predicates
prepositions
corpus-based linguistics
romance
germanic languages
cooking recipes
title Resultative secondary predicates in cooking recipes: an empirical study of Germanic and Romance languages
title_full Resultative secondary predicates in cooking recipes: an empirical study of Germanic and Romance languages
title_fullStr Resultative secondary predicates in cooking recipes: an empirical study of Germanic and Romance languages
title_full_unstemmed Resultative secondary predicates in cooking recipes: an empirical study of Germanic and Romance languages
title_short Resultative secondary predicates in cooking recipes: an empirical study of Germanic and Romance languages
title_sort resultative secondary predicates in cooking recipes an empirical study of germanic and romance languages
topic resultative secondary predicates
prepositions
corpus-based linguistics
romance
germanic languages
cooking recipes
url https://doi.org/10.1515/ling-2022-0130
work_keys_str_mv AT metairyjustine resultativesecondarypredicatesincookingrecipesanempiricalstudyofgermanicandromancelanguages