Verb meanings at the crossroads between higher-level and lower-level constructions

The locative alternation has been analyzed in a variety of linguistic frameworks over the past four decades. This paper discusses various analyses of the locative alternation in Construction Grammar, comparing Goldberg's (1995) with Iwata's (2008) lexical-constructional account. Following Iwata's detailed analysis, this paper shows that constructions of different degrees of abstraction are necessary to account for the full range of argument realizations of verbs in the locative altnernation. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.