Alignment and Complexity of English Resultative Constructions

This paper analyses constructions which are usually studied under the labels of "secondary predication" or " resultative construction" within a Cognitive Linguistic framework. It is shown that structural identity does not imply constructional identity. In particular, in the first part of the paper, the notion of alignment, which can also be extended to other areas of grammar, is introduced and the notion of construal is emphasized. The second part of the paper proposes a novel analysis of verbs of manner of motion and sound emission and sentences like "John cut the salami into the bowl".