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Category: Project

Description: In English, verbs can combine with an object-like (or Objoid) element consisting of a possessive and a superlative. These Superlative Objoids do not add a participant to the event but function like manner adverbs (they work their hardest, i.e. they work extremely hard). This paper is the first to use diachronic evidence from a corpus of Late Modern American English to trace the trajectory of Superlative Objoid Con-structions (SOC) in the recent past. In particular, it aims to show whether the con-struction has become entrenched to the extent that it can give rise to analogical extension. Secondly, the evidence is used to add to conceptual modelling within the framework of Construction Grammar, notably the role that horizontal and vertical links between the SOC and its (potential) relatives have in the constructional net-work of transitivity changing constructions, i.e. the paper proposes the SOCs lineage.