A Constructional Approach to as far as NP is concerned

Abstract

The construction as far as NP is concerned has two functions in English: as a marker of contrastive topic and as an evidential. Due to its homophonous nature, this construction illustrates how meaning is not always a function of semantic compositionality. Thus, it is problematic for syntactic theories that have only compositional means to account for semantic and syntactic relationships. However, a constructional approach, viz. Construction Grammar, is useful for analyzing ambiguous constructions because it makes use of conventions which distinguish pragmatic functions and allows meaning to be attached to syntactic forms.