The Seba library treats Langacker in 9 passages, across 1 author (including Allan, Rutger).
Langacker 8-11, 13, 14, 30, 32-34, 36, 37, 38, 62, 69, 71, 72, 75, 84, 85, 104, 193, 205
The index entry for Langacker spans the full analytical core of Allan's study, confirming that his framework is foundational to chapters on prototypical transitivity, the complex category network, semantic roles, mental events, and reflexive constructions.
, The Middle Voice in Ancient Greek A Study of Polysemy, 2003thesis
Langacker's description of a number of archetypal semantic roles is adopted. The list of semantic roles enumerated by Langacker (1991a: 285-7) is as follows: agent and patient … instrument: a physical object manipulated by the agent
Allan explicitly adopts Langacker's inventory of archetypal semantic roles as the descriptive framework for classifying participants in Greek middle-voice constructions.
, The Middle Voice in Ancient Greek A Study of Polysemy, 2003thesis
Voice alternations can be characterized as encodings of different choices of clausal subject (cf. Langacker 1991a: 335) … voice alternations can be fruitfully described as markings of departures from the prototypical transitive event (Hopper & Thompson 1980; Givón 1984: 157, 2001a: 126-8; Langacker 1991a: 335).
Langacker's formulation of voice as subject-choice encoding grounds Allan's entire analysis of the Greek middle as a departure from prototypical transitivity.
, The Middle Voice in Ancient Greek A Study of Polysemy, 2003thesis
it may be useful to have a look at an example of a lexical category given by Langacker himself (Langacker 1987: 373-385). Consider a child in the process of learning the various senses (conventional usages) of the word tree.
Allan imports Langacker's model of the complex category network—illustrated through the acquisition of the word 'tree'—as the analytical template for describing the polysemous structure of the Greek middle voice.
, The Middle Voice in Ancient Greek A Study of Polysemy, 2003thesis
the notion of cognitive domain … 'semantic unit' (Langacker 1987: 147) … which brings us back to Langacker's Billiard-ball Model. The Billiard-ball model is an archetypal cognitive model that structures our conception of events.
Allan invokes Langacker's cognitive domain concept and the Billiard-ball Model as the foundational cognitive models for analysing how transitive event structure is conceptualised in Greek.
, The Middle Voice in Ancient Greek A Study of Polysemy, 2003thesis
Examples of these are 'see', 'know', 'understand', 'want', and 'love' (see Langacker 1991a: 303-4, 310, 2000: 26). These events are coded in English as a transitive with a subject and a direct object, although they obviously do not involve a physical transmission of energy.
Allan draws on Langacker's analysis of mental-event verbs to explain how Greek extends the transitive clause structure metaphorically to cover perception, cognition, and emotion.
, The Middle Voice in Ancient Greek A Study of Polysemy, 2003supporting
This reasoning can be called the rule/list fallacy which is based on the assumption that rules and lists are mutually exclusive (Langacker 1987: 29, 2000: 3). Therefore, abstract schemas and specific expressions are part of the grammar, provided that they have become conventional units, through entrenchment by frequent, repeated occurrence.
Allan adopts Langacker's critique of the rule/list fallacy to justify retaining both abstract schemas and individually entrenched forms within the cognitive-grammatical description of Greek middle-voice constructions.
, The Middle Voice in Ancient Greek A Study of Polysemy, 2003supporting
The prototype of the category represented here is node A: almost all the other nodes are either extensions of A (indicated by the dashed arrows), or elaborations (the solid arrows). Node A is also the most entrenched node, which is indicated by the thickness of the box.
This diagram of a complex category network, drawn directly from Langacker's framework, illustrates how prototype, extension, elaboration, and schematicity levels are applied to model the polysemous structure of the middle voice.
, The Middle Voice in Ancient Greek A Study of Polysemy, 2003supporting
In the direct reflexive middles (λούμαι), however, the Initiator-aspect of the subject is also, to some extent, conceptually distinguished from the Endpoint-aspect
The Langackerian terminology of Initiator and Endpoint is applied to differentiate the conceptual structure of direct reflexive middles from other reflexive constructions, illustrating the framework's micro-analytical reach.
, The Middle Voice in Ancient Greek A Study of Polysemy, 2003aside