Connecting frames and constructions: A case study of 'eat' and 'feed'

Constructional analysis of corpus data can contribute to the analysis of a semantic frame, as demonstrated by a small corpus study of eat and feed. The EAT/FEED frame forms part of a taxonomy of frames including the superordinate CONSUME frame and subordinate frames of human vs. animal eating; constructional and metaphor data in the corpus shows that English covertly distinguishes human and animal eating. The EAT frame includes three phases (intake, process, and ingest), differentiated lexicogrammatically. The EAT frame also includes three domains in its domain matrix: physical, biological (nutritional) and social, all clearly differentiated by distinct constructions in the corpus. An examination of metaphors with eat and feed in the corpus demonstrate that the target domain contributes image-schematic structure to the metaphorical mapping, contrary to the Invariance Hypothesis.