subtractive (sem)

Type meaning
http://example.org/cx/hasExample He did all the problems correctly except (that) he missed the proof on the last one
http://example.org/cx/hasExample He did all the problems correctly but he missed the proof on the last one
Definition the semantic relation between two events where one event is additionally characterized by the absence of a second event that is normally a part of the first event. In this respect, the subtractive relation is somewhat like a negative version of the additive relation. Example: He did all the problems correctly except (that) he missed the proof on the last one is a figure--ground construal of the simultaneous relation in an adverbial clause construction, and He did all the problems correctly but he missed the proof on the last one is a complex figure construal of the relation in a coordinate clause construction. In the figure--ground construal, the absent event is construed as the ground. (Section 15.3.1)
See section (in Croft 2022) 15.3.1
Function of subtractive construction
Subtype of event relation

Source

The Model of Comparative concepts for Constructicon Alignment (MoCCA; Lorenzi et al. 2024) proposes to connect constructions across and within languages using Comparative Concepts as a shared base of comparison. It adopts the set of Comparative Concepts provided by Croft (2022).

Croft, William. 2022. Morphosyntax: Constructions of the World’s Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://www.cambridge.org/highereducation/books/morphosyntax/1AAB4F5F9C553F675170DCA3F03F82E2#contents. (14 October, 2025).
Lorenzi, Arthur, Peter Ljunglöf, Ben Lyngfelt, Tiago Timponi Torrent, William Croft, Alexander Ziem, Nina Böbel, Linnéa Bäckström, Peter Uhrig & Ely E Matos. 2024. MoCCA: A Model of Comparative Concepts for Aligning Constructicons. In Proceedings of the 20th Joint ACL - ISO Workshop on Interoperable Semantic Annotation @ LREC-COLING 2024, 93–98. Torino, Italia: ELRA and ICCL. https://aclanthology.org/2024.isa-1.12/. (22 July, 2025).

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