Constructions and Frames

Guidelines for article submissions

Introductory Remarks

Constructions and Frames welcomes submissions on construction-based approaches to language analysis. Constructional models emphasize the role of constructions, as conventional pairings of meaning and form, in stating language-specific and cross- linguistic generalizations and in accounting equally for regular and semi-regular patterns. The aim of the journal is to promote innovative research that extends constructional approaches in new directions and along interdisciplinary paths.

To ensure that a paper fits the scope and goals of Constructions and Frames, authors are encouraged to send the editors a summary of their paper prior to formal submission,  by electronic mail,  as  regular text  or attachment.  Articles  should  be shorter than 12.000 words (reviews shorter than 3.000 words), including references; longer manuscripts may not be considered.

Authors submitting articles for publication in Constructions and Frames should send THREE hard copies of the manuscript to one of the editors or, preferably, one electronic copy in portable document format (.pdf). (See the end of this document for contact information.) It is not necessary that initial submissions adhere fully to the guidelines in sections 1-8, below. At this point in the process, clear and consistent presentation are paramount. Texts should be double-spaced, printed on one side of the page only, with all pages numbered consecutively. Figures, charts and tables can be left in the appropriate place in the manuscript rather than moved to the end. In order to permit double-blind refereeing, submissions should not carry author information.

Contributions should be in English; contributors whose native language is not English should have their manuscript carefully checked by a native speaker.

Note: Any material submitted to Constructions and Frames must be original work, not published or under review elsewhere, and contributors may not submit this work elsewhere while it is under review here. If related material is published, under consideration or in press elsewhere, that must be disclosed to us. Similarly, if part of a contribution has appeared or will appear elsewhere, contributors must specify the details in a cover letter accompanying the submission. Upon acceptance of a contribution for publication, its author(s) will be sked to sign a Copyright Assignment Form, transferring the copyright to the publisher.

Reviewing procedure. In order to permit double-blind refereeing, submissions should not carry author information. In particular, please note the following:
1. Your name, affiliation, and other personal data should be submitted separately.
2. Avoid the use of your name in the text of the manuscript.
3. Minimize references to your own work. If necessary, use third person formulations as much as possible; if you are Jones or have worked in Jones‟ department, do not write “Building on previous work (Jones 2007), we will now show that ...”, but simply “We build on prior work by Jones (2007)”.
4. Avoid references to unpublished work, especially work of which you are a (co-) author. If unavoidable, replace the reference in the text by “Author (in press)”, and describe it in the list of references as “Author (in press). Details omitted for blind reviewing”. (But please remember to fill these out again in the final text for production if your article is accepted for publication!)
5. Remember to remove any identifying information from the document properties.
6. Please be advised that the editors may return your manuscript to you for anonymization before sending it to reviewers in case it does not, in their opinion, conform to the standards for double-blind reviewing.

Title page

This should be the first, separate, sheet of the manuscript and must provide: (a) author(s)‟s name(s) and affiliation(s)  as well as (b) full address(es), including e-mail and fax information, indicating – in case there is more than one author – who will be responsible for proofreading.

In case of a long title please suggest a shortened one (max. 55 characters) for the running head.

Please make sure that you include all authors and their affiliations on submission (on a cover sheet/in EM). In general, we will not permit adding authors or making changes to the order of authors after the article is accepted for publication.

After acceptance it is still possible to add an affiliation for individual authors, if an author moved to another institution during the process of reviewing and revising. Removing affiliations would, in principle, never be necessary -- if an author did (part of) the research and writing while affiliated with an institution, that still remains relevant, even if they moved before the article entered the production process.

On submission of the accepted, final version to the editors, please include in the article itself, below the title, a list of all authors in the order in which they should appear in the publication and for each author:

• Name(s) as they should appear in the publication
• Affiliation(s): Please use the name that your institution (at the highest level, usually the name of the university) has established for international usage, either in English, or in one of the official languages of the institution. If your article is written in a language other than English and not one of the languages for which your institution has established an official name, do not translate the name yourself, as this makes it harder or even impossible for us to recognize publications from the same institution. If your institution has a name that is not unique in the world (in English), please add as much information as is needed -- city, country -- to allow for identification. If you have more than one affiliation, please provide each affiliation separated by an ampersand ' & '.
• ORCID, if available

Form of manuscript

Once a manuscript is accepted for publication, contributors must submit revised versions prepared in strict accordance with this style sheet. Final versions must be submitted both in hard copy (or .pdf) and electronically (as an attachment or on diskette), in the word processing program in which the paper was written and, unless the paper was prepared in Microsoft Word, in rich text format (.rtf).

For articles, an abstract of about 100 words is required. Authors of articles are also required to provide up to 10 keywords.

Authors are encouraged to use Unicode fonts for any special – non standard ASCII – characters; in any case, the provided hard copy (or .pdf) should show any special character as they should appear in print, so that this can be used for reference during typesetting. In case you have no access to certain characters, we advise you to use a

clear convention to mark these characters as this will facilitate automatic replacement during the formatting of the text. If you use any special characters, be sure to mark these with unique codes such as %%…%% or $[…].

Authors are asked to k eep formatting to a minimum; for example neither right justification nor automatic hyphenation should be used. The only relevant codes are those pertaining to font enhancements (italics, bold, caps, small caps, etc.), punctuation, and the format of the references. Whatever formatting or style conventions are employed, please be consistent.

Manuscripts, especially articles and review articles, should be divided into sections and subsections as needed, all with appropriate (short) titles, not mere numbers.

Use italics for f oreign words, highlighting, and emphasis. Bold should be used only for highlighting within italics and for headings. Please refrain from the use of FULL CAPS (except for focal stress and abbreviations) and underlining (except for highlighting within examples, as an alternative for boldface).

Text quotations in the main text should be given in “double” quotation marks. Quotations longer than 3 lines should have a blank line above and below and a left indent, without quotation marks, and with the appropriate reference to the source.

Listings should not be indented. If numbered, please number as follows:

1. ..................... or a. .......................
2. ..................... or b. .......................

Listings that run on with the main text can be numbered in parentheses: (1).............., (2)............., etc.

Examples should be numbered with Arabic numerals (1,2,3, etc.) in parentheses and indented. Morphemes and glosses should be aligned; please make sure this alignment is clearly visible in the hard copy/pdf. We recommend the use of the Leipzig Glossing Rules as a convention for the formatting of glosses.

               “Marko and I went to Peredelkino by bus”
         b.   unser-n           Väter-n                                                                           (German)
               our-DAT.PL   father.PL-DAT.PL
               “to our fathers”

CAPS can be used for abbreviations in the interlinear gloss: in the final formatting these will be converted into small caps; please refrain from the use of lower case. Notes should be kept to a minimum and not be used for references. Note indicators in the text should appear at the end of sentences and follow punctuation marks. Notes should be submitted as footnotes.

It is essential that the references are formatted to the specifications given in these guidelines, as these cannot be formatted automatically. Please use the reference style as described in The APA Publication Manual (6th ed.).
References in the text: These should be as precise as possible, giving page references where necessary; for example (Fillmore 1990; Clahsen 1991: 252-253) or, as in Brown et al. (1991: 252). All references in the text should appear in the references section.
References section: References should be listed first alphabetically and then chronologically. The section should include all (and only!) references that are actually mentioned in the text.

Examples

Book:
Görlach, M. (2003). English words abroad. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Spear,  N. E., & Miller, R. R. (Eds.). (1981). Information processing in animals: Memory
      mechanisms. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Article (in book):
Adams, C. A., & Dickinson, A. (1981). Actions and habits: Variation in associative
      representation during instrumental learning. In N. E. Spear & R. R. Miller (Eds.),
      Information processing in animals: Memory mechanisms (pp. 143-186). Hillsdale, NJ:
      Erlbaum.

Article (in journal):
Claes, J., & Ortiz López, L. A. (2011). Restricciones pragmáticas y sociales en la expresión de
      futuridad en el español de Puerto Rico [Pragmatic and social restrictions in the expression
      of the future in Puerto Rican Spanish]. Spanish in Context, 8, 50–72.

Rayson, P., Leech, G. N., & Hodges, M. (1997). Social differentiation in the use of English
      vocabulary: Some analyses of the conversational component of the British National
      Corpus. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 2(1), 120–132.

Tables, Figures and Plates
1. Tables and Figures should be numbered consecutively and provided with concise captions (max. 240 characters, incl. spaces). Reference should be made in the main text, e.g., “(see Figure 5)”; do   not use absolute references such as “see the table below”  or “see this figure: ”. Please indicate the preferred position of the Table or Figure in the text by inserting a line “ Insert Figure XX here” at the appropriate position. It will be placed either at the top or the bottom of the page on which it is mentioned, or on the following page.

2. All Tables, Plates, and Figures eventually have to fit the following text area, either portrait or landscape: 11.5 cm (= 4.5”) x 19 cm (= 7.5”). Font setting: Times New Roman 9pts (absolute minimum: 8pts).