Over the last four decades, Construction Grammar has developed into a rich, robust conceptual framework for analyzing language in its entirety, based on the crucial assumption that language by its nature is a complex and ever-adapting and adaptable system designed for communication. The starting point was Charles J. Fillmore’s vision for an approach that would allow us to analyze grammatical organization of (any) language in such a way that we could answer the broad question of what it means to know one’s language and to use its grammatical resources with native-like fluency by individual speakers within a given language community. Put differently, this framing aims for generalizations that will naturally include systematic observations about meaning and conditions of language use as integral parts of grammatical descriptions.

This chapter discusses the importance of decision-making and agency problems in bank governance with particular focus on the role of the board of directors in addressing sustainability risks that are increasingly affecting the banking business. It considers traditional agency theories that underpin corporate governance and suggests that they do not offer a full explanation of the ‘collective’ agency problems that exist in large complex organisations, such as banks and other financial institutions. Human agency theory offers an alternative theory that emphasises the importance of organisational culture in determining standards, norms and values that influence agent behaviour. As to bank boards, the chapter stresses that although their role is primary, regulatory intervention may be necessary to ensure that organisational practices are adequately managing agency problems regarding sustainability concerns. The chapter concludes with some recommendations for how bank governance and business practices could be improved to support society’s sustainability objectives.

As part of a broader policy agenda promoting more sustainable financial markets, legislative and policy initiatives within the European Union in recent years have explored the activation of micro-prudential requirements for banks and other financial intermediaries with a view to incentivise regulated institutions to change business models and investment patterns and shift funding towards projects and beneficiaries identified as sustainable. This is compatible with traditional regulatory objectives (only) to the extent that regulatory measures try to enhance the sensitivity of existing arrangements vis-à-vis new types of sustainability-related risks, the most obvious example being climate-related risks to the viability and profitability of existing loan and investment portfolios. This chapter assesses the relevant policy initiatives in the light of recent promulgations by international standard-setters, and critically discusses the potential and the functional limits of micro-prudential regulation as a driver towards more sustainable lending – as well as potential repercussions on the existing prudential frameworks.

Ever since its conception in the 1980s, the scope of what is understood by ‘construction grammar’ has evolved to a point where the constructional enterprise has become a full branch of linguistics in its own right. It can therefore be a daunting challenge for newcomers to come to grips with different research directions that have been pursued under a constructional banner, and even seasoned construction grammarians are at risk of misunderstanding each other. The goal of this chapter is therefore to offer a comparative guide for navigating the constructional landscape and to show that the existence of different constructional flavors is a healthy and necessary response to the problem of analyzing complex linguistic structures, provided that the community maintains a consensus about its core concepts.

Many constructions have both metaphoric and non-metaphoric uses. For example, English transitives can either involve metaphor, as in she devoured the experience, or be non-metaphoric, as in she devoured the meat. On the other hand, constructions such as the idiom glutton for punishment or the compound verb greenlight can never be literal. This chapter argues that ‘optionally metaphoric’ constructions, such as transitives, show how metaphoric meaning is often based on non-metaphoric meaning, whereas ‘inherently metaphoric’ constructions, as in greenlight, demonstrate the role of conceptual metaphors in constructional semantics.

The enactment of the European Non-Financial-Reporting-Directive (2014/95/EU) and the new (proposed) Corporate-Sustainability-Reporting-Directive as its successor introduced aspects of corporate social responsibility to the world of financial reporting for almost all listed corporations in the common market. This established a path dependency between the traditional financial and the (new) non-financial reporting regime. As the consequence, the actual non-financial reporting regime does not provide a unique scope of application and does not distinguish between business entities with and without an impact on corporate social responsibility. Nevertheless, the actual content of financial reporting and non-financial reporting is fundamentally different since financial information is a number-based information instrument and sustainability information is a text-based information instrument. Moreover, financial information and non-financial information do not require the same corporate governance procedure for drafting and examining. Finally, it is doubtful that the liability regime of financial disclosure can be used as some kind of blueprint for a civil liability regime for non-financial disclosure. Since the existing framework for civil liability in financial disclosure cannot be used for cases of incorrect non-financial disclosure, it is necessary to develop an independent regime of civil liability for incorrect non-financial disclosure. The existing path dependency between financial and non-financial disclosure prevents this necessary step.

This chapter focusses on environmental sustainability and provides a better understanding of the corporate governance levers that can direct behaviours towards environmental goals. We explore the relationship between risk culture and board members’ intention to adopt pro-environment strategies (PES) through individual beliefs. These factors, according to Ajzen’s theory of planned behaviour (ATPB), refer to what is convenient to do to achieve expected findings (behavioural beliefs), what should be done as required by regulators and induced by stakeholders’ pressure (normative beliefs) and the conviction of possessing skills, resources and opportunities to perform a specific behaviour (control beliefs). According to ATPB, behavioural beliefs, normative beliefs and control beliefs represent, in turn, predictors of an individual’s attitudes, subjective norms and perceived control beliefs. All these variables affect the intention to perform a behaviour and, in this case, to adopt pro-environmental strategies. The research analyses data obtained from a survey of 120 Italian board members, using a partial least square methodology to test the relationship between individual risk culture and beliefs, attitudes and norms and, finally, intention to adopt PES. Our findings add to previous work on the role of risk culture and provide a new theoretical perspective to guide green policy and changes aimed at increasing environmental sustainability.

The chapter analyses disclosure obligations of environmental and social sustainability risks that apply to companies in light of the growing importance to disclose sustainability risks. In doing so, it discusses the potential cross-border strategies for countries to develop international standards to support global convergence. It considers the international developments justifying the rationale for sustainability-related disclosures along with a discussion of the three models of cross-border disclosure regulation: (i) the home state approach, (ii) the host state approach and (iii) the equivalence approach. The chapter argues that the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) (2022) has adopted a mix-and-match model between the host state approach and the equivalence approach. Our analysis emphasises the extraterritoriality of EU sustainability disclosure regulation and compares it with the models followed by the United Kingdom, the United States and Switzerland. The different sustainability disclosure requirements between EU countries and non-EU countries suggests, therefore, that cross-border regulatory coordination is important. The paper recommends a model of ESG disclosure for capital markets that is based on the EU policy of equivalence modified by a recognition of the compliance approaches of certain foreign jurisdictions.

Frame Semantics is foundational to Construction Grammar in both chronological and conceptual terms. Originally developed by Charles J. Fillmore in the late 1970s to 1980s as a theory of semantics that prioritizes language users’ human experience, it views the meaning of linguistic elements in terms of a network of empirical information, which, in turn, motivates the concept represented by the linguistic elements. The theory laid a rich foundation for a variety of approaches associated with Construction Grammar and remains an intellectual resource for further research developments. This chapter focuses on the seminal ideas of Frame Semantics, further advanced in relation to Construction Grammar and the FrameNet project. After an overview of the theory, a variety of frame concepts (e.g., cognitive frame, interactional frame, and linguistic frame) are discussed. We then turn to how frames can effectively explain grammatical ‘well-formedness’ as illustrated by two case studies that were conducted on the path from Frame Semantics to the establishment of Construction Grammar. The last section discusses implications and prospects for the theory of Frame Semantics.

This chapter provides an overview of empirical support for Construction Grammar in the form of behavioral evidence, that is, information derived from the behavior of language users on certain tasks, typically through controlled experiments. Three types of evidence are discussed in particular: (i) evidence from language comprehension tasks that syntactic patternsconvey meaning independently of individual lexical items, (ii) evidence that constructions prime each other both in form and in meaning, and (iii) evidence that grammar consists of a network of related constructions of varying degrees of generality. Many of the cited studies come from the psycholinguistic literature, and even though they were originally not necessarily framed in terms of constructions, their findings are largely in line with the constructional approach. Throughout the discussion, it will be shown how these findings provide evidence for some of the core tenets of Construction Grammar.

This chapter documents the parallel paths the US, UK, and EU have taken in transmuting voluntary corporate ESG commitments into hard law – statute, regulation, and judicial precedent.Whereas stakeholder capitalism was originally the province (mainly) of academics, international organizations, and special interest groups, in the years immediately preceding the 2020 pandemic, major businesses worldwide publicly declared their commitment to the so-called stakeholder model in the US, UK, and in continental Europe. These corporate behaviours were encouraged by proxy advisors andinstitutional investors.The chapter questions the extent to which the current generation of ESG-stakeholderism is in fact a sustainable business practice, capable of maintaining its current pace over a longer-term horizon. We also discuss how voluntary corporate ESG commitments have, over a short period of time, hardened into more formal sources of law and regulation, with examples from the US, EU, and UK. In conclusion, we identify some adverse consequences to this trend.

The framework of Construction Grammar extends naturally to morphology. Constructions in a lexicon–grammar continuum elegantly capture the regularities and idiosyncrasies that typically co-occur in complex words. Yet, Construction Morphology is not just Construction Grammar applied to morphology. Morphological phenomena come with their own challenges and place specific demands on the theory. This chapter outlines the contributions that a constructionist approach to morphology makes to constructionist thinking more broadly. The focus is on two construction-based approaches: Construction Morphology and Relational Morphology. Three topics are highlighted especially. First, idiomaticity and other types of non-compositionality are discussed in the context of the relations within and across morphological constructions. Second, the chapter addresses productivity, specifically limited productivity as is often seen in word-formation. The third topic is paradigmaticity and the role of ‘horizontal’ connections between complex words and between morphological schemas. The chapter aims to show that morphology, the grammar of words, is instructive for the larger theoretical framework.