Abstract
The text focuses on the Czech construction whose instances include expressions such as muž s velkým M 'a man with a capital M' and herečka s velkým H 'an actress with a capital A'. Theoretically, the study is couched within the framework of Construction Grammar; empirically, it is based on 3,969 examples of the construction from the SYN corpus (version 8) and on 268 questionnaires.
It is shown that the construction has a conventionalized form and a semantic as well as a pragmatic (evaluative) meaning, and that it tends very strongly to be used as part of the rheme (focus)-typically as a subject complement-and in other textually prominent contexts, such as headlines. The variability of the instances of the construction is also examined, and the text goes on to consider the relevance of phenomena such as the construction investigated for linguistic theory, especially the traditional rule-based dictionary plus grammar book model.