Lexical and Syntactical Constructions and the Construction of Meaning

Lexical and Syntactical Constructions and the Construction of Meaning PDF

Author: Marjolyn Verspoor

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 1997-01-01

Total Pages: 473

ISBN-13: 9027236542

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The basic tenet of cognitive linguistics is that every linguistic expression is a construal relation. The first section of this volume focuses on issues of such construal and presentation of information, including figure-ground relations, image-schematic structures, and the role of syntactic constructions in information structure.In sections two and three papers are presented on cross-categorial polysemy between lexical and grammatical uses of a morpheme, and between different grammatical senses, and on the relationship between earlier lexical senses and later grammatical ones.The final section of the volume brings together studies which shed further light on transitivity and argument structure. The study of transitivity necessarily entails exploration of the relationship between syntactic constructions and the pragmatics and semantics conveyed by such constructions.As a whole, this collection of papers gives new evidence on the complexity and motivation of the mapping between linguistic form and function and offers a wealth of new directions for research on the construction of meaning at every level of the sentence.

Lexical and Syntactical Constructions and the Construction of Meaning

Lexical and Syntactical Constructions and the Construction of Meaning PDF

Author: Kidong Yi

Publisher:

Published: 1997-06-26

Total Pages: 454

ISBN-13: 9781556198656

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The basic tenet of cognitive linguistics is that every linguistic expression is a construal relation. The first section of this volume focuses on issues of such construal and presentation of information, including figure-ground relations, image-schematic structures, and the role of syntactic constructions in information structure.In sections two and three papers are presented on cross-categorial polysemy between lexical and grammatical uses of a morpheme, and between different grammatical senses, and on the relationship between earlier lexical senses and later grammatical ones. The final section of the volume brings together studies which shed further light on transitivity and argument structure. The study of transitivity necessarily entails exploration of the relationship between syntactic constructions and the pragmatics and semantics conveyed by such constructions. As a whole, this collection of papers gives new evidence on the complexity and motivation of the mapping between linguistic form and function and offers a wealth of new directions for research on the construction of meaning at every level of the sentence.

Grammatical Constructions

Grammatical Constructions PDF

Author: Masayoshi Shibatani

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 9780198238713

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In recent years there has been a resurgence of interest in grammatical constructionsunits of grammar representing formmeaning correspondences. The movement in which Construction Grammar, as developed by Charles Fillmore and Paul Kay, has played a significant role, has arisen in part as aresponse to the Chomskyan modular approach, which treats grammatical constructions as epiphenomenal, dismantling their component features and attributing these to general principles of grammar. This volume is the first collection to focus on grammatical constructions per se, and is dedicated to Charles Fillmore in recognition of his leadership in the field. The papers all reflect or elaborate on his work, which shows how lexicon, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics interact in givingconstructions their individual holistic characters as basic units of grammar. Several approaches to constructions are represented here, dealing with topics that range from idiomatized constructions to traditional forms such as conditionals, relative clauses, and benefactive constructions. A unifying thread is the shared conviction that close examination of the nature ofgrammatical constructions, with particular emphasis on their idiosyncrasies and on the complex interrelationships among their forms, functions, meanings, and uses in ordinary speech and writing, provides a rich foundation upon which to build a theory of cognition, memory, and grammar.

Syntactic Constructions in English

Syntactic Constructions in English PDF

Author: Jong-Bok Kim

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2020-05-21

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 1108634753

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Construction grammar (CxG) is a framework for syntactic analysis that takes constructions - pairings of form and meaning that range from the highly idiomatic to the very general - to be the building blocks of sentence meaning. Offering the first comprehensive introduction to CxG to focus on both English words and the constructions that combine them, this textbook shows students not only what the analyses of particular structures are, but also how and why those analyses are constructed, with each chapter taking the student step-by-step through the reasoning processes that yield the best description of a data set. It offers a wealth of illustrative examples and exercises, largely based on real language data, making it ideal for both self-study and classroom use. Written in an accessible and engaging way, this textbook will open up this increasingly popular linguistic framework to anyone interested in the grammatical patterns of English.

Discourse Constructions in English

Discourse Constructions in English PDF

Author: Aneider Iza Erviti

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-05-29

Total Pages: 173

ISBN-13: 3030716805

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This book emphasizes the advantages of examining discourse connectivity from a constructionist perspective and highlights the role of discourse configurations in the construction of meaning. The research contained advances the field of cognitive classification and categorization of discourse constructions. The text is a great improvement in the discourse analysis literature, since it uniquely clarifies the subtleties of meaning between different discourse markers that are frequently treated as equivalent by lexicographers. It is unique in being the first contribution to the creation of a Constructicon at the discourse level and it fills an important gap within cognitively oriented constructionist accounts that have mostly restricted their analyses to argument-structure and illocutionary constructions. This yearbook appeals to students and researchers working within corpus linguistics.

Phrasal Constructions and Resultativeness in English

Phrasal Constructions and Resultativeness in English PDF

Author: Marina Gorlach

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 172

ISBN-13: 9789027215611

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Eat up the apple or Eat the apple up? Is there any difference in the messages each of these alternative forms sends? If there isn't, why bother to keep both? On the other hand, is there any semantic similarity between eat the apple up and break the glass to pieces? This study takes a fresh look at a still controversial issue of phrasal verbs and their alternate word order applying sign-oriented theory and methodology. Unlike other analyses, it asserts that there is a semantic distinction between the two word order variants phrasal verbs may appear in. In order to test this distinction, the author analyzes a large corpus of data and also uses translation into a language having a clear morphological distinction between resultative/non-resultative forms (Russian). As follows from the analysis, English has morphological and syntactic tools to express resultative meaning, which allows suggesting a new lexico-grammatical category – resultativeness.

Cognitive Approaches to Lexical Semantics

Cognitive Approaches to Lexical Semantics PDF

Author: Hubert Cuyckens

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2009-06-23

Total Pages: 513

ISBN-13: 3110219077

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This collected volume presents radically new directions which are emerging in cognitive lexical semantics research. A number of papers re-ignite the polysemy vs. monosemy debate, and testify to the fact that polysemy is no longer simply taken for granted, but is currently a much more contested issue than it was in the 1980s and 1990s. Other papers offer fresh perspectives on the prototype structure of lexical categories, while generally accepted notions about the radial network structure of categories are questioned in papers on the development of word meaning in child language acquisition and in diachrony. Additional topics include the interaction of lexical and constructional meaning, and the relationship between word meanings and the contexts in which the words are encountered. This book is of interest to semanticists and cognitive linguists, as well as to scholars working in the broader field of cognitive science.

The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics

The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics PDF

Author: Dirk Geeraerts

Publisher: OUP USA

Published: 2010-06-09

Total Pages: 1366

ISBN-13: 0199738637

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With 49 chapters written by experts in the field, this reference volume authoritatively covers cognitive linguistics, from basic concepts and models to practical applications.

Quadri-syllabic Schematic Idioms in Chinese: Description and Acquisition

Quadri-syllabic Schematic Idioms in Chinese: Description and Acquisition PDF

Author: Liu Li

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2023-01-01

Total Pages: 234

ISBN-13: 9811972028

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This book offers an insightful description of the productive behavior of four-character schematic idiomatic expressions (SIEs) in Mandarin and explores from a usage-based perspective the issue of how young learners acquire the partial productivity of these expressions. The beginning chapters contribute to a constructional understanding of the quadri-syllabic SIEs and an in-depth distributional analysis of three typical schematic patterns based on natural corpus data. The following chapters present detailed reports on four experimental studies to account for the factors that play significant roles in the learning process of SIEs from adolescence to adulthood. In the final chapter, the author concludes that acquisition of SIEs is as an interactive process shaped by input frequency, structural complexity, internal semantic relation, and chunking effect of open morphemes at different age levels. These findings enrich current understandings on constructional idioms and the emergentist model in idiom learning with a cross-linguistic focus on Mandarin unique quadri-syllabic SIEs. Language teachers, researchers, and postgraduate students who are interested in studies of idiomaticity. Construction grammar and usage-based learning model will find this book sufficiently informative and intriguing.

Constructions

Constructions PDF

Author: Adele E. Goldberg

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 1995-03-15

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 0226300862

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Drawing on work in linguistics, language acquisition, and computer science, Adele E. Goldberg proposes that grammatical constructions play a central role in the relation between the form and meaning of simple sentences. She demonstrates that the syntactic patterns associated with simple sentences are imbued with meaning—that the constructions themselves carry meaning independently of the words in a sentence. Goldberg provides a comprehensive account of the relation between verbs and constructions, offering ways to relate verb and constructional meaning, and to capture relations among constructions and generalizations over constructions. Prototypes, frame semantics, and metaphor are shown to play crucial roles. In addition, Goldberg presents specific analyses of several constructions, including the ditransitive and the resultative constructions, revealing systematic semantic generalizations. Through a comparison with other current approaches to argument structure phenomena, this book narrows the gap between generative and cognitive theories of language.