The conception of constructions as complex signs

2009 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arie Verhagen
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Cognitive Grammar ◽  
Emergent Properties ◽  
Scientific Interest ◽  
Grammatical Form ◽  
General Scientific ◽  
Lexical Items ◽  
Sound Patterns

Generally, construction based approaches to grammar consider constructions to be pairings of form and meaning and thus as a kind of signs, not essentially distinct from words and other lexical items. Granting this commonality, Langacker (2005) criticizes other varieties of constructional approaches for using the notion ‘grammatical form’, and for not reducing the properties of grammar to the more fundamental and minimal notions of sound, meaning, and symbolic links between these two. While such a reduction is definitely worth pursuing, if only for reasons of general scientific interest, the abstract forms postulated in Cognitive Grammar (schematic sound patterns) are so general that they represent ‘any sound’, which threatens the very basis for the assumption that constructions are a kind of signs. I will argue that a usage-based view of sign-formation (Keller 1998), allows us to understand how the recognition of an element as belonging to a particular class of elementary signs can come to function as a signal for a specific linguistic environment (a construction), and produce a level of structure (categories of more elementary signs and relations between them) intermediate between sound and meaning that has its own (emergent) properties, which can still be reduced to more basic phenomena of processing and language use.

Tvorbeni Potencial Glagolskih Novotvorjenk Na -Ing + -Irati V Slovenščini

2018 ◽  
Vol 69 (3) ◽  
pp. 572-580
Author(s):  
Irena Stramljič Breznik
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Cognitive Grammar ◽  
Slovene Language

Abstract The paper focuses on new verbal formations in Slovene coined from borrowed nouns ending in -ing with the Slovenian morpheme -irati (e.g. šoping-irati) on the basis of analogous phonological and semantic structures in the language, and examines their spread in the sphere of informal language use. The word­formational potential of such verbs is further examined with the basic categories of cognitive grammar, such as morphemic transparency, schematicity of the word­formational pattern and the established status of the phonemic sequence *ingira* in the previously existing lexical units of the Slovene language.

scholarly journals Inclusion, Contrast and Polysemy in Dictionaries: The Relationship between Theory, Language Use and Lexicographic Practice

2014 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 319-340
Author(s):  
Anu Koskela
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Lexical Item ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
Lexical Items ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
National Corpus

This paper explores the lexicographic representation of a type of polysemy that arises when the meaning of one lexical item can either include or contrast with the meaning of another, as in the case of dog/bitch, shoe/boot, finger/thumb and animal/bird. A survey of how such pairs are represented in monolingual English dictionaries showed that dictionaries mostly represent as explicitly polysemous those lexical items whose broader and narrower readings are more distinctive and clearly separable in definitional terms. They commonly only represented the broader readings for terms that are in fact frequently used in the narrower reading, as shown by data from the British National Corpus.  

Uzbek re-modeled

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 313-333
Author(s):  
Lydia Catedral
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Language Planning ◽  
Russian Language ◽  
Semantic Classes ◽  
Unique Approach ◽  
Lexical Items ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract This study investigates the relationship between Russian language use and language planning in the context of newly independent, post-soviet Uzbekistan (1991–1992). It is guided by the question: In what ways does the use of Russian loanwords in Uzbek language newspapers accomplish language planning in newly independent Uzbekistan? The main finding from this analysis is that post-independence use of Russian loanwords from particular semantic classes in particular contexts reinforce overtly stated ideologies about Russian and construct difference between soviet Uzbekistan and independent Uzbekistan. These findings demonstrate the need to reexamine the role of Russian language in post-soviet contexts, and they contribute a unique approach to analyzing links between lexical items and ideology in language planning.

Note on the Occurrence of Thrust-Faulting in Western Newfoundland

1926 ◽  
Vol 63 (8) ◽  
pp. 348-350 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles C. Mook
Keyword(s):  
Field Studies ◽  
Scientific Interest ◽  
Thrust Faulting ◽  
General Scientific

During the summer of 1918 a party under the direction of Mr. Hamlin Brooks Hatch carried on field studies in a section of the property of the Reid-Newfoundland Company in Western Newfoundland. A number of features of general scientific interest were noted, among which was faulting of the Appalachian type. The writer is indebted to Mr. Hatch for permission to publish this phase of the results of the latter's investigations.

Sinclair, pattern grammar and the question of hatred

2007 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-248 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wolfgang Teubert
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Grammatical Structure ◽  
Dependency Grammar ◽  
Syntactic Structures ◽  
Grammatical Categories ◽  
Lexical Items ◽  
Local Grammar

The view of pattern grammar is that syntactic structures and lexical items are co-selected and that grammatical categories begin to align very closely with semantic distinctions. While this is certainly a valid position when analysing the phenomenon of collocation, it does not really solve the problem for open choice issues. Not all language use can be subsumed under the idiom principle. The noun hatred, for instance, can co-occur with any discourse object for which hatred can be expressed. It can also co-occur with other lexical items standing for various circumstantial aspects. The grammatical structure itself often does not tell us whether we find expressed the object of hatred or some circumstantial aspect, as these structures tend to have more than one reading. Lexicogrammar, or local grammar, is more than equating a syntactic structure with a semantic pattern. We have to be aware of the different functions or readings a given grammatical structure can have. The framework of valency/dependency grammar can help us to make the necessary distinctions.

Formalizing Cognitive Grammar by Introducing Analogical-Operatorial (A-O) Mode of Language Use and its Implications for Audience Analysis

1997 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dorota Zielinska
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Cognitive Grammar ◽  
Present Formulation ◽  
Semantic Meaning ◽  
Audience Analysis ◽  
Conceptual Structures ◽  
Linguistic Units

Formalization of cognitive grammar depends in an important way on modeling the process of assessing similarity. This article points out that such formalization is difficult to achieve within the present formulation [1] of the grammar and introduces a modification that will allow modeling the process of similarity. Next, it is suggested that the mechanism of assessing similarity in the modified analogical-operatorial version of cognitive grammar be that of analogical modeling presented in Skousen [2]. Finally, it indicates some consequences of the proposition for the practice of communication. The modification, the analogical-operatorial mode of language use, allows linguistic units, in addition to their function of representing the semantic meaning of these units, to serve as operators differentiating among semantic or other conceptual structures. This introduces inhomogeneity to the content purported with linguistic units and leads to preserving linguistic compositionality understood in a new sense. It also allows one to treat the pragmatic meaning in the same way as the semantic one, and accounts for a compact use of linguistic units. Using linguistic units to differentiate allows one to convey information not contained in the encoded meaning of these structures. This can be utilized to communicate more efficiently but also poses the danger of purporting unwanted meaning.

Researching the Etymology of Australian English Colloquialisms in the Digital Age: Implications for 21st Century Lexicography

English Today ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 40-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Donlan
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Contextual Information ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Language Resources ◽  
Linguistic Research ◽  
Methodological Problems ◽  
Lexical Items ◽  
Australian English

In the December 2012 issue of English Today, Philip Durkin argues that lexis is currently a ‘Cinderella’ subject: he suggests that the methodological problems generated by the study of lexis have led to it being marginalised in contemporary linguistic research (2012: 3). Nevertheless, Durkin notes that ‘lexis (or vocabulary) is probably the area of linguistics that is most accessible and most salient for a non-specialist audience’ (2012: 3). Thus, one cannot overestimate the importance of lexical research with regards to engaging a wider audience in linguistic discourses. Prior to the advent of the internet, however, researching etymology was a laborious process for English language enthusiasts, especially when the lexical items of interest were considered to be colloquialisms or slang. Indeed, ‘non-standard’ lexis, historically, has been marginalised and sometimes even excluded from dictionaries (Durkin, 2012: 6); however, the rise of the internet and social media has led to the increased visibility of ‘non-standard’ lexis, making information about language use more accessible to researchers outside of the local speech community (Browne & Uribe-Jongbloed, 2013: 23). Moreover, the internet has given language enthusiasts unprecedented access to a range of historical and contextual information which proves invaluable when considering etymology. This article demonstrates how more conventional language resources such as the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) can be used alongside a variety of other online resources and fictional and nonfictional texts to identify the etymologies of contemporary English lexical items. Specifically, this essay explores the etymologies of three Australian colloquial nouns (bogan, cobber, and sandgroper) taken from travel website TripAdvisor's (2011) user-generated glossary of Australian English colloquialisms.

scholarly journals Diglossia

Pragmatics ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-216
Author(s):  
Helge Daniëls
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Arabic Language ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Lexical Items ◽  
Ideological Attitudes

Abstract Diglossia is, as far as the Arabic language is concerned, a concept that has been taken for granted, as much as it has been criticized. First, based on Ferguson’s article on diglossia and subsequent interpretations and ramifications of the concept and with a special focus on how language variability is discursively deployed and how it is perceived in the Arab speech community, I will argue that diglossia does not so much describe actual language use, but rather how language variability is ‘read’ in the Arab world. In the second part of the article, an analysis of labeling in a 19th century debate will show how the dichotomy between fuṣḥā and non-fuṣḥā varieties (ʿāmmīya),1 which is the basis of diglossia, was already taken for granted long before the concept and the term existed, and even before fuṣḥā and ʿāmmīya were used as independent lexical items. The analysis in both parts of the article shows how much diglossia is taken for granted by most native speakers of Arabic, even if it defies linguistic descriptions of actual language use. It is exactly this ‘common-sense-ness’ that suggests that diglossia is a useful tool to describe language ideological attitudes.

scholarly journals Constructional Paradigm in Constraint-based Morphosyntax: A Case of Japanese Verb Inflection

2012 ◽  
Vol 38 ◽  
pp. 371
Author(s):  
Ryo Otoguro
Keyword(s):  
Internal Structure ◽  
Complex Interaction ◽  
Emergent Properties ◽  
Functional Grammar ◽  
Lexical Functional Grammar ◽  
Verb Inflection ◽  
Lexical Items

<p>This paper aims to give an account of controversial behaviours of complex interaction of verb inection, auxiliary/copula constructions in Japanese in a constraint-based lexicalist formalism, Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG; Kaplan and Bresnan 1982, Bresnan 2001, Dalrymple 2001, Falk 2001). Building on the insight from a construction-based approach to morphosyntax, the present study proposes that multiple lexical items interact with each other to realise a set of TAM features, while maintaining their phrase-structural autonomy. Crucially, the proposal enables us to capture `constructional' exponents realising a certain combination of morphosyntactic features in the inectional paradigm as well as the internal structure of the construction, so that we can observe the emergent properties of the construction in the grammar.</p>

scholarly journals Obituary notices of fellows deceased

1868 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
Civil Service ◽  
Young Men ◽  
Clinical Teacher ◽  
Medical Studies ◽  
Scientific Interest ◽  
Liquid Part ◽  
Assistant Physician ◽  
General Scientific ◽  
Return Home

Dr. Benjamin Guy Babington was born in 1794. He was the son of Dr. William Babington, who, in his time, held a foremost place as a popular and successful London physician. Educated at the Charter House, he subsequently went through the usual course of study at Haileybury College then required of young men destined for the Indian Civil Service; he went out to the Madras Presidency as a member of that service in 1812. After remaining seven years in India, he was compelled by ill health to return home, and then determined to leave the Indian Service and adopt his father’s profession. With this view he entered at Pembroke College, Cambridge, and took the degree of M. B. in 1825, and that of M. D. in 1830, In the meantime he commenced practice in London, and in 1831 was elected a Fellow of the College of Physicians. For the prosecution of his medical studies in London he had chosen Guy’s Hospital, where Ins father was physician, and he was himself appointed assistant physician to that Institution in 1837, and promoted to be one of the physicians in 1840. Dr. Babington was much esteemed as a clinical teacher, and was the author of papers on different professional subjects, published in the Guy’s Hospital Reports, and elsewhere; but he also engaged in researches of more general scientific interest, and among them his observations on the blood, published in the ‘Medico-Chirurgical Transactions' of 1830, deserve especial mention, inasmuch as he there showed that the liquid part of the circulating blood, or “liquor sanguinis” (a name proposed by him to distinguish it from the serum, and very generally adopted since) really contains or yields the coagulable matter, or fibrin, which solidifies in the process of coagulation. This, no doubt, was merely a confirmation by simple but well-devised experiments of the doctrine held by Hewson and his contemporaries, and accepted by most British physiologists; but the confirmation was needful and well timed on account of the erroneous views then prevailing on the continent on the authority of Prevost and Dumas. At a later time, namely in 1859, Dr. Babington communicated to the Royal Society a series of observations on the effect of various salts dissolved m water in retarding or otherwise altering the rate of spontaneous evaporation, and an abstract stating the nature and results of the experiments was published in the ‘Proceedings’ for 1859.

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