Article published in:
The Wealth and Breadth of Construction-Based Research
Edited by Timothy Colleman, Frank Brisard, Astrid De Wit, Renata Enghels, Nikos Koutsoukos, Tanja Mortelmans and María Sol Sansiñena
[Belgian Journal of Linguistics 34] 2020
► pp. 110–121

Maximizing the explanatory power of constructions in Cognitive Construction Grammar(s)

| University of Almería
This paper suggests two possible ways in which cognitively-oriented constructionist approaches (Cognitive Construction Grammar, Radical Construction Grammar, and Embodied Construction Grammar) could enhance the explanatory power of constructions. First, the anatomy of a construction should spell out how the morphosyntactic realizations of arguments are specifically mapped onto their inherent semantico-pragmatic properties, while also including detailed information concerning illocutionary force, information structure, register, politeness, etc. Second, it is argued that coercion should be best understood as a continuum allowing for varying degrees of (in-)compatibility between the verb and the construction taken as a whole. Moreover, parameterization and linguistic cueing prove useful to handle the dynamic interaction of the morphosyntactic, semantico-pragmatic, and discourse-functional hallmarks of constructions, including those which invite metonymic inferencing.
Keywords: cognitive construction grammar(s), subcategorization, argument linking, coercion, metonymy
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.On the formalization of information in the anatomy of constructions
  • 3.On the dynamic interaction between coercion and figurative language
  • 4.Closing remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 28 May 2021
https://doi.org/10.1075/bjl.00039.gon
References
Brdar, Mario
2018 “Novel Metonymies, Wine and Wineskins, Old and New Ones.” Jezici i Kulture u Vremenu i Prostoru 7 (1): 123–134.Google Scholar
Butler, Christopher S., and Francisco Gonzálvez-García
2014 Exploring Functional-Cognitive Space. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bybee, Joan L.
2013 “Exemplars and Constructions.” In The Oxford Handbook of Construction Grammar, ed. by Thomas Hoffmann, and Graeme Trousdale, 49–69. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Cappelle, Bert
2017 “What’s Pragmatics Doing outside Constructions?” In Semantics and Pragmatics: Drawing a Line, ed. by Ilse Depraetere, and Ralph Salkie, 115–151. Heidelberg: Springer. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Goldberg, Adele E.
1995 Constructions. A Construction Grammar Approach to Argument Structure. Chicago: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
2006 Constructions at Work: The Nature of Generalization in Language. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gonzálvez-García, Francisco
2008 “Cognitive Construction Grammar Works: An Interview with Adele E. Goldberg.” Annual Review of Cognitive Linguistics 61: 345–360. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2009 “The Family of Object-related Depictives in English and Spanish: Towards a Usage-based, Constructionist Analysis.” Language Sciences 31 (5): 663–723. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2011 “Metaphor and Metonymy do not Render Coercion Superfluous: Evidence from the Subjective-Transitive Construction.” Linguistics 49 (6): 1305–1358. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2019 “Exploring the Pedagogical Potential of Vertical and Horizontal Relations in the Constructicon: The Case of the Family of Subjective-Transitive Constructions with Decir in Spanish.” International Review of Applied Linguistics 57 (1): 121–145. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Langacker, Ronald W.
2008 Cognitive Grammar: A Basic Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2009 “Cognitive (Construction) Grammar.” Cognitive Linguistics 20 (1): 167–176. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Leclercq, Benoît
2019 “Coercion: A Case of Saturation.” Constructions and Frames 11 (2): 270–289. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Newmeyer, Frederick J.
2003 “Theoretical Implications of Grammatical Theory – Grammatical Relation Mismatches.” In Mismatch: Form-Function Incongruity and the Architecture of Grammar, ed. by Elaine J. Francis, and Laura A. Michaelis, 149–178. Stanford, CA: Center for the Study of Language and Information Publications.Google Scholar
Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez, Francisco J.
2011 “Metonymy and Cognitive Operations.” In Defining Metonymy in Cognitive Linguistics. Towards a Consensus View, ed. by Réka Benczes, Antonio Barcelona, and Francisco J. Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez, 103–124. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez, Francisco J., and Alicia Galera Masegosa
2014 Cognitive Modeling: A Linguistic Perspective. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez, Francisco J., and Lorena Pérez Hernández
2001 “Metonymy and the Grammar: Motivation, Constraints, and Interaction.” Language and Communication 211: 321–357. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ziegeler, Debra
2010 “Count-Mass Coercion, and the Perspective of Time and Variation.” Constructions and Frames 2 (1): 33–73. CrossrefGoogle Scholar