Productivity
Evidence from Case and Argument Structure in Icelandic
Productivity of argument structure constructions is a new emerging field within cognitive-functional linguistics. The term productivity as used in linguistic research contains at least three subconcepts: ‘extensibility’, ‘regularity’, and ‘generality’. The focus in this study of case and argument structure constructions in Icelandic is on the concept of extensibility, while generality and regularity are regarded as derivative of extensibility. Productivity is considered to be a function of type frequency, semantic coherence, and the inverse correlation between these two. This study establishes productivity as an emergent feature of the grammatical system, in an analysis that is grounded in a usage-based constructional approach, where constructions are organized into lexicality-schematicity hierarchies. The view of syntactic productivity advocated here offers a unified account of productivity, in that it captures different degrees of productivity, ranging from highly productive patterns through various intermediate degrees of productivity to low-level analogical extensions.
[Constructional Approaches to Language, 8] 2008. xiii, 209 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Published online on 19 December 2008
Published online on 19 December 2008
© John Benjamins Publishing Company
Table of Contents
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Preface
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Chapter 1. Introduction
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Chapter 2. Productivity
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Chapter 3. New verbs in Icelandic: A general outline
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Chapter 4. Nonce verbs: A psycholinguistic experiment
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Chapter 5. New verbs of communication: A questionnaire
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Chapter 6. Old and Modern Icelandic: A frequency comparison
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Chapter 7. Synthesis
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Appendix A. Predicates and case and argument structure constructions in the text corpora
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Appendix B. Recent borrowings in Icelandic
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Appendix C. The questionnaire
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Name index | pp. 203–204
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Subject index | pp. 205–207
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Constructions index | p. 209
“An important book, clarifying the concept of productivity, which is often used in the language sciences but is seldom clearly defined. Apart from providing an illuminating meta-analysis, Barðdal develops an original theory of the productivity of case and argument structure constructions.”
Jordan Zlatev, Lund University & Copenhagen Business School
“A 'two-for-one' package, containing both an original and realistic approach to productivity in terms of Construction Grammar and, simultaneously, a penetrating study of case and argument structure in Icelandic. On both accounts the book is a novel and, in my view, a highly successful contribution to theoretical and empirical linguistics.”
Thórhallur Eythórsson, University of Iceland
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Subjects
Main BIC Subject
CFK: Grammar, syntax
Main BISAC Subject
LAN009000: LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General