Cover not available
Article published In:
Functions of Language
Vol. 24:3 (2017) ► pp.319–347

Measuring iconicity

A quantitative study of lexical and analytic causatives in British English

 | Leipzig University
The idea of isomorphism of form and meaning has played an important role in functionalist theories of syntax and morphology. However, there have been few studies that test this hypothesis empirically on quantitative data. This study aims to fill this gap by testing the predictions made by iconicity theory with the help of statistical hypothesis-testing techniques. The paper focuses on a subtype of isomorphism, namely iconicity of cohesion. The analyses are based on a sample of lexical and analytic causatives from the British National Corpus. The study employs three different operationalisations of the degree of semantic cohesion of the causing and caused events, which are based on English and cross-linguistic data. The form-function correlation is interpreted from the point of view of three possible models of relationships between form, function and/or frequency.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Iconicity theory and causatives
  • 3.Analytic and lexical causatives in the British National Corpus: Description of the comparative concepts and the sample
    • 3.1Definition of analytic and lexical causatives
    • 3.2The sample
  • 4.Lexical vs. analytical causatives: Do semantic classes of causative events matter?
  • 5.Corpus-driven variable: Causal/non-causal alternation in English
  • 6.Cross-linguistic evidence: Inchoative-causative alternation
  • 7.Discussion: The form-meaning correlation and how to explain it
  • 8.Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Corpus
  • References
Published online: 9 February 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/fol.15013.lev
References (52)
Corpus
The British National Corpus, version 3 (BNC XML Edition). 2007. Distributed by Oxford University Computing Services on behalf of the BNC Consortium. Available online at [URL].
References
Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. 2000. Transitivity in Tariana. In R. M. W. Dixon & Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald (eds.), 145–172.Google Scholar
Amberber, Menigstu. 2000. Valency-changing and valency-encoding devices in Amharic. In R. M. W. Dixon & Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald (eds.), 312–332.Google Scholar
Bickel, Balthasar. 2010. Capturing particulars and universals in clause linkage: A multivariate analysis. In Isabelle Bril (ed.), Clause-hierarchy and clause-linking: The syntax and pragmatics interface, 51–101. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bybee, Joan L. 1985. Diagrammatic iconicity in stem – inflection relations. In John Haiman (ed.), 11–47.Google Scholar
2010. Markedness: Iconicity, economy and frequency. In J. Jung Song (ed.), Handbook of Linguistic Typology, 131–147. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan L. & Sandra Thomspon. 1997. Three frequency effects in syntax. Proceedings of the Twenty-Third Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: General Session and Parasession on Pragmatics and Grammatical Structure, 378–388. Berkeley: Berkeley Linguistics Society.Google Scholar
Comrie, Bernard. 1981. Language universals and linguistic typology: Syntax and morphology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Comrie, Bernard & Maria Polinsky (eds.). 1993. Causatives and transitivity. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Diessel, Holger. 2007. Frequency effects in language acquisition, language use, and diachronic change. New Ideas in Psychology 251. 108–127. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2008. Iconicity of sequence. A corpus-based analysis of the positioning of temporal adverbial clauses in English. Cognitive Linguistics 191. 457–482. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dixon, R. M. W. & Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald (eds.). 2000. Changing valency: Case studies in transitivity. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Du Bois, John. 1985. Competing motivations. In John Haiman (ed.), 343–365.Google Scholar
Fodor, Jerry. 1970. Three reasons for not deriving “kill” from “cause to die.” Linguistic Inquiry 1(4). 429–438.Google Scholar
Gilquin, Gaëtanelle. 2010. Corpus, cognition and causative constructions. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Givón, Talmy. 1980. The binding hierarchy and the typology of complements. Studies in Language 4(3). 333–377. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1990. Syntax: A functional-typological introduction. Vol. II1. Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Haiman, John. 1983. Iconic and economic motivation. Language 59(4). 781–819. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(ed.). 1985. Iconicity in syntax. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin. 1993. More on the typology of inchoative/causative verb alternations. In Bernard Comrie & Maria Polinsky (eds.), 87–120.Google Scholar
. 2005. Universals of causative verb formation. Paper presented at LSA Institute, MIT, LSA.206, 2 August 2005.
. 2008a. Creating economical morphosyntactic patterns in language change. In Jeff Good (ed.), Linguistic Universals and Language Change, 185–214. Oxford: OUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2008b. Frequency vs. iconicity in explaining grammatical asymmetries. Cognitive Linguistics 19(1). 1–33. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2010. Comparative concepts and descriptive categories in crosslinguistic studies. Language 86(3). 663–687. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin, Andreea Calude, Michael Spagnol, Heiko Narrog & Elif Bamyaci. 2014. Coding causal – noncausal verb alternations: A form – frequency correspondence explanation. Journal of Linguistics 501. 587–625. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hinton, Leanne. 1982. How to cause in Mixtec. Proceedings of the Eighth Annual Meeting of the Berkley Linguistics Society, 354–363.Google Scholar
Hollmann, Willem B. 2004. The iconicity of infinitival complementation in Present-day English causatives. In Constantino Maeder, Olga Fischer, & William J. Herlofsky (eds.), Outside-in – inside-out: Iconicity in language and literature, 287–306. Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Hopper, Paul & Sandra Thompson. 1980. Transitivity in grammar and discourse. Language 56(2). 251–299. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Johnson, Mark. 1987. The Body in the Mind: The bodily basis of meaning, imagination and reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Keller, Rudi. 1994. On Language Change: The Invisible Hand in Language. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kemmer, Suzanne & Arie Verhagen. 1994. The grammar of causatives and the conceptual structure of events. Cognitive Linguistics 51. 115–156. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kulikov, Leonid. 1993. The “second causative”: A typological sketch. In Bernard Comrie & Maria Polinsky (eds.), 121–154. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
LaPolla, Randi J. 2000. Valency-changing derivations in Dulong/Rawang. In R. M. W. Dixon & Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald (eds.), 282–311.Google Scholar
Levin, Beth & Malka Rappoport Hovav. 1995. Unaccusativity: At the syntax-semantics interface. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Levshina, Natalia. 2015a. How to do linguistics with R: Data exploration and statistical analysis. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2015b. European analytic causatives as a comparative concept: Evidence from a parallel corpus of film subtitles. Folia Linguistica 49(2). 487–520. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2016. Why we need a token-based typology: A case study of analytic and lexical causatives in fifteen European languages. Folia Linguistica 50(2). 507–542. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McEnery, Tony & Andrew Wilson. 2001. Corpus Linguistics. An Introduction. 2nd edn. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Næss, Åshild. 2007. Prototypical transitivity. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nedjalkov, Vladimir P. 1969. Nekotoryje verojatnostnyje universalii v glagol’nom slovoobrazonanii [Some probabilistic universals in verbal derivation]. In I. F. Vardul’ (ed.), Jazykovyje universalii i lingvističeskaja tipologija, 106–114. Moscow: Nauka.Google Scholar
1976. Kausativkonstruktionen. Tübingen: TBL.Google Scholar
Patterson, Betty S. J. 1974. A study of Korean causatives. Hawaii Working Papers in Linguistics 6(4). 1–52.Google Scholar
Piantadosi, Steven T., Harry Tilly & Edward Gibson. 2011. Word lengths are optimized for efficient communication. PNAS 108(9). 3526–3529. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
R Core Team. 2014. R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria.Google Scholar
Rosenbach, Anette. 2003. Aspects of iconicity and economy in the choice between the s-genitive and the of-genitive in English. In Günter Rohdenburg & Britta Mondorf (eds.), Determinants of grammatical variation in English, 379–411. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stefanowitsch, Anatol. 2005. New York, Dayton (Ohio), and the Raw Frequency Fallacy. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 1–2. 295–301. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stefanowitsch, Anatol & Stefan Th. Gries. 2003. Collostructions: Investigating the interaction between words and constructions. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 8(2). 209–243. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Steger, Maria & Edgar W. Schneider. 2012. Complexity as a function of iconicity: The case of complement clause constructions in New Englishes. In Bernd Kortmann & Benedikt Szmrecsanyi (eds.), Linguistic complexity: Second language acquisition, indigenization, contact, 156–191. Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Taylor, John. 2012. The Mental Corpus: How language is represented in the mind. Oxford: OUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Verhagen, Arie & Suzanne Kemmer. 1997. Interaction and causation: Causative constructions in modern standard Dutch. Journal of Pragmatics 241. 61–82. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zipf, George K. 1949. Human behavior and the Principle of Least Effort. Cambridge, MA: Addison-Wesley Press.Google Scholar
Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

SCHNEIDER, ULRIKE
2023. Reflexive analytic causatives: a diachronic analysis of transitivity parameters. English Language and Linguistics 27:4 ► pp. 789 ff. DOI logo
Uljas, Sami
2021. Iconicity and Semantic-Structural Mapping in Earlier Egyptian Complementation. Lingua Aegyptia - Journal of Egyptian Language Studies :29 ► pp. 215 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 4 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.