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Article published In:
Corpus Approaches to Language, Thought and Communication
Edited by Wei-lun Lu, Naděžda Kudrnáčová and Laura A. Janda
[Review of Cognitive Linguistics 17:1] 2019
► pp. 29–52
Special issue articles

Massive corpora and models of cross‑cultural communication styles in Cognitive Linguitics

The case of the N1 V (for) N2 to-infinitive construction in English

| University of Niš

The paper addresses a pair of construction variants: the N1 V for N2 to-infinitive construction and its version without for, in the cases when both are possible with the same main verb (I need for him leave / I need you to stop). It aims to point to the importance of the use of massive e-corpora in gaining better insight into the given construction pair. It also aims to test the hypothesis that the obtained quantitative data from such corpora can at least partially be accounted for by the interplay of: (1) the differences in the semantics of the two construction variants (based on combining relevant cognitive-linguistic insights), (2) the differences in the lexical semantics of the main verbs, and (3) extra-linguistic factors dealt with by models of cross-cultural communication styles. The paper thus argues for a tighter integration of cognitive-linguistic insights and a social-interactional perspective on language phenomena.

Keywords: construction variants, principle of no-synonymy, massive e-corpora, models of cross-cultural communication styles, recontextualizing approach to language
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Models of inter-cultural and cross-cultural communication styles
  • 3.The method and the corpus
  • 4.Data and discussion
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
Published online: 20 August 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/rcl.00025.pav
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