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Part of
Reconnecting Form and Meaning: In honour of Kristin Davidse
Edited by Caroline Gentens, Lobke Ghesquière, William B. McGregor and An Van linden
[Studies in Language Companion Series 230] 2023
► pp. 267–298

Chapter 10
Enation and agnation in multi-level models

The case for Functional Discourse Grammar

| University of Vienna

Gleason’s (1965) distinction between enation (same structure, different lexemes) and agnation (different structure, same lexemes) has proved to be a crucial one for theoretical linguistics, and over the last decades functional and cognitive linguists have made important contributions to the study of (in particular) agnate relations. Nevertheless, several issues have not yet been sufficiently investigated, including the identification of less obvious agnate relations; the exact characterization of identical, similar or overlapping relations at different levels of linguistic analysis; and the role of different kinds of function words in distinguishing between enation and agnation. In this paper I argue that the distinctive features of Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG) make this theory ideally suited to address these issues.

Keywords: enation, agnation, frames, levels of analysis, Functional Discourse Grammar
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Relations within the language system: Enation and agnation
    • 2.1Subtypes of enation and agnation
    • 2.2Applications of agnation
  • 3.Functional Discourse Grammar: Relevant features
    • 3.1Overall characterization
    • 3.2Four levels of analysis
    • 3.3Other important features
  • 4.Enation and agnation in FDG
    • 4.1General observations
    • 4.2Enation and agnation at the Interpersonal Level
    • 4.3Enation and agnation at the Representational Level
      • 4.3.1Type of entity
      • 4.3.2Quantitative valency
      • 4.3.3Qualitative valency
    • 4.4Overlapping frames
      • 4.4.1Resultative and simultaneous states
      • 4.4.2Syntactic er-noun derivation
    • 4.5Summary
  • 5.Towards a more systematic approach to relations between linguistic elements
    • 5.1Interaction between IL and RL
    • 5.2Lexeme vs. structure?
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 10 February 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.230.10kei
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