Publications

Publication details [#1344]

Baicchi, Annalisa and Francisco José Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez. 2010. The cognitive grounding of illocutionary constructions within the theoretical perspective of the Lexical-Constructional Model. Textus 23 : 87–112. 26 pp.
Publication type
Article in journal
Publication language
English
Place, Publisher
Tilgher

Abstract

This article develops previous research carried out by Ruiz de Mendoza and Baicchi (2007) on the notion of illocutionary construction with a view to integrating this notion into the illocutionary layer of the Lexical Constructional Model. So far this layer has only paid attention to a limited set of directive constructions (especially Can You X?), which it discusses in terms of the restrictions of the fixed elements of the construction on the kind of conceptual material that can saturate the variable part. In order to fill this gap, the present article makes a complementary analysis of the way illocutionary meaning is modeled in our minds and studies how speakers make use of illocutionary cognitive models to motivate the conventionalized illocutionary value of linguistic expressions. By following the general trend in constructionist approaches to language (especially the Goldbergian strand, within which the LCM is circumscribed), it is assumed that illocutionary constructions are form-meaning pairings like other kinds of construction. However, what distinguishes these constructions from others is the relatively fixed nature of their form (e.g. Can You X?, Will You X?, You Must X, etc.) and the special situational and generic (or high-level) nature of the meaning part of the pairing.