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oa The one–new–idea constraint, functor–argument metaphors, and holistic speech processing
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Author(s):
Uta Reinöhl1
and T. Mark Ellison2
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- 21 Dec 2025
- 03 Feb 2026
- 08 May 2026
Abstract
The one-new-idea constraint (ONICON) is a hypothesis about how much information we can package in one intonation unit (Chafe 1982, 1992, 1994). Chafe (1994) suggests that constructions containing multiple new content words do not necessarily violate the ONICON. Examples include prefabs as well as constructions consisting mostly of low-content elements, and no more than one high-content word (as in, e.g. light verb constructions). We argue in this paper that there is another construction type — functor–argument metaphors (Reinöhl & Ellison 2024) — which does not violate the ONICON, even while they can also consist of more than one new content word. In metaphorical functor–argument constructions, such as to arrive at a conclusion, the functor arrive loses semantic features — in this case, movement in space — through the clash of its literal sense with a non-spatial ‘goal’. The resultant lowered content of the functor renders functor–argument constructions like ones containing maximally one high-content lexeme to start with. We will show that functor–argument metaphors also share certain properties with prefabs. We conclude that functor–argument metaphors need to be added as a third pseudo-exception type, leading us to an enriched understanding of the ONICON, ideahood, and holistic processing of multi-word construction types in speech.
