Review of Cognitive Linguistics. Published under the auspices of the Spanish Cognitive Linguistics Association - Volume 22, Issue 1, 2024

Abstract

This study examines cognitive representations of Ethiopia and Egypt’s hydro-political stances on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. Data were analysed using image schema theory and conceptual metaphor theory to identify how political leaders deploy conceptual structures to construct, maintain, and reproduce (counter-)hydro-hegemony for water management and international relations broadly. Results suggest that the gerd represents physical and symbolic boundaries constructed/activated to block and animate power. Egypt prefers multilateralism on gerd matters; whereas, Ethiopia acts unilaterally in its national interest. The findings indicate that international public opinion can be cognitively and discursively manipulated to legitimise (in)action sanctioning (counter)hydro-hegemony using original metaphor mappings and mini-narratives. This study posits that interstate hydro-disputes can be viewed as either a journey or trial. While Egypt suggested a family-threat-journey-destination script where all regions correlate to garner power, Ethiopia invoked a victim -threat-defendant-plaintiff-trial narrative to defend confrontational move(s) and motivate the illegitimate jury to dismiss the case.

Abstract

Most usage-based research emphasizes the importance of implicit, input-driven learning in naturalistic environments, but recent studies have adopted usage-based grammatical descriptions for instructed learning in classrooms. These descriptions are intended to draw learners’ deliberate attention to relevant usage patterns in the input and thereby support intake. Most of these studies compare usage-based descriptions to other types of descriptions for their efficiency, while little attention has been paid to the ways in which learners understand and apply such descriptions. This study examines what foreign language learners understand of usage-based grammatical descriptions of target structures. In an experimental forced choice task, Chinese learners of German received usage-based descriptions of case structures and then classified target instances in variable contexts. A multivariate regression analysis indicated that choices were influenced by interactions of the type of description with participants’ target-language proficiency and the semantic and lexical target contexts. This is discussed in terms of noticing and category formation. This study argues that learners are able to use grammatical descriptions as some kind of auxiliary model for recognizing and categorizing target patterns. The descriptions thus make learners aware of the mechanisms underlying implicit learning and help them exploit these mechanisms for explicit learning.

Abstract

Verbal synesthesia is generally considered to be a special type of metaphor involving concepts stemming from distinct sensory domains. However, with the upsurge of metonymy research some authors have proposed a metonymic motivation for synesthetic expressions. In line with these proposals, I argue in my paper that (i) a considerable portion of synesthetic expressions are in fact metonymic and (ii) they are based either on co-occurrence or on an intra-modal resemblance of sensory stimuli. Since olfaction offers itself as an ideal terrain to study synaesthetic expressions due to its relatively poor lexicalization in most languages, in order to test my hypotheses, I present the results of a corpus study on German synesthetic attribute-noun constructions combining gustatory adjectives with olfactory nouns. My results suggest that the heterogeneity of verbal synesthesia regarding its conceptual background cannot be grasped simply by proposing that it is a metaphorical phenomenon.

Abstract

This article offers theoretical and programmatic reflection on how the impact of culture on language change should be accounted for from a radically usage-based diachronic construction grammatical perspective, with a focus on how cultural change can cause constructions to disappear from a language. It approaches this question through an assessment of how culture is incorporated in Schmid’s (2020) Entrenchment-and-Conventionalization model of ‘the dynamics of the linguistic system’. Against the backdrop of various proposals on the effect of ‘democratization’ in Anglo-Saxon culture on subtractive historical developments in the modal domain of English, and based on a study of interpersonal variation in the intrapersonal longitudinal development of a declining modal construction, the paper argues that the influence of culture on language change is mediated by entrenchment and that culture has a more extensive impact on entrenchment than the EC-model currently allows for.

Abstract

While it has largely been taken for granted by most linguists that the relationship between linguistic signifier and signified is arbitrary in nature, a growing number of studies suggest otherwise. In this article, we demonstrate that iconicity in total reduplicative constructions in Nigerian Pidgin is graded in nature, and that the degree of iconicity of any given reduplicative is largely correlated with the word class to which its simplex form belongs, with reduplicated ideophones and adverbials exhibiting the highest degree of iconicity, reduplicated pronouns the lowest degree of iconicity, and reduplicated adjectives, nouns, numerals and verbs intermediate degrees of iconicity.

Our results shed light, not only on which word classes are more prototypically involved in reduplication than others in the world’s languages, but also on typical pathways that reduplicatives follow in processes of grammaticalization, whereby their isomorphic form-meaning relationship appears increasingly attenuated, albeit due to varying language-internal factors that are specific to individual languages.

Abstract

This article provides a principled constructionist account (Goldberg & Herbst, 2021) of the main characteristics of expressions like the following: (1) Juan es muy de (ir de) bares (‘Juan is very into (going to) bars’), and (2) Tu ayuda es muy de agradecer (‘Your help is very much appreciated’). Instances of this kind are best handled in terms of coercion between the intensifier and non-stative/non-gradable elements in the nominal slot of the de-PPs. Specifically, these combinations qualify as individual-level predicates with a characterizing, evaluative interpretation. The specific constructional interpretations in (1)–(2) arise from contextual adjustments (Carston, 2015), encoding a person’s habits and a potential modal deontic habituality, respectively. The semantic and pragmatic properties of the sub-constructions in (1)–(2), among others, can be adequately subsumed under a family of ser muy de-PP constructions, with the following general meaning: ‘X (SOMEONE/SOMETHING) (SUBJECT) IS SUBJECTIVELY CONSTRUED AS HAVING Y (A HIGHLIGHTED CLASSIFICATORY PROPERTY OF AN INDIVIDUAL/CLASS) (ATTRIBUTE)’.

Abstract

The Spanish comparative correlative (CC) construction (Cuanto más leo, (tanto) más entiendo) has a complex syntactic structure and complex semantics. The syntactic relationship between its two subclauses has been subject to much debate. This study, the first large-scale (> 3,000 tokens) corpus investigation, explores various aspects and provides evidence for hypotaxis. However, statistical analysis of the data also revealed ‘under-the-surface’ parataxis. I therefore argue that the construction cannot be classified as either hypotactic or paratactic, but as hypotactic and paratactic to certain degrees, also compared with its counterparts in English and Slovak. I argue that the ‘competition’ between hypotactic and paratactic encoding can be attributed to the principle of iconicity, that is, the “(partial) motivation of a construction’s form by its meaning” (Hoffmann, 2019, p. 12). Finally, I discuss various formal aspects of the Spanish CC construction that have so far gone unnoticed, providing new evidence in the form of corpus data.

Abstract

The process of noun-verb conversion, which is highly productive in English, has been dealt with from a variety of theoretical perspectives. What is missing so far is a systematic analysis of conceptual-semantic factors which motivate this process and set it apart from another productive verb-formation process, namely -ize derivation. The present article is intended to fill this gap. While some conceptual-semantic patterns which are displayed by converted verbs but not by -ize verbs have already been identified in the literature, more fine-grained contrastive analyses show that converted verbs display even more patterns not attested for the overtly derived verbs. Even if the two verb-formation types share a conceptual-semantic pattern, they may be in complementary distribution at a lower level of abstraction. Moreover, non-derived denominal verbs allow for a wider range of metaphorical meanings. The difference in semantic diversity is ascribed here to the fact that -ize verbs denote more specialized activities, whereas converted verbs typically (though not necessarily) express activities reflecting speakers’ interaction with basic-level objects, which may be based on experience or imagination. Since the activities denoted by converted verbs are readily transferred to different domains of experience (e.g., to bottle up emotions), these verbs more frequently undergo metaphorical meaning extension. Formally, the higher degree of semantic versatility observed for converted verbs is reflected by the fact that conversion – unlike -ize derivation – is constrained neither by predetermined Lexical Conceptual Structures nor by selectional restrictions, but motivated by metonymy, which may be enriched by metaphorical extension.

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