Aspects of meaning construction / edited by Gunter Radden ... [et al.].

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Radden, Günter.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Semantics.

Metonyms.

Metaphor.

Grammar, Comparative and general.

Physical Description:

x, 287 p. : ill.

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Amsterdam ; Philadelphia : John Benjamins, c2007.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Meaning does not reside in linguistic units but is constructed in the minds of the language users. Meaning construction is an on-line mental activity whereby speech participants create meanings on the basis of underspecified linguistic units. The construction of meaning is guided by cognitive principles. The contributions collected in the volume focus on two types of cognitive principles guiding meaning construction: meaning construction by means of metonymy and metaphor, and meaning construction by means of mental spaces and conceptual blending. The papers in the former group survey experiential evidence of figurative meaning construction and discuss high-level metaphor and metonymy, the role of metonymy in discourse, the chaining of metonymies, metonymy as an alternative to coercion, and metaphtonymic meanings of proper names. The papers in the latter group address the issues of meaning construction prompted by personal pronouns, relative clauses, inferential constructions, "sort-of" expressions, questions, and the into-causative construction.

Contents:

Aspects of Meaning Construction

Title page

LCC data

Dedication page

Table of contents

List of contributors

Introduction: The construction of meaning in language

1. Underspecification and the construction of meaning

2. Types of underspecification

3. Ways of constructing underspecified meanings

References

Part I. Metonymy and metaphor

Experimental tests of figurative meaning construction

1. Introduction

2. Metonymy and meaning construction

3. Proving the psychological reality of conceptual metonymies

4. Studies on metonymic processing

5. Mutual adjustment during figurative language processing

6. Conclusion

High-level metaphor and metonymy in meaning construction

2. Levels of description

3. Constraints on metaphor and metonymy

4. Metonymic chains

5. Metaphor, metonymy, and grammar

The role of metonymy in meaning construction at discourse level

2. Metonymy

3. Discussion of some relevant parts of the case study

4. Conclusions

Appendix

Chained metonymies in lexicon and grammar

2. Chained metonymies

3. Body part terms and their chained metonymies

4. Conclusion

Arguing the case against coercion

Introduction

1. Defining terms

2. Examples of coercion in recent studies

3. Coercion in the construction of meaning

When Zidane is not simply Zidane, and Bill Gates is not just Bill Gates

2. Objectivist theories of reference vs. cognitive approach to the figurative use of proper names

3. Metonymy and metaphor in the construction of the meaning of figuratively used proper names

4. Conclusions and prospects for further research

References.

Collocational overlap can guidemetaphor interpretation

2. A frequency-based model of collocational overlap

3. An association-based model of collocational overlap

4. Evaluation of the model against native-speaker interpretations

5. General discussion

Part 2. Mental spaces and conceptual blending

Constructing the meanings of personal pronouns

The construction of meaning in relative clauses

2. The construction of meaning in relative clauses

3. Pragmatically and contextually driven interpretations

4. Conceptual and constructional constraints in the interpretation of relatives

5. Conclusion

Constraints on inferential constructions

2. Constraints on the English inferential construction

3. The distribution of inferential constructions in discourse

4. A discourse constraint on English inferential constructions

5. Discussion

The construction of vagueness

2. Lexical sources

3. The functions of taxonomic nouns in scientific contexts

4. The emergence of approximative modifiers

5. From prepositional to modifying use

Dictionaries, corpora, and internet sources

Communication or memory mismatch?

2. Radical Experientialism and Cognitive Typology

3. Questions

4. Interrogation and memory mismatch

5. Conclusions

Brutal Brits and persuasive Americans

2. A construction-based approach

3. Previous studies of the into-causative

4. The into-causative in British vs. American English

5. Summary

Index of authors

Index of subjects

Index of metonymies and metaphors.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

ISBN:

9786612154676

9781282154674

1282154672

9789027292551

9027292558

OCLC:

320323012