Contexts and constructions / edited by Alexander Bergs, Gabriele Diewald.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Bergs, Alexander.

Diewald, Gabriele.

Series:

Constructional approaches to language ; v. 9.

Constructional approaches to language, 1573-594X ; v. 9

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Pragmatics.

Grammar, Comparative and general--Syntax.

Grammar, Comparative and general.

Physical Description:

247 p. : ill.

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Amsterdam ; Philadelphia : John Benjamins Pub. Co., c2009.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Recent studies of conditionals in English have cited putative evidence from German word order in support of the functional distinction between content and speech-act conditionals (Dancygier & Sweetser, 2005; Declerck & Reed, 2001) while counterexamples have largely been ignored. The present study takes a closer look at the syntactic marker in question, namely integrative and non-integrative word order in wenn 'if'-initial conditionals. The findings raise doubts about the hypothesized correlation of the construction's syntactic form and the cognitive domain in which it is interpreted. In this paper I explore how clausal integration interacts with mental space construction in conditional speech acts and show that integration does not mark content or predictive conditionality. Rather, clausal integration signals that the if-clause (P) is the sole space where the apodosis (Q) holds and that in all other spaces, ~ Q would take Q's place. From the perspective of Construction Grammar (CG), the form-function mapping of syntactic integration and contrastivity observed in the German data provides a window on functional distinctions which may exist but are not formally marked in other languages.

Contents:

On de-limiting context / Marina Terkourafi

Constructions and context : when a construction constructs the context / Henri-José Deulofeu & Jeanne-Marie Debaisieux

Representing contextual factors in language change : between frames and constructions / Mirjam Fried

Grammatical constructions in dialogue / Per Linell

Interactional construction grammar : contextual features of determination in dialectal Swedish / Camilla Wide

Contextual cues for particle placement : multiplicity, motivation, modeling / Bert Cappelle

Conditionals and mental space set-up : evidence from German word order / Ilona Vandergriff

Semantics and pragmatics in construction grammar : the case of modal verbs / Ronny Boogaart.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

ISBN:

1-282-48501-6

9786612485015

90-272-8878-X

OCLC:

593287172