Coercion: Definition and challenges, current approaches, and new trends

Lauwers, Peter; Willems, Dominique

doi:10.1515/ling.2011.034

Cited by 82 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…Triste 'sad' is a SL predicate and hence may occur in small clauses, whereas inteligente 'intelligent' is an IL predicate and therefore cannot appear in small clauses. 3 The phenomenon of coercion is explained by Lauwers andWillems (2011: 1219) as "a mismatch […] between the semantic properties of a selector (be it a construction, a word class, a temporal or aspectual marker) and the inherent semantic properties of a selected element, the latter being not expected in that particular context. The resulting semantic effect […] is a compromise between the combinatorial constraints imposed by the language system and the flexibility (and creativity) allowed by the same system."…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stage-Level and Individual-Level distinction in morphological variation

Rivas

Brown

2012

Borealis

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This work examines the role of the stage-level (SL)/individual-level (IL) distinction applied to nouns in a case of morphosyntactic regularization in Spanish: variable reanalysis of the NP argument as subject in the presentational haber construction (había/habían perros). We conduct variationist, quantitative analyses on all instances of existential haber with a plural NP in corpora of spoken Puerto Rican Spanish (>500,000 words) to determine the linguistic factor groups that promote reanalysis and, hence, pluralized forms. Results of variable rule analyses reveal that the SL-IL distinction constrains the regularization. IL predicates significantly favor haber regularization (e.g., habían muchas personas de las Antillas ‘there were a lot of people from the Antillas’) whereas SL predicates significantly disfavor pluralized forms (este año hubo menos tiros que en años pasados ‘this year there were fewer shots fired than previous years’). These results are interpreted from within a usage-based framework in which the status of the noun introduced in the [haber + NP] construction, as either a likely or unlikely subject for haber, influences the analogical leveling. IL predicates are more prototypical nouns than SL predicates because the former are temporally persistent. IL predicates promote nouns’ candidacy as subjects over direct objects because prototypical subjects present two temporally-persistent characteristics: independence existence and referentiality. As a result, IL predicates increase the likelihood of reanalyzing the direct object as subject, thus triggering agreement of the verbal form with plural NPs. SL predicates, on the other hand, because they display low temporal stability, inhibit regularization.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stage-Level and Individual-Level distinction in morphological variation

Rivas

Brown

2012

Borealis

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“…In sum, according to this analysis, constructional coercion is the mechanism underlying the formation of N(Deg)-ADJ constructs, and it is also responsible for the potential ambiguities between degree and submodifier readings. This ambiguity could formally be captured by polysemy links item is used in a construction in which it is not typically used, and its meaning is coerced to correspond with the meaning of the parent construction (see, e.g., Michaelis 2002;Lauwers & Willems 2011).…”

Section: N(deg)-adj Compounds As Constructionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fromtwig-skinnytoKate Moss skinny: expressing degree with common and proper nouns

Vartiainen

2019

English Language and Linguistics

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This article provides a constructional (CxG) analysis of N-ADJ compounds in which the noun receives a degree reading (e.g. bullet-straight, Kennedy-handsome). A semantic analysis based on similes and scale matching is provided, and the recent history and increased productivity of the construction are examined in light of data from both the Corpus of Historical American English and a range of present-day corpora. The article introduces new evidence of the increased functional flexibility of both common and proper nouns in English and discusses the ongoing conventionalisation of proper noun degree modifiers in both American English and other varieties of English. The results of the study suggest that the recent introduction of proper noun degree modifiers has been supported by both constructional (semantic) change and macro-trends that have affected English usage more generally.

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“…On the other hand, authors who have focused on the perfective past propose that the implicative reading is the result of the coercion of the modal verb when it bears perfective past morphology (Borgonovo 2011;Homer 2011). It is often maintained that at the origin of the phenomenon of coercion there is some conflict between the semantic properties of a selector item (either a construction, a word, or a morpheme) and the semantic properties of an unexpected selected item (Lauwers & Willems 2011). The selector item would be the perfective morphology; the selected and unexpected item, the root modal.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the actuality entailment of Spanish root modals

Carrasco

2019

Borealis

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This paper examines the actuality entailments of Spanish past perfective root modals. I wil sidewith those authors that maintain that the phenomenon is syntactic. Nevertheless, the emphasis will not beon scope differences between projections, but on the fact that the root modal periphrasis is an example ofrestructuring structure. More precisely, I will claim that root modal periphrases may be included amongthe constructions with a low level of restructuring. This point of view will take me to propose that theseperiphrastic structures give rise to a complex event which behaves as a non-homogeneous predicate withregard to temporal-aspectual meaning.

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Coercion: Definition and challenges, current approaches, and new trends

Cited by 82 publications

References 25 publications

Stage-Level and Individual-Level distinction in morphological variation

Stage-Level and Individual-Level distinction in morphological variation

Fromtwig-skinnytoKate Moss skinny: expressing degree with common and proper nouns

On the actuality entailment of Spanish root modals

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