Constructional schemas in variation

Silvennoinen, Olli O.

doi:10.1075/cf.00009.sil

Cited by 8 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 34 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Table 5). They have also been found to be both formally and functionally similar in previous research (Silvennoinen 2018). For this variable there are thus four levels in the HCFA analysis, not six, as was the case in the analysis of individual variables.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 81%

Not Just Contrastive: Constructions with Negated Restrictives in English

Silvennoinen

2023

Journal of English Linguistics

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

When restrictive adverbs are negated, an additive reading is produced (e.g., not only). This is particularly common in correlative constructions with a corrective part optionally introduced by but (e.g., not just in England but also in Scotland), but can also appear in other syntactic contexts. This study investigates formal and functional variation in the use of the four most common variants of negated restrictives ( not only, not just, not simply, and not merely) from the perspective of constructional and usage-based approaches to language. The study is based on a dataset of 1599 tokens, annotated for formal, functional, and extralinguistic variables, and is analyzed using hierarchical configural frequency analysis. The contrastive correlative construction not only X but ( also) Y appears as the central grammatical context for negated restrictives in English. In addition to its high frequency, not only displays the least variability in both form and function, which suggests a high degree of conventionalization. The less frequent variants of negated restrictives have more diffuse usage profiles, suggesting they are less conventionalized and may be emergent constructions which have not yet conventionalized into stable parts of the language. Methodologically, the study suggests an alternative to modeling alternations, which enables the detection of different degrees of conventionalization and which avoids conceptualizing alternations as choices conditioned by independent variables.

show abstract

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 81%

Not Just Contrastive: Constructions with Negated Restrictives in English

Silvennoinen

2023

Journal of English Linguistics

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…However, the division of labour between these forms, let alone the cross-linguistic analysis of such forms, is a task that has received only limited attention (but see Silvennoinen 2017Silvennoinen , 2018. Most of the attention has been focused on forms (5a), (5c) and (5d).…”

Section: Contrastive Negation and Constructional Strategiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

From constructions to functions and back: Contrastive negation in English and Finnish

Silvennoinen

2020

Folia Linguistica

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This is a comparative investigation of contrastive negation in English and Finnish, i. e. combinations of a negated and an affirmed part construed as alternatives to one another. In both languages, there are several constructions that express contrastive negation, but their division of labour remains unclear. The aims of the paper are two-fold: first, to see what constructional strategies are available for contrastive negation in the two languages and, second, to see how the strategies are motivated by its interactional functions. In English, contrastive negation may be expressed by using the adversative conjunction but correctively (e. g. It’s not the bikers but the other vehicle on the road), whereas standard Finnish has a specialised corrective conjunction vaan alongside the adversative mutta. Moreover, many constructions can express contrastive negation, including ones without a conjunction (e. g. It’s not the bikers, it’s the other vehicle on the road). An analysis of conversational data shows that English favours constructions without conjunctions, while in Finnish constructions both with and without conjunctions are frequent. The uses of contrastive negation are divided into reactive and non-reactive. The pragmatic functions largely explain the usage patterns, and these in turn can explain the cross-linguistic regularities of corrective conjunctions.

show abstract

“…Yet, the latter explanation is problematic, since it has been shown that even subtle differences in grammatical structures are conveying dif ferent construals of events (e.g., Goldberg 1995;Silvennoinen 2018). More specifically, different semantic, pragmatic, and extralinguistic contexts might be related to the use of different linguistic devices ( Silvennoinen 2018). Therefore, it is plausible that "the alternation between overt and zero forms relates to something other than the cognitive status of the intended referent" (Scott 2013: 74).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Third-person overt pronoun and zero reference in Estonian. Insights from two experiments

Hint,

Reile,

Kaiser

2023

ESUKA-JEFUL

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This study reports two experiments that investigate the variation between two Estonian third-person referential devices – zero reference vs. the overt pronoun ta. First, in a speech-restoration paradigm (Experiment 1), we test whether the structure of a reference chain affects referential choice. Second, drawing on Experiment 1, we designed an acceptability judgement task (Experiment 2) to explore a possible systematic variation between zero reference vs. overt pronoun in different sentential configurations (two separated sentences vs. one coordinated sentence). Our findings suggest that sentential configuration affects referential choice. Thus, our study accords with earlier observations that salience-only accounts cannot fully explain referential choice. Furthermore, this study supports the form-specific account of reference, by showing that zero reference is more sensitive to sentential configuration than the overt pronoun. We suggest that along with microstructure and the local coherence effects on referential devices, it is necessary to consider macrostructure and the effect of discourse segmenting on referential devices. Kokkuvõte. Helen Hint, Maria Reile, Elsi Kaiser: Kolmanda isiku eksplitsiitne pronoomen ja nullviitamine eesti keeles. Tähelepanekuid kahe katse tulemustest. Artiklis analüüsime eesti keele kolmanda isiku nullviitamise ja eksplitsiitse personaalpronoomeni ta vaheldumist ja referentsiaalseid omadusi. Viisime läbi kaks katset. Esimeses katses uurisime, kas valikut nullviitamise ja ta vahel mõjutab viiteahela struktuur ehk see, millised on olnud eelnevad samale referendile osutavad viitevahendid. Teises katses testisime, kas viitevahendi vastuvõetavuse hinnangut mõjutab lausete omavahelise ühendamise viis (kas kasutatakse kaht iseseisvat lauset või üht kahe rindliikmega lauset). Katsete tulemused näitavad, et viiteahela struktuur nullviitamise ja eksplitsiitse pronoomeni valikut üksinda ei mõjuta, vaid on seotud lausungite ühendamisega. Viimane on aga oluline tunnus eraldiseisvana: nullviitamine on tavalisem siis, kui kasutatakse üht rinnastusseoses olevate liikmetega lauset, ta esineb pigem siis, kui kaks (liht)lauset on omavahel punktiga eraldatud. Teisalt mõjutab lausete ühendamise viis eelkõige nullviitamist, samas kui ta kasutus ei näita selle tunnuse suhtes olulisi erinevusi. Siinne uurimus osutab selgelt, et viitevahendite kasutuses peegeldub diskursuse töötluse mitmetahulisus. Lisaks kohesioonisuhetele mõjutab viitevahendi valikut diskursuse üldisem ülesehitus. Seega on siinse uurimuse tulemused kooskõlas mitmefaktorilise ja vormispetsiifilise lähenemisega viitamisele.

show abstract

Constructional schemas in variation

Cited by 8 publications

References 34 publications

Not Just Contrastive: Constructions with Negated Restrictives in English

Not Just Contrastive: Constructions with Negated Restrictives in English

From constructions to functions and back: Contrastive negation in English and Finnish

Third-person overt pronoun and zero reference in Estonian. Insights from two experiments

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About