Alternate Construals, Iconicity, and Grounding: The Case of Nominals with the Noun Part

Abstract

In the earlier studies of nominals with the noun part, the choice between the construction with the indefinite article and the construction wherein pari appears without any determiner or modifier, i.e. äs a simple "bare" noun remains unexplained. On the basis of the LOB-corpus analysis, it becomes evident that, contrary to what is commonly assumed, the usage of the construction with the "bare" noun pari is by no means sporadic, but, on the contrary, constitutes the most frequent case. On the other hand, when tested about a sample of the LOB-corpus data with a pari /pari, the native Speakers of English were able to detect differences in meaning whenever these expressions were interchanged in a given context. From the perspective of cognitive grammar (cf. Langacker 1987(cf. Langacker , 1991(cf. Langacker , 1999, which expects that the diiference in form be symptomatic of some difference in meaning, this finding is, by no means, surprising. The present paper aims to show that Langacker's theory is also fully equipped to express, on the one hand, the relevant differences in meaning, and on the other hand, various grammatical properties of the two constructions in a systematic and motivated manner.The proposed description crucially relies on the reference-point relationship inherent in the overall part-of-X N construction (cf. Gorska 1999). The need to postulate two constructions with pari -one of which is called "grounded" and the other "iconic"-falls out from the analysis. In the iconic construction, the phonological form of the phrase withpart-equivalent to the bare noun stem-is reduced to minimum (of course, äs compared to the form of the -marked nominal); this phonological minimality is said to be iconic for the minimal conceptual distance between the participants of a part-whole relation which is evoked by the pari of X N construction. It is argued that, in its conceptual content, the iconic construction "overlaps" with -marked nominals in which pari is modified by adjectives such äs large, important, essential, and integral. In effect, Speakers have an option of portraying the relevant conceptual content in two alternate ways: in "one-shot"-by means of the iconic construction with pari alone or via the more complex compositional path of a symbolically complex adjectival phrase with the noun pari grounded by the article and modified by any such adjective.

Arbitrary structure, cognitive grammar, and the partes orationis. A study in Polish paradigms

“…For even this perceptually based, relatively simple lexical field, we have seen a number of what seem to be arbitrary examples of con straints upon and motivation for compositionality. Although the findings do not discredit the work of Górska (2001Górska ( , 2002 and Tabakowska (2003), who find motivated explanations for similar phenomena for the same language, they show that even if an ico nic basis of partes orationis is viable, it certainly cannot explain a great deal the complexity involved in compositionality. The find ings presented here more consistently demonstrate the tendencies seen in Glynn (2006, P r e -P r i n t D r a f t forthcoming).…”