Abstract
Ad hoc categorization is the bottom-up abstraction of a category starting from concrete exemplars of the category itself. When we observe linguistic data, we find various phenomena that provide evidence for the ubiquity of such an on-line, goal-driven and context-dependent categorization in everyday communication. Beyond offering concept labels in the form of words, language indeed provides speakers with a great number of strategies to convey reference to a class by naming representative individuals. After providing a semantic and pragmatic account of ad hoc categorization in terms of indexicality, we will survey ad hoc categorization strategies in discourse and across languages: they can be syntactic (lists, general extenders, exemplifying constructions), morphological (heterogeneous plurals, collectives, aggregates, compounds), or in-between (reduplication). We will argue that all these strategies show a similar abstract structure consisting in a categorization trigger, that is, some prosodic, morphological or syntactic element triggering the abstractive inferential process towards the category identification, plus a linguistic expression referring to some overt category member, which is processed as the starting point for abstraction. The diachronic connections between these strategies and the pathways leading to their emergence and conventionalization also speak in favor of their unified treatment.
Abbreviations
- 1, 2, 3
1st, 2nd, 3rd person
- 2/3
form for both 2nd and 3rd person
- ABL
ablative
- ACC
accusative
- AGT
agentive/instrumental case particle
- ASS
associative
- B
bare
- CAUS
causative
- CJEC
conjectural
- CMPL
complement clause
- COLL
collective
- CONJ
conjunction
- COP
copula
- CTEMP
contemporaneous
- D
deictic
- DEM
demonstrative
- DET
determiner
- DH
downhill
- DIR
directional
- DS
different subject;
- DST
distal
- EFF
effector
- F
feminine
- FOC
focus marker
- GEN
genitive
- GUES
guess
- HAB
habitual
- INAN
inanimate
- INDEF
indefinite
- INF
infinitive
- IPFV
imperfective
- LOC
locative
- MV
medial verb form
- NEG
negation
- NF
non-final verbal suffix
- NOM
nominative
- NSG
non-singular
- NZR
nominalizer
- OBJ
object
- PE
personal experience evidential
- PF
perfect
- PL
plural
- POL
polite form
- POSB
possibilitive modality
- POSS
possessive
- PRO
pronoun
- PROH
prohibitive
- PROP
proprietive
- PRS
present
- PRT
particle
- PST
past
- PURP
purposive
- QUOT
quotative
- RED
reduplication
- RES
resultative
- RLS
realis
- SE
stem extender
- SG
singular
- SIM
simulative
- SLEV
same topographic level
- SS
same subject
- STAT
stative
- TOP
topic marker.
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© 2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Linguistic strategies for ad hoc categorization: theoretical assessment and cross-linguistic variation
- The role of exemplification in the construction of categories: the case of Japanese
- Categorization via exemplification: evidence from Italian
- Ad hoc categorization in Russian and multifunctional general extenders
- Alternative Relations and Higher-Level Categories
- From ad hoc category to ad hoc categorization: The proceduralization of Argentinian Spanish tipo
- Exemplification and ad hoc categorization: The genre-construction in French
- Collective suffixes and ad hoc categories: from Latin -ālia to Italian -aglia
- The encoding of ad hoc categories in Sanskrit: A synchronic and diachronic analysis of “compounds” with ādi-
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Linguistic strategies for ad hoc categorization: theoretical assessment and cross-linguistic variation
- The role of exemplification in the construction of categories: the case of Japanese
- Categorization via exemplification: evidence from Italian
- Ad hoc categorization in Russian and multifunctional general extenders
- Alternative Relations and Higher-Level Categories
- From ad hoc category to ad hoc categorization: The proceduralization of Argentinian Spanish tipo
- Exemplification and ad hoc categorization: The genre-construction in French
- Collective suffixes and ad hoc categories: from Latin -ālia to Italian -aglia
- The encoding of ad hoc categories in Sanskrit: A synchronic and diachronic analysis of “compounds” with ādi-