Startseite Why the Principle of No Synonymy is Overrated
Artikel
Lizenziert
Nicht lizenziert Erfordert eine Authentifizierung

Why the Principle of No Synonymy is Overrated

  • Peter Uhrig EMAIL logo
Veröffentlicht/Copyright: 8. Oktober 2015
Veröffentlichen auch Sie bei De Gruyter Brill

Abstract

The formulation of Goldberg’s oft-quoted Principle of No Synonymy is one of the factors responsible for a shift away in attention from alternations as postulated in the generative transformational tradition towards a view that regards the so-called alternatives as conveying different meanings and thus not being real alternatives. The rejection of the generativist position, in which one variant was regarded as primary and the other as derived from the primary variant, is of course justified and necessary in a cognitive linguistic approach, but it will be argued in this paper that the Principle of No Synonymy – if regarded as a dogma – is misleading in that it bears the risk of missing important generalisations across different patterns of the same verb. Furthermore, it will be argued that both linguistic variation and pre-emption are not perfectly compatible with the Principle of No Synonymy.


Corresponding author: Peter Uhrig, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), Department Anglistik/Amerikanistik und Romanistik, Bismarckstraße 1, 91054 Erlangen, e-mail:

Works Cited

Anderson, Stephen (1971). “On the Role of Deep Structure in Semantic Interpretation.” Foundations of Language 6, 387–396.Suche in Google Scholar

Boas, Hans C. (2010). “The Syntax-Lexicon Continuum in Construction Grammar: A case study of English Communication Verbs.” Belgian Journal of Linguistics 24, 54–82.10.1075/bjl.24.03boaSuche in Google Scholar

Bock, Kathryn J. (1986). “Syntactic Persistence in Language Production.” Cognitive Psychology 18, 355–387.10.1016/0010-0285(86)90004-6Suche in Google Scholar

Bolinger, Dwight (1977). Meaning and Form. New York: Longman.Suche in Google Scholar

Bresnan, Joan, Anna Cueni, Tatiana Nikitina and Harald Baayen (2007). “Predicting the Dative Alternation.” Gerlof Bouma, Irene Krämer and Joost Zwarts, eds. Cognitive Foundations of Interpretation. Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Science, 69–94.Suche in Google Scholar

Bybee, Joan (2015). Language Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9781139096768Suche in Google Scholar

Cappelle, Bert (2009). “Can We Factor Out Free Choice?” Andreas Dufter, Jürg Fleischer and Guido Seiler, eds. Describing and Modeling Variation in Grammar. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 183–201.10.1515/9783110216097.3.183Suche in Google Scholar

Chomsky, Noam (1975 [1955]). The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory. New York: Plenum Press.Suche in Google Scholar

Chomsky, Noam (1957). Syntactic Structures. The Hague: Mouton.10.1515/9783112316009Suche in Google Scholar

Clark, Eve (1987). “The Principle of Contrast: A Constraint on Language Acquisition.” Brian MacWhinney, ed. Mechanisms of Language Acquisition. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1–33.Suche in Google Scholar

de Saussure, Ferdinand (1916). Cours de linguistique générale. Charles Bally and Albert Séchehaye, eds. Paris and Lausanne: Payot.Suche in Google Scholar

Faulhaber, Susen (2011). Verb Valency Patterns: A Challenge for Semantics-Based Accounts. Berlin and New York: De Gruyter Mouton.10.1515/9783110240788Suche in Google Scholar

Fillmore, Charles (1965). Indirect Object Constructions in English and the Ordering of Transformations. The Hague: Mouton.Suche in Google Scholar

Gilquin, Gaëtanelle (2010). Corpus, Cognition and Causative Constructions. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: Benjamins.10.1075/scl.39Suche in Google Scholar

Goldberg, Adele E. (1995). Constructions. A Construction Grammar Approach to Argument Structure. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Suche in Google Scholar

Goldberg, Adele E. (2002). “Surface Generalizations: An Alternative to Alternations.” Cognitive Linguistics 13.4, 327–356.10.1515/cogl.2002.022Suche in Google Scholar

Goldberg, Adele E. (2006). Constructions at Work. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Suche in Google Scholar

Goldberg, Adele E. (2011). “Corpus Evidence of the Viability of Statistical Preemption.” Cognitive Linguistics 22.1, 131–153.10.1515/cogl.2011.006Suche in Google Scholar

Goldberg, Adele E. (2013). “Argument Structure Constructions versus Lexical Rules or Derivational Verb Templates.” Mind & Language 28.4, 435–465.10.1111/mila.12026Suche in Google Scholar

Goldberg, Adele E. and Ray Jackendoff (2004). “The English Resultative as a Family of Constructions.” Language 80.3, 532–568.10.1353/lan.2004.0129Suche in Google Scholar

Gries, Stefan (2003). Multifactorial Analysis in Corpus Linguistics: A Study of Particle Placement. London and New York: Continuum.Suche in Google Scholar

Herbst, Thomas (2011). “The Status of Generalizations: Valency and Argument Structure Constructions.” Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 59.4, 347–367.10.1515/zaa-2011-0406Suche in Google Scholar

Herbst, Thomas (2014a). “The Valency Approach to Argument Structure Constructions.” Thomas Herbst, Hans-Jörg Schmid and Susen Faulhaber, eds. Constructions Collocations Patterns. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, 167–216.10.1515/9783110356854.167Suche in Google Scholar

Herbst, Thomas (2014b). “Idiosyncrasies and Generalizations: Argument Structure, Semantic Roles and The Valency Realization Principle.” Martin Hilpert and Susanne Flach, eds. Yearbook of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association. 2 Vols., 253–289.10.1515/gcla-2014-0015Suche in Google Scholar

Herbst, Thomas and Susen Schüller (2008). Introduction to Syntactic Analysis: A Valency Approach. Tübingen: Narr.Suche in Google Scholar

Herbst, Thomas and Peter Uhrig (2009). The Erlangen Valency Patternbank. <http://www.patternbank.uni-erlangen.de> (August 20, 2015).Suche in Google Scholar

Kinsey, Rafe, T. Florian Jaeger and Thomas Wasow (2007). “What Does THAT Mean? Experimental Evidence against the Principle of No Synonymy.” Handout for presentation at LSA. <http://www.rafekinsey.com/papers/lsa-handout.pdf> (August 20, 2015).Suche in Google Scholar

Labov, William (1972). Sociolinguistic Patterns. Oxford: Blackwell.Suche in Google Scholar

Labov, William (2008). “Quantitative Reasoning in Linguistics.” <http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~wlabov/Papers/QRL.pdf> (August 20, 2015).Suche in Google Scholar

Langacker, Ronald W. (1988). “An Overview of Cognitive Grammar.” Brygida Rudzka-Ostyn, ed. Topics in Cognitive Linguistics. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 3–48.10.1075/cilt.50.03lanSuche in Google Scholar

Larson, Richard K. (1988). “On the Double Object Construction.” Linguistic Inquiry 19.3, 335–391.Suche in Google Scholar

Leech, Geoffrey (1981). Semantics: The Study of Meaning. 2nd ed. Harmondsworth: Penguin.Suche in Google Scholar

Leech, Geoffrey (1983). Principles of Pragmatics. London and New York: Longman.Suche in Google Scholar

Levin, Beth (1993). English Verb Classes and Alternations: A Preliminary Investigation. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Suche in Google Scholar

Loebell, Helga and Kathryn Bock (2003). “Structural Priming across Languages.” Linguistics 41.5, 791–824.10.1515/ling.2003.026Suche in Google Scholar

MacWhinney, Brian (1987). “Competition and Lexical Categorization.” Pittsburgh: Research Showcase @ CMU, no page numbers.Suche in Google Scholar

Perek, Florent (2012). “Alternation-Based Generalizations are Stored in the Mental Grammar: Evidence from a Sorting Task Experiment.” Cognitive Linguistics 23.3, 601–635.10.1515/cog-2012-0018Suche in Google Scholar

Stein, Gabriele (1979). Studies in the Function of the Passive. Tübingen: Narr.Suche in Google Scholar

Wasow, Thomas (2002). Postverbal Behavior. Stanford: CSLI Publications.Suche in Google Scholar

Wulff, Stefanie (2008). “Das Prinzip der Nicht-Synonymität: V1-and-V2 und V1-V2 im Englischen.” Anatol Stefanowitsch and Kerstin Fischer, eds. Konstruktionsgrammatik II: Von der Konstruktion zur Grammatik. Tübingen: Stauffenburg, 189–201.Suche in Google Scholar

Published Online: 2015-10-8
Published in Print: 2015-10-1

©2015 by De Gruyter

Heruntergeladen am 13.10.2025 von https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/zaa-2015-0030/html
Button zum nach oben scrollen