Brutal Brits and persuasive Americans
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Stefanie Wulff
Abstract
“England and America are two nations divided by a common language.”(George Bernard Shaw)
Adopting a construction-based view of language (Goldberg 1995), we demonstrate that it is possible to uncover differences between British and American English at the lexicosyntactic level, showing that the collexemes, i.e. the words significantly associated with a construction, are variety-dependent. To this end, we compare more than 5,000 verb pair types as they occur in the two varieties in the so-called into-causative construction (as in He tricked me into employing him) and submit them to the scrutiny of a statistical test called distinctive collexeme analysis, which identifies those verbs that distinguish best between the two varieties. Interesting contrasts emerge, such as the predominance of verbal persuasion verbs in the cause predicate slot of the American English data as opposed to the predominance of physical force verbs in the cause predicate slot of the British English data. We discuss how these and other results create a picture of subtle, yet systematic, differences in meaning construction, and we offer an explanation of these differences as reflecting differently entrenched semantic frames.
Abstract
“England and America are two nations divided by a common language.”(George Bernard Shaw)
Adopting a construction-based view of language (Goldberg 1995), we demonstrate that it is possible to uncover differences between British and American English at the lexicosyntactic level, showing that the collexemes, i.e. the words significantly associated with a construction, are variety-dependent. To this end, we compare more than 5,000 verb pair types as they occur in the two varieties in the so-called into-causative construction (as in He tricked me into employing him) and submit them to the scrutiny of a statistical test called distinctive collexeme analysis, which identifies those verbs that distinguish best between the two varieties. Interesting contrasts emerge, such as the predominance of verbal persuasion verbs in the cause predicate slot of the American English data as opposed to the predominance of physical force verbs in the cause predicate slot of the British English data. We discuss how these and other results create a picture of subtle, yet systematic, differences in meaning construction, and we offer an explanation of these differences as reflecting differently entrenched semantic frames.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- List of contributors ix
- Introduction. The construction of meaning in language 1
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Part I: Metonymy and metaphor
- Experiential tests of figurative meaning construction 19
- High-level metaphor and metonymy in meaning construction 33
- The role of metonymy in meaning construction at discourse level 51
- Chained metonymies in lexicon and grammar 77
- Arguing the case against coercion 99
- When Zidane is not simply Zidane, and Bill Gates is not just Bill Gates 125
- Collocational overlap can guide metaphor interpretation 143
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Part II: Mental spaces and conceptual blending
- Constructing the meanings of personal pronouns 171
- The construction of meaning in relative clauses 189
- Constraints on inferential constructions 207
- The construction of vagueness 225
- Communication or memory mismatch? 247
- Brutal Brits and persuasive Americans 265
- Index of authors 283
- Index of subjects 285
- Index of metonymies and metaphors 289
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- List of contributors ix
- Introduction. The construction of meaning in language 1
-
Part I: Metonymy and metaphor
- Experiential tests of figurative meaning construction 19
- High-level metaphor and metonymy in meaning construction 33
- The role of metonymy in meaning construction at discourse level 51
- Chained metonymies in lexicon and grammar 77
- Arguing the case against coercion 99
- When Zidane is not simply Zidane, and Bill Gates is not just Bill Gates 125
- Collocational overlap can guide metaphor interpretation 143
-
Part II: Mental spaces and conceptual blending
- Constructing the meanings of personal pronouns 171
- The construction of meaning in relative clauses 189
- Constraints on inferential constructions 207
- The construction of vagueness 225
- Communication or memory mismatch? 247
- Brutal Brits and persuasive Americans 265
- Index of authors 283
- Index of subjects 285
- Index of metonymies and metaphors 289
