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Creative intentions — The fine line between ‘creative’ and ‘wrong’

  • Peter Uhrig

    Peter Uhrig is currently interim Professor of English Linguistics at the University of Leipzig. For the duration of this stint, he is on leave from his position as a post-doctoral researcher at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg. His current research project on large-scale multimodal corpus linguistics aims at creating new methods for research on multimodal communication by integrating insights and tools from corpus linguistics, computational linguistics, speech recognition, and computer vision.

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Published/Copyright: August 24, 2020
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Abstract

The distinction between creative language use and linguistic errors is not always straightforward. Even less clear is what factors play a role in the attribution of a positive evaluation (= creative) or a negative one (= error). In this paper, it is argued that a Construction Grammar approach can model the difference based on two basic mechanisms: Frequency effects (either modelled as preemption or as negative entrenchment) and hearer expectations, which are continuously updated and based on a wide range of linguistic and contextual factors such as dialect and speech situation, influencing the perception of the abilities and intentions of the speaker.


Corresponding author: Peter Uhrig, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany, E-mail:

Special Issue: Construction Grammar and Creativity edited by Thomas Hoffmann.


About the author

Peter Uhrig

Peter Uhrig is currently interim Professor of English Linguistics at the University of Leipzig. For the duration of this stint, he is on leave from his position as a post-doctoral researcher at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg. His current research project on large-scale multimodal corpus linguistics aims at creating new methods for research on multimodal communication by integrating insights and tools from corpus linguistics, computational linguistics, speech recognition, and computer vision.

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Published Online: 2020-08-24

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