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The role of exemplification in the construction of categories: the case of Japanese

  • Alessandra Barotto EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: July 28, 2018
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Abstract

The aim of this paper is to examine the role of exemplification in categorization processes, that is, how examples can be used in discourse to communicate conceptual categories. Based on data from present-day Japanese and a corpus-driven methodology, it will be shown that exemplifying constructions can be used 1) to refine already explicit categories by contextualizing and actualizing the reference, and 2) to create categories ex novo by triggering associative inferences and abstractive processes. Accordingly, a detailed analysis of the linguistic properties of the examples will be provided in order to identify recurring encoding patterns and correlations with the functions described above. Furthermore, it will be argued that, although any conceptual category can be lexicalized by means of a category label, there exist some interesting correlations between the coding of the examples and the labelling of the category. Finally, we will conclude by showing that the linguistic analysis of exemplification can provide useful insights regarding the modalities in which the human brain categorizes.

Acknowledgements

The research here presented was developed within the SIR project “LEAdhoC: Linguistic expression of ad hoc categories”, coordinated by Caterina Mauri (University of Bologna; prot. RBSI14IIG0). I would like to thank Caterina Mauri, Andrea Sansò, Mira Ariel, Simone Mattiola, and the two anonymous reviewers for their precious comments that allowed me to improve the concepts discussed in the present paper. I would also like to thank Kazumi Taniguchi and Giorgio Francesco Arcodia for helping me with the translation and interpretation of Japanese data. The usual disclaimers apply.

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Published Online: 2018-07-28
Published in Print: 2018-07-26

© 2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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