Volume 12, Issue 2

This article examines the development of finite complement clauses in the speech of seven English-speaking children aged 1;2 to 5;2. It shows that in most of children's complex utterances that seem to include a finite complement clause, the main clause does not express a full proposition; rather, it functions as an epistemic marker, attention getter, or marker of illocutionary force. The whole construction thus contains only a single proposition expressed by the apparent complement clause. As children grow older, some of the “main clauses” become more substantial and new complement-taking verbs emerge that occur with truly embedded complement clauses. However, since the use of these constructions is limited to only a few verbs, we argue that they are not yet licensed by a general schema or rule; rather, they are “constructional islands” organized around individual verbs.

Cognitive Grammar presupposes an inherent and intimate relation between linguistic structures and discourse. Linguistic units are abstracted from usage events, retaining as part of their value any recurring facet of the interactive and discourse context. Linguistic structures thus incorporate discourse expectations and are interpretable as instructions to modify the current discourse state. There are multiple channels of conceptualization and vocalization, including the symbolization of attentional framing by intonation groups. An expression is produced and understood with respect to a presupposed discourse context, which shapes and supports its interpretation. Particular contextual applications of linguistic units become entrenched and conventionalized as new, augmented units. As discourse proceeds, conceptual structures are progressively built and modified in accordance with the semantic poles of the expressions employed. While initially manifesting the specific conceptual structuring imposed by these expressions, the structures assembled undergo consolidation to reflect the intrinsic conceptual organization of the situations described. This conceptual organization has to be distinguished from grammatical constituency, which is flexible, variable, and in no small measure determined by discourse considerations.

Dirk Geeraerts: Diachronic Prototype Semantics: A Contribution to Historical Lexicology. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997, 207 pp., ISBN 0-19-823652-2. (Bernd Kortmann)