Volume 16, Issue 4

By confronting variable use, the variationist method can reveal patterns of subjectification of grammatical morphemes. Applying this method to the analysis of salir(se)  ‘go out’ variation in Mexican Spanish oral data, we conclude that subjectification is manifested structurally in the tendency for middle-marked salirse  to co-occur with first-person singular or referents close to the speaker, positive polarity and the past tense. Further comparative dialectal and diachronic data indicate the origins of the se  -marked form in physical spatial deviation. Usage of the form then extends to situations that denote deviation from social norms. We thus propose that the locus of subjectification of this counter-expectation marker is an increasingly speaker-based construal of expectation. This semantic change appears to proceed via absorption of contextual meaning in the frequently occurring + de  ‘from’ construction.

Much recent work in Cognitive Linguistics and neighbouring disciplines has adopted a so-called usage-based perspective in which generalizations are based on the analysis of authentic usage data provided by computerized corpora. However, the analysis of such data does not always utilize methodological findings from other disciplines to avoid analytical pitfalls and, at the same time, generate robust results. A case in point is the strategy of using corpus frequencies. In this paper, we take up a recently much debated issue from construction grammar concerning the association between verbs and argument-structure constructions, and investigate a construction, the English as -predicative, in order to test the predictive power of different kinds of frequency data against that of a recent, more refined corpus-based approach, the so-called collexeme analysis. To that end, the results of the application of these corpus-based approaches to an analysis of the as predicative are compared with the results of a sentence-completion experiment. Concerning the topic under consideration, collexeme analysis is not only shown to be superior on a variety of theoretical and methodological grounds, it also significantly outperforms frequency as a predictor of subjects’ production preferences. We conclude by pointing out some implications for usage-based approaches.

This paper has two goals. The first is to develop a cross-linguistically valid model of modality and mood that captures the most important dimensions along which modal expressions vary. I posit a model with two such dimensions, one of volitivity, and one of event-orientation vs. speaker-orientation, mood being placed at the speaker-oriented end relative to modality proper. The second goal is to provide a new perspective on semantic change of modal expressions on the basis of the proposed model. I argue that unidirectional change along the event-oriented / speaker-oriented dimension is the one overarching tendency of semantic change in modals. This stands in contrast to the widespread perception that change from deontic to epistemic is the dominant tendency. The directionality suggested in this new model is also more comprehensive than previously proposed tendencies of change, such as ‘‘from agent-oriented to epistemic’’, ‘‘from agent-oriented to speaker-oriented’’, and ‘‘from participant-internal to participant-external’’, as it better accounts for various kinds of change that have been previously neglected, including change from epistemic to deontic.

Marina Rakova, The Extent of the Literal. Metaphor, Polysemy and Theories of Concepts. Reviewed by Jürgen Van de Walle and Fieke Van der Gucht Peter Stockwell, Cognitive Poetics: An Introduction. Reviewed by Craig A. Hamilton Mark Turner, Cognitive Dimensions of Social Science. Reviewed by David B. Kronenfeld George Lakoff, Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think. Reviewed by Leah Ryan Jan Nuyts, Epistemic Modality, Language, and Conceptualization. A Cognitive-Pragmatic Perspective. Reviewed by Jesús M. Sánchez García