Last update:
9 February 2010
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Aspects of Meaning Construction
2007. x, 289 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Hardbound
– In stock
978 90 272 3242 7 / EUR 110.00 / USD 165.00
e-Book
– Available from e-book platforms
Meaning does not reside in linguistic units but is constructed in the minds of the language users. Meaning construction is an on-line mental activity whereby speech participants create meanings on the basis of underspecified linguistic units. The construction of meaning is guided by cognitive principles. The contributions collected in the volume focus on two types of cognitive principles guiding meaning construction: meaning construction by means of metonymy and metaphor, and meaning construction by means of mental spaces and conceptual blending. The papers in the former group survey experiential evidence of figurative meaning construction and discuss high-level metaphor and metonymy, the role of metonymy in discourse, the chaining of metonymies, metonymy as an alternative to coercion, and metaphtonymic meanings of proper names. The papers in the latter group address the issues of meaning construction prompted by personal pronouns, relative clauses, inferential constructions, “sort-of” expressions, questions, and the into-causative construction.
Table of contents
“As a whole, the volume offers the readers impressive insights into the investigation of meaning construction, examines and contrasts a range of current approaches, and highlights many unresolved problems in the theoretical understanding of the nature of meaning. [...] In essence, the volume will be highly informative and thought-provoking for those researchers and scholars who are interested in the ever-green topic of meaning construction.”
Annalisa Baicchi, University of Pavia, in the Annual Review of Cognitive Linguistics, Vol. 5 (2007)
“This is indeed an extremely coherent volume that makes an engaging, highly stimulating reading experience [...] The result is a highly rigorous, well-balanced volume which makes a groundbreaking contribution to the complex issue of meaning construction. The authors of the volume’s chapters admirably succeed in shedding light on a considerable number of different though complementary facets which are essential to fully understand the dynamics of meaning construction.”
Subject classification |
Linguistics