Is “to fish in a river” equivalent to “to fish a river”?
A study at the crossroads of cognitive sociolinguistics and corpus linguistics
Using the example of the alternation [to fish (det) river(s)]/[to fish prep (det) river(s)/], this paper adopts a corpus
linguistics approach in order to show how it can contribute to studies in cognitive semantics, combining statistics with a more
qualitative analysis. The main aim is to investigate whether these two constructions (with or without a preposition) correspond to
a single meaning with alternations or to two distinct meanings. Two studies, both using the Web as corpus, were carried out to
elucidate this issue. The first study compared occurrences of the two constructions on French and English websites and showed
that, statistically speaking, the construction without a preposition occurs mainly in angling websites that have an emotional
dimension, such as blogs. The second study, focusing solely on English websites, examined the lexical environment of the two
constructions and identified certain distinct semantic classes for each construction, defining two semantic scenarios. These two
semantic scenarios were found to correlate closely with the nature of the website. In light of the corpus evidence, the paper
concludes in favor of two meanings, each concerned by one or the other construction (with or without a preposition). The role of
the emotional dimension in the relationship between the angler and the river is crucial in determining the presence or absence of
a preposition before river. Such a conclusion positions this study firmly in the perspective of cognitive
sociolinguistics.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.The initial study: The influence of the type of website on the occurrence of the construction with or without a preposition
- 2.1The study of the alternative constructions
- 2.2Results
- 2.2.1Statistical analysis: The chi-square test
- 2.2.2Qualitative analysis: The location as an object
- Syntactic tests
- Semantic considerations
- 3.One meaning or two?
- 3.1Comparing the lexical environment of the two structures
- 3.1.1Significant semantic classes in the “without-prep corpus”
- 3.1.2Significant semantic classes in the “with-prep corpus”
- 3.2Semantic profile of the two corpora
- 3.3What about the fish?
- 3.4Finally, one meaning or two?
- 4.Conclusion
- Notes
-
References
References
Anthony, L.
(
2012)
AntConc (
Version 3.3.2) [Computer Software]. Tokyo, Japan: Waseda University. Available from
[URL]
Baumann, K.-D.
(
2007)
A communicative-cognitive approach to emotion in LSP communication. In
K. Ahmad &
M. Rogers (Eds.),
Evidence-based LSP (pp. 323–344). Bern: Peter Lang.
Bybee, J.
(
2006)
From usage to grammar: The mind’s response to repetition.
Language, 82 (4), 711–733.
Bybee, J. & Hopper, P.
(
2001)
Introduction. In
J. Bybee &
P. Hopper (Eds),
Frequency and the emergence of linguistic structure (pp. 1–61). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Condamines, A.
(
2013)
Quand la passion autorise la transitivation d’un circonstanciel de lieu.
Journal of French Language Studies, 23(3), 335–356.
Croft, W.
(
2012)
Verbs: Aspects and causal structure. Oxford University Press.
Fillmore, C. & Baker, C.
(
2009)
A frames approach to semantic analysis. In
B. Heine &
H. Narrog (Eds.),
The Oxford handbook of linguistic analysis (pp. 313–339). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Geeraerts, D.
(
2006)
A rough guide to Cognitive Linguistics. In
D. Geeraerts (ed.),
Cognitive linguistics: Basic readings (pp. 1–28). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Geeraerts, D., Kristiansen, G., & Peirsman, Y.
(
2010)
Introduction. In
D. Geeraerts,
G. Kristiansen &
Y. Peirsman (Eds.),
Advances in cognitive sociolinguistics (pp. 1–21). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Goldberg, A.
(
1995)
A construction grammar approach to argument structure. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Goldberg, A.
(
1996)
Jackendoff and construction-based grammar.
Cognitive Linguistics, 7 (1), 3–20.
Gries, S.
(
2015)
The role of quantitative methods in Cognitive Linguistics: Corpus and experimental data on (relative) frequency and
contingency of words and constructions. In
J. Daems et al. (Eds.),
Change of paradigms – New paradoxes: Recontextualizing language and linguistics (pp. 311–325). Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter.
Gries, S.
(
2013)
Data in construction grammar. In
G. Trousdale &
T. Hoffmann (Eds.),
The Oxford handbook of construction grammar (pp. 93–108). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Heylen, K., Tummers, J. & Geeraerts, D.
(
2008)
Methodological issues in corpus-based cognitive linguistics. In
G. Kristiansen and
R. Dirven (Eds.),
Cognitive sociolinguistics: Language variation, cultural Models, social System (pp. 91–128). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Hopper, P. J., & Thompson, S. A.
(
1980)
Transitivity in grammar and discourse.
Language, 56(2), 251–299.
Hymes, Dell H.
(
1967)
Models of the interaction of language and social setting.
Journal of Social Issues, 23(2), 8–38.
Johnson, M.
(
1987):
The body in the mind. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Jørgensen, M. W., & Phillips, L.
(
2002)
Discourse analysis as theory and method. London: Sage.
Kilgarriff, A.
(
1997)
Using word frequency lists to measure corpus homogeneity and similarity between corpora.
Proceedings of ACL-SIGDAT Workshop on Very Large Corpora, Beijing and Hong Kong, 231–245.
Kilgarriff, A., & Grefenstette, G.
(
2003)
Introduction to the special issue on web as corpus.
Computational Linguistics 29 (3), 333–348.
Kristiansen, G., & Dirven, R.
(
2008) (Eds.).
Cognitive sociolinguistics: Language variation, cultural model, social Systems. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Lazard, G.
(
1984)
Actance variations and categories of the object. In
F. Plank (Ed.),
Objects. Towards a theory of grammatical relations (pp. 269–292). London: Academic Press.
Levin, B., & Rappaport, M.
(
2005)
Argument Realization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pütz, M., Robinson, J. A., & Reif, M.
Rayson, P., & Garside, R.
(
2000)
Comparing corpora using frequency profiling.
Proceedings of the Workshop on Comparing Corpora, 91, 1–6.
Rice, S. A.
(
1987)
Towards a cognitive-model of transitivity. PhD Thesis. University of California.
Talmy, L.
(
2000)
Toward a cognitive semantics. Vol.11. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Cited by
Cited by 1 other publications
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 27 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.