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Article published In:
Review of Cognitive Linguistics
Vol. 18:2 (2020) ► pp.480–518

Dialogic constructions and discourse units:

The case of think again

| National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
| National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
| National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

Adopting a constructionally-oriented analysis, the present paper examines the pattern ‘think again’ (i.e., an instance of a mental state verb + adverbial adjunct) in synchronic, corpus-derived data. On the basis of both qualitative and quantitative analyses we show that think again merits constructional status in language; while it inherits features of fully-compositional meaning from its constituents it has also developed its own idiosyncratic properties. We further argue that think again may ultimately function as a discourse marker of challenge that regulates the relationship between Speaker (S) and Addressee (A), correlating with certain contextual regularities and interdependencies. It thus qualifies as a discourse construction that imposes a dialogic construal on its context and contributes fundamentally to discourse unit delimitation.

Keywords: Construction Grammar, dialogicity, mental state/propositional attitude verbs, dialogic constructions, discourse marker, challenge, discourse unit delimitation
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction and background: Mental state predicates and adverbial adjuncts; dialogicity and constructions
  • 2.Methodology and data
  • 3.From compositional to constructional think again
    • 3.1Compositional semantics and encoding properties
    • 3.2Constructional semantics/pragmatics and encoding features
  • 4.Frequency counts of the categories tagged
    • 4.1Compositional and constructional semantics
    • 4.2Distribution of think again in the dialogic-monologic and dialogual-monologual contexts
    • 4.3Distribution of intensifying elements
    • 4.4Distribution of morphosyntactic features
    • 4.5Positional distribution
  • 5.Reliability and validity statistics
    • 5.1The statistical significance of the data
    • 5.2The internal reliability of the data
    • 5.3Interim summary: The construction think again
  • 6. think again: Motivation as constructional inheritance
  • 7. think again and dialogicity
  • 8. think again and discourse unit delimitation
  • 9.Concluding remarks and implications
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 4 December 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/rcl.00068.gek
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