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Changing Structures: Studies in constructions and complementation
Edited by Mark Kaunisto, Mikko Höglund and Paul Rickman
[Studies in Language Companion Series 195] 2018
► pp. 15–30

Talk into vs convince to

Talking as a cause leading to containment, convincing as a cause leading to a result

| Université Laval

This paper explores the causative constructions ‘talk NP into + ‑ing’ vs ‘convince NP to + infinitive’ by means of a collection of attested occurrences. It shows the connection between the characteristics described by Wierzbicka (1998), Gries & Stefanowitsch (2004) and Rudanko (2006) and the linguistically-signified semantic content involved in these structures. Wierzbicka’s account and the related Construction Grammar approach are shown to be wanting on both the descriptive and explanatory levels due to a distancing from the level on which a stable relation exists between meaning and linguistic form. An explanation of the distribution and semantics of the two constructions is proposed based on Langacker’s (1987) semiological principle, i.e. on the semantic content associated with each of the linguistic signs involved in these sequences.

Keywords: causatives, container metaphors, path metaphors, Construction Grammar, Natural Semantic Metalanguage, embodiment
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Refining the observation of the empirical data
  • 3.Explanations anyone?
  • 4.Construction grammar, embodied cognition and the basic design architecture of human language
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 22 May 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.195.02duf
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Cited by

Cited by 2 other publications

Flach, Susanne
2020. Constructionalization and the Sorites Paradox. In Nodes and Networks in Diachronic Construction Grammar [Constructional Approaches to Language, 27], ► pp. 46 ff. DOI logo
Flach, Susanne
2021. From movement into action to manner of causation: changes in argument mapping in the into-causative. Linguistics 59:1 ► pp. 247 ff. DOI logo

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