Indexicality across the boundaries of syntax, semantics and pragmatics: The constructional content of the Danish free indirect object
Publikation: Bidrag til bog/antologi/rapport › Bidrag til bog/antologi › Forskning › fagfællebedømt
Standard
Indexicality across the boundaries of syntax, semantics and pragmatics : The constructional content of the Danish free indirect object. / Nielsen, Peter Juul; Heltoft, Lars.
Ditransitive Constructions in Germanic Languages : Diachronic and Synchronic Aspects. red. / Eva Zehentner; Melanie Röthlisberger; Timothy Colleman & al. Amsterdam : John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2023. s. 150-194 (Studies in Germanic Linguistics; Nr. 7).Publikation: Bidrag til bog/antologi/rapport › Bidrag til bog/antologi › Forskning › fagfællebedømt
Harvard
APA
Vancouver
Author
Bibtex
}
RIS
TY - CHAP
T1 - Indexicality across the boundaries of syntax, semantics and pragmatics
T2 - The constructional content of the Danish free indirect object
AU - Nielsen, Peter Juul
AU - Heltoft, Lars
PY - 2023
Y1 - 2023
N2 - n Danish, indirect object (IO) constructions fall into two main classes: (1) the three-argument valence-governed pattern and (2) the free indirect object construction. The free IO is a constructional extension to certain types of monotransitive constructions and verbs; by contrast, the valencegoverned IO is a manifestation of the third argument of three-place verb stems in (prototypically) transfer constructions. The free indirect object (free IO) in Modern Danish presents an intricate problem, calling for concepts and solutions not normally connected with constructional syntax. Its frequency is extremely low, and intuitions about its acceptability varyaccording to basic speech act type. In assertive contexts, it comes across as old-fashioned and is hardly productive; in regulative contexts, by contrast, it retains full productivity. The few positive results yielded by a corpus search are almost exclusively examples of free IOs in regulative contexts. Indexicality, as used especially in morphology by Henning Andersen and Raimo Anttila, is the key concept of our analysis. An IO NP must identify its argument by pointing indexically to some aspect of the predicate’s semantics, but since – in the case of free IOs – there is no third argument A3 in the verb’s valence schema, there is apparently nothing for the free IO to index. In special cases, however, most importantly in regulative contexts, the free IO finds an alternative indicatum by pointing to features of the performative situation. Our findings indicate the need for a grammatical theory that allows syntactic rules to be not only semantically, but also pragmatically sensitive.
AB - n Danish, indirect object (IO) constructions fall into two main classes: (1) the three-argument valence-governed pattern and (2) the free indirect object construction. The free IO is a constructional extension to certain types of monotransitive constructions and verbs; by contrast, the valencegoverned IO is a manifestation of the third argument of three-place verb stems in (prototypically) transfer constructions. The free indirect object (free IO) in Modern Danish presents an intricate problem, calling for concepts and solutions not normally connected with constructional syntax. Its frequency is extremely low, and intuitions about its acceptability varyaccording to basic speech act type. In assertive contexts, it comes across as old-fashioned and is hardly productive; in regulative contexts, by contrast, it retains full productivity. The few positive results yielded by a corpus search are almost exclusively examples of free IOs in regulative contexts. Indexicality, as used especially in morphology by Henning Andersen and Raimo Anttila, is the key concept of our analysis. An IO NP must identify its argument by pointing indexically to some aspect of the predicate’s semantics, but since – in the case of free IOs – there is no third argument A3 in the verb’s valence schema, there is apparently nothing for the free IO to index. In special cases, however, most importantly in regulative contexts, the free IO finds an alternative indicatum by pointing to features of the performative situation. Our findings indicate the need for a grammatical theory that allows syntactic rules to be not only semantically, but also pragmatically sensitive.
KW - Faculty of Humanities
KW - Construction, free indirect object, indexical meaning, valence, speech acts, reflexive pronoun, symbolic meaning
KW - indirect object constructions, constructional meaning, free indirect object, indexical meaning, valence, speech acts, reflexive morpheme, regulative speech acts, symbolic meaning
U2 - 10.1075/sigl.7.05nie
DO - 10.1075/sigl.7.05nie
M3 - Book chapter
SN - 9789027213914
T3 - Studies in Germanic Linguistics
SP - 150
EP - 194
BT - Ditransitive Constructions in Germanic Languages
A2 - Zehentner, Eva
A2 - Röthlisberger, Melanie
A2 - Colleman & al., Timothy
PB - John Benjamins Publishing Company
CY - Amsterdam
ER -
ID: 226498337