Overview

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.

Full Product Details

Author:   Günter Radden (University of Hamburg) ,  Klaus-Michael Köpcke (Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster) ,  Thomas Berg (University of Hamburg) ,  Peter Siemund (University of Hamburg)
Publisher:   John Benjamins Publishing Co
Imprint:   John Benjamins Publishing Co
Weight:   0.685kg
ISBN:  

9789027232427

ISBN 10:   9027232423
Pages:   289
Publication Date:   11 April 2007
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In stock  
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Table of Contents

1. List of contributors; 2. Introduction. The construction of meaning in language (by Radden, Gunter); 3. Part I: Metonymy and metaphor; 4. Experiential tests of figurative meaning construction (by Gibbs, Jr., Raymond W.); 5. High-level metaphor and metonymy in meaning construction (by Ruiz de Mendoza Ibanez, Francisco Jose); 6. The role of metonymy in meaning construction at discourse level: A case study (by Barcelona, Antonio); 7. Chained metonymies in lexicon and grammar: A cross-linguistic perspective on body-part terms (by Hilpert, Martin); 8. Arguing the case against coercion (by Ziegeler, Debra); 9. When Zidane is not simply Zidane, and Bill Gates is not just Bill Gates: Some thoughts on the construction of metaphtonymic meanings of proper names (by Brdar, Mario); 10. Collocational overlap can guide metaphor interpretation (by Stefanowitsch, Anatol); 11. Part II: Mental spaces and conceptual blending; 12. Constructing the meanings of personal pronouns (by Langacker, Ronald W.); 13. The construction of meaning in relative clauses: Indeterminacy and constraints (by Nikiforidou, Kiki); 14. Constraints on inferential constructions (by Koops, Christian); 15. The construction of vagueness: Sort-of expressions in Romance languages (by Mihatsch, Wiltrud); 16. Communication or memory mismatch?: Towards a cognitive typology of questions (by Schulze, Wolfgang); 17. Brutal Brits and persuasive Americans: Variety-specifc meaning construction in the into-causative (by Wulff, Stefanie); 18. Index of authors; 19. Index of subjects; 20. Index of metonymies and metaphors

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