New Benjamins title: Productivity - Bar ðdal

[Paul Peranteau]

Productivity
Evidence from Case and Argument Structure in Icelandic

Jóhanna Barðdal
University of Bergen

Constructional Approaches to Language 8

2008. xiii, 209 pp.
Hardbound  In stock
978 90 272 1830 8 / EUR 95.00 / USD 143.00
e-Book  Not yet available
978 90 272 8967 4 / EUR 95.00 / USD 143.00

Productivity of argument structure constructions is a new emerging 
field within cognitive-functional linguistics. The term productivity 
as used in linguistic research contains at least three subconcepts: 
'extensibility', 'regularity', and 'generality'. The focus in this 
study of case and argument structure constructions in Icelandic is on 
the concept of extensibility, while generality and regularity are 
regarded as derivative of extensibility. Productivity is considered 
to be a function of type frequency, semantic coherence, and the 
inverse correlation between these two. This study establishes 
productivity as an emergent feature of the grammatical system, in an 
analysis that is grounded in a usage-based constructional approach, 
where constructions are organized into lexicality-schematicity 
hierarchies. The view of syntactic productivity advocated here offers 
a unified account of productivity, in that it captures different 
degrees of productivity, ranging from highly productive patterns 
through various intermediate degrees of productivity to low-level 
analogical extensions.


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Table of contents

Preface
Chapter 1. Introduction
Chapter 2. Productivity
Chapter 3. New verbs in Icelandic: A general outline
Chapter 4. Nonce verbs: A psycholinguistic experiment
Chapter 5. New verbs of communication: A questionnaire
Chapter 6. Old and Modern Icelandic: A frequency comparison
Chapter 7. Synthesis
References
Appendix A. Predicates and case and argument structure constructions 
in the text corpora
Appendix B. Recent borrowings in Icelandic
Appendix C. The questionnaire
Name index  203204
Subject index  205207
Constructions index  209



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"A 'two-for-one' package, containing both an original and realistic 
approach to productivity in terms of Construction Grammar and, 
simultaneously, a penetrating study of case and argument structure in 
Icelandic. On both accounts the book is a novel and, in my view, a 
highly successful contribution to theoretical and empirical linguistics."
Thórhallur Eythórsson, University of Iceland
"An important book, clarifying the concept of productivity, which is 
often used in the language sciences but is seldom clearly defined. 
Apart from providing an illuminating meta-analysis, Barðdal develops 
an original theory of the productivity of case and argument structure 
constructions."
Jordan Zlatev, Lund University & Copenhagen Business School



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