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This book provides the first empirical study of the history and spread of mediopassive constructions. It investigates the productivity of the pattern, the spread of the construction in Modern English, and looks into text type-specific preferences for the construction. On a more abstract level, it combines the corpus-based description of mediopassive constructions with cognitive linguistic models, drawing largely on notions such as 'prototype', 'family resemblances', 'patch' and 'construction'. The theoretical modelling is largely based on data from real texts. These come from publicly available machine-readable corpora, text-databases and a single-register 'corpus' (American mail-order catalogues). The study combines the corpus-based approach with cognitive theories and is therefore of interest to both empirical and theoretical linguists. Contents: List of tables and figures Preface Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: Defining the object of study Chapter 3: Previous studies Chapter 4: Theoretical background Chapter 5: The mediopassive in Present Day English Chapter 6: The history of mediopassives Chapter 7: Conclusion References Appendix 1: Primary material Appendix 2: Sample pages of Sears & Roebucks catalogues Appendix 3: Additional tables and figures Index
E-Book Content
English mediopassive constructions
LANGUAGE AND COMPUTERS: STUDIES IN PRACTICAL LINGUISTICS No 58 edited by Christian Mair Charles F. Meyer Nelleke Oostdijk
English mediopassive constructions A cognitive, corpus-based study of their origin, spread, and current status
Marianne Hundt
Amsterdam - New York, NY 2007
Cover design: Pier Post Online access is included in print subscriptions: see www.rodopi.nl The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of "ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents Requirements for permanence". ISBN-10: 90-420-2127-6 ISBN-13: 978-90-420-2127-3 ©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2007 Printed in The Netherlands
To Markus Helge Tabea and Helene
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Contents Table of contents
vii
List of tables and figures
xi
Preface
xv
Chapter 1.
Introduction
1.1 Why study mediopassive constructions? 1.2 Aim and scope 1.3 Chapter outline Chapter 2.
Defining the object of study
2.1 A descriptive approach 2.2. Restrictions on mediopassive formation 2.2.1 (Adverbial) modification 2.2.2 Temporal-aspectual restrictions 2.2.3 Implicit agent 2.3 Transitivity of the verb 2.4 Syntactic or lexical process – Quo vadis? 2.5 A terminological Babel Chapter 3.
Previous studies
3.1 Early approaches 3.2 Generative grammar 3.2.1 Transformational grammar 3.2.2 Government and Binding 3.2.3 Minimalist Program 3.3 Cognitive grammar Chapter 4.
Theoretical background
4.1 A prototype approach to mediopassive constructions 4.1.1 Transitivity 4.1.2 Semantic roles
1 1 3 4 7 7 11 12 13 15 17 21 23 25 25 26 26 29 40 44 53 53 54 61
viii
Contents 4.1.3 Voice 4.1.4 Relations between constructions 4.2 Implications of the prototype approach
Chapter 5.
72 73 76
The mediopassive in Present Day English
81
5.1 Hypotheses on the use of the mediopassive in PDE 5.1.1 Prototype theory and text frequency – the question of markedness 5.1.2 Text type-specific uses of the mediopassive constructions 5.1.3 The modification constraint 5.1.4 Aspectual restrictions on mediopassive constructions 5.1.5 Word-formation processes and mediopassive constructions 5.2 Corpora for the study of mediopassive constructions in PDE 5.3 Results 5.3.1 Transitivity profiles and voice options 5.3.2 Reflexive variants of mediopassive constructions 5.3.3 Mediopassive constructi