Adjectives in Cognitive Linguistic

Résumé du document

During the seminar, we have buckled down to the arduous task of understanding and using a brand new theoretical field of study as far as the great family of linguistics is concerned. This paper and the database we have come to build out are the concrete results of a work which turned out to be very interesting, for it allowed us to open up to things fundamentally different from the Culiolian approach we have been familiar to so far. Indeed, within the framework of pragmatics, language is not just a logical system: any time one talks, one performs a speech act and implies conversational implicatures, using conversational maxims, in order to follow the cooperative principle, and therefore, the context and the intention of the speaker have to be taken into account. The speaker –or, to a more general extent, the one who utters or writes a sentence–'s meaning, as we shall see, is often different from the sentence meaning, and therefore, taking language as a mere binary system –things being categorized as true or false– can be erroneous. We have tried to apply all those principles to the study of grammatical constructions, which are patterns –ranging from words to complex sentences– that integrate form, intonation and meaning(s) –both semantic and pragmatic. What is important in this prism is to work within a tripartite framework, involving syntax, semantics and pragmatics. Once we have understood what speech acts, implicatures and grammatical constructions stand for, we can tackle the analysis of various examples of grammatical constructions. This paper will put the emphasis on adjectives in their broadest sense –that is to say, modifiers and determiners, or any word or group of words that function as an adjective proper. We will try to highlight the different grammatical constructions involving an adjectival form, using the various contexts in which those units were uttered. We will first of all try to analyse two short paragraphs which are replete with adjectival forms, in order to show the importance of the context on such and such grammatical construction involving adjectives. Namely, we will give the form of each construction, its meaning, and try to show how the context influences –or not– our understanding of the unit. A second part will be dedicated to a less systematic analysis, for we will only take into account the most relevant –those which can stand for representatives of either a linguistic form or of a pragmatic meaning– grammatical constructions, in order to come up to certain generalizations concerning adjectives.

Extraits

[...] In examples and you can find such constructions. An adjectival clause is a dependent clause which takes the place of an adjective in another clause or phrase. It modifies a head noun, giving an attribute or property of this noun or specifying it An adjective clause usually comes after the head noun it mdifies. In sister, who is much older than I am, is an engineer”, the descriptive relative clause functions as an adjective, since it gives information about the head noun “sister”. [...]

[...] Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 337-359. Bybee, Joan Main clauses are innovative, subordinate clauses are conservative: consequences for the nature of constructions. In J. Bybee and M. Noonan (eds.) Complex sentences in grammar and discourse: essays in honor of Sandra A. Thompson. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Fillmore, Charles J The case for case. In Universals in linguistic theory, ed. [...]

[...] That follows an 99-earlier $100 million campaign warning 100-young people to “Think. Don't Smoke”, analogous to the 101-“just say admonitions against drugs. ( ) In practice, these 102-industry-run campaigns are 103- ineffective. ( ) 104-The greater the 105-teenagers' potential exposure to the ads, 104-the stronger their intention to smoke and 104-the greater their likelihood of having smoked in the 106-past thirty days. ( ) But the company has done only 107-the skimpiest research on how the campaign is working. Philip Morris, 108-the industry's biggest and most influential company, is renowned for its 109-marketing savvy. [...]

[...] Indeed, a “council a “public place”, a “public health measure”, “television spots”, “wood-smoke” or “bakery-oven” can be considered as compounds, since those expressions are commonly used and the two nouns often work together to infer a global meaning that is fundamentally different from the meaning of the head noun: it is more specific. A “bakery-oven”, for instance, is an oven used to bake bread, and it is used only in bakeries. Note the use of the hyphen between the two nouns, emphasizing this idea of compoundity. Apart from compound nouns, you also find in the database a few compound adjectives, as in examples or 159 for instance. Notice the hyphens liking the two parts of the adjectives. The examples 38 and 120 are perfect examples of typical English compound adjectives. [...]

[...] new era of hope” is a construction made of an article, an adjective, a head noun and a prepositional phrase. It is part of a larger construction, the beginning of a new era of where the subject of study here is a prepositional phrase modifying the head noun “beginning”. The attributive adjective conveys the idea of a series of eras, and a contrast between the tragic events which took place in the past and the current spark of expectation. hope” qualifies the era. [...]