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Article published In: Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada/Spanish Journal of Applied Linguistics
Vol. 32:2 (2019) ► pp.573–589

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On the cognitive grounding of agent-deprofiling constructions as a case of pretense constructions

 | University of La Rioja
 | University of La Rioja
Published online: 5 November 2019
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/resla.17006.men
Abstract
Agent-deprofiling constructions have the function of drawing the language user’s attention to the non-agentive elements of a predication, while endowing one of these elements with agent-like qualities. Members of this family are the inchoative, middle, instrument-subject, location-subject, and cause-subject constructions. These constructions have been discussed in the literature, especially in projectionist accounts of language, without adequately accounting for their relatedness, which in our view can best be done by investigating their grounding in cognition. The present article addresses this issue by considering agent-deprofiling constructions as belonging to the class of what we term pretense constructions. Pretense constructions provide non-descriptive, or re-construed, representations of states, situations, or events. Because of their re-construed nature, which involves metaphor and/or metonymy, in these configurations there is no one-to-one match between the semantic and syntactic functions of their elements. We discuss how this reorganization of the semantic and syntactic function of constructional elements produces specific meaning implications that can be motivated by underlying metaphoric and metonymic shifts, sometimes working in cooperation.
Resumen
Las construcciones de desperfilación de agentes tienen la función de llamar la atención del usuario del lenguaje sobre los elementos no agentivos de una predicación, al tiempo que dotan a uno de estos elementos de cualidades similares a las de un agente. Son miembros de esta familia las construcciones incoativa, media, sujeto-instrumento, sujeto-locación y sujeto-causa. Estas construcciones han sido tratadas en los estudios sobre el tema, especialmente en enfoques proyeccionistas del lenguaje, sin tener en cuenta adecuadamente su interrelación, lo que en nuestra opinión se puede hacer mejor investigando su fundamentación en la cognición. El presente artículo aborda este problema al considerar las construcciones de desperfilación de agentes como pertenecientes a la clase de lo que llamamos construcciones de pretensión. Las construcciones de pretensión proporcionan representaciones no descriptivas – o re-interpretadas – de estados, situaciones o eventos. Debido a su naturaleza re-interpretada, que implica la actividad de metáforas y / o metonimias, en estas configuraciones no existe una relación de uno a uno entre las funciones semántica y sintáctica de sus elementos. Analizamos cómo esta reorganización de la función semántica y sintáctica de los elementos construccionales produce implicaciones de significado específicas que pueden ser motivadas por cambios metafóricos y metonímicos subyacentes, a veces trabajando en cooperación.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.What is not a pretense construction
  • 3.The inchoative and middle constructions
  • 4.The instrument-subject construction
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
References (43)
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[no author supplied]
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