TY - JOUR
T1 - Inferring cultural models from corpus data
T2 - Force-dynamic cultural models reflected in the discursive behavior of a scalar adjectival construction
AU - Jensen, Kim Ebensgaard
PY - 2015/2/20
Y1 - 2015/2/20
N2 - One of the main tasks in cognitive anthropology is the reconstruction of cultural models, which are behavior-regulating schematic cognitive models that are intersubjectively shared in a community. Given their behavior-regulatory status, cognitive anthropologists and other cognitive scientists have developed methods of inferring cultural models from observed behavior – in particular observed verbal behavior (including both spoken and written language). While there are plenty of studies of the reflection of cultural models in artificially generated verbal behavior, not much research has been made into the possibility of inferring cultural models from naturally occurring verbal behavior as documented in language corpora. Even rarer are such corpus-based studies of the interaction between cultural models and constructions. Exploring the usability of corpus data and methodology in the observation of constructional discursive behavior, the present paper offers a covarying collexeme analysis of the [too ADJ to V]-construction in the Corpus of Contemporary American English. The purpose is to discover the extent to which its force-dynamic constructional semantics interacts with cultural models. We focus on three instantiations of the construction – namely, [too young to V], [too proud to V], and [too macho to V] – to see whether there are patterns in their ranges of coattracted verbs that are indicative of force-dynamic relations in cultural models of age, pride, and machismo respectively.
AB - One of the main tasks in cognitive anthropology is the reconstruction of cultural models, which are behavior-regulating schematic cognitive models that are intersubjectively shared in a community. Given their behavior-regulatory status, cognitive anthropologists and other cognitive scientists have developed methods of inferring cultural models from observed behavior – in particular observed verbal behavior (including both spoken and written language). While there are plenty of studies of the reflection of cultural models in artificially generated verbal behavior, not much research has been made into the possibility of inferring cultural models from naturally occurring verbal behavior as documented in language corpora. Even rarer are such corpus-based studies of the interaction between cultural models and constructions. Exploring the usability of corpus data and methodology in the observation of constructional discursive behavior, the present paper offers a covarying collexeme analysis of the [too ADJ to V]-construction in the Corpus of Contemporary American English. The purpose is to discover the extent to which its force-dynamic constructional semantics interacts with cultural models. We focus on three instantiations of the construction – namely, [too young to V], [too proud to V], and [too macho to V] – to see whether there are patterns in their ranges of coattracted verbs that are indicative of force-dynamic relations in cultural models of age, pride, and machismo respectively.
KW - Faculty of Humanities
KW - cognitive linguistics
KW - collostructional analysis
KW - covarying collexemes
KW - cultural models
KW - cognitive models
KW - corpus linguistics
KW - cultural conceptualization
KW - cultural cognition
KW - force dynamics
KW - cognitive semantics
KW - corpus methodology
KW - construction grammar
KW - scalar semantics
KW - English language
KW - American English
KW - Corpus of Contemporary American English
KW - age
KW - pride
KW - machismo
KW - cognitive anthropology
U2 - 10.5278/ojs.globe.v1i0.699
DO - 10.5278/ojs.globe.v1i0.699
M3 - Journal article
SN - 2246-8838
VL - 1
SP - 126
EP - 151
JO - Globe: A Journal of Language, Culture and Communication
JF - Globe: A Journal of Language, Culture and Communication
ER -