Testing the Principle of No Synonymy across levels of abstraction: A constructional account of subject extraposition
(2020) Linguistic Society of America — Location: New Orleans (2.January.2020)
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Larsson, Tove 
- Abstract
- One of the central tenets of Construction Grammar (CxG) in the Goldbergian sense is the Principle of No Synonymy which states that “if two constructions are syntactically distinct, they must be semantically or pragmatically distinct” (Goldberg 1995: 67). While this principle has been supported by studies showing semantic differences between syntactically distinct and seemingly synonymous constructions (e.g. dative alternation constructions), it does not tally with the commonly held generativist view that non-canonical structures are derived from more canonical ones. The exact definition of “syntactically distinct” has also been up for debate: strictly speaking, as pointed out by Uhrig (2015: 329), “even in Goldberg’s own work, there are syntactic differences that do not seem to lead to semantic differences”. However, as CxG is a framework that allows for description of constructions at different levels of granularity, this apparent paradox could potentially be resolved if we can assume that the Principle of No Synonymy only extends to certain levels of abstraction. The present paper aims to test this hypothesis by conducting a constructional study of subject extraposition (i.e. linguistic structures as in (1) and (2) that have two subjects: an anticipatory it and a clausal subject) (Quirk et al. 1985:1391ff). (1) It is interesting to note the exceptions to this rule. (2) It is clear that there must be development. These information packaging structures have been largely disregarded in CxG accounts (though see Mak, 2005, for an exception), despite the fact that studies using other frameworks have noted a correlation between its formal and functional representations (e.g. Herriman, 2000; Larsson, 2018). Our study adopts an empirical, large-scale corpus-based approach using data culled from the written registers of the British National Corpus. Each instance was annotated using one semantic and two syntactic classification schemes. Larsson’s (2017) functional classification (e.g. Hedge: it might be that…; Attitude marker: it is surprising that…) was used for the semantic analysis. The instances were subsequently categorized and described (i) at an intermediate level of abstraction, applying Quirk et al.’s (1985: 1392) syntactic typology (e.g. Subject-Verb-Complement: it is important that…) and (ii) at a lower-level of abstraction, using the Pattern Grammar framework (Hunston & Francis, 2000) to reflect the lower-level formal realization patterns (e.g. it V det n that: it is the case that…). Inferential statistics (e.g. log-linear generalized linear models) were used to test the correlation between form and function at both levels of abstraction. While there is no absolute one-to-one mapping between form and function, the results show that there is a clear and statistically significant correlation between form and function at both levels of abstraction. However, function is a better predictor of form at the intermediate level of abstraction than at the lower level, indicating that the Principle of No Synonymy holds best at the intermediate level. Against this background, we suggest that a weaker formulation of the principle, one that also allows for lower-level syntactic variation, better explains tendencies found in actual language use. References Herriman, J. (2000). Extraposition in English: A study of the interaction between the matrix predicate and the type of extraposed clause. English Studies, 81 (6), 582–599. Hunston, S., & Francis, G. (2000). Pattern grammar: A corpus-driven approach to the lexical grammar of English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Goldberg, A. E. (1995). Constructions: A construction grammar approach to argument structure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Larsson, T. (2018). Is there a correlation between form and function? A syntactic and functional investigation of the introductory it pattern in student writing. ICAME journal, 42 (1), 13–40. Larsson, T. (2017). A functional classification of the introductory it pattern: Investigating academic writing by non-native- speaker and native-speaker students. English for Specific Purposes, 48, 57–70. Mak, K. T. (2005). The dynamics of collocation: A corpus-based study of the phraseology and pragmatics of the introductory it-construction. Ph.D. Thesis, The University of Texas at Austin. Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G., & Svartvik, J. (1985). A comprehensive grammar of the English language. London: Longman. Uhrig, P. (2015). Why the Principle of No Synonymy is overrated. Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 63 (3), 323–337.
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Laporte, S., & Larsson, T. (2020). Testing the Principle of No Synonymy across levels of abstraction: A constructional account of subject extraposition. Linguistic Society of America, New Orleans. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/90496