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

VL - 1

SP - 126

EP - 151

JO - Globe: A Journal of Language, Culture and Communication

JF - Globe: A Journal of Language, Culture and Communication

SN - 2246-8838

ER -