Morphosyntactic Alternations in English - Functional and Cognitive Perspectives - Pilar Guerrero Medina
6. Spontaneous and facilitative events revisited
Morphosyntactic Alternations in English - Functional and Cognitive Perspectives - Pilar Guerrero Medina
Juana L. Marín-Arrese
Universidad Complutense of Madrid
Description
Juana Marín-Arrese’s chapter deals with the codification of facilitative and spontaneous linguistic types in English and Spanish. The author revisits the characterizing features of inchoative and middle constructions from a cognitive linguistic perspective. Marín-Arrese argues for a non-derivational analysis of these constructions, based on the notions of construal and profiling. A “fuzzy middle area” is posited between the two constructions, which accounts for instances of “blends” and other nonprototypical constructions.