Cognition Verbs Revisited from a Corpus-based Diachronic Perspective
(Embedded in A Corpus-based Valency Lexicon for a Contrastive and Diachronic Study of Ancient & Medieval Languages, ELIDEK, Research team: Prof. Nikolaos Lavidas (Principal Investigator), Prof. Kiki Nikiforidou & Prof. Anna Piata)
The versatile semantic class of cognition verbs including verbs like ‘think’ or ‘believe’ (Schiffer 1990; Jaszczolt 1999; Moltmann 2003) has been an inspiring point of departure in numerous respects for a robust body of both synchronic and diachronic research in different linguistic paradigms (cf. Gleitman 1990; Bertuccelli Papi 1998, 2000; Nuyts 2001; de Villiers 1995, 2005; Anand and Hacquard 2013). Zooming in on valency and, by extension, complementation considerations, the intended study is expected to contribute to and extend diachronic research into the said verbal class from a Construction-Grammar (CxG) and, in particular, Diachronic Construction Grammar (DCC) perspective. Readily integrating grammaticalisation and constructionalisation insights (see Traugott 2005, 2006; Traugott & Trousdale 2013), the canvassed study will focus on cognition verbs on the basis of extensive diachronic corpus-based investigation, with a view to ultimately offering a more nuanced and valency-informed understanding of the inner complexity of their semantics-pragmatics, their attested polysemy, and their observable polyfunctionality in the language. The study will thus be mainly concerned with tracing the developmental trajectories that specific members of the class have followed in English, and which have crucially informed their ‘synchronic identity’, notably including complementation practices. In so doing, it will cast light on the diachronically and by extension synchronically available valency and combinatorial patterns of the cognition verbs to be focused upon, examined – inter alia – against aspect, voice, or clause type (e.g., Imperative clauses) considerations which have been argued to trigger important meaning differences, and hence change (Brinton 2001, 2008). Genre and mode (i.e., written vs. spoken) considerations may also be shown to relate to the qualitative grid to be devised for annotation purposes. To address all the above, the study will adopt a corpus-based framework of analysis while its findings will be rigorously examined against qualitative and quantitative considerations. The ultimate aim will be for the findings to contribute to the development of a Valency Lexicon with specific entries for the cognition verbs that the study will call attention to, as part of the larger research endeavour in which it is embedded (i.e., A Corpus-based Valency Lexicon for a Contrastive and Diachronic Study of Ancient & Medieval Languages, ELIDEK). With respect to the qualitative considerations, the study will systematically engage in annotating diachronic linguistic evidence most likely through a combination of manual and automated tagging procedures. As regards quantitative considerations, the study will analyse the empirical distribution of its objects of study across different year spectra with due acknowledgement of the highly expected data and/or representative text sparseness (Lawson et al. 2021; Lavidas & Nikiforidou 2022). Methods to be employed in this direction will most likely entail bootstrapping and statistical classifier methods, as advocated in formal mathematical-statistical frameworks (Egbert and Plonsky 2021).
Keywords: diachronic study, cognition verbs, aspect, valency, argument structure
References
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