Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-5xszh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T17:26:43.636Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

A constructional taxonomy of I think and related expressions: accounting for the variability of complement-taking mental predicates1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 2010

JULIE VAN BOGAERT*
Affiliation:
English Department, Ghent University, Rozier 44, 9000 Ghent, BelgiumJulie.VanBogaert@UGent.be

Abstract

This article offers a constructional approach to complement-taking mental predicates (CTMPs), e.g. I think, accommodating a whole class of CTMP types (i think, i suppose, i imagine etc.) and their variant forms (e.g. I would think, I should have imagined) in a constructional taxonomy. CTMPs are generally believed to depend on their prototypical simple present form in order to convey an epistemic/evidential meaning. Corpus evidence shows, however, that there exist several variant forms that equally function as interpersonal modifications. Such variation has long presented a stumbling block to studies approaching CTMPs from the point of view of grammaticalization theory, since this framework has traditionally been rather inimical to the idea that a grammaticalized item may encompass a paradigm of variant forms and instead requires internal fixation into an unalterable form. It will be argued that CTMPs should be regarded as constructions constituting a taxonomy characterized by several levels of schematicity. It will be demonstrated that the most frequently used CTMP, i think, has reached the highest degree of entrenchment and schematicity, and consequently sanctions the widest range of variant forms, which are disseminated throughout the taxonomy by virtue of analogization.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aijmer, Karin. 1972. Some aspects of psychological predicates in English (Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis/Stockholm Studies in English 24). Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell.Google Scholar
Aijmer, Karin. 1997. I think – an English modal particle. In Swan, Toril & Westwik, Olaf Jansen (eds.), Modality in Germanic languages: Historical and comparative perspectives, 147. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Aijmer, Karin. 2009. Seem and evidentiality. Functions of Language 68, 6388.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ariel, Mira. 2008. Pragmatics and grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barlow, Michael & Kemmer, Suzanne. 2000. Introduction: A usage-based conception of language. In Barlow, Michael & Kemmer, Suzanne (eds.), Usage-based models of language, vii–xxviii. Stanford: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Biber, Douglas, Johansson, Stig, Leech, Geoffrey, Conrad, Susan & Finegan, Edward. 1999. Longman grammar of spoken and written English. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Boye, Kasper & Harder, Peter. 2007. Complement-taking predicates: Usage and linguistic structure. Studies in Language 31, 569606.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brems, Lieselotte. 2007. The grammaticalization of small size nouns: Reconsidering frequency and analogy. Journal of English Linguistics 35, 293325.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brems, Lieselotte, Davidse, Kristin & De Smet, Liesbeth. 2008. Type noun uses in the English NP: A case of right to left layering. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 13, 139–68.Google Scholar
Brinton, Laurel J. 1996. Pragmatic markers in English: Grammaticalization and discourse functions. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brinton, Laurel J. 2008. The comment clause in English: Syntactic origins and pragmatic development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bublitz, Wolfram. 1992. Transferred negation and modality. Journal of Pragmatics 18, 551–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Butler, Christopher S. & Taverniers, Miriam. 2008. Layering in structural-functional grammars. Linguistics 46, 689756.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bybee, Joan L. 2003. Mechanisms of change in grammaticalization: The role of frequency. In Joseph, Brian D. & Janda, Richard D. (eds.), The handbook of historical linguistics, 602–23. Oxford: Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bybee, Joan L. 2006. From usage to grammar: The mind's response to repetition. Language 82, 711–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bybee, Joan L. & Hopper, Paul J. (eds.). 2001. Frequency and the emergence of linguistic structure. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bybee, Joan L. & Pagliuca, William. 1987. The evolution of future meaning. In Ramat, Anna Giacalone, Carruba, Onofrio & Bernini, Giuliano (eds.), Papers from the 7th International Conference on Historical Linguistics (ICHL), 109–22. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bybee, Joan L., Perkins, Revere & Pagliuca, William. 1994. The evolution of grammar: Tense, aspect and modality in the languages of the world. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan L. & Thompson, Sandra A. 1997. Three frequency effects in syntax. Berkeley Linguistics Society 23, 378–88.Google Scholar
Croft, William. 2001. Radical Construction Grammar: Syntactic theory in typological perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Croft, William 2005. Logical and typological arguments for Radical Construction Grammar. In Östman, Jan-Ola & Fried, Mirjam (eds.), Construction grammars: Cognitive grounding and theoretical extensions, 273314. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Croft, William & Cruse, D. Alan. 2004. Cognitive linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davies, Mark. 2008–. The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA): 400+ million words, 1990-present. Available online at www.americancorpus.org.Google Scholar
Dehé, Nicole. 2009. Clausal parentheticals, intonation phrasing and prosodic theory. Journal of Linguistics 45, 569615.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dehé, Nicole & Kavalova, Yordanka. 2007. Parentheticals: An introduction. In Dehé, Nicole & Kavalova, Yordanka (eds.), Parentheticals, 1–22. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Diessel, Holger & Tomasello, Michael. 2001. The acquisition of finite complement clauses in English: A corpus-based analysis. Cognitive Linguistics 12, 97141.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fillmore, Charles. 1963. The position of embedding transformations in a grammar. Word 19, 208–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fischer, Olga. 2007. The development of English parentheticals: A case of grammaticalization? In Smit, Stefan Dollinger, Hüttner, Julia, Kaltenböck, Gunther & Lutzky, Ursula (eds.), Tracing English through time: Explorations in language variation, 99114. Vienna: Braumüller.Google Scholar
Givón, Talmy. 1991. The evolution of dependent clause morpho-syntax in Biblical Hebrew. In Traugott, Elizabeth Closs & Heine, Bernd (eds.), Approaches to grammaticalization, vol. 2 (Typological Studies in Language 19), 257310. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Givón, Talmy. 1993. English grammar: A function-based introduction, vol. 2. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Goldberg, Adele. 1995. Constructions: A construction grammar account of argument structure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Goldberg, Adele. 2006. Constructions at work: The nature of generalization in language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Haiman, John. 1994. Ritualization and the development of language. In Pagliuca, William (ed.), Perspectives of grammaticalization, 328. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Halliday, M. A. K. 1994 [1985]. An introduction to functional grammar, 2nd edn.London: Arnold.Google Scholar
Heine, Bernd, Claudi, Ulrike & Hünnemeyer, Friederike. 1991. Grammaticalization: A conceptual framework. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Heller, Brooke & Howe, Chad. 2008. Raising parentheticals as discourse particles. Presented at New Reflections on Grammaticalization 4, Leuven.Google Scholar
Hooper, Joan B. 1975. On assertive predicates. In Kimball, John P. (ed.), Syntax and semantics, vol. 4, 91124. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Hopper, Paul J. 1987. Emergent grammar. Berkeley Linguistics Society 13, 139–57.Google Scholar
Hopper, Paul J. 1988. Emergent grammar and the a priori grammar postulate. In Tannen, Deborah (ed.), Linguistics in context: Connecting observation and understanding, 117–36. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.Google Scholar
Hopper, Paul J. 1991. On some principles of grammaticalization. In Traugott, Elizabeth Closs & Heine, Bernd (eds.), Approaches to grammaticalization, vol. 1, 1735. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hopper, Paul J. & Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. 2003. Grammaticalization, 2nd edn.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ifantidou, Elly. 2001. Evidentials and relevance. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaltenböck, Gunther. 2005. Charting the boundaries of syntax: A taxonomy of spoken parenthetical clauses. Vienna English Working Papers 14, 2153.Google Scholar
Kaltenböck, Gunther. 2006. ‘. . . That is the question’: Complementizer omission in extraposed that-clauses. English Language and Linguistics 10, 371–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaltenböck, Gunther. 2007a. Position, prosody and scope: The case of English comment clauses. Vienna English Working Papers 16 (1), 338.Google Scholar
Kaltenböck, Gunther. 2007b. Spoken parenthetical clauses in English: A taxonomy. In Dehé, Nicole & Kavalova, Yordanka (eds.), Parentheticals. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Kärkkäinen, Elise. 2003. Epistemic stance in English conversation: A description of its interactional functions, with a focus on I think. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kärkkäinen, Elise. 2007. The role of I guess in conversational stance taking. In Englebretson, Robert (ed.), Stancetaking in discourse: Subjectivity, evaluation, interaction, 183219. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kärkkäinen, Elise. 2009. I thought it was pretty neat: Social action formats for taking a stance. In Slembrouck, Stef, Van Herreweghe, Mieke & Taverniers, Miriam (eds.), From will to well: Studies in linguistics offered to Anne-Marie Simon-Vandenbergen, 293304. Ghent: Academia Press.Google Scholar
Kearns, Kate. 2007. Epistemic verbs and zero complementizer. English Language and Linguistics 11, 475505.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kiefer, Ferenc. 1998. Modality. In Verschueren, Jef, Östman, Jan-Ola, Blommaert, Jan & Bulcaen, Chris (eds.), Handbook of pragmatics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Kimball, John P. 1972. Cyclic and linear grammars. In Kimball, John P. (ed.), Syntax and semantics, vol. 1, 6380. New York: Seminar Press.Google Scholar
Krug, Manfred G. 2000. Emerging English modals: A corpus-based study of grammaticalization (Topics in English Linguistics 32). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lakoff, George. 1970 [1965]. Irregularity in syntax. New York: Holt.Google Scholar
Lakoff, Robin. 1969. A syntactic argument for negative transportation. Chicago Linguistic Society 5, 140–7.Google Scholar
Langacker, Ronald W. 1987. Foundations of cognitive grammar, vol. 1: Theoretical prerequisites. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Langacker, Ronald W. 1991. Foundations of cognitive grammar, vol. 2: Descriptive application. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Langacker, Ronald W. 2000. Grammar and conceptualization (Cognitive Linguistics Research, 14). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Lehmann, Christian. 1985. Grammaticalization: Synchronic variation and diachronic change. Lingua e Stile 20, 303–18.Google Scholar
Lindholm, James M. 1969. Negative-raising and sentence pronominalization. Chicago Linguistic Society 5, 148–58.Google Scholar
Mindt, Ilka. 2003. Is I think a discourse marker? In Mengel, Ewald, Schmidt, Hans-Jörg & Steppat, Michael (eds.), Proceedings of the Conference of the German Association of University Teachers of English 24, 473–83. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag.Google Scholar
Nuyts, Jan. 1993. Epistemic modal adverbs and adjectives and the layered representation of conceptual and linguistic structure. Linguistics 31, 933–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Östman, Jan-Ola & Fried, Mirjam (eds.). 2005. Construction grammars: Cognitive grounding and theoretical extensions. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oxford English dictionary. www.oed.com.Google Scholar
Palander-Collin, Minna. 1999. Grammaticalization and social embedding: I THINK and METHINKS in Middle and Early Modern English (Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique de Helsinki 55). Helsinki: Tome LV.Google Scholar
Quirk, Randolph, Greenbaum, Sidney, Leech, Geoffrey & Svartvik, Jan. 1985. A comprehensive grammar of the English language. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Rühlemann, Christoph. 2007. Conversation in context: A corpus-driven approach. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Scheibman, Joanne. 2001. Local patterns of subjectivity in person and verb type in American English conversation. In Bybee, Joan L. & Hopper, Paul J. (eds.), Frequency and the emergence of linguistic structure, 6189. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scheibman, Joanne. 2002. Point of view and grammar: Structural patterns of subjectivity in American English conversation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schneider, Stefan. 2007. Reduced parenthetical clauses as mitigators: A corpus study of spoken French, Italian and Spanish. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schönefeld, Doris. 2006. Constructions. Constructions Special Volume 1, www.constructions-online.de (10 June 2009).Google Scholar
Simon-Vandenbergen, Anne-Marie. 2000. The functions of I think in political discourse. Journal of Applied Linguistics 10, 4163.Google Scholar
Stubbs, Michael. 1986. A matter of prolonged fieldwork: Notes towards a modal grammar of English. Applied Linguistics 7, 125.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sweetser, Eve E. 1988. Grammaticalization and semantic bleaching. Berkeley Linguistics Society 14, 389405.Google Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali & Smith, Jennifer. 2005. No momentary fancy! The zero ‘complementizer’ in English dialects. English Language and Linguistics 9, 289309.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taverniers, Miriam. To appear. Interpersonal grammatical metaphor as double scoping and double grounding. Word.Google Scholar
Thompson, Sandra A. 2002. ‘Object complements’ and conversation: Towards a realistic account. Studies in Language 26, 125–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thompson, Sandra A. & Mulac, Anthony. 1991. A quantitative perspective on the grammaticalization of epistemic parentheticals in English. In Traugott, Elizabeth Closs & Heine, Bernd (eds.), Approaches to grammaticalization, vol. 2, 313–39. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Torres Cacoullos, Rena & Walker, James A.. 2009. On the persistence of grammar in discourse formulas: A variationist study of that. Linguistics 47, 143.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. 1982. From propositional to textual and expressive meanings: Some semantic-pragmatic aspects of grammaticalization. In Lehmann, Winfred P. & Malkiel, Yakov (eds.), Perspectives on historical linguistics, 245–71. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. 1988. Pragmatic strengthening and grammaticalization. Berkeley Linguistics Society 14, 406–16.Google Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. 1995a. The role of the development of discourse markers in a theory of grammaticalization. Presented at the International Conference on Historical Linguistics (ICHL) XII, Manchester.Google Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. 1995b. Subjectification in grammaticalization. In Stein, Dieter & Wright, Susan (eds.), Subjectivity and subjectivisation: Linguistic perspectives, 3154. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. 2005. From ideational to interpersonal: A reassessment. Presented at the FITIGRA Conference: From Ideational to Interpersonal: Perspectives from Grammaticalization, Leuven.Google Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. 2007. The concepts of constructional mismatch and type-shifting from the perspective of grammaticalization. Cognitive Linguistics 18, 523–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. 2008a. The grammaticalization of NP of NP constructions. In Bergs, Alexander & Diewald, Gabriele (eds.), Constructions and language change, 2346. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. 2008b. Grammaticalization, constructions and the incremental development of language: Suggestions from the development of degree modifiers in English. In Eckhardt, Regine, Jäger, Gerhard & Veenstra, Tonjes (eds.), Variation, selection, development: Probing the evolutionary model of language change, 219–50. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs & Ekkehard König. 1991. The semantics-pragmatics of grammaticalization revisited. In Traugott, Elizabeth Closs & Heine, Bernd (eds.), Approaches to grammaticalization, vol. 1, 189218. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs & Trousdale, Graeme. 2010. Gradience, gradualness and grammaticalization: How do they intersect? In Traugott, Elizabeth Closs & Trousdale, Graeme (eds.), Gradience, gradualness and grammaticalization, 1944. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trousdale, Graeme. 2008a. Constructions in grammaticalization and lexicalization: Evidence from the history of a composite predicate construction in English. In Trousdale, Graeme & Gisborne, Nikolas (eds.), Constructional approaches to English grammar, 3367. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trousdale, Graeme. 2008b. Grammaticalization, constructions and the grammaticalization of constructions. Presented at New Reflections on Grammaticalization 4, Leuven.Google Scholar
Trousdale, Graeme. 2008c. Words and constructions in grammaticalization: The end of the English impersonal construction. In Minkova, Donka & Fitzmaurice, Susan (eds.), Studies in the history of the English language IV: Empirical and analytical advances in the study of English language change, 301–26. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trousdale, Graeme. 2009. Degrammaticalization and Construction Grammar. Presented at Current Trends in Grammaticalization Research, Groningen.Google Scholar
Urmson, James O. 1952. Parenthetical verbs. Mind 61, 480–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Bogaert, Julie. 2006. I guess, I suppose and I believe as pragmatic markers: Grammaticalization and functions. Belgian Journal of English Language and Literatures (New Series) 4, 129–49.Google Scholar
Van Bogaert, Julie. To appear. I think and other complement-taking mental predicates: A case of and for constructional grammaticalization. Special issue of Linguistics.Google Scholar
Vandelanotte, Lieven. 2004. Dependency, framing, scope? The syntagmatic structure of sentences of speech or thought representation. Preprints of the Department of Linguistics 211. Department of Linguistics, University of Leuven.Google Scholar
Vandelanotte, Lieven. 2006. Speech or thought representation and subjectification, or on the need to think twice. Belgian Journal of Linguistics 20, 137–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vandelanotte, Lieven. To appear. Dependency, framing, scope? The syntagmatic structure of sentences of speech and thought representation. Word.Google Scholar
Verhagen, Arie. 2001. Subordination and discourse segmentation revisited, or: Why matrix clauses may be more dependent than complements. In Sanders, Ted, Schilperoord, Joost & Spooren, Wilbert (eds.), Text representation: Linguistic and psychological aspects, 337–57. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Verstraete, Jean-Christophe. 2001. Subjective and objective modality: Interpersonal and ideational functions in the English modal auxiliary system. Journal of Pragmatics 33, 1505–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wierzbicka, Anna. 2006. English: Meaning and culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar