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1.3.Meaning
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Apartfrombluntobservationsthatthedistinctionismisguided,awide-
lyadoptedsolutionhasbeentoapproachitasacontinuum,aview
proposedbyLangacker(1987;2008),GentnerandBoroditsky(2001)or
EvansandGreen(2006).AsLangackerputsit:
Thereisnomeaningfuldistinctionbetweengrammarandlexicon.
Lexicon,morphology,andsyntaxformacontinuumofsymbolicstru‑
ctures,whichdiferalongvariousparametersbutcanbedividedinto
separatecomponentsonlyarbitrarily.(1987,3)
1.3.Meaning
Thismayseemlikeareasonablemove,accountingforthefuzzinessof
theboundary,butitdoesnotreallydoitjusticeinpractice.Proposalsby
manyscholarstopreservethedistinctioningradientformaremerely
verbaldeclarations,andinrealitythecontinuumcompromiseprovides
ajustificationtoignorethedistinctionaltogether,thethinkingbeing
thatsincealllanguageformsaresymbolicinnature(Langacker,2008),
thenclosed-classformsmayhaveanykindofmeaning.Thisiseither
animplicitassumptioninmanyconstructionistanalysesofsyntactic
paternsorisanopenassertion,asinKayandMichaelis(2012,p.2278),
whoproposethatH[p]robablyanykindofmeaningthatoccurscanbe
thesemanticcontributionofaconstruction.”Similarly,Wierzbicka(2006)
claimsthatthereexistH[l]inksbetweencultureandgrammar”andthat
Hgrammaticalcategoriesofalanguagealsoencodemeaning”(p.171),
whichshedemonstratesbymeansofmanyitems,amongwhichanHex‑
tremelyrichandelaboratesystemofexpressivederivationapplicableto
propernames(specifically,namesofpersons)”(p.171)(tobediscussed
belowhere).Totakeanotherexample,inastudyoffutureconstructions,
Hilpert(2008)signalsthattheyHareviewedaslinguisticformsthatare
endowedwithrichmeaningsthatinclude,butmaywellgobeyond,fu‑
turetimereference”(p.1).
Whatisstrikingabouttheaboveviewsisthattheyseemtoreston
theassumptionthatconstructionslocatedtowardtheclosed-classend
ofthecontinuumhavemeaningswhosedegreeofspecificitymayin
principlebecomparabletowhatisobservedinopen-classforms.This
extremeclaimisendorsedbyGoldberg(2006)whopointsoutthatthe
concernwithmeaningsofconstructionsisahallmarkofconstructionist
approaches:
