Belgian Journal of Linguistics 

About: Belgian Journal of Linguistics is an academic journal published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Construction grammar & Verb. It has an ISSN identifier of 0774-5141. Over the lifetime, 325 publications have been published receiving 2930 citations.

What is political discourse analysis

Abstract: L'A. se propose de definir ce que l'on entend par discours politique et montre comment il peut etre etudie d'une maniere critique. Selon lui, une telle analyse ne doit pas simplement etre une contribution aux etudes discursives, mais aussi aux sciences politiques et aux sciences sociales en general. Ainsi, le discours politique est essentiellement defini contextuellement, c-a-d en termes de pratiques ou d'evenements particuliers dont le but et la fonction ne sont peut-etre pas exclusivement, mais au moins initialement, politiques. D'un point de vue analytique, cette definition contextuelle suggere que l'etude du discours politique ne doit pas se limiter aux proprietes structurales du texte ou du discours, mais doit aussi inclure une prise en consideration systematique du contexte politique, du processus politique et du systeme politique et de leurs relations aux structures discursives

A question of commitment

Abstract: This paper addresses certain restrictions on the use of declaratives as questions in English. Declaratives are taken to express commitment by the speaker, even in a questioning use. The analysis traces the restrictions to two distinct contextual factors: (i) a general principle requiring that a commitment have a recognized source, i.e., a discourse agent who plausibly has independent evidence supporting the content committed to; (ii) specific to a questioning interpretation, the need for the context to support the inference that the speaker’s commitment depends upon the addressee’s anticipated confirmation. Rising intonation contributes a very general element of meaning, indicating that the utterance it marks is contingent upon some discourse condition obtaining; the specific conditions required for a questioning interpretation instantiate one such type of contingency. The proposals are modeled via elaboration of standard contextual structures in a possible-worlds framework.

Quotation in Context

Abstract: It appears that in mixed quotations like the following, the quoted expression is used and mentioned at the same time:George says Tony is his ‘bestest friend’.Most theories seek to account for this observation by assuming that mixed quotations operate at two levels of content at once. In contradistinction to such two-dimensional theories, we propose that quotation involves just a single level of content. Quotation always produces a change in meaning of the quoted expression, and if the quotation is mixed the shift is, to a first approximation at least, from α to ‘what x calls ‘α’’, where x is a variable whose value is determined by the context. We argue that quotation is generally context dependent in various ways, and that some of these ways are presuppositional in nature; we present a detailed analysis of the presuppositions in question.

The syntax-lexicon continuum in Construction Grammar: A case study of English communication verbs

Abstract: This paper offers an alternative analysis of Goldberg’s (1995) account of communication verbs appearing in the ditransitive construction. Based on a more finely-grained frame-semantic analysis of constructional phenomena, it is shown that generalizations over specific syntactic frames are possible at different levels of semantic abstraction. This, in turn, allows us to make across-the-board generalizations that hold not only between lexical units evoking the same frame, but also between lexical units belonging to different frames at different levels of abstraction. The resulting network of constructions combines Goldberg’s proposals regarding the status of abstract-schematic constructions with item-specific knowledge regarding the specific lexical units, with various midpoints in between. This approach has the advantage that there is no need for fusing lexical entries with abstract meaningful constructions, thereby avoiding some of the problems that arise due to the separation of syntax and the lexicon in some constructional approaches.

Rethinking English 'prepositions of movement' : The case of 'to' and 'through'

Abstract: In this paper, we argue against the view that prepositions designate motion. We make the case for prepositions such as to and through being associated with spatial properties in addition to a functional element. The functional element arises as a consequence of our daily interaction with the spatial configuration associated with the particular preposition. While to is associated with a spatial configuration in which a TR is oriented in the direction of a LM, its functional element is that of the LM constituting the TR’s goal. Due to the integration of spatial and functional elements with sentential context, particularly motion verbs, a movement reading is derived. Previous scholars have assumed this is due to the preposition itself. With regard to through, its semantics are associated with a spatial configuration involving contiguous locations from one side of a bounded LM to the other. The functional element is that of path, which, while correlating with motion, is distinct from it. The notion of motion which often arises in sentences involving through is due to the integration of the spatial and functional character of through with other sentential prompts for movement such as motion verbs. In essence, we argue for carefully articulating the nature of conventional content associated with prepositions, including both spatio-geometric and functional content, and for teasing apart distinct and distinguishable (albeit related) concepts such as orientation, path, trajectory, goal, and motion.