Explain Me This

Creativity, Competition, and the Partial Productivity of Constructions

af Adele E. Goldberg

Our use of language is highly creative yet also constrained, we use words and phrases creatively to express ourselves in ever-changing contexts, readily extending language constructions in new ways. Yet native speakers also implicitly know when a creative and easily interpretable formulation-such as "Explain me this" or "She considered to go"-doesn't sound quite right. In this incisive book, Adele Goldberg explores how these creative but constrained language skills emerge from a combination of g... (Læs mere)