Frequency vs. iconicity in explaining grammatical asymmetries
Frequency vs. iconicity in explaining grammatical asymmetries
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DOI：
10.1515/cog.2008.001
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发表时间：
2008-01-01
影响因子：
1.7
通讯作者：
Haspelmath, Martin
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Haspelmath, Martin
本文认为，在象似性的大标题下，被广泛接受的三个激励因素，即数量象似、复杂性象似和衔接象似，实际上对解释语法不对称没有任何作用，应予以摒弃。雅各布森、海曼和吉文等权威人士提出了对相关现象的象似性解释，但我认为，这些语言学家没有充分考虑到其他基于使用频率的解释。仔细观察表明，众所周知的使用频率的Zipfian效应（导致缩短和融合）可以对所有所谓的象似性效应负责，并且一系列现象的初始语料库数据证实了该方法的正确性。
This paper argues that three widely accepted motivating factors subsumed under the broad heading of iconicity, namely iconicity of quantity, iconicity of complexity and iconicity of cohesion, in fact have no role in explaining grammatical asymmetries and should be discarded. The iconicity accounts of the relevant phenomena have been proposed by authorities like Jakobson, Haiman and Givon, but I argue that these linguists did not sufficiently consider alternative usage-based explanations in terms of frequency of use. A closer look shows that the well-known Zipfian effects of frequency of use (leading to shortness and fusion) can be made responsible for all of the alleged iconicity effects, and initial corpus data for a range of phenomena confirm the correctness of the approach.