This volume contributes to the now one-century old question, ‘Is the link between forms and meanings in language essentially arbitrary, as Saussure put it, or is it on the contrary also considerably motivated?’ The greater part of the papers (Sections 1–3) analyze linguistic phenomena in which not arbitrary, but cognitively motivated links between form and meaning play a role. As such, the contributions in Section 1 examine selected aspects of motivation in the continuum between lexicon and grammar; the contributions in Section 2 study the factors underlying the range of (semantic) variants that attach to a particular lexical item; and papers in Section 3 look at motivating factors in linguistic items situated in and conceptualizing the socio-cultural domain. A smaller set of papers in Section 4 point to the role which learner motivation and attitudinal motivation may play in applied linguistics domains.

Table of contents

Editors' foreword vii Acknowledgments viv In search of conceptual structure: Five milestones in the work of Günter Radden René Dirven xiii Section 1: Motivation in lexico-grammar Extreme subjectification: English tense and modals Ronald W. Langacker 3–26 Meaning and context John R. Taylor 27–48 Lexical rules vs. constructions: A false dichotomy William A. Croft 49–68 Schemas and lexical blends Suzanne Kemmer 69–97 Valency and diathesis Heinz Vater 99–122 To get or to be? Use and acquisition of get- versus be-passives: Evidence from children and adults Kerstin Meints 123–150 Section 2: Motivation in the lexicon Space and time in Polish: The preposition za and the verbal prefix za- Elżbieta Tabakowska 153–177 Functions of the preposition kuom in Dholuo Mechthild Reh 179–201 Grammaticalization of postpositions in German Claudio di Meola 203–222 Metonymy in cognitive linguistics: An analysis and a few modest proposals Antonio Barcelona 223–255 Section 3: Motivation in socio-cultural conceptualizations How language is conceptualized and metaphorized in Japanese: An essay in language ideology Yoshihiko Ikegami 259–271 The ever-stifling essentialism: Language and conflict in Poland (1991–1993) Karol Janicki 273–295 Motion metaphorized in the economic domain Olaf Jäkel 297–318 Section 4: Motivation in applied linguistics English in the world and English in the school Willis Edmondson and Juliane House 321–345 Attitudes towards Luganda, Kiswahili, English, and mother tongue as media of instruction in Uganda Meike Sprenger-Tasch 347–366 Style labels in monolingual English learner’s dictionaries Wolfgang Hünig 367–389 Name Index 391–396 Subject Index 397–403