Academic Paper |
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| Title: | Beers, Kaffi, and Schnaps: Different Grammatical Options for Restaurant Talk Coercions in Three Germanic Languages |
| Author: | Heike Wiese |
| Homepage: | http://www.uni-potsdam.de/germanistik/fachgebiete/dspdg/pers/wiese.html |
| Institution: | Universität Potsdam |
| Author: | Joan Maling |
| Email: | click here to access email |
| Homepage: | http://www.brandeis.edu/facguide/person.html?emplid=7071fdd35b3e032323445b80c64c973b942c72b8 |
| Institution: | National Science Foundation |
| Linguistic Field: | Applied Linguistics |
| Subject Language: |
English
Icelandic German |
| Abstract: | This paper discusses constructions such as We'll have two beers and a coffee that are typically used for beverage orders in restaurant contexts. We compare the behavior of nouns in these constructions in three Germanic languages, English, Icelandic, and German, and take a closer look at the correlation of the morphosyntactic and semantic-conceptual changes involved. We show that even within such a restricted linguistic sample in closely related languages one finds three different grammatical options for the expression of the same conceptual transition. Our findings suggest an analysis of coercion as a genuinely semantic phenomenon, located on a level of semantic representations that serves as an interface between the conceptual and the grammatical systems and takes into account inter- and intralinguistic variations. |
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This article appears in Journal of Germanic Linguistics Vol. 17, Issue 1, which you can read on Cambridge's site or on LINGUIST . |
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