Between Composition and Emergentness: A Cognitive Semantics Re-Reading of the Way-Construction

Abstract

This study re-analyzes the English way-construction by having recourse to diverse concepts and tools of Talmy’s cognitive semantics. Drawing on his theory of recombinance and its relevance for conceptualizing the construction, the article implements Talmy’s theory of event integration, categorizes the way-construction as an instantiation of the open path event frame, considers link-ups of the schematic systems of force dynamics and attention as they become instantiated in the construction, and probes into its motion-aspect patterning, grounded in a conformation of space and time and resulting in a strategy that is called de-conflation. Further, it will recruit Talmy’s types of semantic conflict resolution (shifts, blends, juxtaposition) to explain seemingly incompatible features of the construction. On a meta-theoretical plane, the article is to present evidence for the view that a cognitive semantics account may complement the many descriptive accounts of the way-construction by providing some missing cognitive foundations and motivation.