Productivity from a Metapragmatic Perspective: Measuring the Diachronic Coverage of the Low Level Lexico-Grammatical Construction Have the N (Body Part/Attitude) to ↔<Metapragmatic Comment> Using the COHA

Abstract

This paper seeks to address the relation between semantics, pragmatics and the productivity of a low level lexico-grammatical construction, Have the N (body part/attitude) to ↔metapragmatic comment. The question posed is how semantics affects productivity, in the generative sense of extensibility of a construction (a form meaning pairing). The method identifies the specificity and variations of the Have the N (body part/attitude) to ↔metapragmatic comment construction within the pragmeme of politeness using the COHA. Hereafter, we consider how to measure the extensibility within the onomasiological frame based on the available pool of forms expressing an attitude/emotion, i.e., the coverage or attractivity of the Have the N to construction. The paper discusses the findings, namely, how to overcome methodological issues relating to a qualitative rather than quantitative approach to the constructional architecture and the relative productivity of constructions. The experimental small scale corpus study of Have the N to in the COHA suggests that a global view of constructional architecture at multiple levels should be pertinent to identifying the extensibility potential of the construction.