Recoding and reorganizing grammatical form by meaning: the English genitive as an example

Abstract

The consideration of grammar in this article assumes that both meaning and form are central. However, in receiving language acoustic form is the initial cue, while in production meaning is the initial cue resulting in articulated forms. Beyond this, it is assumed that receptive and productive knowledges are organized differently and the processes activating the knowledges distinct. The novelty here is the argument that receptive knowledge, which is generally acoustically cued by form, has to be RECODED for semantic cueing for production. It also has to be REORGANIZED. To clarify the argument, an extended example is given of the semantic area covering possessive, part-whole and social/professional relationships and realized by the frames [NP'sN], [N of NP] and [N of NP's], as in Julia's bike, the tower of the cathedral and a friend of Laura's. The example demonstrates how recoding/ reorganizing works in practice. The consequence for assimilation is that language learners, unless they expect to express meanings productively in the future, are unlikely to recode input and existing form-based intake for semantic cueing, let alone reorganize it. Finally, the article ends with a discussion of some of the pedagogical consequences of recoding/reorganizing.