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Between being wise and acting wise: A hidden conditional in some constructions with propensity adjectives1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 June 2009

DAVID Y. OSHIMA
DAVID Y. OSHIMA*
Affiliation:
Ibaraki University
*
Author's address: International Student Center, Ibaraki University, 2-1-1 Bunkyo, Mito, Japan310-8512[email protected]
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Abstract

This paper develops a semantic analysis of three constructions: (i) the subject-oriented adverb construction (Wisely, John left early), (ii) the ‘Adj+to Inf’ construction (John was wise to leave early), and (iii) the ‘Adj+of NP’ construction (It was wise of John to leave early), which all involve three semantic components: (i) an individual a (John), (ii) a property P1 that describes a mental/behavioral propensity (wise), and (iii) another property P2 which typically describes an action (leave early). I argue that the three constructions share a meaning along the lines of ‘P2(a), and from this it is possible to infer that P1(a)’, where P1 is forced to receive the transitory interpretation, but they differ as to which component they assert/presuppose. I further demonstrate that this analysis allows us to solve two well-known semantic puzzles concerning these constructions (the ‘entailment puzzle’ and the ‘embeddability puzzle’). The three constructions are highly amenable to the Construction Grammar approach, because their meaning cannot be derived from the intuitive meanings of their constituents and regular semantic rules only. I provide formal analyses of the three constructions in the framework of Sign-Based Construction Grammar (SBCG).

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 45 , Issue 2 , July 2009 , pp. 363 - 393
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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Footnotes

[1[

This article expands on and supersedes Oshima (2008). I am grateful to the four anonymous referees of Journal of Linguistics, whose comments and suggestions helped me correct flaws in previous versions of this paper. Thanks also to the editor Robert Borsley for helpful comments.

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