The construal of the - ING constructions: prominence, profiling and subjectification

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to discuss the behavior of the -ING constructions based on Cognitive Grammar’s (Langacker, 1987, 1990, 1991, 2008) concepts of prominence, profiling, and subjectification. The -ING construction represents a very challenging issue for ESL teachers whose students are Spanish speakers. Such a challenge is due to the different functions the construction carries, i.e., verbal progressive, adverbial, adjectival, prepositional, and nominal and the tendency for students to conceive the construction in its most prototypical (Rosch, 1973) reading, i.e., the progressive. As for the theoretical framework, our research is mainly based on Langacker’s contribution, specifically on Cognitive Grammar’s concepts of prominence, profiling within a gradience of both radiality and subjectification, applied to the different construals (Talmy, 2000; Langacker, 2008) in which the -ING constructions exhibit different senses. In regard to methodology, we consider both quantitative and qualitative approaches (Cook & Reichardt, 1979; Richardson, 1985, Creswell, 2010) to data compiled from an English-Spanish parallel corpus (Berber-Sardinha, 2000; Tagnin, 2002), constituted by 2036 -ING data. Our main hypothesis is that there is a Radial Network (Brugman, 1981; Lakoff, 1987) in which the - ING constructions share a set of semantic properties by means of which they are anchored in discourse. The functions exhibited by the construction, i.e., verbal progressive, adverbial, adjectival, prepositional and nominal are organized with basis on a more concrete perspective, aligned with the narrative plot, having, then, a more objective construal, which is more anchored in the ground (Langacker, 1987, 1990, 1991, 2008), being the progressive aspect a more central characteristic of the construction. As for the other senses, we argue that the construal gradually becomes more (inter)subjective, i.e. less situated on the ground and more dependent on the speaker-hearer interaction (Langacker, 1990; Traugott; Dasher, 2005). Such a gradience, we argue, also relies on Image Schema (Johnson, 1987; Lakoff, 1987), whose idea of categorization is supported by our interaction with the outside world, thus schemas like center-periphery, linear order, and source-path-goal contribute with the conception of the -ING construction in its different senses, as they project notions of our human behavior in regard to the outside world. Research results suggest that there exists an alignment between the English and Spanish construals, represented by the convergence between the syntactical and semantical characteristics within the radial network that goes from the most prototypical function of the -ING construction (verbal progressive) up to the most peripheral one (nominal) of the original and translated version in the conceptualization of scenes.