Iconicity in grammatical variation
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.36505/ExLing-2019/10/0024/000386Keywords:
prepositional phrases, synonymy, questionnaire-based survey, iconicityAbstract
This study examines the form-function relation of prepositional phrases, taking up the use of of interest as a sample case. It is well known that prepositional phrases such as this function like adjectives. By conducting a questionnaire-based survey, we investigated two predictions: (i) whether a formal or real subject filled the Subject slot in a sentence, and (ii) whether the expressions co-occurred with modal verbs. The results of the analysis demonstrate that both variables and their combination have evident effects on the choice between the two alternatives, and these can be interpreted in terms of the iconic principle. The results of this analysis contribute to ongoing discussions about iconicity theory and its applications to related fields.
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