What is it about?
This research explores how we use simple mental building blocks called “scenarios” to understand complex language. We propose three types of scenarios: descriptive (facts and events), attitudinal (feelings and opinions), and regulatory (rules and norms). When we speak, we don’t just state facts; we “exploit” these scenarios using a mental shortcut called metonymy (using a part to stand for the whole). This process allows listeners to infer much more than what is literally said. For example, in the ironic remark, “Oh, great job!” after a failure, the speaker is exploiting an attitudinal scenario of praise to metonymically point to its opposite: disapproval. The paper uses the famous “What’s X Doing Y?” construction (e.g., “What’s he doing reading my mail?”) as a detailed case study to show how every grammatical feature of the sentence is systematically motivated by the logic of the underlying attitudinal scenario questioning the appropriateness of an action.
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Why is it important?
This work is important because it provides the first cognitive-pragmatic motivation for Charles Fillmore and Paul Kay’s well-known analysis of the “What’s X Doing Y?” construction. It demonstrates that seemingly arbitrary grammatical rules (like why you can’t say “What else is he doing…?” in this construction) are not arbitrary at all; they are direct consequences of the specific cognitive scenario (a speaker’s attitude of challenge or puzzlement) that the construction is built to express. By systematically linking grammatical form to entrenched meaning implications derived from metonymic operations on scenarios, this research offers a powerful, unified explanation for how pragmatics (implied meaning) becomes crystallized in grammar. It bridges a significant gap between abstract cognitive models and the concrete, formal properties of language.
Perspectives
This paper holds a special place in my work as it is, to my knowledge, the first to successfully ground Fillmore and Kay’s influential formal analysis of the “What’s X Doing Y?” construction in a robust cognitive-pragmatic framework. It was intellectually satisfying to demonstrate that every single formal constraint of the construction –from the use of the verb “be” to the prohibition of the modifier “else”– naturally emerges from the logic of a single, underlying attitudinal scenario. This work strongly reinforces my conviction that grammar is not an arbitrary set of rules but is profoundly motivated by the intrinsic logic of our conceptual structures. When a particular way of thinking (like expressing a challenging attitude) is used frequently enough, its conceptual profile shapes the grammar itself, creating a stable pairing of form and meaning. This exemplifies the deep, systematic connection between how we think and how we speak.
Professor Francisco J. Ruiz de Mendoza
University of La Rioja
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The metonymic exploitation of descriptive, attitudinal, and
regulatory scenarios in meaning making, July 2020, John Benjamins,
DOI: 10.1075/ftl.9.12rui.
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