What is it about?
This paper examines a family of grammatical constructions that work by “deprofiling” or backgrounding the Agent (the typical doer of an action) and instead putting a different element in the spotlight. Examples include sentences like “The boat sank” (inchoative: what happened to the boat?), “This book sells well” (middle: a property of the book), or “The key opened the door” (instrument-subject: the tool as the subject). Traditional grammatical accounts often treat these constructions as separate quirks. This paper argues they are all unified members of a larger class called “pretense constructions.” These constructions don’t describe events literally; they “pretend” or offer a reconstrued view where, for instance, a location or an instrument is treated as if it were an agent. This pretended viewpoint is created through cognitive operations like metaphor and metonymy, which systematically reshape the meaning and syntactic roles of the sentence elements.
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Why is it important?
This research is important because it provides a unified cognitive explanation for a diverse set of grammatical constructions that have previously been analyzed in isolation. By grouping them under the umbrella of “pretense constructions” and showing how they all rely on metaphoric and metonymic shifts to reorganize semantic roles, the paper reveals a deep systematicity in grammar that purely syntactic (“projectionist”) accounts miss. It demonstrates that grammar is not just about linking words to roles, but about actively construing events from different perspectives for specific communicative purposes. This cognitively-grounded approach offers a more motivated and explanatory account of why these constructions exist, how they are related, and what nuanced meanings (like highlighting properties or causes) they systematically convey.
Perspectives
Investigating these constructions felt like uncovering a hidden pattern in the grammar of perspective-taking. It was fascinating to see how consistently language uses the powerful tools of metaphor and metonymy not just in vocabulary, but in the very architecture of its basic sentence patterns. The concept of “pretense” proved to be a powerful key, unlocking the relatedness between constructions that, on the surface, seem quite distinct. This work strongly supports the view that grammar is profoundly motivated by our cognitive ability to view events from different angles and to “pretend” for rhetorical effect. It shows that even in the dry terrain of syntax, we find the fingerprints of a creative, construing mind at work.
Professor Francisco J. Ruiz de Mendoza
University of La Rioja
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: On the cognitive grounding of agent-deprofiling constructions as a case of pretense constructions, Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada/Spanish Journal of Applied Linguistics, November 2019, John Benjamins,
DOI: 10.1075/resla.17006.men.
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