When Richard met CG: reference-point and English copy-raising

• Published in: Language and cognition Vol. 9; no. 3; pp. 473 - 500
• Main Authors: PARK, CHONGWON, TURNER, DANIEL
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge, UK Cambridge University Press 01.09.2017
• Subjects: Clauses; Cognitive grammar; Embedded constructions; English language; Epistemology; Expletives; Grammatical subject; Linguistics; Metonymy; Perceptions; Pronouns; Syntactic structures; Verbs; copy-raising; reference-point; perceptual source; Cognitive Grammar; perceptual resemblance verbs
• ISSN: 1866-9808; 1866-9859
• DOI: 10.1017/langcog.2016.25

The aim of this paper is to develop a Cognitive Grammar-based analysis of English Copy-raising (CR) constructions such as Richard seems like he is dancing. We argue that the notion of reference-point plays a crucial role in licensing the matrix-subject of the construction. In CR, with the epistemic verbs seem and appear, the matrix-subject functions as a reference-point in relation to the pronominal copy (if a copy exists) in the embedded clause. The aboutness topicality of the matrix-subject in CR is expected, owing to its reference-point property. The epistemic CR construction is acceptable without a pronominal copy if the matrix-subject functions as a reference-point in relation to the complement clause. The same type of analysis is applied to the CR construction with perceptual resemblance (PR) verbs – sound, look, feel, and smell – leading to the conclusion that the strong dichotomy between epistemic and PR verbs is illusory. It is further demonstrated that expletive there-raising in CR is motivated by the same reference-point phenomenon. The difference between there-raising and other CR examples stems from the role of there as a setting subject. Our reference-point-based analysis predicts a metonymic interpretation of the matrix-subject, which we attribute to the connection between reference-point and metonymy.