The Coordinating Mechanisms For Form-function Mismatch

Form-function mismatch in this study refers to the incongruity between language entities (lexical fillers) and the morpho-syntactic configurations involved. In natural languages, such language phenomena are not rare to see and, in deed, formal linguistic devices such as words, morphemes, and grammatical constructions are often recruited to perform semiotic functions distinct from those were apparently developed, yielding forms or patterns which seem to confound otherwise discrete categories. From the syntax-semantic interface analysis of form-function mismatch, we can gain insight into and at the meantime, motivate theoretical exploration of languages.In this study, form-function mismatches concerned are more phrasal, in which some semantic conflict due to the idiosyncratic combination between lexical fillers and the syntactic structures in real-time language uses can be found, and semantic blocking thereof, or alternatively, resolutions as proposed for the conflict are expected. In the case of the latter one, the lexical filler will undergo an adaptation with some changes semantically to meet with the type as required by syntactic slots. From the resolutions concerning form-function mismatch, we can identify three representative accounts, namely, function and operator interpolation; constructional coercion; metaphor and metonymy. Undoubtedly, these three can show their explanation power, however, some inadequacies will be found in cases given their theoretical limitations or methodologies adopted.Therefore, we extend this study under the theoretical framework of Cognitive linguistics and probe into form-function mismatch from grammatical constructions and high-level metonymies. The grammatical constructions, like the high-level metonymies are operated at their high schematic level, and thereby can provide explanation to grammatical phenomena. In a form-function mismatch, the idiosyncratic morpho-syntactic configurations of lexical fillers are accessed against their general patterns, and the reanalysis of their categories (or their recategorization processes) takes place through constructional coercion, in which the lexical filler is coerced out the semantic type as required by the construction via "override principle", and as a result, the semantic conflict is reconciled. As a matter of fact, apart from the effect from constructional coercion, the semantic adaptation of the lexical filler has as its basis metonymic mapping, which ranges its semantic ends from pragmatic strengthening, multi-domain operations to interactions with coercion. The cooperation of metonymy and construction, as claimed in this study, can then well account for form-function mismatch both in its licensing-through and pragmatic failure cases.