Abstract
This article explores to what extent linguistic creativity can be accounted for by investigating the collocational and collostructional properties of different constructions. A distinction is made between intended creativity and creativity caused by despair. It is argued that while unexpected combinations of constructions (in the sense of lexical items and syntactic constructions) are not the only type of linguistic creativity, they are of particular relevance to linguistic theory because they can only be appropriately accounted for in terms of a model that takes an integrative view of grammar and lexicon and allows for a considerable amount of lexical knowledge concerning the description of constructions.
Appendix
Questionnaire
Are you a native speaker of English?
yes (22) no (7) female (13) male (16)Age group:
20–30 30–40 40–50 50–60 60–70 over 70Please tick for each of the following quotations ALL of the labels provided that describe them appropriately. (You can tick more than one box for each item.)
T1 | She gave him a hug. (COCA 2015 FIC) | |||||||
correct English | perfectly normal | humorous | poetic | creative | ironic | wrong/ungram-matical | does not make sense | |
27 | 27 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
T2 | She explained him the situation. (invented) | |||||||
correct English | perfectly normal | humorous | poetic | creative | ironic | wrong/ungram-matical | does not make sense | |
1 | 5 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 25 | 2 |
T3 | Tonight at noon, America will declare peace on Russia. (Henri 1967/1974) | |||||||
correct English | perfectly normal | humorous | poetic | creative | ironic | wrong/ungram-matical | does not make sense | |
6 | 0 | 20 | 3 | 8 | 13 | 10 | 13 |
T4 | He flung her a furious look. (BNC JYD 3856) | |||||||
correct English | perfectly normal | humorous | poetic | creative | ironic | wrong/ungram-matical | does not make sense | |
17 | 3 | 5 | 13 | 17 | 0 | 3 | 2 |
T5 | “I don’t think you can say that we don’t get it automatically,” Mr. Trump said on CNN’s “New Day.” (COCA 2016 NEWS) | |||||||
correct English | perfectly normal | humorous | poetic | creative | ironic | wrong/ungram-matical | does not make sense | |
21 | 10 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 8 |
T6 | Henry VII was very good at answering the Irish Question. (Sellar and Yeatman [1930] 1960, 59) | |||||||
correct English | perfectly normal | humorous | poetic | creative | ironic | wrong/ungram-matical | does not make sense | |
22 | 9 | 4 | 1 | 6 | 4 | 0 | 6 |
T7 | I have been prepared to concede him an eternal place among the inexorably tenacious. (BNC B76 1572) | |||||||
correct English | perfectly normal | humorous | poetic | creative | ironic | wrong/ungram-matical | does not make sense | |
22 | 2 | 6 | 9 | 12 | 2 | 3 | 3 |
T8 | Right outside his office was one of his favorites, Mark Rothko’s Untitled 1964, which was on loan from the National Gallery of Art. (COCA 2012 FIC) | |||||||
correct English | perfectly normal | humorous | poetic | creative | ironic | wrong/ungram-matical | does not make sense | |
27 | 23 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
T9 | She puts her soiled breakfast things in the sink, already crammed with the relics of last night’s supper, and hurries upstairs. (BNC ANY 650) | |||||||
correct English | perfectly normal | humorous | poetic | creative | ironic | wrong/ungram-matical | does not make sense | |
26 | 15 | 1 | 10 | 10 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
T10 | September has flung a spray of rooks on the sea-charts of the sky. (Causley 1975) | |||||||
correct English | perfectly normal | humorous | poetic | creative | ironic | wrong/ungram-matical | does not make sense | |
18 | 0 | 0 | 22 | 13 | 0 | 0 | 11 |
T11 | Would you like some more tea? (BNC G0X 2503) | |||||||
correct English | perfectly normal | humorous | poetic | creative | ironic | wrong/ungram-matical | does not make sense | |
29 | 28 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
T12 | He now looks upon me as the dregs of the criminal world – if not public enemy number one, certainly number two or three. (Wodehouse [1938] 1966) | |||||||
correct English | perfectly normal | humorous | poetic | creative | ironic | wrong/ungram-matical | does not make sense | |
26 | 12 | 14 | 3 | 13 | 4 | 1 | 0 |
T13 | Pat sneezed the foam off the cappuccino. (Goldberg 2006) | |||||||
correct English | perfectly normal | humorous | poetic | creative | ironic | wrong/ungram-matical | does not make sense | |
25 | 8 | 15 | 3 | 12 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
T14 | Crucially, all linguists recognize that a wide range of semi-idiosyncratic constructions exists in every language, constructions that cannot be accounted for by general, universal, or innate principles or constraints. (Goldberg 2006) | |||||||
correct English | perfectly normal | humorous | poetic | creative | ironic | wrong/ungram-matical | does not make sense | |
27 | 14 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
T15 | Lord Emsworth ambled off pigwards. (Wodehouse [1929] 1966, 6) | |||||||
correct English | perfectly normal | humorous | poetic | creative | ironic | wrong/ungram-matical | does not make sense | |
17 | 1 | 15 | 6 | 18 | 0 | 2 | 11 |
T16 | Jeannie blinks Tony’s automated plane to Cuba instead of Puerto Rico. | |||||||
correct English | perfectly normal | humorous | poetic | creative | ironic | wrong/ungram-matical | does not make sense | |
11 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 9 | 0 | 9 | 18 |
T17 | To her son these words conveyed an extraordinary joy, as if it were settled the expedition were bound to take place, and the wonder to which he had looked forward, for years and years it seemed, was, after a night’s darkness and a day’s sail, within touch. (Woolf 1927) | |||||||
correct English | perfectly normal | humorous | poetic | creative | ironic | wrong/ungram-matical | does not make sense | |
24 | 6 | 0 | 18 | 11 | 0 | 3 | 1 |
T18 | He thrust her a diminishing glance. (BNC JY9 1298) | |||||||
correct English | perfectly normal | humorous | poetic | creative | ironic | wrong/ungram-matical | does not make sense | |
13 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 11 | 1 | 6 | 10 |
T19 | I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled. (Wodehouse [1938] 1966, 6) | |||||||
correct English | perfectly normal | humorous | poetic | creative | ironic | wrong/ungram-matical | does not make sense | |
14 | 6 | 24 | 1 | 18 | 5 | 2 | 0 |
T20 | Flaubert teaches you to gaze upon the truth and not blink from its consequences; he teaches you, with Montaigne, to sleep on the pillow of doubt; he teaches you to dissect out the constituent parts of reality, and to observe that Nature is always a mixture of genres; he teaches you the most exact use of language; … (BNC G1A 1866) | |||||||
correct English | perfectly normal | humorous | poetic | creative | ironic | wrong/ungram-matical | does not make sense | |
23 | 6 | 0 | 18 | 14 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
T21 | The first daffodils of autumn will appear. (Causley 1975) | |||||||
correct English | perfectly normal | humorous | poetic | creative | ironic | wrong/ungram-matical | does not make sense | |
24 | 9 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 15 |
T22 | He conceded me a putt so we’d finish halved. (COCA 2006 MAG) | |||||||
correct English | perfectly normal | humorous | poetic | creative | ironic | wrong/ungram-matical | does not make sense | |
17 | 6 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 7 | 13 |
T23 | She disappeared the rabbit. (Robenalt and Goldberg 2016) | |||||||
correct English | perfectly normal | humorous | poetic | creative | ironic | wrong/ungram-matical | does not make sense | |
6 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 10 | 1 | 18 | 4 |
T24 | Could I have some blue crisps? (see example (3a)) | |||||||
correct English | perfectly normal | humorous | poetic | creative | ironic | wrong/ungram-matical | does not make sense | |
26 | 16 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 4 |
Thank you very much for taking part in this survey.
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