This chapter describes the contribution that grammatical constructions may have in detecting ironic intent in discourse. Constructions are very flexible devices that can be “manipulated” by speakers for specific communicative purposes, including instances where people “play” with or even “violate” the rules of grammar. Her specific focus on rhetorical questions (e.g., “How about another piece of pie?” said to someone who has already eaten more than his share of the pie) reveals how irony allows speakers to present alternatives that balance between accepting and rejecting a particular frame, or understanding of some situation. Rhetorical questions can both appear to accept some frame (e.g., the addressee is invited to have another piece of pie) and cancel or negate it (e.g., the addressee should not have another piece of pie given how much he has already eaten), which together often sets the stage for intense awareness of irony. Rhetorical questions (e.g., “How can I stand this stupid world without a mobile phone?”) also have diplomatic functions, because they allow people to express one socially accepted frame (e.g., mobile phones are necessary) while also challenging this belief through the evocation of irony (e.g., mobile phones are annoying, yet addictive).

Chapter 5 explores the complexity inherent in metaphoric mappings as a result of their reliance on both the conceptual structuring of the source domain of space and the language used in a metaphoric statement.

Chapter 2 contains a detailed overview of Construction Grammar and Relevance Theory. Special attention is given to identifying their respective strengths and weaknesses, particularly with regard to questions about the semantics–pragmatics interface. This will allow for a more comprehensive understanding of the issues at hand and pave the way for a genuine integration of the two theories.

Language is arguably the most important cultural tool that humans have ever invented. In this book, using English as our specific object of choice, we will look at the cognitive basis of language and discover how all aspects of it, from inventing new words to uttering full sentences, rest on one central cognitive unit: the construction. As we will see in this chapter, a core property of languages is that they are complex sign systems. I will first introduce the classic definition of words as linguistic signs, that is, as arbitrary pairings of form and meaning. Next, we shall see that even morphemes or abstract syntactic patterns are best analysed as form-meaning pairings. All of these different types of signs will be captured by the notion of the construction. Besides, instead of a strict dichotomy of words and rules, we will treat language as a system that ranges from simple word constructions to complex syntactic constructions. Finally, we will explore the basic assumptions shared by all approaches that consider the construction the basic notion of syntactic analysis (so-called Construction Grammars) and outline how these differ from Chomskyan Mainstream Generative Grammar.

Chapter 9 offers a summary of findings and general conclusions with regard to (1) evidentiality in English, (2) constructions, interactions, and change, (3) the House of Commons as a community of practice in change (and Prime Minister’s Questions as an activity in change), and (4) the potential for a new research strand, Diachronic Interactional (Socio-)Linguistics.

This first chapter introduces the notions of theory of mind from cognitive psychology and the one of intersubjectivity from linguistics. It introduces the new speaker-centred notion of co-actionality. It provides an overview of the literature of both domains and finally defines the desiderata for a new gradient approach to analyse speakers’ ability to project their interlocutors’ potential reactions to what is being currently said. It lists a number of assumptions that will be discussed and empirically supported throughout the book: (1) Theory of Mind is communicated through overt intersubjective strategies and/or constructions, which vary in degrees of complexity. (2) Intersubjectivity is expressed linguistically as extra-propositional surplus of meaning that is additional to the perlocutionary effects of a linguistic act. (3) There is a unidirectional pathway of increased complexity of social cognition, ranging from co-actionality, to immediate intersubjectivity (I-I) to extended intersubjectivity (E-I). (4) This increasing complexity matches the evolutionary shift from dyadic to triadic and finally to collective intentionality. This cline can be traced both in language change and ontogenetic development. (5) Neuro-typical adult interactionis however includes utterances sometimes underpinning mere co-actionality, yet mostly hinging on immediate intersubjectivity and extended intersubjectivity. (6) Language change is an important indicator of a cognitive tendency toward polysemy and increasingly complex interactional functions that subserve human needs in a community of practice.

This second chapter defines the fundamental characteristics of intersubjective gradience through interaction, language change and ontogeny. It discusses the gradience dimension of intersubjectivity and the way increasing complexity of intersubjectified constructions and strategies can be operationally analysed and quantified. I illustrate an online and diachronic shift from basic co-actional interaction, to overtly communicated awareness of the mind of the interlocutor (immediate intersubjectivity, I-I) who is present during the here and now of the speech event, to more complex assumptions about common sense and inferred social behaviour (extended intersubjectivity, E-I). This shift in complexity of linguistic utterances matches the evolutionary-developmental model proposed in Tomasello (2019) whereby human evolution is, in turn, hypothesised to have been progressively acquiring abilities of dyadic intentionality, then shifting to triadic attention (i.e. including a common object of joint attention), to finally developing the more complex ability to infer and understand the collective intentions, conventions and set of beliefs of a social group.

In this last chapter I discuss the potential impact of the intersubjective gradience model on research in Cognitive Linguistics and Pragmatics. I explicitly refer to intersubjective gradience as a schematic mechanism. Abstract representation of immediate and extended interaction contribute to the formulation of linguistic acts as much as image schemata (i.a. Lakoff 1990; Mandler 1992; Di Maggio 1997) are hypothesised to trigger metaphorical thinking and determine the morpho-syntactical structure of grammatical constructions. I then show the applicability of the gradience model in Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) research and the way this usage-based framework can inform a fine-grained assessment of individuals’ ability to overtly express their awareness of an addressee’s potential reactions to what is being said. I finally summarise the main assumptions of the gradience model of intersubjectivity of this book.

This chapter is centred on interlocutors’ ability to spontaneously construe intersubjectified utterances throughout ontogeny and first language acquisition. The diachronic continuum illustrated in Chapter 3 is also at stake throughout children’s ontogenetic development. Children acquire the capacity to spontaneously express immediate intersubjectified (I-I) polysemies of a lexeme before they develop the skills to convey extended intersubjectified usages (E-I) of the same form. In Section 4.1 I introduce the application of the gradience model in first language acquisition and theory of mind research with reference to children's usage of the Italian construction guarda ‘look’. Section 4.2 focuses on the Mandarin construction 你看 nǐkàn ‘look, you see’ and the way new intersubjectified polysemies of 你看 nǐkàn (hinging on mirativity and opinion elicitation), significantly emerge at later stages of development than directive usages of the same form. In section 4.3 I discuss the acquisition of the Mandarin post-verbal 过 guo. Interpersonal evidential polysemies of 过 guo are spontaneously mastered by children around the seventh year of age, e.g. comparatively later than other usages of the same form. Section 4.4 is finally dedicated to the first language acquisition of the pre-nominal such and children’s progressive ability to use express generic reference to objects, entities and events to which they ascribe collective recognition. This extended intersubjective function of such emerges later than other polysemies of the same form aimed at merely establishing joint attention.

This chapter ‘puts the gradience model into play’ through a corpus-based application of the framework to semantic-pragmatic change in a number of constructions in American English, British English, Mandarin Chinese and other world languages. Each section is centred on a different construction diachronically acquiring new extended intersubjective (E-I) polysemies that progressively arise out of original literal usages. In a number of cases, an intermediate immediate intersubjective (I-I) stage of reanalysis can be formally identified in the sequence of changes of a construction. In some other instances, E-I polysemies may arise directly from literal usages of the construction. Section 3.1 touches upon the universality of intersubjectification as a ubiquitous process of change in the world languages. In Section 3.2, I then illustrate the continuum from immediate to extended intersubjectification of the 干嘛 ganma construction in Mandarin. Among the extended intersubjectified linguistic acts that I analyse in the chapter there is American English common-sense assertions of [you don't want X] (Section 3.3) and the attention-getting functions of the chunk believe it or not (Section 3.4). Extended intersubjectivity also intersects with evidential statements of shared knowledge through the usage of the Mandarin 过 guo construction (Section 3.5) and in assertions of expected agreement with the Mandarin sentence final particle 吧 ba (Section 3.6). Finally, I discuss the existential construction [ there is no X] in British English, which diachronically developed a new intersubjectified function to pre-emptively address what a speaker imagines a specific or generic interlocutor will say as a result of a current turn-taking.

The idea of using origami to perform geometric constructions (as opposed to the classic tools of straightedge and compass) is introduced.Origami construction methods are presented for folding an equilateral triangle, dividing a line segment into n equal pieces, trisecting angles, and folding a regular heptagon.The basic origami operations are also presented and proved to be the complete list of basic construction moves that can be made in origami by folding one straight crease at a time.Historical remarks are also included.