Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik

Published by De Gruyter

Volume 66 Issue 3 - Special Issue: Linguistic Creativity

Issue of Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik

Contents
Journal Overview

Publicly Available September 4, 2018

Frontmatter

Page range: i-iii

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Articles

September 4, 2018

Creativity and Construction Grammar: Cognitive and Psychological Issues

Thomas Hoffmann

Page range: 259-276

Abstract

Creativity is an important evolutionary adaptation that allows humans to think original thoughts, to find solutions to problems that have never been encountered before and, potentially, to fundamentally change the way we live. In this special issue, we explore the cognitive and psychological factors that influence the verbal creativity of speakers.

September 4, 2018

Learn the Rules like a Pro, so you can Break them like an Artist (Picasso): Linguistic Aberrancy from a Constructional Perspective

Alexander Bergs

Page range: 277-293

Abstract

This paper investigates linguistic creativity from a constructional perspective. Following a distinction between F-creativity (fixed creativity, like productivity) and E-creativity (extending creativity, creativity beyond rules), it discusses several possible origins for innovations in a given language: errors and mistakes, language contact, and the intentional manipulation of linguistic material in the form of snowcloning, coercion, and aberrancy. This paper shows that only one special form of aberrancy might be classified as ‘pure’ E-creativity. Rather than enforcing the dichotomy between E- and F-creativity, all the other sources of linguistic innovations seem to form a cline between these two poles.

September 4, 2018

I don’t want to go all Yoko Ono on you

Peter Uhrig

Page range: 295-308

Abstract

The present paper discusses what may be responsible for the creative effect that instances of a family of constructions, the go/get all/full [PROPER NOUN(S)] on Y pattern, appear to have on the hearer. For this purpose, a set of possible properties of creative language use will be discussed and checked against the results of a detailed corpus analysis of the pattern and related structures. Both the speaker’s and the hearer’s perspectives will be taken into account.

September 4, 2018

Collo-Creativity and Blending: Recognizing Creativity Requires Lexical Storage in Constructional Slots

Thomas Herbst

Page range: 309-328

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.

September 4, 2018

Unwitting Inventors: Speakers Use -ly-Adverbs More Creatively when Primed

Hendrik De Smet

Page range: 329-340

Abstract

Speakers may use language creatively because they want to be extravagant, or because they need to communicate content for which no conventional coding solution exists. In addition, however, there is a third motivation for creativity that is both more fundamental and less conspicuous. Speakers are creative because their mental access to linguistic resources is limited and variable – a factor referred to here as ‘availability.’ In this paper, corpus data from the spoken British National Corpus and from the Hansard Corpus are used to show that speakers of English use the morphological pattern of - ly -adverb formation (as in correctly , locally , poorly etc.) more creatively when they have recently heard or used another - ly -adverb. This manifests itself in higher type frequencies – hence, more varied forms – for - ly -adverbs. The effect can be ascribed to priming, and indicates that the creative use of a linguistic resource depends on factors that facilitate mental access to it.

September 4, 2018

Exploring the Creative Potential of Computational Construction Grammar

Paul Van Eecke, Katrien Beuls

Page range: 341-355

Abstract

Computational construction grammar aims to provide concrete processing models that operationalise construction grammar accounts of the different aspects of language. This paper discusses the computational mechanisms that allow construction grammar models to exhibit, to a certain extent, the creativity and inventiveness that is observed in human language use. It addresses two main types of language-related creativity. The first type concerns the ‘free combination of constructions,’ which gives rise to the open-endedness of language. The second type concerns the ‘appropriate violation of usual constraints’ that permits language users to go beyond what is possible when adhering to the usual constraints of the language, and be truly creative by relaxing these constraints and by introducing novel constructions. All mechanisms and examples discussed in this paper are fully operationalised and implemented in Fluid Construction Grammar.

September 4, 2018

The Role of Creativity in Multimodal Construction Grammar

Mark Turner

Page range: 357-370

Abstract

Construction Grammar accepts responsibility to account for forms of creativity otherwise almost entirely ignored in linguistics. This commitment is wise, given that creativity is the engine that develops systems of communication. Blending is the main mechanism of this creativity.

September 4, 2018

Creativity Parallels between Language and Music

Graeme Trousdale

Page range: 371-380

Abstract

This article explores possible connections between language, music and creativity, particularly in terms of change in linguistic and musical grammars. It considers parallels between properties of usage-based grammars (like chunking and schematicity) and musical structures. While some research into the relationship between music and language has tended to align itself more with formal approaches to knowledge about language, the discussion here is more focussed on functional, usage-based approaches. The article sets out some ways in which work on musical change might be used to think about parallels between language and music, and how this connects to creativity.

September 4, 2018

Creative Grammarians: Cognition, Language and Literature – An Exploratory Response

Peter Schneck

Page range: 381-391

Abstract

Any definition of creativity is a ‘machine’ which produces exactly those instances of creativity that follow the rules of the respective definition – so how does one escape the conundrum of defining individual creativity without turning it into a mere act of reproduction? One of the central tenets of the present volume is that Construction Grammar is particularly suited to bridge the gap between everyday linguistic creativity and highly professionalized and conventionalized forms of cultural reproduction, especially creative literature. While it appears to merely follow a trend in cognitive linguistics, which emerged and firmly established itself over the last three decades, and which emphasizes the creative potential of linguistic practices over and against the definition of language and speech as a rule-based system of engendering constraints, Construction Grammar insists on its ability to provide a most profitable interdisciplinary approach for the study of creativity and language – one that would also be able to embrace and empower the study of literary creativity.

About this journal

Starting 2025, Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik will be transferred to Gold Open Access on a year-by-year basis. All articles will thus immediately appear under the Creative Commons license CC-BY. There will be no publication costs for the authors. The Open Access transformation is based on Subscribe-to-Open, an alternative model that enables the full Open Access transformation of journals through the continuation of existing subscriptions. The prerequisite for successful transformation is that subscriptions are continued to the same extent as before. The editors of Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik and the publisher De Gruyter would therefore like to thank all subscribers for their support, which has made the transformation to Open Access possible.　

Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik (ZAA) is a peer-reviewed journal that traditionally reflects the entire spectrum of English and American language, literature and culture. Particular attention will also be paid to the new literatures in English, the development of linguistic varieties outside Britain and North America, the culture of ethnic minorities and the relationship between anglophone and neighbouring cultural areas. The journal also welcomes contributions which examine theoretical and interdisciplinary issues in literary, linguistic and socio-cultural research. Thus, ZAA invites contributions concerning a wide range of research on current issues, survey articles featuring recent developments in the fields of culture, literature and language, research reports as well as proposals concerning new directions within the discipline. For two of the journal’s four annual issues articles may be submitted in the field of literary and cultural studies; the remaining two issues will be reserved for special topics, one in literature and culture, the other in linguistics.