A functional approach to OM-constructions

Zhang, Chunyan and Fontaine, Lise ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9366-8725 2020. A functional approach to OM-constructions. Lingua 242 , 102867. 10.1016/j.lingua.2020.102867

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Abstract

In traditional grammar, and is a prototypical paratactic additive conjunction, and yet when occurring in the OM-construction (the one more construction), this status is challenged because in these cases it represents an indeterminate or vague syntactic and semantic relation (e.g., Culicover & Jackendoff 1997). This paper discusses OM-constructions from a functional approach with the aim of resolving this indeterminacy and explaining the meaning potential they realised. Drawing on both attested examples from the BNC and the enTenTen15 corpora and examples from existing literature, we analyse a range of instances of the OM-construction, and we compare them to related constructions (e.g., pseudo-imperatives, if-conditionals). We draw three main conclusions: (1) the OM-construction constitutes a clause complex which construes a sequence of figures, where the nominal form of the OM-construction may be an elliptical clause; (2) the non-canonical uses of and evolved from the prototypical additive conjunction and, where interpersonal speech functions play a key role in differentiating potential readings of the OM-construction; and (3) uses of and in the OM-construction function not only to link a paratactic sequence but also a hypotactic one, where and is also used to express sequential, causal and conditional enhancement.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	English, Communication and Philosophy
Publisher:	Elsevier
ISSN:	0024-3841
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	6 April 2020
Date of Acceptance:	2 April 2020
Last Modified:	05 Dec 2024 07:45
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/130863

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