Variable constituent: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 14:42, 25 September 2009

A variable constituent is a constituent of a mutable lexeme or a construction.

In "eat food", "food" is a variable constituent, whose values range over the members of the category FOOD.

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-The term '''variable constituent''' is involved in explaining the [[mutable lexeme]] and the [[construction (in neurocognitive linguistics)|construction]].
+A '''variable constituent''' is a constituent of a [[mutable lexeme]] or a [[construction (in neurocognitive linguistics)|construction]].
-To understand variable constituents by example, take the Saddam Hussein-coined mutable lexeme "the mother of all battles".  When "battle" is segmented, the remainder of whatever meaning is connected to "the mother of all battles" is assigned to the remainder of the expression, that is, "the mother of all ...-s".  The conditions for the occurrence of this process, for example, for a substitution of "meteor" for "battle", are presumably that the situation involving the meteor was sufficiently similar to that involving battle to call up that (heretofore) fixed lexeme.  This makes it easy to substitute "meteor" and other nouns for "battle" to describe situations in which something is spectacularly large or important.
+=== Example ===
+In "eat food", "food" is a variable constituent, whose values range over the members of the category FOOD.