Conceptual and Pragmatic Motivation as an Explanatory Concept in Linguistics

The concept of motivation has been rejected by many formalist linguists as irrelevant,or at least,negligible.It is argued in this article that motivation deserves a place of honor in linguistic theorizing.After an introduction to various semiotic types of motivation based on previous work by Günter Radden and the present author,constructions with perception verbs in English and Spanish are analyzed.These constructions provide evidence for the hypothesis that lexicogrammatical form is often motivated conceptually.Consequently,contrary to the dogma of autonomous syntax,semantic and pragmatic information has to be built into the formulation of lexicogrammatical regularities.

The concept of motivation has been rejected by many formalist linguists as irrelevant, or at least, negligible. It is argued in this article that motivation deserves a place of honor in linguistic theorizing. After an introduction to various semiotic types of motivation based on previous work by Gunter Radden and the present author, constructions with perception verbs in English and Spanish are analyzed. These constructions provide evidence for the hypothesis that lexicogranmmtical form is often motivated conceptually. Consequently, contrary to the dogma of autonomous syntax, semantic and pragmatic information has to be built into the formulation of lexicogrammatical regularities.