Author:

Keywords:

Social Sciences, Linguistics

Abstract:

© 2009 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG. All rights reserved. This paper explores the question whether speakers, when they are confronted with grammatical alternatives, can be free to choose. The well-known particle placement alternation in English (e.g. throw away the wrapper / throw the wrapper away) serves as our case study. We first address some theoretical points raised by this alternation and present our 'allostructional' model, which relates two structural variants as concrete manifestations of a single syntactically underspecified schema. Two distinctions which sparked off the theoretical discussion are then discussed in some detail: lexicalization and literalness. Although both orderings are available for combinations on both sides of these two distinctions, the likelihood that one is chosen instead of the other is nonetheless influenced by them. We discuss some reasonswhy this should be so. Finally, we look at cases in which these and other factors either cancel each other or are irrelevant to a combination in a given context.