Table Of Content
Building Categories
in Interaction
Linguistic resources at work
Edited by
Caterina Mauri
Ilaria Fiorentini
Eugenio Goria
Building Categories in Interaction
Studies in Language Companion Series (SLCS)
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Volume 220
Building Categories in Interaction. Linguistic resources at work
Edited by Caterina Mauri, Ilaria Fiorentini and Eugenio Goria
Building Categories
in Interaction
Linguistic resources at work
Edited by
Caterina Mauri
University of Bologna
Ilaria Fiorentini
University of Pavia
Eugenio Goria
University of Turin
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Amsterdam / Philadelphia
TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
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of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.
doi 10.1075/slcs.220
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isbn 978 90 272 0950 4 (Hb)
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Table of contents
Chapter 1
Building categories in interaction: Theoretical and empirical perspectives 1
Caterina Mauri, Ilaria Fiorentini and Eugenio Goria
Chapter 2
Ad hoc categorization in linguistic interaction 9
Caterina Mauri
Chapter 3
Categories at the interface of cognition and action 35
Lawrence W. Barsalou
Chapter 4
Category-building lists between grammar and interaction:
A constructionist view 73
Eugenio Goria and Francesca Masini
Chapter 5
Are new words predictable? A pilot study on the origin of neologies
by means of natural selection 111
Dietmar Zaefferer
Chapter 6
The Camel Humps prosodic pattern: Listing for disaffiliating
in spoken Hebrew 155
Nadav Matalon
Chapter 7
Making the implicit explicit: Free enrichment in interaction 187
Christine Paul
Chapter 8
Online text mapping: The contribution of verbless constructions
in spoken Italian and French 211
Carmela Sammarco
vi Building Categories in Interaction
Chapter 9
Exemplification in interaction: From reformulation to the creation
of common ground 239
Alessandra Barotto and Maria Cristina Lo Baido
Chapter 10
The on-line construction of meaning in Mandarin Chinese:
Focus on relative clauses 271
Giorgio Francesco Arcodia
Chapter 11
Et cetera, eccetera, etc. The development of a general extender
from Latin to Italian 295
Ilaria Fiorentini and Elisabetta Magni
Chapter 12
Morphopragmatics of rhyming and imitative co-compounds in Russian 317
Anna Alexandrova and Valentina Benigni
Chapter 13
Encoding ad hoc categories in Georgian: Three types
of echo-word constructions 355
Zaal Kikvidze
Chapter 14
French type-noun constructions based on genre:
From the creation of ad hoc categories to ad hoc categorization 373
Wiltrud Mihatsch
Chapter 15
In a manner of speaking: The co-construction of manner
in spoken Italian dialogues 415
Luisa Corona and Paola Pietrandrea
Chapter 16
Why it’s hard to construct ad hoc number concepts 439
Mira Ariel
Index 463
Chapter 1
Building categories in interaction
Theoretical and empirical perspectives
Caterina Mauri, Ilaria Fiorentini and Eugenio Goria
University of Bologna / University of Pavia / University of Turin
1. On categories and categorization within linguistics
In the second half of the 20th century, path-breaking studies in the field of cogni-
tive sciences radically changed our view of categories and categorization. Eleanor
Rosch’s seminal works on cognitive psychology (1973, 1975) provided a crucial
contribution to a theory of categories with the introduction of key notions such
as prototype and basic level which are now widely used in several subdisciplines of
linguistics. This revolution also provided the main tenets for a cognitive-functional
approach in linguistics, based on the notion that language is embodied and inte-
grated within other human cognitive abilities (Langacker 1987; Lakoff 1987; Croft
& Cruse 2004). Several studies in this field have shown how language reflects the
way speakers of different languages categorize reality in a culture-specific way; some
well-known examples are the studies on color typology (Berlin & Kay 1969) or spa-
tial frames of reference (Levinson 2003). At the same time, advances in cognitive
psychology, especially through the works of Lawrence Barsalou (1983, 1991, 2003,
2010, this volume) have introduced an important distinction between natural (or
common) categories on the one hand and ad hoc categories on the other. The first
roughly correspond to traditional categories, i.e. context independent intuitions,
while the latter respond to the need to categorize reality under particular contextual
circumstances and for a specific purpose.
Ad hoc categories, which are the main topic of this volume, although the
authors do not always use this label, are involved in the creation of reference to
situation-specific objects such as “things I need for a one-month vacation to Alaska”
or “magazines you can find in a men’s barber shop”. Therefore, ad hoc categoriza-
tion is the process through which concepts, regardless of their entrenchment in the
speaker’s conceptual system, may be constructed in an ad hoc fashion in order to
be adapted to local contexts (Mauri, this volume). According to the general the-
ory, such categories differ from “common” or “established” categories in two main
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.220.01fio
© 2021 John Benjamins Publishing Company
2 Caterina Mauri, Ilaria Fiorentini and Eugenio Goria
aspects. First of all, ad hoc categories are ephemeral: being strictly dependent on
specific situations, they are not permanently stored in human cognition and are
often dismissed immediately after their use. This appears to be the clearest reason
why languages have “special” strategies to refer to this type of entities (see Mauri
2017 and this volume; Mauri & Sansò 2018, 2020), such as marked prosodic pat-
terns (Matalon this volume), reduplication (Montaut 2009; Alexandrova & Benigni
this volume; Kikvidze this volume), associative and similative plurals (Daniel &
Moravcsik 2013; Mauri & Sansò in press), list constructions (Selting 2007; Goria &
Masini this volume), general extenders (Overstreet 1999, 2005, 2014; Fiorentini &
Magni this volume), exemplification (Barotto & Lo Baido this volume). Secondly,
ad hoc categories are strongly dependent on human action, or goal derived. In this
view, which is extensively discussed in Lawrence Barsalou’s chapter, categorization,
on the cognitive side, may be thought of as an emergent phenomenon that arises
concomitantly with situated action. Therefore, if we think of categorization in terms
of process rather than a pre-existing state, we also expect that the linguistic struc-
tures that come into play when speakers are in need to verbalize about categoriza-
tion will somehow reflect this procedural nature. This may be seen in at least two
fundamental approaches, that recur across the chapters of this volume: on the one
hand, ad hoc categorization is involved in the contextual adaptation of referential
expressions, as argued by most of the current pragmatic theories (see Wilson &
Carston 2007; Ariel this volume); on the other hand, it may also be thought of as
a conversational practice in its own right, whereby speakers cooperate in order to
construct referential meaning (see the contributions in Part 2 of this book).
2. Aims and scope of the volume
Verbalization plays a central role in the process of ad hoc categories construc-
tion. Nonetheless, little attention has been given to the linguistic constructions
systematically employed to convey this process. (cf. Mauri 2017: 301). The aim of
this volume is to provide a relevant contribution to the current debate on catego-
rization and language, employing converging evidence from different languages,
mainly based on spoken and experimental data, to account for how categorization
is performed and communicated between speakers in interaction. To this end, the
linguistic strategies employed to convey the construction of categories will be dis-
cussed in detail, providing evidence for an analysis of categorization as the product
of linguistic interaction.
More specifically, the book focuses on the attested linguistic strategies and their
actual use, rather than on the distinction between category types (e.g. common
Chapter 1. Building categories in interaction 3
categories vs. ad hoc categories, Barsalou 1983), in the belief that the observation
of how language is employed in linguistic interaction may reveal the way in which
categorization is achieved and communicated, rather than the exact category type
being construed. The contributions to the volume address in particular theoretical
perspectives on the linguistic construction of categories, interactional approaches
to categorization, as well as categorization strategies across languages. Overall, they
provide a comprehensive picture of how categorization is achieved through lin-
guistic interaction.
3. The contributions in this volume
The idea of this volume was first conceived during the workshop Building Categories
in Interaction: Multidisciplinary Approaches to Categorization, held in Bologna on
19–20 October 2017, in the framework of a broader project on the synchronic and
diachronic aspects of categorization in languages. Most of the topics and research
questions presented in this book have first emerged during the workshop and have
been widely discussed among the participants.
The first part of the volume aims to summarize and expand the current state
of the art in research on categorization and is intended, in a way, to be a prelimi-
nary reading for any study on this topic. The chapters by Mauri, Barsalou, Goria
and Masini and Zaefferer address a systematic discussion of the theoretical and
methodological challenges that appear to be recurrent in most of the recent schol-
arship. In fact, many of the theoretical issues raised here will return at several points
throughout the book, in the discussion of language-specific case studies. Caterina
Mauri discusses the role that linguistic interaction plays in ad hoc category con-
struction and communication, by looking at naturally occurring data of spoken
language. Ad hoc categorization is analyzed taking the perspective of so-called
languaging, showing that categorization is frequently instrumental to intersubjec-
tive aims, such as mutual agreement, negotiation, and the general management of
the speakers’ positioning. The paper describes the incrementality of ad hoc cate-
gorization in interaction along two dimensions, namely, the identification of the
category borders and the progressive anchoring of the category to the interlocutors’
experience. The chapter by Lawrence Barsalou, couched within the framework of
cognitive psycholinguistics, focuses on the close relationship between categoriza-
tion and action, showing how categories are inherently bound to human activities
and may have various degrees of conventionalization. As a consequence, the lin-
guistic resources that in single languages are recruited for the task of performing
categorization will reflect in their structure the procedural nature of categories.
