Vormierinevused tähenduserinevuse ilminguna. Kaassõnaühendite grammatiseerumine konstruktsioonides
Change in Form as a Manifestation of Change in Meaning. Grammaticalization of Estonian Adpositional Phrases

Summary/Abstract: This study is concerned with different senses of adpositional phrases in Estonian. A forced-choice task was used on 143 participants to test the hypothesis that language users perceive adpositional phrases as bearing different senses when occurring in different constructions. Another objective was to ascertain a potential link between the metaphorical senses of adpositional phrases and misspelling of those phrases, the latter being a noticeable tendency in unedited written texts. The results of the experiment confirm the aforementioned hypothesis – participants often referred to different senses in their explanations. The results also establish a link between the form and the meaning – the more metaphorical the context, the more the participants tend to misspell the adpositional phrases as a single word. This phenomenon is analysed from the perspective of grammaticalization theory and construction grammar, viewing the current variation in form as grammaticalization of adpositional phrases.

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