Author's Reply - What Multifunctionality Patterns Tell Us

Croft (2010) challenges my view that semantic maps reflect a number of diachronic mechanisms leading to the creation of novel constructions but may not correspond to a universal arrangement of the relevant conceptual situations in terms of perceived relationships of similarity as represented in a speaker's mind.Some of Croft's arguments address my claim that typological markedness patterns do not reveal any perceived connection between different conceptual situations.Croft's first point is that my discussion provides an incorrect representation of the analysis of these patterns given in Croft (2003).In this analysis, he claims, typological markedness patterns reflect the token frequency of the relevant categories, e.g. the token frequency of the nominative as opposed to the accusative, not any similarity relationship between the conceptual situations pertaining to these categories.These relationships are rather represented by the links in the conceptual space on which the relevant categories are mapped.If this is the case, however, the notion of a semantic map as such does not appear to be particularly relevant to typological markedness, because semantic maps are supposed to represent specific links between particular conceptual situations, not the distributional patterns originating from the frequency of the categories encompassing these situations.More importantly for the present discussion, Croft argues that, even if typological markedness patterns reflect frequency effects (rather than similarity relationships between the relevant conceptual situations), we still need semantic maps and conceptual spaces to account for a number of phenomena pertaining to these patterns.In particular, he argues that frequency effects do not account for the fact that grammatical categories (as defined by the distribution of a particular constructional scheme, e.g.zero case marking or the presence of plural inflection) always cover a continuous region on a conceptual space, even if categories covering discontinuous regions would have a higher token frequency.For example, Croft argues, we do not find languages where plural inflections applies to pronouns and nonhuman animate nouns but not to human animate nouns, even if the former category would have a higher token frequency.Hence, the distribution of plural inflection is determined not only by frequency, but also by conceptual space contiguity.I find this argument problematic in two respects.First, the multifunctionality patterns described by semantic maps usually pertain to the uses of individual forms, e.g. a particular case marker or conjunction.Insofar as these patterns originate from the fact that the form is extended from one use to another, the various uses are not independent, and one may assume that speakers establish a connection between the relevant conceptual situations.Typological markedness patterns, however, pertain to the distribution of constructional schemes, e.g.particular inflectional patterns, not individual forms, and a constructional scheme may be used to encode a particular conceptual situation independently of the fact that it is also used to encode other conceptual situations.Hence, there is no reason why the frequencies of the various conceptual