The idea of isomorphism of form and meaning has played an important role in functionalist theories of syntax and morphology. However, there have been few studies that test this hypothesis empirically on quantitative data. This study aims to fill this gap by testing the predictions made by iconicity theory with the help of statistical hypothesis-testing techniques. The paper focuses on a subtype of isomorphism, namely iconicity of cohesion. The analyses are based on a sample of lexical and analytic causatives from the British National Corpus. The study employs three different operationalisations of the degree of semantic cohesion of the causing and caused events, which are based on English and cross-linguistic data. The form-function correlation is interpreted from the point of view of three possible models of relationships between form, function and/or frequency.

中文翻译：

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测量象似性

形式和意义同构的思想在语法和形态的功能主义理论中发挥了重要作用。然而，很少有研究在定量数据上实证检验这一假设。本研究旨在通过在统计假设检验技术的帮助下测试象似理论所做的预测来填补这一空白。本文重点讨论同构的一个子类型，即衔接的象似性。这些分析基于来自英国国家语料库的词汇和分析原因样本。该研究基于英语和跨语言数据，采用了三种不同的因果关系语义衔接程度的操作化方法。形式-功能相关性是从形式之间三种可能的关系模型的角度来解释的，