Speakers are creative, within limits — a response to Peter Uhrig

Abstract

Abstract In his contribution to the present volume, Uhrig (2020. Cognitive Semiotics 13, 1) focusses on an interesting question: When is a novel utterance considered “creative” and when is it seen as “wrong?” As I will show, Uhrig offers many important answers to this question. At the same time, I argue 1) that deliberateness is not (always) important for linguistic creativity; 2) that appropriateness requires a closer look; and 3) that frequency does not (always) play the most important role.