Prof. Klaus-Uwe Panther, Professor Emeritus at the University of Hamburg, Germany, and former chairman of the International Cognitive Linguistics Association (2005–2007) gave a lectureFrom Coordination to Modification: The Role of Hyponymy in Meaning Constructionat the National Key Research Center for Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies on October 16, 2013.

In this lecture he investigates a construction that displays a “mismatch” between form and content/function, instantiated by expressions such asnice and comfy,nice and appreciative,or evennice and distressing. He considers that this nice and Adj pattern has a "literal" transparent meaning, which corresponds to its coordinative syntax, but it is on its way to becoming a full-fledged construction with unpredictable formal and conceptual attributes (in the sense of Goldberg 1995), where nice (and) functions as a conceptual-pragmatic modifier. In this semantic-pragmatic shift from coordination to modification the conceptual relation of hyponymy plays a significant role. An adequate analysis of the nice and Adj construction requires the integration of inferential mechanisms, such as implicature and invited inference, into the descriptive apparatus of construction grammar.

The lecture lasted about 2 hours and the audience showed great interest in professor Panther’ studies and asked questions about the construction Nice + Adj. in detail. Professor Panther answered the questions patiently and shared his understanding of the construction with the audience.