CONTENT, EXPRESSION AND STRUCTURE
STUDIES IN LANGUAGE COMPANION SERIES (SLCS) The SLCS series has been established as...
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CONTENT, EXPRESSION AND STRUCTURE
STUDIES IN LANGUAGE COMPANION SERIES (SLCS) The SLCS series has been established as a companion series to STUDIES IN LANGUAGE, International Journal, sponsored by the Foundation "Foundations of language". Series Editors Werner Abraham University of Groningen The Netherlands
Michael Noonan University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee USA Editorial Board
Joan Bybee (University of New Mexico) Ulrike Claudi (University of Cologne) Bernard Comrie (University of Southern California) William Croft (University of Manchester) Östen Dahl (University of Stockholm) Gerrit Dimmendaal (University of Leiden) Martin Haspelmath (Free University of Berlin) Ekkehard König (Free University of Berlin) Christian Lehmann (University of Bielefeld) Robert Longacre (University of Texas, Arlington) Brian MacWhinney (Carnegie-Mellon University) Marianne Mithun (University of California, Santa Barbara) Edith Moravcsik (University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee) Masayoshi Shibatani (Kobe University) Russell Tomiin (University of Oregon) John Verhaar (The Hague)
Volume 29
Elisabeth Engberg-Pedersen et al. (eds) Content, Expression and Structure Studies in Danish functional grammar
CONTENT, EXPRESSION AND STRUCTURE STUDIES IN DANISH FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR Edited by
ELISABETH ENGBERG-PEDERSEN MICHAEL FORTESCUE PETER HARDER LARS HELTOFT LISBETH FALSTER JAKOBSEN
JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Content, expression and structure : studies in Danish functional grammar / edited by Elisabeth Engberg-Pedersen et al. p. cm. — (Studies in language companion series, ISSN 0165-7763 ; v. 29) Includes indexes. 1. Danish language-Grammar. 2. Functionalism (Linguistics) I. Engberg-Pedersen, Elisabeth, 1952- II. Series. PD3105.C66 1996 439.8'15-dc20 96-12359 ISBN 90 272 3032 3 (Eur.) / 1-55619-381-5 (US) (alk. paper) CIP © Copyright 1996 - John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O.Box 75577 · 1070 AN Amsterdam · The Netherlands John Benjamins North America · P.O.Box 27519 · Philadelphia PA 19118-0519 · USA
Table of contents
Introduction Is there a passive in Nahuatl? Una Conger
vii 1
Grammaticalized focus in Yukagir: Is it really grammaticalized and is it really focus? Michael Fortescue
17
Iconic motivations in conflict: Language-specific structure and in fluence from the medium Elisabeth Engberg-Pedersen
39
The syntax of Danish verbs: Lexical and syntactic transitivity Per Durst-Andersen and Michael Herslund
65
From lexical potential to syntactic realization: A Danish verb valency model Lone Schack Rasmussen and Lisbeth Falster Jakobsen
103
Danish directional adverbs: Content syntax and complex predicates — a case for host and co-predicates Peter Harder, Lars Heltoft, and Ole Nedergaard Thomsen
159
Danish passives and subject positions as a mood system: A content analysis Lars Heltofi and Lisbeth Falster Jakobsen
199
Information structure and the anatomy of the noun phrase: The expression of subject and object in Danish noun phrases Irene Baron
235
TABLE OF CONTENTS
vi
Topic continuity and prosody: An experimental study in Danish Erik Kristiansen
261
Discourse particles in Danish Niels Davidsen-Nielsen
283
Eh bien: Marker of comparison and contrast Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen
315
The degrammaticalization of agentivity in Tlapanec Søren Wichmann
343
The functions of locative prepositions Ebbe Spang'Hanssen and Henrik Rue
361
Communicative function and language-specific structure in second language acquisition: A discussion of natural sequences of acquisition Karen Lund
385
Theoretical considerations
421
Linguistic structure in a functional grammar Peter Harder
423
Iconicity and arbitrariness Elisabeth Engberg-Pedersen
453
Paradigmatic structure, word order and grammaticalization
469
Lars Heltoft Subject index
495
Index of names
505
Introduction
In Anglo-American linguistics a tradition has developed of viewing language in terms of levels inspired by philosophical logic. The definitions provided in the International Encyclopedia of Linguistics are: "syntax deals with formal relations of signs to one another; semantics with the relation of signs to what they denote; and pragmatics with the relation of signs to their users and inter preters" (Horn 1992:260). It has been an issue of some debate to what extent each level is independent of the others. Functionalists claim that linguistic features are ultimately motivated by the use of language in communication. In accordance with the concept of language as consisting of levels, the functional ist approach is, therefore, sometimes described as explaining linguistic features by reference to external factors (see, for instance, Levinson 1983:40). We find that the whole idea of levels and the extension of linguistic descrip tion to include the "levels" of semantics and pragmatics as well as socio- and psycholinguistic factors are mistaken. A functionalist approach implies a con ception of language as a matching of content that can be communicated with the expressive means of the language. That is, instead of seeing language meta phorically as horizontal levels, one put on top of the other, we return to the basic Saussurean notion that languages have two planes: an expression plane and a content plane. Language is organized into units of increasing complexity, each having both a content and an expression, the smallest units being mor phemes, the largest ones utterances, with lexical words and syntagms of var ious complexities in between. Thus we do not see semantic and pragmatic features as belonging to levels that are only taken into consideration once the morphological and syntactic units have been described. The link between con tent and expression is constituted by the sign, another Saussurean notion that should be reemphasised. This is a central aspect of what we mean by describ ing ourselves as functionalists: to convey content is the constitutive function of linguistic expression. Therefore any linguistic unit must be understood in its relationship with the content side of language; and something with no relation ship to any conveyable content cannot be a linguistic unit. In rejecting the levels model and analysing all units from the morpheme to the utterance as having both semantic-pragmatic content and expression, func-
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INTRODUCTION
tional grammar as practised in Denmark agrees with functionalist approaches elsewhere such as the 'Columbia School' and Cognitive Grammar. The view that languages fundamentally consist in the mapping of semantic-pragmatic content onto expression has, however, led us to emphasise the notion content structure. The term — borrowed from the Danish version of structuralism as sociated with the name of Louis Hjelmslev — can be roughly characterized as the way individual languages carve out and organize meaning, meaning being associated with every level of expression structure from the morpheme to the utterance.1 Content structure is opposed to content substance, the non-linguistic ("notional") world as given to us pre-linguistically and in which we act and try to realize our goals and purposes. The attention paid to specific content structures of individual languages has important consequences for the psychological adequacy — or plausibility — of one's linguistic theorizing and, indeed, for the neo-Whorfian endeavour to elucidate the cognitive significance of language-specific features of a given language for its speakers. The things one can express or comprehend through one's language are indeed restricted — even determined — by the structure of the language itself, i.e. must conform to its content structure. This does not, however, lead to total linguistic relativism. The restrictions imposed by one's language can be overcome both by expanding 'readymade' meanings through syntagmatic elaboration and by exploiting the content structure of other lan guages one learns to speak. Moreover, the view does not preclude perceptual and conceptual categorizations that are not determined by one's language, e.g. for typical colour discrimination. Taking the content structure of the linguistic sign system seriously is, more over, a way of avoiding the pitfalls that attend the stipulation of 'underlying' linguistic abstractions whose reality can only be shown theory-internally. The only elements that require elucidation are those that are reflected directly in "surface" expression. For unlike generative and (neo-generative) modular ap proaches to grammar, the approach that has developed amongst functionalists in Denmark regards the semantic-pragmatic content of language as in a sense no deeper than the "surface" structure. The notion of content structure is true to the cardinal Saussurean insight whereby the linguistic sign is seen as bearer of its own meaning, whether this be the sign as morpheme, lexical word, syntagm or utterance. Psychological adequacy is ensured by faithfulness to an ade quate structural description, meaning being simply the obverse of expression (allowing of course for the possibility of non-isomorphic expression-to-content mappings).
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ix
As regards the relationship between the language-specific and language uni versais (whether synchronic or diachronic) the studies in this volume endeavour first and foremost to clarify structural categories coded in the languages con cerned on their own terms. Any attempt to explain them by or relate them to either general discourse factors or general cognitive abilities is a subsequent step. In other words, 'functions' on this view are understood primarily as in herent to language and only in the second place as reflecting general pragmatic and cognitive factors that impinge upon grammars. Moreover, in any linguistic work there is a constant movement back and forth between language-specific and universal linguistic categories relevant to the analysis at hand. What is being advocated here is a preferred orientation towards the language-specific, not a dogmatic standpoint. In particular, the notion of 'ernic' categories should be taken to include textual structures — in fact any domain displaying expres sion-meaning pairings, stopping short only where inferencing or non-linguistic world knowledge leads outside the realm of content structure altogether. With respect to what is conventionally coded, from the morpheme to the text, the focus lies especially, but not exclusively, on what is grammaticalized. By 'grammaticalized' we do not mean only what is expressed by means of bound morphemes, but also what is expressed by markers, word order, proso dy and constraints between different constructions within the sentence or be tween different constituents of a construction. Grammaticalization is a question of degree of obligatoriness. The commitment to taking both language-specific content and expression structures seriously entails a certain scepticism towards postulates of universal semantic-pragmatic content and universal grammatical categories. We see it as a major task for linguists to describe with all possible precision the individual content and expression structures of as many genetically unrelated and typologically divergent languages as possible, and only then, based on such analy ses, to engage in the setting up and testing of universal categories. The general procedure is thus to start with categories relevant to one language (or group of related languages) and then compare their categories — as regards both content and expression — with similar, but overlapping categories in other languages. One will find that such a category, e.g. tense, may differ from language to language as regards both content (e.g. deictic or relative time reference) and expression (e.g. obligatory affixai marking of every finite verb as opposed to optional adverbials), but that these differences are precisely specifiable. One can then set up universal categories either as relatively abstract types indicat ing the parameters of variation found in individual languages/language groups, or as prototypes which are instantiated in some languages/language groups (the
x
INTRODUCTION
ones for which the categories were originally suggested), and from which other languages can be seen to diverge in fairly open-ended, but specifiable ways. We do not, however, exclude the possibility of taking content substance as the point of departure for language comparison. Such an approach consists of the delimitation of a linguistically relevant cognitive or communicative content and the subsequent analysis of how this content is structured and expressed in different languages. The articles in this volume can be seen as a demonstration of how serious attention to the linkage of semantic-pragmatic content and expression categories of individual languages can contribute to a deeper understanding of linguistic categories and their functions. The first three articles take their point of departure in familiar cross-linguis tic notions. They show how the structures of individual languages define their own categories, but also contribute to the delimitation of the cross-linguistic prototypes. These are useful for language comparison, but the point shared by the three articles is that you cannot go directly from cross-linguistic prototypes to the description of individual languages. 'Is there a passive in Nahuatl?' questions the usefulness of lumping together quite diverse constructions from different languages under the term passive. It is pointed out that by calling certain constructions of 16th century Nahuatl pas sive, we suppress the fact that, by contrast to prototypical passives, so-called passive verbs in Nahuatl cannot occur with an explicit agent. The analysis of such verbs as passives, moreover, neglects the importance of the concept of unspecifiability in the grammar of Nahuatl: certain morphological facts about Nahuatl verbs indicate that the so-called passives should be described as verbs having two subjects, an unspecifiable agent and a "promoted" object, and un specifiability also plays a role in other parts of Nahuatl grammar. The paper thus stresses the importance — both for the description of the individual lan guage and for typological purposes — of taking the structure of any individual language seriously. In 'Grammaticalized focus in Yukagir: Is it really grammaticalized and is it really focus?' the so-called grammatical focus system of Yukagir is analysed in terms of the standard pragmatic functions of Dik's Functional Grammar. It is demonstrated that the phenomenon actually covers the functional territory of both Focus and New Topic and interacts moreover with less grammaticalized aspects of the pragmatic articulation of utterance in Yukagir texts, principally word order variation. This raises the question as to where the border can or should be drawn between those aspects of focus which are fully grammatica lized in terms of 'ernic' categories of expression in the language and those that
INTRODUCTION
xi
merely reflects the distinctions of usage in the wider, less systematized realm of discourse 'etics'. Because of the unusually explicit nature of the category of focus within its verbal morphology, Yukagir is a particularly useful language on which to test the universality of application of these notions. In 'Iconic motivations in conflict: Language-specific structure and influence from the medium' it is demonstrated that linguistic expression can enforce a certain structure upon content because of its physical character, but also that claims of iconicity are no short-cut to an analysis of language-specific struc ture, as iconic factors can compete such that different languages — or different stages of one language — can have different iconically motivated structures. The data come from Danish Sign Language and relate to verb agreement ex pressed spatially and the expression of a specific point of view in verbs. Par allels attributable to common communicative and cognitive factors between signed and spoken languages are pointed out, as well as differences due to the difference in medium. The theme of the next three articles is content structure in Danish focusing on verb-related meanings. 'The syntax of Danish verbs: Lexical and syntactic transitivity' shows how the semantics of Danish verbs can only be understood in relation to structural patterns which massively reorganize the basic meanings of verbs stems as they become integrated in fully specified syntactic contexts. Taking their point of departure in the failure of the traditional transitive-intransitive distinction to serve as a useful way to set up classes of verb stems, the authors argue that the essential semantic correlate of the transitivity distinction can be captured in terms of a distinction between "actions" and "activities", in terms of which all "action" readings are coded by transitive constructions and all "activity" read ings are coded by intransitive constructions. Comparing extensively with other languages, they then proceed to demonstrate how, among the mechanisms that affect the relatively unspecified meaning of Danish verb stems, detransitivization devices seem to constitute a preferred strategy. 'From lexical potential to syntactic realization: a Danish verb valency mod el' applies the basic structural distinctions that recur throughout the volume to the linguistic area of valency relations. One reason why it has proved so diffi cult to achieve satisfactory results beyond the core cases that occupy the central area in all valency models is that several sets of semantic properties interact in this area; a major point of the article therefore consists in identifying the whole range of paradigmatic oppositions and syntagmatic combination possi bilities that languages tend to code together.
xii
INTRODUCTION
The article on 'Danish directional adverbs: Content syntax and complex predicates — a case for host and co-predicates' discusses the role of directionmarking adverbs in the content structure of Danish, with special reference to the pervasive differentiation of the role of the central predicate into a "host predicate" and a "co-predicate". The semantics of these adverbs is argued to involve a verb-like property, that of taking an obligatory locative argument. Another aspect discussed is their role as indicators of "subjective direction": as opposed to cases where the directionality is inherent in the situation type, the Danish adverbs typically place the location as it appears from the subjective perspective of the speaker. The article on 'Danish passives and subject positions as a mood system' presents a semantic distinction that is made in a number of different places in the Danish content system. The core feature is a distinction between presenting a SoA as rendering "actual facts as seen by the speaker" and as "things seen through other eyes". The latter half of the distinction has several sub-variants, including generic, normative, quotational or fictional readings. The article demonstrates how this distinction is coded by the choice between the two Dan ish passives, and by the choice between two ways of coding indefinite subjects; the distinction also surfaces in other places. In order to give an account that does justice to the role of this distinction in Danish, we need to go beyond the standard inventory of structural notions. The next three articles are also about Danish, but focus on the coding of discourse-oriented "pragmatic" types of meaning. In this they illustrate that the habitual contrast between grammatical structure and "pragmatics" is inadequate from a functional point of view. 'Information structure and the anatomy of the noun phrase: The expression of subject and object in Danish noun phrases' demonstrates that information structure plays a crucial role at a level not usually considered in relation to information structure, i.e. within the complex noun phrase in Danish. Danish has the possibility of expressing the relations of a deverbal head noun to its modifiying "complements" either as a preposed genitive or a postposed pre positional phrase. It is shown that when the language user has a choice between a genitive and a prepositional phrase, the decisive factor is pragmatic. In the limited number of cases where the language user has no choice, the distribution of the modifiers on genitives and prepositional phrases is determined by a small set of lexico-syntactic constraints. 'Topic continuity and prosody: An experimental study in Danish' describes a study into the relationship between pronominal stress and reference. The experiment presented subjects with a range of sentence pairs in which there
INTRODUCTION
xiii
was more than one candidate for antecedent function, varying the parameter of pronominal stress. The problem belongs in the field of topic continuity and reference tracking, and the results are interesting in showing the way in which a minimal coding parameter such as presence or absence of stress interacts with the referential context; the importance of coding vis-a-vis purely "situa tional" plausibility is clearly demonstrated. 'Discourse particles in Danish' is about a group of interactively used mono syllabic particles, which constitute a characteristic feature of Danish: they are a familiar stumbling-block for foreign learners — and for those who try to translate them, particularly into English. The slot which they occupy in the content structure of Danish is analysed as belonging in the category of pro position operators. Their meaning is understood as involving in most cases an element of polyphony, signalling the status of the proposition in relation to speaker, hearer, and possibly other discourse sources. 'Eh bien: Marker of comparison and contrast' relates to the preceding ar ticle in dealing with discourse markers, but differs from the main body of articles in this volume in focusing on an element outside the core area of gram mar, the French discourse marker eh bien. Although it is often claimed that such markers are "without semantic content", the author shows that like other linguistic expressions this type can be understood as having a function that constitutes its coded meaning — in the nature of an instruction from the speak er to the hearer about how to understand the utterances before and after the particle. Her account demonstrates how the marginal place accorded to such elements represents a radical underestimation of their importance — which can only be understood if coded meanings are understood in relation to the com municative process. The degrammaticalization of agentivity in Tlapanec' illustrates another consequence of a content-oriented approach to language description. Behind a fully productive verbal inflectional system in the Mexican language Tlapanec can be found a peculiar lexicalized contrast with semantic parallels to active case marking. The category exhibits very little interaction with other categories of the language, and language users do not systematically associate a particular meaning with the contrast. The article points up the importance of distinguish ing fully productive categories from relics of the type described. Prepositions have had a central position in the renewed interest in semantics created by cognitive linguistics. Functional and cognitive approaches to the description of locative prepositions explain these in terms of either communi cative needs (i.e. the landmark theory) or in terms of how humans perceive space and act in space. Geometry is said to have little to do with either of
xiv
INTRODUCTION
these functions. In The functions of locative prepositions' it is pointed out that geometry plays a role with respect to both kinds of functions, however. It is demonstrated that the most simple general interpretation rule for locative pre positions is that they express a difference between two positions in the dimen sion explicitly mentioned while there is no, or only little, difference in the other dimensions. This interpretation rule can be seen as a result of communi cative needs. In theories on second language acquisition it has been postulated that all learners pass through the same developmental sequence irrespective of linguis tic background. The article 'Communicative function and language-specific structure in second language acquisition: A discussion of natural sequences of acquisition' presents data on the acquisition of inversion and negation from Danish as well as other languages and discusses the so-called theory of natural sequences in a functional perspective. The main point is that without an ap proach based on functional semantic and pragmatic categories and with due consideration of the peculiarities of each language, the data cannot be described adequately; important systematic patterns in the aquisitional process are ig nored. The hypothesis put forward is that learners search for communicatively loaded parts of the second language. The interlanguage will be characterized by reductions and simplifications of the less communicatively important parts of the new language. The last three articles of the volume constitute a theoretical meta-section. They are the results of discussions in a group consisting of the authors and Lisbeth Falster Jakobsen. The point of the article 'Linguistic structure in a functional grammar' is to present a concept of structure that avoids the fal lacies of the structural tradition without throwing out the baby with the bath water: in order to be precise about the way an individual language is orga nized, we cannot rely solely on non-structural accounts of language functions. The interest is mainly oriented towards semantic substance; and a major point is that the concept of "syntax" that the generative hegemony has imposed on the linguistic community is untenable, and with it the tripartition into syntax, semantics and pragmatics that is widely assumed also by functionalists. A major point in suggesting a revised architecture is to point out the existence of a content side of syntax, thus putting the role of syntax in organizing meaning on the agenda. It is argued that linguistic structure is neither totally autono mous not totally motivated. Whenever there is a function involved, there are always some options that are equally good (to which extent the choice is arbi trary) and some options that are better than others (to which extent the choice is motivated).
INTRODUCTION
xv
The main point of 'Iconicity and arbitrariness' is that claims of iconicity cannot ignore structure in a direct linking of content and expression in lan guage. The paper discusses and exemplifies different concepts of iconicity deriving from Saussure and Peirce. An important distinction is the one between imaginai diagrams and diagrams based on analogy. In an imaginai diagram a feature of the expression as substance (e.g. linearity) is reflected in the expres sion structure which in turn reflects a similar feature of the content plane (e.g. semantic "firstness" reflected in temporal priority of a structural unit within a larger structural unit on the expression plane). In a diagram based on analogy the diagrammatic relation between content and expression is only realized when a relation of analogy is first established between content elements (e.g. impor tance interpreted as "firstness" and expressed temporally first). The article on 'Paradigmatic structure, word order and grammaticalization' shows how existing standard views on structure need to be revised in order to get a clear and whole view of structural change. The main theoretical concept is the notion of a paradigm, which is in need of clarification because it is am biguous between several different senses with different implications for what constitutes grammaticalization. The article argues that standard conceptions are too narrow and shows how a revised understanding can give word order changes a natural place within a theory of grammaticalization, and also accom modate additional related phenomena that otherwise tend to get overlooked. The authors would like to thank Ulrik Hvilshøj for his meticulous preparation of the final text of the volume. Copenhagen, November 1995 Elisabeth Engberg-Pedersen Michael Fortescue Peter Harder Lars Heltoft Lisbeth Falster Jakobsen
Notes 1.
Hjelmslev (1943) used the terms content form and expression form. We do, however, find that the term form is likely to mislead as form is generally used in the meaning 'ex pression' in American linguistics.
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INTRODUCTION
References Hjelmslev, Louis. 1943. Omkring Sprgteoriens Grundlœggelse (= Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Copenhague, XXV). (Reprinted 1993, København: Reitzel.) Horn, Laurence R. 1992. Pragmatics, implicature, and presupposition. International Encyclopedia of Linguistics ed. by W. Bright, vol. 3.260-266. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Levinson, Stephen R. 1983. Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Is there a passive in Nahuatl? Una Ganger University of Copenhagen
1. Introduction The title of this paper is polemically naive. But a more appropriate one: "Do we gain or lose by calling a certain construction in Nahuatl a passive? And what is it that we gain or lose?" is much too long for a title of any short paper. The passive is a construction that has received no little attention in the last forty years since Noam Chomsky attempted to teach us that a passive sentence is a transform from an active sentence. And a number of scholars have since then dealt cross-linguistically with the passive and related constructions and have tried — with meagre success — to arrive at a definition of the passive. Let me quote a few. In the final summary of her book from 1984 Siewierska finds that: The passive may therefore be characterized as a construction: a) which has a corresponding active the subject of which does not function as the passive subject b) the event or action expressed in the passive is brought about by some person or thing which is not the passive subject, but the subject of the correspond ing active c) the person or thing if not overt is at least strongly implied. (Siewierska 1984:256) and she concludes that: Thetermpassive can only be valid and useful for purposes of language description if it refers to the same type of structure in all languages in which this construction is said to be displayed. The discussion here has shown that the constructions called passive have very little in common. [...] Whether the three properties that they share warrant a common passive label is debatable. (Siewierska 1984:259)
2
UNA CANGER
Shibatani comments that: the familiar controversy over whether a given construction should be considered passive is pointless; rather, a description must be offered in terms of how such a construction is similar to or different from the prototypical passive. (Shibatani 1985:822) and in the article he constantly returns to "defocusing of an agent" as "the pri mary pragmatic function of the passive prototype". The aims of the present paper are twofold: first I wish to demonstrate that Nahuatl spoken in the 16th century did not have a passive. The Nahuatl con structions which are traditionally called passive and impersonal are more appropriately described — not as impersonals — but as having an unspecifiable subject; and in fact, the traditional distinction between passives and imper sonals is mainly confusing. To my knowledge, no one — neither typologists (Siewierska 1984) nor specialists of Nahuatl (Olmos 1547; Carochi 1645; Andrews 1975; Launey 1976, 1979, 1986; Langacker 1976, 1977; Langacker & Munro 1975) - has seriously questioned the existence of passive in Nahuatl. However, formul ations such as "no specifiable referent in the nonlinguistic world" (Andrews 1975:79), "effacement du sujet" (Launey, e.g. 1981:21), etc. are commonly found; it is therefore surprising that this insight has led no one to take the final step. Secondly, as a corollary to the first aim, I wish to suggest that we reserve the term passive for the best known, but apparently exceptional constructions, namely those that include an optional agent.
2. The situation in Nahuatl from the 16th century In Nahuatl, nouns are not marked for case. Verbs are with prefixes marked for person and number of subject and object (see Table 1). The marking is obliga tory and thus occurs also when a nominal subject and object are present in the clause.1 (1)
ni-yo:li 1SG:SUBJ-live 'I live'
IS THERE A PASSIVE IN NAHUATL?
3
Table 1: Subject and object prefixes in 16th century Nahuatl SUBJECT
OBJECT
SG
1. 2. 3.
niti0
ne:čmi¢ki-, te:-, λa-
ti- .. ' am- .. ' 0.. '
te:čame:čkim-
PL
1. 2. 3.
(2)
0-yo:li-' in či:či:me:ka-' 3:suBJ-live-PL:suBJ the Chichimec-PL 'the Chichimecs (they) live'
(3)
ti-yo:li- ' 1PL:suBJ-live-PL:suBJ 'we live'
(4)
ni-k-itta lsG:suBJ-3sG:OBJ-see Τ see (it) the coyote'
(5)
0-ne:č-itta- ' 3:sUBJ-lSG:OBJ-see-PL:suBJ 'the Chichimecs see me'
in koyo:\ the coyote in the
či:či:me:ka- ' Chichimec-PL
The distinction between intransitive and transitive is an important feature in the language; a transitive verb must have an object prefix. If there is no specifiable object one of two prefixes occurs, te:- 'human', \a- 'nonhuman': (6)
ni-te:-itta lsG:SUBJ-UNSPEc:oBJ:HUM-see 'I see (humans)'
(7)
ni-λa-kwa lsG:suBJ-UNSPEc:oBJ:NONHUM-eat 'I eat'
4
UNA CANGER
The independent words meaning 'something', iλa', and 'someone', aka', are — as opposed to te:- and λa— syntactically specifiable and demand the regular 3. person singular specifying object prefix: (8)
kwiš
iλa' ti-k-kwa QUESTION something 2sG:SUBJ-3SG:OBJ-eat 'do you eat something?'
There is only one set of specifying object prefixes; the object marking thus gives no evidence for distinguishing between indirect and direct object: (9)
ni-k-\a-maka no-ta '¿in 1SG:SUB J-3SG :OBJ-UNSPEC : OBJ: NONHUM-give 1 SG : POSS-father 'I give (him/her) my father "things'"
(10)
і-k-te:-maka lSG:SUBJ-3SG:OBJ-UNSPEc:OBJ:HUM-give 'I give (it) the flower away'
in šo:čiλ the flower
According to an exceptionless rule only one specifying object marker is permitted per verb. If there are two specifiable objects, only one of them is marked on the verb: (11)
Ø-ne:č-Ø-maka no-ta'¢in in šo:či\ 3:suBJ-lSG:oBJ-3sG:OBJ-give lSG:POSS-father the flower '(he/she) my father gives me the flower'
(12)
і--0- in lsG:SUBJ-3sG:0BJ-3sG:0BJ-give the 'I give (it) the flower to my father'
$o:čiλ flower
no-ta'¢in lSG:POSS-father
Maka 'give' is a ditransitive verb, and the absence of an unspecifying object prefix {te:- or \a-) in examples (11) and (12) indicates that both objects are specifiable; nothing in the language indicates a distinction between our con cepts of direct and indirect object, but if a first or second person object cooccurs with a third person object, then third person yields to first or second person. Since two specifying object prefixes never co-occur in one verb form, the place of the Ø is arbitrary, and example (11) may just as well be written this way: Ø-Ø-ne:č-maka. Table 1, which shows positions of the prefixes, should probably have one more position for the other object that just never appears. A nominal object may be incorporated, appearing in the position immediate ly preceding the verb; the restrictions on object prefixes do not apply to an
IS THERE A PASSIVE IN NAHUATL?
5
incorporated object, so in ditransitive verbs it may co-occur with a specifying object prefix: ( 13)
ni-k-šo:či-maka no-ta '¢in 1SG :SUBJ-3SG: OBJ-flower-give 1SG :POSS-father 'I give (him/her) flowers to my father'
There is also a set of reflexive prefixes which have their position after the specifying object prefixes and before te:- and λα-: (14)
ni-no-mik-tia lSG:SUBJ-lSG:REFL-die-CAUS
Ί kill myself (15)
(16)
Ø-mo-mik-tia 3 : SUBJ-3SG:REFL-die-CAUS 'he kills himself ti-to-mik-tia-' lPL:SUBJ-lPL:REFL-die-CAUS-PL:SUBJ
'we kill ourselves' The order of prefixes is: subject prefix, specifying object prefix, reflexive prefix, unspecifying human object prefix, and unspecifying nonhuman object prefix (see Table 2).
Table 2: Verbal prefixes and their positions
6
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A whole array of derivational suffixes derive transitives from intransitives and ditransitives from transitives, with varying content and functions of the new arguments according to choice of derivational suffix: (17)
ni-k-yo:li-tia (from yo:li 'live') 1SG:SUBJ-3SG:OBJ-live-CAUS 'I revive him'
(18)
ni-k-\a-kwa-ltia
(from kwa 'eat')
1SG:SUBJ-3SG : OBJ-UNSPEC : OBJ:NONHUM-eat-CAUS
'I feed him' (19)
ni-k-λa-kwa:-lia
(from kwa 'eat') 1SG:SUBJ-3SG:OB J-UNSPEC :OBJ : NONHUM-eat- " APPLICATIVE " 'I eat from/for him'
The markings of subject and object on the verbs do not express semantic roles. The following examples show how the syntactic subject disregards the semantic role of its referent: (20)
Ø-miki
'he dies'
(21)
Ø-we:iya
'he becomes big
(22)
Ø-we¢i
'he falls'
(23)
0-kwi:ka
'he sings'
(24)
0-icteki
'he robs'
(25)
Ø-k-a:na
'he takes it'
(26)
Ø-k-mik-tia
'he kills him'
3. Constructions traditionally called impersonals and passives The constructions that are traditionally called impersonals and passives are centered around verbs derived with two derivational suffixes, -wa and -(l)o, from intransitive and transitive verbs, respectively; historically the two suffixes can be shown to have the same origin (cf. Launey 1981). Basically, intransitive verbs take the suffix -wa, and transitives take the suffix -(l)o. However, this distribution is not absolute; the suffix -wa also occurs with a few transitive verbs; and the suffix -(l)o is found with some intransitive verbs. For the present discussion the distribution of the two suffixes is of no consequence.
IS THERE A PASSIVE IN NAHUATL?
7
The translation of the following examples is in agreement with the tradition al interpretation of the constructions: (27)
ni-koči lSG:SUBJ-sleep 'I sleep'
(28)
koči:-wa Sleep- " IMPERSONAL " '"people" sleep'
(29)
ni-k-kwa lsG:SUBJ-3sG:OBJ-eat 'I eat it'
(30)
ni-kwa:-lo lsG:suBJ-eat-"PASS" Ί am eaten'
(31)
\a-kwa:-lo UNSPEC:NONHUM-eat- " IMPERSONAL " 'something is eaten'
(32)
ni-k-\a-maka
no-ta 'éin
1SG:SUBJ-3SG :OBJ-UNSPEC:OBJ: NONHUM-give
1SG:POSS-father
'I give (him/her) my father "things'" (33)
Ø-λa-mak-o 3SG:SUB J-UNSPEC :OBJ: NONHUM-give- "PASS"
no-ta'¢in 1 SG: POSS-father
'my father is given something' (34)
te:-\a-mak-o UNSPEC : HUM-UNSPEC : NONHUM-give- " IMPERSONAL" 'someone is given something'
The Jesuit Horacio Carochi, who in 1645 wrote an impressively insightful grammar of Nahuatl, makes an interesting distinction between passive and impersonal based on the specifiability of arguments. Forms within the sphere of impersonals and passives that have no specifiable argument he calls impersonals, whereas those that have at least one specifiable argument are named passives. He would thus call (28), (31), and (34) impersonals and (30) and (33) passives. The derivation of verbs with the suffixes -wa and -(l)o was productive in the 16th century; however, it was subject to some general constraints con-
8
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nected with the feature human versus nonhuman. These constraints have been analyzed and described in detail by Launey (1976, 1979, 1986) to whom I owe much of this insight. In wa-verbs the unspecifiable subject must be human (see example (28)); unspecifiability of a nonhuman subject of intransitive verbs does not involve the suffix -wa, but is expressed with the prefix λα-: (35)
(36)
Ø-wa:ki in šo:čiλ 3:SUBJ-dry the flower 'the flower dries' λa-wa:ki UNSPEC:NONHUM-dry
'everything dries' Lo-verbs derived from transitive verbs have either a subject marker referring to a human (see examples (30) and (33)) or a nonhuman, unspecifying object marker that translates as subject (see example (31)); in the case of lo-verbs derived from ditransitives the second option involves two unspecifying object prefixes of which te:- is the one that translates as subject (see example (34)). If the promoted object is nonhuman and specifiable, then a different con struction — e.g. a reflexive one — will be chosen: (37)
Ø-mo-kwa 3:suBJ-3sG:REFL-eat 'it is eaten'
(38)
0-mo-te:-maka in šo:čiλ 3:SUBJ-3sG:REFL-UNSPEC:OBJ:HUM-give the flower 'flowers are given away'
This description of the constructions in focus has so far not revealed any thing that makes them significantly distinct from passive constructions in other languages. However, lo-verbs display a number of features that suggest a dif ferent analysis. It was observed already in the first Nahuatl grammar, in that of Fray Andres de Olmos from 1547, that the agent cannot be expressed: Ni tampoco rescibe persona agente expressa 'Neither does it receive an expressed agent' (Olmos 1547:99). The aforementioned Jesuit grammarian Horacio Carochi says: Los verbos passiuos no tienen persona, que haze, que en latin se pone en ablativo con a. vel ab. por que no se dize en esta lengua yo soy amado de Pedro, lo qual es menester dezir por actiuo, nëchtlaçòtla in Pedro. (The passive verbs do nol
IS THERE A PASSIVE IN NAHUATL?
9
have a person that acts, the one which in Latin is given in the ablative with a or ab, because in this language one does not say I am loved by Pedro, this it is necessary to express with the active, nëchtlaçòtla in Pedro [Pedro loves me].) (Carochi 1645:433) This observation has been repeated in all later descriptions of the language. Now, the lack of agent in the constructions called passives is cross-linguisti cally not such a rare feature. However, Nahuatl lo-verbs deviate markedly in another respect: they can be derived from reflexive verbs. The verb meaning 'run' is inherently reflexive in Nahuatl: (39)
ni-ηο-λαlοα lSG:SUBJ-lSG:REFL-run
'I run' When lo-verbs are derived from reflexive verbs, an unspecifying reflexive prefix, ne-, occurs: ne-λalo:-lo 'everyone runs'. In Nahuatl — just like in other languages — the characteristic feature of a reflexive form is that the referents of subject and object are identical. Reflexive constructions thus presuppose a subject. To explain the reflexive form of lo-verbs with the un specifying reflexive prefix I therefore propose that these verbs have an unspecifiable subject: (40)
ne-λalo:-lo UNSPEC : REFL-run-UNSPEC : SUBJ
'"people" run' This leads me to suggest a different analysis of lo-verbs in general, namely that they all have an agent, but an unspecifiable one. Example (30) will thus receive the following analysis and a different translation: (30')
ni-kwa:-lo UNSPEC : SUBJ- 1SG:OBJ-eat-UNSPEC:SUBJ
'someone unspecifiable eats me' This also clarifies the apparent lack of agent: the agent cannot be expressed because it is already there, although unspecifiable and expressed by zero. According to this analysis the sentence has two subjects, an unspecifiable agentive subject and a specifiable human subject, expressed by the regular subject marker, promoted from object status. None of the two can be explained away and analyzed as something else; the one has the regular shape of a subject prefix, and the other, the unspecifiable one, is presupposed as subject by the unspecifying reflexive prefix.
10
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In discussions about causatives — and passives — and the hierarchy of grammatical relations Comrie has touched in general terms upon the possibility of "two subjects in a single clause". He says: Since the English passive involves two processes — OBJECT PROMOTION and SUBJECT DEMOTION or SUBJECT DELETION — a reasonable question to ask is whether, in other languages, these two exist independently, i.e. whether there are languages with passives involving only Subject Demotion, or involving only Object Promotion. The latter possibility would give rise to a derived structure with two subjects, and while I am not convinced that such a structure must be excluded from linguistic theory, I know of no languages where the passive illustrates this possibility. (Comrie 1977:47-48) This description applies quite accurately to Nahuatl constructions with lo-verbs: the object is promoted, and the subject is not deleted, but unspecifiable. The analysis that posits an unspecifiable subject in constructions with loverbs receives support from other cases of unspecifiability in Nahuatl: I have already shown that 'unspecifiable object' is expressed by the prefixes, te:- and λα- (see examples (6) and (7)). Unspecifiability is found also in connection with nouns: an 'unspecifiable possessor' is expressed by the prefix te:-. In Nahuatl, nouns are explicitly marked as unpossessed or possessed, whereas the noun referring to the possessor has no marking: (41)
siwa:-λ woman-UNPOSSESSED 'woman'
(42)
no-siwa:-w 1:SG:POSS-woman-POSSESSED 'my woman'
(43)
i:-siwa:-w 3:SG:POSS-woman-POSSESSED 'Itzcoatl's woman'
(44)
te:-siwa:-w UNSPEC :POSS: HUM-woman-POSSESSED 'someone's woman'
i¢coaλ Itzcoatl
With this comprehensive occurrence of the concept of unspecifiability, unspecifying object prefixes, an unspecifying reflexive prefix, and an unspeci-
IS THERE A PASSIVE IN NAHUATL?
11
fying possessor prefix, one is tempted to say that an unspecifiable subject is even expected. A further implication of this analysis is that wa-verbs and lo-verbs will be given the same description: both types have an unspecifiable subject. The verb koči:-wa will then be understood to mean 'someone unspecifiable sleeps', and it is appropriately translated 'everyone or people sleep': (28')
koči:-wa Sleep-UNSPEC:SUBJ 'everyone sleeps'
Additional support for the unspecifiable subject is provided by the above mentioned exceptionless rule that permits only one specifying object marker per ditransitive verb. The rule was exemplified by examples (11) and (12) that were shown to contrast with examples (9) and (10) in that the latter have one specifying and one unspecifying object prefix: (11)
Ø-ne:c-Ø-maka no-ta'¢in in šo:čiλ 3:SUBJ-lSG:OBJ-3SG:OBJ-give lSG:POSS-father the flower 'my father gives me the flower'
(12)
ni-k-Ø-maka in lSG:suBJ-3sG:oBJ-3sG:oBJ-give the 'I give (it) the flower to my father'
(9)
ni-k-\a-maka lSG:suBJ-3sG:0BJ-UNSPEc:0BJ:N0NHUM-give 'I give (him/her) my father "things'"
(10)
ni-k-te:-maka lSG:suBJ-3sG:0BJ-UNSPEC:0BJ:HUM-give 'I give (it) the flower away'
šo:čiλ flower
no-ta'¢in lSG:POSS-father no-ta '¢in lSG:Poss-father
in šo:či\ the flower
Lo-verbs derived from ditransitives likewise permit only one specifying prefix, namely one that refers to the promoted object which has acquired subject form; or — expressed differently — they permit no specifying object marker at all. (l1')
ni-Ø-mak-o in šo:čiλ "lSG:SUBJ"-3sG:oBJ-give-UNSPEc:SUBJ the flower 'someone unspecified gives me the flower'
(9')
Ø-λa-mak-o " 3SG : SUBJ " -UNSPEC : OBJ : NONHUM-gi ve-UNSPEC : SUBJ 'someone unspecified gives him "things'"
12
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In other words, precisely like in the active ditransitive constructions, the absence of an unspecifying object prefix indicates that there is a specifiable object; thus instead of the expected form *ni-k-mak-o we get the form in (l1'). It may seem problematic to assign object function to prefixes that elsewhere indicate subject. However, whichever way to-verbs are analyzed there will be some overlap in functions between subject and object prefixes. According to the traditional analysis the unspecified nonhuman object prefix λα- may be assigned subject function as in example (31'): (31')
λa-kwa:-lo UNSPEC :SUBJ:NONHUM-eat-UNSPEC : S U B J
'something is eaten' whereas according to my analysis it continues to function as an unspecifying, nonhuman object marker: (31")
λa-kwa:-lo UNSPEC : OBJ : NONHUM-eat-UNSPEC : SUBJ 'someone unspecified eats something'
4. Conclusion My claim is that to-verbs in Classical Nahuatl are not passive forms and that wa-verbs are not impersonals, but that both are active forms that have an unspecifiable subject, indicated by the two suffixes, -lo and -wa, and that the nouns referred to by specifying subject prefixes in to-verbs function as objects. I shall now sum up the arguments on which this claim is based: 1. 2. 3. 4.
5.
to-verbs can be formed from reflexive verbs and have an unspeci fying reflexive prefix; the agent cannot be expressed in constructions with to-verbs; unspecifiability is a pervasive feature in the language; unspecifiable object and unspecifiable possessor are expressed systematically; an exceptionless rule that restricts the number of specifying object prefixes to one applies also to to-verbs — if the prefix for promoted object is counted as an object prefix; to-verbs and wa-verbs will now receive the same analysis.
The concept of the unspecifiable subject that I find so exceptionally clearly illustrated in Nahuatl from the 16th century is definitely embraced by the
IS THERE A PASSIVE IN NAHUATL?
13
characteristics of passives and related constructions established through crosslinguistic studies. And my analysis is not fundamentally different from other treatments of wa-verbs and lo-verbs in Nahuatl. Demotion of subject, and "effacement du sujet" (Launey 1981), is completely in consonance with my "unspecifiable subject". In his book on Non-Distinct Arguments in Uto-Aztecan Langacker (1976) demonstrates the extension of the discussed phenomena for the whole language family. What I object to in those analyses is the use of the term passive; and ter minology is not a matter to be treated lightly. I question the usefulness of lumping together quite diverse constructions from a great many of the lan guages of the world under the term passive. Such lumping is a reflection of the age and tremendously deep roots of the traditional European linguistics; and the foundation of this our only linguistics with its attitudes has not been changed substantially by more recent studies of non-Indo-European languages, studies that are often used simply to confirm the appropriateness of our traditional inventory of concepts. Discussions of "near universais" are dangerous; we find what we look for, or, in other words, our expectations influence our analysis, we distort data to make them fit the model; and with every exemplification of a "near universal" it is confirmed and fuel is added to the vicious circle. In order to progress in our understanding of human language we need to focus on the specific phenomena in individual languages and test the few con cepts that so far appear to be universal, but we want to be specifically cautious about the firmly cemented concepts that appear natural to us because they are so deeply rooted in our culture. Let me conclude by answering my original question: what is it that we gain or lose by calling a certain construction in Nahuatl a passive? We gain little since the concept of passive contributes nothing to the description of Nahuatl. On the contrary, we gain in our understanding of Nahuatl by analyzing it in accordance with the unique morphology of that language and by recognizing the systematic way of expressing the unspecifiable as something particularly characteristic of Nahuatl. And at least as important: by restricting and clari fying the definition and domain of the concept of passive to include only those that permit an optional agent we also here sharpen our insight.
14
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Notes 1.
None of the examples are taken from existing texts from the 16th century. They are all typical linguist's examples, out of context; and the translations are equally unreal and in many cases unacceptable as English sentences.
References Andrews, J. Richard. 1975. Introduction to Classical Nahuatl. Austin: University of Texas Press. Canger, Una. 1975. Brief comments on passive - impersonal: -ni/-o:-ni, and -l/-λi in Classical Aztec. Mimeographed manuscript. Carochi, Horacio. 1645. Arte de la lengva Mexicana con la declaración de los ad verbios della. México. Reprinted in Colección de gramáticas de la lengua Mexica na 1.395-538, supplement to Anales de Museo Nacional, la época. Tomo 5. 1892. Comrie, Bernard. 1977. In defense of spontaneous demotion: The impersonal pas sive. Grammatical Relations (= Syntax and Semantics, 8.) ed. by Peter Cole & Jerrold Sadock, 47-58. New York: Academic Press. Comrie, Bernard. 1981. Language Universals and Linguistic Typology. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Croft, William. 1991. Syntactic Categories and Grammatical Relations: The cognitive organization of information. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Dakin, Karen. 1982. La evolución fonológica del protonáhuatl. México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Langacker, Ronald W. 1976. Non-Distinct Arguments in Uto-Aztecan (= University of California Publications in Linguistics, 82.). Berkeley: University of California Press. Langacker, Ronald W. 1977. An Overview of Uto-Aztecan Grammar (= Studies in Uto-Aztecan Grammar, 1.). Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics & The Univer sity of Texas at Arlington. Langacker, Ronald W. & Pamela Munro. 1975. Passives and their meaning. Language 51.789-830. Launey, Michel. 1976. Deux sources du passif d'après la morphologie nahuatl. 42nd International Congres of Americanists, Proceedings, 471-484. Paris. Launey, Michel. 1979. Introduction à la langue et la littérature aztèques. Tome I: Grammaire. Paris: L'Harmattan. Launey, Michel. 1981. Une interprétation linguistique des schémas relationnels: passifs-impersonnels et causatifs en nahuatl classique. Amerindia 6.17-58. Launey, Michel. 1986. Catégories et opérations dans la grammaire nahuatl. Thèse d'Etat, Université Paris 4. Unpublished.
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15
Olmos, Fray Andrés de. 1547. Arte para aprender la Lengva Mexicana. [First pub lished by Rémi Siméon as Grammaire de la langue Nahuatl ou Mexicaine. Paris 1875.] Perlmutter, David & Paul Postal. 1977. Toward a universal characterization of passivization. Berkeley Linguistics Society 3.321-71. Shibatani, Masayoshi. 1985. Passives and related constructions. Language 61.821-848. Siewierska, Anna. 1984. The Passive: A comparative linguistic analysis. London: Groom Helm.
Grammaticalized focus in Yukagir Is it really grammaticalized and is it really focus? Michael Fortescue University of Copenhagen
1. Introduction Yukagir's morphological focus system is doubtless the feature for which the language is best known to linguists (see for example Comrie 1981:258-261). It is otherwise a fairly typical agglutinating SOV language with only a mode rately developed morphology.1 It is still generally regarded as an isolate, although remote genetic relationships to Uralic and to Eskimo-Aleut have been suggested (cf. Collinder 1940 and Fortescue 1988 respectively). There are two extant 'dialects', (Upper) Kolyma and Tundra, which are at least as divergent as any two Scandinavian languages, lexically more so. Because of its elaborate focus system it is a language that has considerable potential interest for Func tional Grammar. This interest is enhanced when one attempts to analyse from an FG perspective how the system actually works in texts and discovers that it is not really a matter of Focus in the FG sense of Dik (1989:277f.) at all — at least it only partially overlaps with it. The domain of focus in Yukagir covers more than just the morphological system of the language, moreover: also word-order variations from basic SOXV are involved. The question arises as to which pragmatic functions actually can be called 'grammaticalized' in this language —■ just the obligatory morphological choices or also more optional and sporadic word order variations? 2. The focus system of Tundra Yukagir The most detailed description of the Yukagir focus system is to be found in Krejnovich 1958, but the examples presented there are mostly isolated sen-
18
MICHAEL FORTESCUE
tences and the paradigms of the system are expressly given as answers to hypothetical Q-word questions, i.e. as examples of what Dik (1989:282) calls 'Completive Focus'. Comrie (1981:260) too presents the system in the same fashion, adding that its function is to indicate focus, 'i.e. essential new in formation'. I reproduce on Table 1 his Table 6.3, which shows the five basic paradigms of Tundra Yukagir, adding English glosses for the first item of each paradigm. According to J.S. Maslova (personal communication) Kolyma Yuka gir lacks the subject focus construction with transitive verbs. Note that all verbs in Yukagir are inherently either transitive or intransitive, irrespective of the presence of an overt object (though in the Object Focus construction the object must be expressed). Similarly, subject constituents may be left out (ex cept in the Subject Focus construction) if there is immediate topic continuity with the preceding context.2 The endings -ek and -leng (or -le) in the Subject Focus and Object Focus paradigms are special nominal focus markers (there is thus double marking of focus in these constructions). The second form (used on simple nouns) is prob ably from Ve- 'be', hence may reflect an earlier cleft construction. It is also used in nominal sentences of the type ten nime-leng 'this is a house' with noun nime- 'house'. Not to be confused with -le(ng) as a focus marker is its use as accusative marker on ordinary non-focused objects when the subject is also 3rd person in the transitive Verb Focus construction (see example sentence (10)). The presentation is somewhat simplified as regards the actual morphemes and allomorphs involved, but all the relevant categories are covered (they also apply to predicative adjectives). There is, however, one aspect of it that is mis leading: the prefix me(r)- {me- before C) in the VF paradigms is not essential to the construction — in the Kolyma dialect it is in fact usually absent (ap pearing occasionally as a perfective aspectual marker rather), and in Tundra Yukagir it may be omitted when 'there is no special need for accentuating the verb' (Krejnovich 1958:121). I shall return to this point later. When one turns to actual texts, the picture changes somewhat. First, the VF construction is far and away the most common construction in connected narra tive discourse: out of the first 183 sentences of the longest single text I have available in Tundra Yukagir (Krejnovich 1958:255-262) there are only 6 in stances of SF and 13 of OF, all the rest being VF. Moreover, examples of question-answer pairs illustrating 'completive focus' are rather rare in the nar rative texts available (Krejnovich 1958 and 1982 and Jochelson 1900),3 but the morphological system as such nevertheless pervades the material, so obviously something more is involved. The odd thing about the examples of answers in
GRAMMATICALEED FOCUS IN YUKAGIR
19
Table 1 : The morphological Focus system
VF form (mainly answers to 'why' questions) is that none of them have the prefix me(r)- although one would a priori expect the 'focus' in such answers to lie upon the verb. This is illustrated in the following (all example sentences are from Krejnovich 1958 unless otherwise indicated): (1)
a.
tetťie -ni "nemengin' gelu-k?" rich:man say-3sG:VF why come-2sG:INTER 'The rich man said: Why did you come?'
20
MICHAEL FORTESCUE
b. tadāne mo-d'eng "met-ama met-qane then say-1SG:VF my-father me-LOC Then I said: My father sent me'.
pot'ese-j" send-3SG:VF
The verb pot'ese- is transitive, note, and its object, being a 1st (or 2nd) person pronoun, regularly takes the locative case. For the time being I shall continue to gloss the so-called VF forms as just that, 'verb focus'. Note the lack of me tiso on the VF forms monni and mod'eng. Facts such as these lead me to con clude that the VF paradigm — the forms without me(r)-, that is — is actually focus-neutral, in clear contrast to the SF and OF paradigms, where the focused constituents almost always introduce new information. In Krejnovich (1982:216) there are examples (rare) of focused S and constituents which are not actually new but which nevertheless signal a degree of narrative surprise (see the functions of NewTop discussed below) sufficient to override the lack of contextual newness. The new information is not necessarily — or even typi cally — contrastive or emphatic.4 We generally appear to be dealing with a quite straightforward token of New Topic in the FG sense, as in example (2) (see note 7 for an example of SF): (2)
n 'awn 'iklie-jawul-ek juo-meng Arctic :fox-track-FOC see-1SG : OF 'I saw the track of an Arctic fox'.
Note that in VF sentences, on the other hand, an S or V, whether overt or not, need not necessarily be 'given' information, as in mārqan-göde monni 'a man spoke', where the subject of the VF verb is clearly 'new' in the context (it consists of 'one' followed by and fused with 'man'). The identity of the man is unimportant, however, and he is not maintained as topic in what follows. To sum up the position so far: rather than being a language in which every sentence is marked for completive (or contrastive) focus on one of its constit uents, as descriptions suggest, it turns out that Yukagir is a language in which New Topic (whether applying to an S or an O) is morphologically marked both on the verb and on the nominal constituent concerned, whereas the so-called 'verb focus' construction (without me(r)-) is its unmarked or 'default' indica tive paradigm. It expresses neither completive nor contrastive focus in most cases, though it may also be found in answers to Q-word questions concerning the predicate alone. Krejnovich (1982:182) describes the VF construction as that in which the verb is the rheme of the sentence, a statement that is quite compatible with the position I am here espousing.
GRAMMATICALEED FOCUS IN YUKAGIR
21
3. A closer look at 'verb focus' in Tundra Yukagir Before proceeding any further I need to present further evidence for my claim that VF is actually the unmarked indicative and not really an indicator of focus at all.5 Firstly, it should be pointed out that the VF construction is nominativeaccusative, whereas the OF and SF ones are ergative, the focus system being superimposed as it were upon upon an otherwise nominative-accusative clausal basis. I have examined Krejnovich's text to see what proportion of VF forms are actually contrastive or completive in the sense of Dik. Note that according to the latter all instances of Focus must be either the one or the other (Dik 1989:282).6 In the whole text I found no clear example of contrastive usage and only a couple of answers to 'why' questions. Here it was the whole predi cation, not just the verb that was questioned. Of course this is bound up with the nature of the text concerned (it represents the narrative register), and an investigation of spoken dialogue would undoubtedly have revealed a much higher percentage. Then there is the matter of the presence/absence in the Tundra VF paradigm of prefix me(r)- alluded to above. Krejnovich (1958:132 and 150-151) states that this prefix is regularly absent in non-finite verb forms, in negative, opta tive and interrogative forms, and when the verb is qualified by a qualitative adverbial (actually also quantitative ones). The former kind of restriction is not surprising if we are dealing with an unmarked indicative as I claim: me(r)would be adding something extra, namely some kind of foregrounding of the verb not compatible with modality other than the indicative. Such foreground ing would also be incompatible with adverbials modifying the verb in an essen tial way — they would rather be expected to draw the focus to themselves, as in (3): (3)
met-en'ie iral'aj-neng ed'i my-mother hard-ADV live:3sG:vF 'My mother had a hard life'.
The problem is to specify the kind of focusing/foregrounding that me(r)contributes. Krejnovich (1982:190) calls it 'assertive', but this is simply because it cannot co-occur with the negative prefix el'-. It is not simply contrastive, nor is it necessarily completive, as it can be present or absent irrespective of such factors (which are relatively rare in the texts, as I have mentioned). In fact, about half the VF forms in Krejnovich's text are without me(r)-. It is also regularly absent on the VF form monni 'he said' before a direct discourse quotation, as we have seen in (la), where the verb is obvious-
22
MICHAEL FORTESCUE
ly of less semantic weight than the quoted material following. The conditions under which me(r)- does occur are not easy to pinpoint, though Krejnovich has it always present in his 'completive' examples. As we have seen in section 2, he also states that me(r)- does not occur — apart from in the clearly defined cases just mentioned — 'when there is no special need for accentuating the verb'. It appears to be particularly likely to be present if there is an overt S or or nominal X (an oblique case-marked or postpositional referring phrase) also present in the sentence — and this in turn is a matter of topic continuity. One could thus suppose that it represents real Verb focus', or perhaps the ab sence of stress on any nominal constituent rather. However, the situation is probably more complicated than that since 'verb focus' is occasionally marked by me(r)- when there is no such overt nominal constituent. The precise factors leading to such instances are yet to be determined. There are in fact examples in the texts of non-contrastive/non-completive VF without me(r)- where it seems to be a matter of sentential emphasis of the type expressed by 'indeed' in English: (4)
a.
me-ponre-t'eli VF-go:away-lPL:VF '(And indeed) we went away'.
This comes in a context where another character (the narrator's mother) has just suggested that the two of them leave their wealthy employers, using the same verb in the corresponding VF form without me(r)- as an optative: ponret'eli 'let's go away'. All this suggests that we should change the analysis of VF forms so that those without me(r)- are simply marked as INDIC (and SF and OF forms be marked SF.INDIC and OF.INDIC respectively). (4a), for example, can be reanalysed as: (4)
b.
me-ponre-t'eli VF-go : away-1PL : INDIC
The function oí me(r)- when not 'completive' (focusing on the verb alone) can thus be said to foreground the whole predication as bearing the main nar rative line forward. In the present analysis I shall call the 'ernic' function associated with me(r)- Predicational Focus. By 'ernic' I mean pertaining to a language-specific grammatical category as opposed to the wider range of 'etic' functions to which elements expressing such categories may be put in actual discourse contexts.
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23
4. Word order in Yukagir The broad Prague School notion of Commmunicative Dynamism (CD) gives useful leverage on understanding word-order variation in Yukagir, the other side of the pragmatic articulation of the sentence in that language. It involves a weaker sense of 'focus' than that of the morphological system, one concern ing the degree of freedom that remains after the obligatory effects of choices within the latter have been accounted for. I have examined all examples of deviation from strict Frame-S-O-X-V ordering in Krejnovich's Tundra text. Yukagir is somewhat less rigid in its word ordering than English but more so than West Greenlandic. Variation of the basic or 'neutral' pattern (mostly postposing of NPs after the verb) does not have a very high functional load, per haps precisely because the morphological focal system covers most of the ground itself. Krejnovich (1982:270f.) gives examples of such variation but does not go further than to describe it as 'subjective' and 'expressive'. In particular, postposing does not appear to be utilized to indicate marked New Topics as in West Greenlandic (Fortescue 1994:270). Postposing performs a function in Yukagir that I shall call, following Hannay (1983), Emphatic Focus or EmphFoc. Especially common is the post posing of adverbial material — including oblique case-marked nominal phrases. This is not surprising since such constituents are not involved in the morpho logical focus system as such (case-marked adverbial NPs can take emphatic suffix -ng however). They are rather often postposed — at least in the Tundra dialect — when they express what Firbas calls 'specification' (Firbas 1992:345) in the type of sentence where the verb has 'quality-assigning' (as opposed to 'presentational') function.7 This may represent essential information without which the predicate cannot be said to be complete and thus bear the maximal CD within the sentence as 'rheme proper'. Such material follows the universal tendency for constituents bearing the highest CD to come last in the sentence (that is, when allowed by the grammar of the specific language concerned). The verb, bearing less CD than the following 'specification', may thus fulfil a merely 'transitional' function. The material concerned may be 'given' in a global sense, but what counts is the immediate context, as Firbas stresses, i.e. any referring expression here should be different from the immediate topic at that point in the text. It could have been introduced for the first time several topic shifts back. An example of one kind of EmphFoc postposing is found in (5):
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(5)
me-kewe-t 'eng tett 'ie-ngin ' VF-go:off-lSG:INDIC rich: man-ALL 'I went off to the rich man'.
The postposed X is here 'given' in the preceding sentence, where the narrator's father tells him to go and work for the rich man. The CD of the sentence is concentrated on the final X phrase, the predicate being 'transitional' in Firbas' sense, yet the verb nevertheless has the VF marker me-. This would seem to be a case of the same kind of sentential/predicate focus I glossed in (4a) as 'indeed'. The verb repeats — or, as here, rephrases — the verb of the preced ing sentence. In (6) a typical example is given where the X represents immediately new — although globally 'given' — material; the sentence exemplifies the OF con struction. (6)
labunme-le qalRatej-meng nonol-Rat ptarmigan-FOC release-1SG:OF : INDIC snare-ABL 'I released (unexpectedly) a ptarmigan from (the) snare'.
The last mention of the snare was seven sentences back, across several topic shifts. The immediate context is a question put by the narrator's mother as to why he is crying. The main CD of the sentence can be said to lie on the fo cused object — i.e. the morphological system overrides word-order in this respect. The X constituent is nevertheless postposed as having relatively high CD, as an essential completion of the rest of the sentence. Such postposing of an X is common with the OF construction — in fact the normal position for a focused object or subject (noun, pronoun or Q-word) is immediately before the verb, so any X constituent will be excluded from this, its otherwise normal position and placed either after the verb (as here) or before the focused con stituent, as in (9) below.8 Also S and constituents may be positioned after the V in the VF construc tion when they contain higher CD than the verb itself, as in (7): (7)
tadat mer-uo-ng n'awn'iklie-d'ul then VF-cook-lSG:INDIC Arctic: fox-meat 'Then I cooked (the) fox meat'.
The immediately preceding context here describes how the narrator caught two foxes, skinned them and lit a fire. It is obvious that he is going to cook them. Perhaps 'fox meat' can be regarded as a SubTop inferrable from 'fox' in such a context — for a Yukagir, that is. The OF construction would have been in appropriate here since 'fox meat' is not a brand new NewTop.
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25
Not all cases of postposing are of this sort, however — there are also in stances of 'Tail' material, elaborating or clarifying the predication or some part of it. In written texts it may be difficult to distinguish between the two cases; in (8), with a postposed S, the comma is Krejnovich's: (8)
n'aRa me-kewe-t'eli, met en'ie-n'eng together VF-go :off-1PL: INDIC I mother-COMM 'I went off together with my mother'.
As regards the preposing of an X (i.e. a satellite containing a referring nominal) before an S or constituent, the basic principle seems to be the natu ral one of positioning here material that has a stronger anaphoric link to con text than the other constituents of the sentence — I shall call this Frame2 as distinct from stage-setting adverbs and conjunctions, which I call Frame1. It would seem to correspond to the function 'Stager' in Hannay (1991:146). This is particularly common in the OF construction, where, as mentioned, the is NewTop and finds its natural position just before the verb, away from the beginning of the sentence, as in (9), which also contains an initial Frame1 con stituent: (9)
tāl'ellede met-lalime-Rat kil-labunme-k then my-sledge-ABL two-ptarmigan-FOC seure-meng bring:in-lSG:oF:INDIC 'Then I brought in two ptarmigans from my sledge'.
The narrator's sledge has not been mentioned overtly before but it can be in ferred that he has arrived on one, having been out hunting. More rarely, an is found preposed before S, as in (10), which occurs in a context where the narrator has been talking about the Chukchis he is journey ing with but in the immediately preceding sentence intruduces some new peo ple; the former are therefore more deeply rooted in the context than the latter: (10)
tun-t'upt'e-pu-le these-Chukchi-PL-OBJ me-merās-nga VF-clothe-3PL: INDIC 'These people fed the
tu-d'īng me-lögite-nga these-people VF-feed-3PL: INDIC wien-sukun-ek other-clothing-OBJ Chukchis and gave them (new) clothes'.
This is, then, a case of a GivTop preposed to P1: this occurs when there are two GivTops in the same sentence, the one most given, i.e. deeply an chored in the preceding text, coming first. The same sentence also illustrates
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the difference in pragmatic force between preposing and postposing NP constit uents (the object constituent in the second clause represents EmphFoc); this can also be seen in (11), which contains both at once, but here, as more common ly, with two X's rather than core arguments: (11)
mat'e-lek met-kedel me-wārej-ng lasso-INSTR my-body VF-pull: across-1SG:INDIC enudie-ngumde-ngin ' river-other: side-ALL 'With the lasso I pulled myself across to the other side of the river'.
The first X is firmly anchored in the preceding text (the nominal referent was introduced a few sentences back), whereas the postposed one, functioning as EmphFoc, is an essential new part of the predication, indicating the goal and purpose of the event concerned.
5. Fitting Yukagir into the FG framework A number of problems have to be faced now when relating what has been said so far to the existing FG formalism. As in my analysis of word-ordering prin ciples in West Greenlandic (Fortescue 1994), I shall concentrate on marked ernic pragmatic functions (other than Tail), as grammaticalized in the specific language Yukagir. These are presented on Table 2, which should not be taken as complete (for instance, other means of expressing Emphatic Focus than by word order are omitted and the etic function 'cataphoric' may well be relevant on NewTop and/or EmphFoc). Each of these expression categories can in turn be seen to realize a number of potential etic discourse features (or 'micro-func tions') of the discourse situation — in square brackets on Table 2. This would seem to represent a useful way of recognizing the fact that the same ernic means may be used for a variety of etic ends, often more than one at once. The unmarked cases are not of great importance here, actually being indi cative of lack of any special pragmatic content: they do not involve the element of 'special treatment' that Dik (1989:266) associates with both Focus and Topic. They are 'defaults' which would not be called NewTop, etc., at all in standard FG. Thus the default means of introducing a new topic in discourse is by an overt NP in a neutral VF sentence (as opposed to zero anaphora for
GRAMMATICALIZED FOCUS IN YUKAGIR
27
Table 2: Pragmatic functions in Yukagir
an unmarked given topic). Even EmphFoc could be said to have an unmarked counterpart, namely the head verb of the sentence, on which such emphasis lies in the default case. The marked categories, on the other hand, match formal marking with content markedness, as expressed by the relevant etic features below them on Table 2: they represent the language-specific clusters of univer sal functions — prototypes, if you will — expressed by the associated struc tures, as determined by abductive investigation. The category GivTop, for example, indicates when marked something more than just being a discourse topic (a referring expression in general): it indicates some particular relevance at that point in the discourse. Whether marked or not, it can be applied to an S or an or to both in one sentence.9 In Yukagir marked Frame2 is distinct from unmarked Frame1 (conjunctions and anaphoric adverbials finding their normal place at the beginning of the sentence) in so far as it is realized by oblique case-marked nominal expressions normally found in the neutral posi tion for X constituents just before the verb (for the category 'Frame' compare de Vries 1992:3f.). It is, in Firbas' terms, part of the Theme (the part of the sentence with lowest CD), more specifically corresponding to his 'Set', as discussed in note 7. Note that 'resumed', 'inferred', 'completive' and 'con trastive' are regarded here as etic micro-functions, i.e. specific uses to which the language-specific categories GivTop, NewTop and PredFoc in Yukagir may
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be put. We have already seen in sentences (5) and (6) how the marked catego ries can interact, i.e. be represented in one and the same sentence. Yukagir makes limited use of special P1 and PO positions, as in West Greenlandic. The former, preposed position appears to be limited to anaphoric NPs — usually Fraire2 satellites but occasionally also GivTops. The postposed position PO is limited to material assigned EmphFoc, with higher CD than the verb, which in the unmarked case (like in West Greenlandic) comes sentencefinally. There is also a P2 position just before the verb, reserved for oblique/adverbial X constituents unless filled by a focused S or O. This gives the over all sentence template Frame-Pl-S-O-P2-V-P0-Tail, where all positions except the verb are optional (and Frame is for Frame1 constituents as described). As to representing the various possibilities for expressing pragmatic func tions in Yukagir in terms of FG sentential formulae, there is no particular problem with the SF and OF constructions, where the terms concerned are simply marked NewTop, as for example — somewhat simplified — in formula (12) representing SF metek uul on Table 1: (12)
Ind e1: [uu-vintr (met)AgNewTop]
The expression rules, if they operate centrifugally on successive layers and their satellites and operators as Dik (1989:308) claims they do, ensure that the full verbal form will be determined only at the level at which Ind, the extended predicate operator of objective modality, occurs, choosing the appropriate ver bal paradigm. Here the SF form is chosen after NewTop has already triggered focal marker -ek to be attached to the subject. In the absence of the NewTop tag on one of the core arguments the default (VF) indicative would have been triggered. Nor is there any difficulty marking EmphFoc on satellites as in (13), corre sponding to (6): ( 13)
Ind e1:[qalRatej -vtr( 1 s)Ag(labunme-)GoNewTop] (nonol-)SoEmphFoc
But what of the so-called Verb focus' construction? First, the 'completive' example given in Table 1, met meruujeng could be represented as in (14), with PredFoc marked on the verb: (14)
Ind e1: [uu-vintrPredF (met)Ag]
In the case of the corresponding construction lacking me(r)-, which I have argued merely indicates the unmarked indicative, the following representation seems obvious: (15)
Ind e¡: [uu-vintr (met)Ag]
GRAMMATICALEED FOCUS IN YUKAGIR
29
A more complicated case arises with the me(r)- VF construction used for sentential emphasis, as in (5), glossable as '(indeed) I went off to the rich man'. I propose the following representation, where the label PredFoc is at tached to the predicate as in (14), even though this is etically understood as referring to the whole predication (by pragmatic inferencing) and EmphFoc is attached to the source satellite: (16)
Ind e¡: [kewe-vintrPredFoc(ls)Ag] (tetťie-)SoEmphFoc
The question that arises with such an analysis is whether PredFoc and Emph Foc actually need to be distinguished, since their scope is always distinct, a predicate in the former case and a term (or adverbial) in the latter. Just Foc in both cases would be sufficient in so far as the means of expression concerned depends entirely upon the domain concerned, but of course two 'identical' foci in one sentence is not particularly desirable a solution. This is a matter I shall return to below.
6. The grammaticalization of pragmatic functions To grasp how language-specific the ernic categories used in the analysis above actually are it is useful to compare the category NewTop in Yukagir and West Greenlandic: is this category exactly the same in the two cases? If not, what is common to them? Naturally the means by which they are expressed are not identical; moreover, they are not obligatorily utilized to the same degree. But beyond that, just what do I mean by NewTop in Yukagir, for example? It is not just the 'newness' of the constituent thus marked, for also unfocused nomi nal constituents in the VF construction may be 'new' in the immediate context. There is also an element of discourse-context foregrounding beyond mere new ness. This is indicated by the etic feature 'important' on Table 2. Is this the same as the feature of that name indicated also for EmphFoc, where, as we have seen, it is a matter of relatively higher CD than the verb? I would claim that it is. This is precisely the point in distinguishing universal etic features, no single one of which is necessarily criterial for triggering a particular ernie category in a given language. They rather combine with other such universal features of human discourse to produce a distinctive cluster which defines the ernie function concerned. NewTop in West Greenlandic, for instance, is not associated with the etic features 'contrastive' and 'completive' as the ernie cate gory of that name is in Yukagir. What I would like to propose, then, is that although etic functions may be
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related on a universally valid hierarchy, emic ones can not usefully be repre sented in this fashion since they may overlap both in terms of means of expres sion and in terms of content. They are nevertheless discrete within the overall grammar of the individual language. On Figure 1 is one hierarchical way of representing the overall domain of Focus (compare it with the diagram on p. 282 of Dik 1989, to which I have added Hannay's Assertive/Emphatic distinc tion discussed below). Features concerning topic management alone (e.g. etic functions associated with GivTop) are not included. On Figure 1 'New' is the etic feature ingredient in NewTop, and does not indicate Dik's New Focus (Dik 1989:282), which is identical to his Completive Focus — see my etic feature 'completive'. Compare also Mackenzie & Keizer (1991:211) for the suggestion that has been made within FG of treating NewTop as a variety of Focus: in their strictly binary classification they treat it as a 'presentative' sub-variety of 'completive (contextually new) focus'.10 Asser tive Focus, which corresponds to the part of the sentence bearing maximal CD in Prague School theory (Rheme Proper), covers according to Hannay (1983: 210) those varieties of focus concerned with what is new for the addressee in the given setting, as opposed to Emphatic Focus, which is a matter of impor tance or salience irrespective of the given-new parameter. In Yukagir, leaving aside PredFoc, which is not part of the ergatively organized focus system at all, the distinction corresponds to that between morphological focus (NewTop) and all other types of focus (EmphFoc); the latter may be realized by word order, by special 'emphatic' suffixes (corresponding to English 'even', 'also', 'as for', 'just', '(him)self', etc.) or presumably also by intonation (a matter on which I have no information, however). It remains an open question here whether there is really just one emic cate gory 'EmphFoc' in Yukagir or whether there should be a separate sub-category for each of the emphatic suffix types, for example. Similarly, sub-varieties of the etic category of that name with universal applicability may well be dis cernible, with one or more of which specific emic sub-categories would be associated, although there is no guarantee that any real language would match just those distinctions emically. It would seem to be desirable at all events to make a clearer distinction between universal etic and grammaticalized/language-specific emic functions within FG in general. In doing so it will also be necessary to decide whether questions of the 'scope' of Focus (see Dik 1989: 281) should be allowed to dictate distinctions between emic functions that otherwise seem to be 'etically' the same. For example, is PredFoc just a sub-
GRAMMATICALIZED FOCUS IN YUKAGIR
31
Figure 1 : Th etic Focus hierarchy variety of EmphFoc, as hinted at in connection with the discussion of formula (16) above? In so far as these two ernic categories in Yukagir, besides having distinct scope domains, each have their own distinct expression and their dis tinct cluster of associated etic sub-functions, I prefer to keep them separate. At a more abstract level they could still be analysed as varieties of the same (em phatic) Focus in complementary distribution as regards their scope. The two major types of focus may combine in one sentence, as in the fol lowing from Krejnovich (1982:221), which occurs in a context where an old man and his wife are revealing to the hero how he can get his horse to take him anywhere that he wishes by magical means; the man has just finished speaking: (17)
apanalã-ngoldaRane jawlaRande t'ald'edarime-Ra old:woman-as:for left palm-LOC ul'ege-die-k tadi-mle leaf-small-FOC give-3sG:OF:INDIC 'As for the old woman, she put a small leaf into the palm of his hand.'
There is Assertive (NewTop) Focus on the object and special Emphatic Focus (irrespective of newness) on the subject, as marked by suffix -ngoldaRane. The varieties of Focus on Figure 1 should be taken as belonging to the uni versal description of discourse management. I hesitate to call such an area of
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study 'discourse grammar' since it is precisely not a matter of grammaticalization in any real language; it is a matter of a theory of 'dynamic verbal inter action' as opposed to static grammatical description (see Mackenzie & Keizer 1991:171). Each specific language associates a selection of such universal discourse factors with the means of expression available to it. The fit can probably never be exact since the means available to a given language will presumably always underdetermine the richness of their potential uses in the service of the pragmatic articulation of discourse. It appears then that Yukagir's 'focus system' can indeed be seen as a matter of Focus in the widest sense — though the FG notion of Focus needs to be both broadened and further differentiated along the lines suggested by Hannay and by Mackenzie & Keizer for this to be evident.11 What is unusual in Yukagir is the morphological expression of the marked core categories in this domain — i.e. when the etic features of the on-going discourse associated with them are activated above some threshold level (for example 'new' plus 'impor tant' in the case of NewTop, both of them gradable). As we have seen, this does not exhaust the means available for the expression of Focus in Yukagir however — there is also the additional parameter of deviation from basic word order, as in West Greenlandic, though much less utilized than in that language. West Greenlandic in turn has no morphological means of expressing pragmatic functions (apart from the enclitic construction required for identifying/selective focus). One may well ask whether the obligatory (e.g. morphological) part and the more optional (e.g. word ordering) part of the expression of pragmatic functions have the same status. In other words, is it a matter of grammaticalization in both cases? If formal categories of any sort exist to express them, I am afraid that this is simply so and that we must live with different degrees of grammaticalization of pragmatic functions. Thus the grammatical indication of marked NewTop subjects and objects in Tundra Yukagir is obligatory but not that of PredFoc on the verb, even though the latter is also a matter of morphol ogy (prefix me(r)-). There would appear to be some degree of variability in the use of that prefix, but not as much as in purely word order choices (apart from the positioning of focused or S just before the verb); for example, what is expressed as Tail elaboration or afterthought by one speaker might have been treated by another — or by the same speaker at another time — as an integral part of the predication (e.g. as Given Topic). The difference between 'obliga tory' and 'optional' would seem to be one of degree — these may well be ex plicable in dynamic discourse terms of weightings and thresholds but that does not help us draw the line as to what is grammaticalized or not in a given lan guage.
GRAMMATICALIZED FOCUS IN YUKAGIR
33
A further complication arises with the 'marked' versus 'unmarked' distinc tion. One position — close to the one I adopted in section 5 above — is to ignore the (structurally) unmarked cases, claiming that they really indicate absence of pragmatic function in as far as they are default morphosyntactic 'settings' which have no synchronic functionality, though they often do reflect functional historical roots. Another is to break down illocutions into different sub-types, each associated with a different array of pragmatic functions, op tional or not. In Yukagir, for instance, the category NewTop is not relevant for imperative sentences (the OF and SF constructions are impossible). In this vein Hannay (1991) discusses the distinct declarative TOPIC, ALL-NEW and PRESENTATIVE 'modes' (amongst others relevant to English). Only the for mer is associated (obligatorily) with a GivTop, while all of them have a Focus (in the presentative case corresponding to Dik's NewTop). These three 'modes' certainly seem relevant to Yukagir too, where Topic mode is associated with marked GivTop and Presentative mode with marked NewTop — in what Krejnovich calls the 'rhematic object and subject' constructions.12 Another kind of problem concerning markedness and grammaticalization arises in the case of the P2 position in Yukagir, utilized, as we have seen, for oblique/adverbial constituents when not filled by a focused S or O. Since the filling of the position by such a focused constituent is part and parcel of the OF and SF constructions (for NewTop), can it be regarded as a grammatical/emic category in its own right? Not according to the principles employed in this paper, since there is no independent choice involved. Such considerations lead me to propose a scale of grammaticalization of pragmatic functions, going from the most grammaticalized to the least as fol lows: -
unmarked functions (obligatory default values, synchronically largely arbi trary morphosyntactic patterns) - marked functions (choices that are available for given discourse goals) - clashes between pragmatic functions and grammar as such.13 The inverse link between markedness and obligatoriness should be clear, but note that the central region of the scale may contain means of expression var ying widely as regards degree of obligatoriness. The sense of 'markedness' used here refers, note, to ernic expression categories in a given language, not to universal etic ones (relatable, for example to textual frequency). There must, at all events, be a limit to the degree of specificity with which one can integrate the pragmatic articulation of utterances in context into a
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strictly grammatical description. The most useful place to draw the line, I would suggest, is precisely between the ernic and the etic (or between 'content form' and 'content substance' in Hjelmslevian terms), as I have done in this paper and in my work on West Greenlandic word order. This means focusing on the central (marked) region of the scale proposed above. Etic functions in wider discourse contexts can be drawn upon to explain and validate the lan guage-specific ernic ones that the individual grammar contains, but need not be part of any static grammatical description.
Notes 1.
It does not, for example, display object incorporation like neighbouring Chukchi, though it does have incorporation-like fusion of nominals with preceding adjectival and other modifiers.
2.
This is less general than in West Greenlandic, however, in which the overt presence of any pronominal subject is marked. Topic tracking is supplemented by a switch reference system in West Greenlandic, lacking an analogue in Yukagir.
3.
In fact I have not found any examples at all in the texts of completive focus on the verb in answer to questions like 'What did he do?', as in Krejnovich's isolated example sen tences. Such questions, note, are in the OF form, as in nemele wiete-meng 'what will you do?'. The answer, as we have seen, will be in the VF form, which is also the form used in questions and answers about NPs in the instrumental and other oblique cases of the type 'What did he do it with?' (the answer to the latter type may sometimes also be in the OF form — see Krejnovich 1958:88). Compare the completive use of the SF (or OF) construction in 'identifying' contexts such as: kin-ek Ewenge-ngol-el → who-FOC Ewenge-be-3SG:SF:INTER 'Who is Ewenge?'. →
4.
met-ek Ewenge-ngol-el I-FOC Ewenge-be-lSG:SF:INDIC 'I am Ewenge'.
That the SF and OF constructions may nevertheless be used contrastively is illustrated by the following OF sentence from Krejnovich, where it is the 'incorporated' adjective alone that undergoes restrictive Focus: met amat 'ed-ile-k el '-bun '-meng 'It wasn't a good reindeer that I killed'. Here the complex noun phrase object has the appropriate focus-marker -k attached and the verb is in the expected transitive OF form. This appears to be the only construction where the negative prefix el '- does not take inflections similar to the intransitive VF con struction. It otherwise goes with such VF inflections even when the verb is transitive,
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35
as in met lieng el'bund'eng 'I didn't kill a reindeer', where the predication is negated (note that constituent negation is also possible in this latter case, with el- directly attached to the object). 5.
Note that the basic 'tense' appearing in Comrie's paradigms, which he calls 'past' (and Krejnovich 'aorist') is actually a bare indicative, as in West Greenlandic, referring to past or present (as opposed to the morphologically marked future).
6.
'Parallel Focus', a sub-variety of Contrastive Focus, can also be found in Yukagir, as in: mārqale met-abut 'ien dading, mārqale met-qait 'ien dading 'I gave one to my grandmother and one to my grandfather'. This is the ordinary VF construction (repeated in each clause), without me(r)- and with the allative case X nominal in its usual place after the object. In other words, this does not have special ernic status in Yukagir.
7.
As an example of Firbas' 'presentational' sentence type, consisting of Set (setting) - Pr (presentation) - Ph (phenomenon) observe the following, in the SF construction as ex pected (the subject is the 'phenomenon' and the 'set' element is lacking — or rather understood from context): labunme-le köt 'id 'i-nu-l ptarmigan-FOC jump-FREQ-3sG:SF:INDIC 'A ptarmigan was jumping about (in it)'. This follows a sentence describing the narrator going to look at the snare he has set. Compare also (9), where the 'set' (Frame2) element is present and the 'phenomenon' is the object.
8.
Exceptions do occur, however, where other factors override the placement of a focused S or immediately before the verb, as in the following from Krejnovich's text: n'awn'iklie-le met-kapkan-Ra fox-FOC my-trap-LOC 'A fox got caught in my trap'.
eju-l be:caught-3sG:SF:INDIC
The reason the focused subject has been placed in initial position here may be that at this point in the narrative the fox is not new to the reader/listener (we have just been told that it was caught), but it is new to the addressee of the utterance within the narrative, namely the speaker's mother, to whom he addresses it. There is, in other words, a clash between NewTop asignment (and its obligatory grammatical consequences) and the givenness/anaphoric status (GivTop?) of the constituent concerned. A clearer example of this is seen in the following from Krejnovich (1982:239), where the focused object tangut 'that' is actually an anaphoric demonstrative (which cannot take focus suffixes and appears in its ordinary object form) though the referent is being put in a new — and contrastive — context in the sentence:
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tangut met n'ienu-lbun'-meng tet-in' that I request-want-1SG:OF: INDIC you-ALL '(It's) that (girl) I want to request (lit. 'call') for you'. 9.
Thus the following VF sentence from Krejnovich's text: met-en 'ie n 'awn 'ikliele і 'im 'My mother killed the fox'. Here the subject meten'ie 'mother' and the object n'awn'ikliele 'fox' (distinguished by the OBJ marker -le) have just been named in the preceding context, the mother immediately before and the fox 'resumed' from two sentences back. If the two topics had been unmarked the sentence would just have consisted of the final verb. See Hannay (1991:139) for other exceptions to the principle that there should only be one Topic per sentence, e.g. in Hungarian and various Slavic languages. Cases of a single constituent appearing to take more than one pragmatic function at once should probably be regarded as a matter of 'clashes' (see note 8).
10.
But unlike English in their analysis (and like West Greenlandic), Yukagir does appear to be a language in which New and Given Topic are both relevant ernic categories, distinct in expression from (other kinds of) Focus. In general, the pragmatic function New Topic appears to occupy a middle ground between Given Topic (which anchors a referential constituent in preceding context but not calling further attention to it) and Emphatic Focus (which calls the listener/reader's attention to a particularly important constituent). New Topic partakes of both, combining 'importance' with relevance to the on-going elaboration of the topic framework.
11.
It should perhaps further be pointed out that focus is quite independent of syntactic function assignment in Yukagir, which has a full syntactic passive construction (with the agent in the instrumental). Thus Maslova (1989:18) gives examples like the following of the interaction of passivization and focus assignment: uor-pe-leng
n'ie-juol-ngul
child-PL-FOC all-PASS-3PL:SF:INDIC
'The children were called'. The agent, if present, may also be focused (e.g. with SF focus form met '(by) me' and without the focus marker on the subject in the example above). 12.
Hannay's REACTION mode (for answers) is probably also relevant here, a completive context calling forth either the NewFoc or the PredFoc category in Yukagir.
13.
See for example Fortescue (1987) for an investigation of the occasional overriding of 3rd versus 4th person marking in West Greenlandic by pragmatic factors — in particular the discrepancy between long-term 'topic entity' (main actant) and grammatical 'subject'. Whether such sporadic phenomena are a matter for the grammar as such is a moot point. My own position is that they are not, but rather form part of a language-specific theory
GRAMMATICALEED FOCUS IN YUKAGIR
37
of discourse. Wichmann (1992:22f.), however, uses the term 'global topic' for rather similar cases in Tlapanec, treating this as an ernic (grammatical) category. Compare also under note 8.
Abbreviations ABL ADV ALL FOC FREQ INDIC INTER OF PASS PL SF SG TR VF
ablative case adverb allative case focus frequentive indicative interrogative object focus passive plural subject focus singular transitive verb focus
References Collinder, Bjørn. 1940. Jukagirisch und Uralisch. Uppsala: Uppsala Universitets Års skrift 1940, 8. Comrie, Bernard. 1981. The Languages of the Soviet Union. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dik, Simon. 1989. The Theory of Functional Grammar. Part 1: The structure of the clause. Dordrecht: Foris. Firbas, Jan. 1992. Functionalism in linguistics. Thirty Years of Linguistic Evolution ed. by M. Pütz, 335-357. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Fortescue, Michael. 1987. Switch reference anomalies and 'topic' in West Greenlandic: A case of pragmatics over syntax. Levels of Linguistic Adaptation ed. by J. Verschueren, 53-80. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Fortescue, Michael. 1988. The Eskimo-Aleut-Yukagir relationship: An alternative to the genetic/contact dichotomy. Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 21.21-50. Fortescue, Michael. 1994. Eskimo word order variation and its contact-induced pertur bation. Journal of Linguistics 29.267-289.
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Hannay, Michael. 1983. The focus function in Functional Grammar: Questions of contrast and context. Advances in Functional Grammar ed. by S. Dik, 207-223. Dordrecht: Foris. Hannay, Michael. 1991. Pragmatic function assignment and word order variation in a functional grammar of English. Journal of Pragmatics 16.131-155. Jochei son, V.l. 1900. Materialy po izucheniju Jukagirskago jazyka i foľklora. Trudy jakutskoj ekspeditsii, otd. 3, t.9, c.3. St. Petersburg. Krejnovich, E.A. 1958. Jukagirsky Jazyk. Leningrad: Nauka. Krejnovich, E.A. 1982. Issledovanija i materialy po jukagirskomu jazyku. Leningrad: Nauka. Mackenzie, J. Lachlan & M. Evelien Keizer. 1991. On assigning pragmatic functions in English. Pragmatics 1.169-215. Maslova, J.S. 1989. Sootnoshenije kommunikativnoj і sintaksicheskoj struktur v prostom predlozhenii jukagirskogo jazyka. Avtoreferat disertatsii na sooiskanije uchonoj stepeni kandidata filologicheskikh nauk, Leningradskoje otdelenije instituta jazykoznanija, Akademija Nauk, Leningrad. Vries, Lourens de. 1992. Frames and Topics in some Papuan Languages. Paper pre sented at the 5th International Conference on Functional Grammar, Antwerp, Belgium. Wichmann, Søren. 1992. Topic switch-reference in Azoyú Tlapanec and the logicalglobal parameter. Paper presented at the 5th International Conference on Function al Grammar, Antwerp, Belgium.
Iconic motivations in conflict Language-specific structure and influence from the medium Elisabeth Engberg-Pedersen University of Copenhagen
1. Introduction A functional view of language means that language is primarily seen as a means for communication in a wide sense. Ultimately functional linguists thus seek to describe and explain the different types of relations between semanticpragmatic content and its expression in the world's languages. The functional view of language makes it interesting to examine cases where linguistic ex pression brings about, or at least makes possible a certain content structure because of its physical character, for instance linearity (see, for instance, Haiman 1985b). In the article 'Iconicity and arbitrariness' (this volume), I point out that iconic relations between content and expression in language always involve structural units, i.e. content elements and expression elements as determined by the structure of any individual language. It is often claimed, for instance, that in sentences with a conjunction of two event verbs such as (1a-b), there is an iconic relation between what is first on the content plane and what is first in the expression such that we interpret (la) as meaning 'He first got up and then had breakfast' and (lb) as 'He first had breakfast and then got up'. (1)
a. He got up and had breakfast. b. He had breakfast and got up.
What we compare here is the sequencing of structural units in the form of verb phrases on the expression plane and events on the content plane. In English the two verb phrases can be interchanged with a change in meaning, but without any other consequence on the expression plane. In a language such as Hua, the
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ELISABETH ENGBERG-PEDERSEN
first verb would be marked as medial and the second verb as final in both sen tences (Haiman 1985b:79-80), i.e. the order of the verb phrases in Hua cannot be changed without a change in the morphological form of the verbs. In ac counting for temporal iconicity we have to consider such structural character istics of individual languages. In 'Iconicity and arbitrariness' (this volume) I furthermore outline three types of diagrammatic iconicity: - imaginai diagrams: a feature of the expression as structured substance re flects a feature of the content plane; -diagrams based on analogy between elements on the content plane; - paradigmatic isomorphism: diagrams of structure only. Examples (la-b) demonstrate an imaginai diagram: the linearity of the ex pression as substance is reflected in the order of the verb phrases (expression structure) and this order reflects a temporal ordering on the content plane. A diagram based on analogy between content elements is found, for instance, in cases where communicatively or cognitively important elements are expressed before less important elements (task urgency, see Givón 1985:198-199). Here the diagrammatic nature of the relationship only appears once we establish an analogical relation between commmunicative or cognitive importance on the one hand and temporal firstness on the other. Finally, isomorphism is one-toone mapping between structural elements on the content plane and structural elements on the expression plane: a trend towards isomorphism is a diachronic development away from portmanteau morphs or polysemy towards distinctive encoding of each content element. In this paper I want to demonstrate the point that linguistic expression can bring about a certain content structure because of its physical character, but also that claims of iconicity are no short-cut to an analysis of language-specific structure, as iconic factors can compete such that different languages — or dif ferent diachronic stages of one language — can have different iconically moti vated structures. I mainly use data from a visual language, i.e. Danish Sign Language, but also demonstrate parallels between signed and spoken languages that can be attributed to common communicative and cognitive factors, as well as differences that can be attributed to the difference in medium. In sections 2 and , І briefly describe the way the space around the signer is used for reference in signed languages and how signs in predicates can be modified spatially. Section 4 discusses the category of person in relation to pronouns in signed languages, while section 5 demonstrates different types of "deictic projection" (Lyons 1977:578-579) or ways of "taking the other fel low's point of view" (Fillmore 1975). Sections 6 and 7 present generational
ICONIC MOTIVATIONS IN CONFLICT
41
differences in the use of verbs modified spatially in Danish Sign Language and demonstrate how the differences can be explained as the result of competing semantic-pragmatic factors, namely agentivity as expressed in iconic verb signs, agreement with an origin in locative relations, and a specific point of view derived from the deictic value of the signer's location. Section 8 demon strates how the same factors interact in spoken languages, and, finally, in sec tion 9 I discuss the different types of iconicity in the light of the similarities and differences between signed and spoken languages.
2. Signed languages as languages and the use of space in signing Signed languages of the deaf are natural languages in the sense that they have not been invented by anyone, but have arisen and developed among deaf peo ple, especially in families with several deaf generations, in schools for the deaf and in deaf clubs. Some isolated parts of the world have seen such a concentra tion of deaf individuals that a signed language has been common in interaction between most hearing and deaf members of the community (for an overview, see Perlmutter 1986). Linguistic study of signed languages, which has been going on since the early 1960s, has shown that signed languages are expressed by movements of the hands, the body, the head, and the muscles of the face, including eye movements and mouth movements. Signed languages vary in the extent to which they use silent mouthings of (approximations to) spoken language words. All signed languages described up to now also use mouth movements that do not correspond to any spoken language word. Signed languages use the space around the signer for reference. Deictic ref erence can be made by means of pointing gestures to individuals, entities, and places in the context of utterance, while anaphoric reference can be made by means of pointing gestures in different directions from the signer, each direc tion representing a referent. A direction from the signer that represents a referent is called a locus (pl. loci) (Engberg-Pedersen 1993:52-57). Besides in pointing gestures (i.e. pronouns and determiners) loci can be manifested in other manual signs modified for the locus. That a sign is modified for a locus means that the hands are moved out in the direction of the locus or held in such a way that they are seen as oriented in the direction of the locus. The direction of a locus may also be seen in the orientation of the signer's head, body or gaze.
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ELISABETH ENGBERG-PEDERSEN
Loci for referents are not chosen randomly, but according to certain con ventions. A particular configuration of loci at a given point in the discourse is called the frame of reference. The frame of reference may be an imaginai diagram in the sense that the relations between its loci reflect the relations between the referents in the situation described. The choice of a locus for a new referent depends on the current frame of reference. If there is some kind of semantic affinity between a new referent A, e.g. a club, and one of the pre viously mentioned referents B, e.g. a member of the club, and if there is no need to keep A distinct from B, then A is represented by the same locus as B. This latter type of diagram is based on analogy: the association of a member of a club with the club is understood in terms of spatial and temporal closeness and this content feature is reflected in the organization of loci in the frame of reference. The signer's own locus, called the sender locus, has a special status: it can be used to represent other referents than the signer and a referent represented by the sender locus is seen as having the point of view in a way that will be further described below. The sender locus is always relevant, which means that the choice of loci for other referents is influenced by its presence. Signers may describe a situation involving two referents different from themselves, e.g. their child and their child's teacher. In that case, they are expected to empa thize more with their child than their child's teacher and thus to use a locus close to their body (to the right or the left) to represent their child, and a locus forward and usually in the opposite direction (left or right) to represent the teacher. The choice of locus for a referent is thus not a free one, neither is it totally predictable. That is, loci are meaningful. Signers may choose to use a locus close to their body to represent their child's teacher and a locus forward of them to represent their child. This frame of reference is a very strong indication of the signer's empathy — or frustration.
3. Agreement in Danish Sign Language Signs modified for a locus and occurring in predicates are said to show agree ment with the nominal that refers to the referent represented by the locus, or, to put it more simply, the predicate is said to agree with the locus in question (Engberg-Pedersen 1993:Chapters 6 and 7). Illustrations 1-3 show three ver sions of the sign in Danish Sign Language glossed EXPLAIN and meaning 'explain, tell'. The form in I11. 1 is the sign's base form, the one that deaf peo-
ICONIC MOTIVATIONS IN CONFLICT
43
ple will give as an answer to the question What is the sign meaning 'explain'? The form in I11. 2 can occur in a clause meaning 'I told her...', where the ref erent corresponding to 'her' is represented by the locus to the signer's left. The form in I11. 3 occurred in a clause meaning 'Dan explained it to me', where the individual named Dan is represented by the locus forward left from the signer. The illustrations demonstrate how the orientation of the hands changes depending on the locus of the arguments' referent and the arguments' semantic role — with EXPLAIN, depending on whether the argument is agent or reci pient.
Illustration
Illustration 2
We still know fairly little of the syntax of Danish Sign Language besides what relates to the use of space, but it appears that clauses such as the first clause of (2) differ from clauses such as (3) in that the arguments in the first clause of (2) can be described in semantic terms, while the relation between the argument and the predicate in (3) is better described in pragmatic terms, maybe as a topic-comment relation.1 (2)
l . p TELL + EXPLAIN + S1 GRANDMOTHER / PRON + fd DEAF /
'I told her grandmother, 'She is deaf".
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ELISABETH ENGBERG-PEDERSEN
Illustration 3 (3)
PRON + fr PAY+p.a.:fr WHOLE + fr /
'He'll pay all of it' or 'He should be paid all of it'. Verbs such as EXPLAIN and PAY can show both the type of agreement seen in (2), called semantic agreement, and the type of agreement shown in (3), called pragmatic agreement. Most signs can only show pragmatic agreement, however. When EXPLAIN and PAY show semantic agreement, what matters is the orientation of the hands. When they show pragmatic agreement, the important thing is where the hands are, their orientation being immaterial. Agreement is not obligatory in Danish Sign Language, but partly a matter of pragmatic choice. Agreement is more likely to occur than not - if the loci are deictic, i.e. if the referents are present in the context of utterance; - in a contrastive or emphatic context; - if signers want to underline that they witnessed a transaction between two non-first person referents or to underline their lack of involvement in a transaction between two non-first person referents. These points will be further illuminated below.
ICONIC MOTIVATIONS IN CONFLICT
45
4. The category of person in signed pronouns It has been an issue of much debate whether signed languages have personal pronouns, i.e. whether the category of person is relevant to signed pronouns (see especially Ahlgren 1984; Ravnholt & Engberg-Pedersen 1986; Ahlgren 1990; Lillo-Martin & Klima 1990; Meier 1990; Engberg-Pedersen 1993:131139). The reason for the debate is that signed pronouns take the form of point ing gestures and that these can be seen as identical with pre- or paralinguistic pointing. In order to refer to the receiver signers simply point to the receiver as they point to any other person present in order to refer to him or her, in cluding the signer. In order to refer to themselves, signers point to themselves. It might therefore be claimed that there is not a three-way person distinction in the pronouns, but only one pronoun whose current form depends on the actual location of the referent. If so, the pronoun has infinitely many mani festations. With only one pronoun, it cannot, of course, exhibit the category of person. Arguments in favour of a two-way person distinction between a first person pronoun (transcribed l.p) and a non-first person pronoun (transcribed PRON) draw on data from reported speech and, for Danish Sign Language, also on a distinction with respect to expression between the two pronouns. In pointing signs that are used to refer to non-first person referents including the receiver the orientation of the hand assimilates to the orientation of the hand of a pre ceding sign. In the citation form of PRON the palm faces sideward, but in the sequence CAN PRON+[locus-marker]?, 'Can you/he/she/it/they?', the end position of the hand in CAN is with the palm facing downward; the pronoun is then made with the palm facing downward. The citation form of the first person pronoun l.p consists of a pointing gesture where the tip of the index hand makes contact with the signer's chest. This form never shows hand orien tation assimilation, probably for physiological reasons. The handshape of l.p may, however, assimilate to the handshape of a preceding or following predi cate sign. Moreover, the handshape of l.p may be a very loose index hand and even a handshape where all the fingers and the thumb are extended, but re laxed. The handshape of PRON is always an index hand. What characterizes personal pronouns of any language is that they are what Jakobson after Jespersen calls shifters (Jakobson 1971). A shifter is an indexical symbol in the sense that, as a symbol, it "is associated with the represented object by a conventional rule" (1971:132), while at the same time, as an index, it "is in existential relation with the object it represents" (1971:132):
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ELISABETH ENGBERG-PEDERSEN
[...] on [the] one hand, the sign I cannot represent its object without being associated with the latter "by a conventional rule", and in different codes the same meaning is assigned to different sequences such as I, ego, ich, ja etc.: con sequently I is a symbol. On the other hand, the sign I cannot represent its object without "being in existential relation" with this object: the word I designating the utterer is existentially related to his utterance, and hence functions as an index [...] (Jakobson 1971:132) The sign l.p is not necessarily transparent as it may be made with other handshapes than an index hand. The main reason why l.p is an indexicai sym bol is, however, that it is not necessarily used to refer to the person the index hand is pointing at. An index in Jakobson's sense represents its object by "being in existential relation" with the object. But l.p can be used in reported speech to refer to an original sender. Thus l.p is "in existential relation" with, or refers to, the speech act participant the sender: it designates "the utterer" by being "existentially related to his utterance". It is sometimes claimed (see, in particular, Lillo-Martin & Klima 1990) that a pointing gesture to the signer used to refer to somebody else in reported speech can be analysed as an instance of PRON because reported speech is accompanied by body movements which signal that the signer no longer rep resents the signer, but another individual. Signers move, so to speak, out of their own position and place themselves in the position representing the other individual, it is claimed. Thus the index hand of PRON is no longer directed at the signer, but at the individual that the signer represents. The analysis does not hold for Danish Sign Language, however. In this language there need not be any signal in reported speech that distinguishes a report of another indi vidual's utterance from a report of the signer's own utterance at a different point in time. The movements of the signer's body do not signal the original sender, but the original receiver. That is, no features of reported speech dis tinguish the equivalent of He said to her, '7 can 't come " from the equivalent of I said to her, "I can't come". The reference of l.p in reported speech can only be understood from contextual clues such as a sender-identifying intro duction like He/I said. By contrast, a pointing gesture directed at the actual receiver can never be used to refer to anyone but the actual receiver. My con clusion is, therefore, that Danish Sign Language distinguishes first person from non-first person in the pronouns, but does not have a separate second person pronoun (for a similar conclusion with respect to ASL, see Meier 1990).
ICONIC MOTIVATIONS IN CONFLICT
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5. Shifted reference, shifted attribution of expressive elements, and shifted locus The term shifted is sometimes used in descriptions of indirect speech and the free indirect style in spoken languages: a shifted pronoun in indirect speech or the free indirect style is a pronoun that is not identical with the pronoun used in the original utterance (Jespersen 1924:219). By shifted, I mean, however, "changed in relation to the point of view of the actual sender" (EngbergPedersen 1995): the canonical use of the first person pronoun is for reference to the person who utters it. When speakers use the first person pronoun to refer to an original sender in reported speech, the pronoun has shifted refer ence. Shifted reference then covers cases where the first person pronoun (in Danish Sign Language: l.p) is used to refer to an original sender, not the actu al sender. In Danish Sign Language, shifted reference is only found in reported speech, i.e. in reports of what somebody said or signed (will/might say or sign). I use shifted attribution of expressive elements of cases where expressions of emotions or attitudes should be attributed to somebody other than the sender of the actual speech situation.2 In Danish Sign Language emotions and attitudes are often expressed by the signer's face and/or body and head posture. Signers express emotions by looking happy, enthusiastic, bored to death, arrogant, etc. Such expressions may either be attributed to the present signer as his/her atti tude to the contents of the message, or they may be attributed to a being who is the topic of whatever the signer is saying. While the phenomena of shifted reference and shifted attribution of expres sive elements are relevant to both spoken and signed languages, shifted locus is only relevant to signed languages as it requires the use of loci. Shifted locus covers cases where signers use the sender locus to represent another referent than themselves or use another locus than the sender locus to represent them selves. In the following monologue, a signer quoted another individual's utter ance to herself: she used the sender locus (c) to represent the original sender and the locus forward left from her body (ft) to represent herself. (4)
head: neu gaze: +
f1-
rot.fl neu ? +
neu+APPROACH+c ASK l . p / MAY l . p fl+c+SWAP /
'He came up to me and asked me, "May I swap with you?"'
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In the first half of the example the signer uses the sender locus to represent herself in the verb APPROACH, which is modified for the sender locus as rep resenting the goal. In the second half of the example she looks briefly forward left and rotates her head so that she faces forward left, both features signalling the original receiver (i.e. the present signer) represented by the locus forward left. SWAP is modified for both the locus forward left and for the sender lo cus, which now represents the sender of the reported speech, i.e. the man who approached the signer. While shifted reference is only used in reported speech, shifted attribution of expressive elements and shifted locus may occur also in reports of thoughts and beliefs and in descriptions of events and states with a shift to the agent, the experiencer, the patient, or the recipient. The referent "occupying" the sender locus can be described as the holder of the point of view (see further below). The greatest identification with a referent is seen when the first person pronoun l.p is used of the same individual as the sender locus in verbs and expressions of emotions and attitudes are attributed to that same individual. If l.p does not refer to the signer, we see this in reported speech only. Similar phenomena where basically deictic terms are used with another deictic centre than the actual sender are found in spoken languages, in parti cular where deictic terms are used with the receiver as their deictic centre. One well-known example is the request May we come in? with the addressee as the deictic centre of come (Fillmore 1973). Such phenomena are described as "taking the other fellow's point of view" (Fillmore 1975) or "deictic projec tion" (Lyons 1977:578-579). The two ways of characterizing the phenomena can be seen as metaphorically describing either a movement from another in dividual to the speaker ("taking the other fellow's point of view") or as a movement from the speaker to another individual ("[t]he speaker.. .can project himself into the spatiotemporal location of the addressee" (Lyons 1977:578, emphasis added)). In relation to signed languages the first metaphor seems more appropriate as the referent having the point of view "takes over" or "occupies" the signer's position, e.g. in reported speech.
6. Generational differences in the use of locus-modified verbs Verbs that can show semantic agreement in Danish Sign Language are of two types, single and double agreement verbs. Single agreement verbs can only agree with one argument, i.e. the Ρ argument (see Comrie 1981:64), of a tran sitive verb and what I call the argument of a ditransitive verb, i.e. the third
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ICONIC MOTIVATIONS IN CONFLICT
argument which is neither the A nor the Ρ argument. Double agreement verbs agree with their A argument and their Ρ argument in the case of transitive verbs and with their A argument and their argument in the case of ditransi tive verbs (see Table 1). This pattern is typologically remarkable (Faltz 1978) in that A argument agreement presupposes P/IO argument agreement: a verb can only agree with its A argument if it can also agree with its Ρ or IO argument. Table 1: The agreement patterns of different types of verbs Single agreement verbs agree with - transitive verbs: - ditransitive verbs: Double agreement verbs agree with - transitive verbs: - ditransitive verbs:
Ρ argument argument A argument and A argument and
Ρ argument argument
In order to explain this typological "peculiarity" we need to look more closely at individual verb signs and the ways they are used by different gene rations of deaf signers.3 Many elderly deaf signers use almost all verbs that can show semantic agreement as single agreement verbs, i.e. they only use verb forms that show agreement with the P/IO argument. Moreover, if the P/IO argument has first person reference, they leave out agreement altogether and use instead the base form of the verb followed by the first person pronoun: (5)
BLIND INSTITUTE OFTEN / BLIND TEASE l . p + p l . + s r /
This institute for the blind, the blind there often teased us'. A young deaf signer might here have used an agreement form of TEASE, e.g. fl+TEASE+c. In a somewhat younger generation we do find agreement with a first person P/IO argument, but not (or rarely) agreement with a non-first person A argu ment unless the P/IO argument is first person. That is, a person following this pattern may use the form fr+ANSWER +c in I11. 4 with non-first person A argument agreement and first person argument agreement in the equivalent of He answered me.4 But such a person may not use the form fr+ANSWER +fl in I11. 5 with agreement with two non-first person arguments correspond ing to He sent her an answer.
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ICONIC MOTIVATIONS IN CONFLICT
Finally, at the most advanced stage we. see more forms of the type fr+ANSWER+fl, i.e. verb forms with agreement with two non-first person arguments. The different stages are summarized in Table 2. Table 2: Diachronic differences between agreement patterns A: 1st P/IO: non-lst "I to him"
A: non-lst P/IO: 1st "he to me"
A: non-lst P/IO: non-lst "he to her"
Stage 1
ANSWER + fr
ANSWER
ANSWER + fl
Stage 2
c+ANSWER + fr
Stage 3
+ ANSWER + fr
fr
+ ANSWER + c fr + ANSWER +
c + ANSWER + fl fr + ANSWER + fl
Since ANSWER never shows agreement with two arguments at stage 1, ANSWER is a single agreement verb at this stage. At stage 2 ANSWER is a deficit double agreement verb in that it can show agreement with two argu ments when one of them has first person reference, but cannot show agreement with two non-first person arguments. Finally, at stage 3 ANSWER is a fullfledged double agreement verb. Very often, however, even members of the youngest generation use a form of ANSWER with a marker for the sender locus in place of an A argument agreement marker (i.e. a form like c+AN SWER+fr) even when the A argument does not have first person reference. That is, they use the form in (6) rather than the one in (7). (6)
PETER NOT-YET C + SEND-MAIL + fl /
Teter hasn't sent it to them'. (7)
PETER NOT-YET fr + SEND-MAIL + fl /
'Peter hasn't sent it to them'.
7. Competing factors In order to understand the development across stages and the typological peculiarity whereby Danish Sign Language gives priority to P/IO argument agreement over A argument agreement, we need to look at the role of the sender locus and the marker c. It appears from Table 2 that the marker
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prevents the occurrence of a non-first person marker for the A argument in the form +ANSWER+fl at stage 2 (third column, second row); the form "ought to" have shown non-first person A argument agreement (compare the form in the third column, second row, with the form in the third column, third row). In the table each stage is analysed as a system independent of the other stages. Therefore, the table does not show that the marker — or rather its submorphemic equivalent, the area close to the signer's body — also "blocks" the occurrence of a non-first person A argument agreement marker in the forms of stage 1. Compared with the forms of stage 3, we might transcribe the forms of stage 1 as follows: c+ANSWER+fr ("I to him"), +ANSWER+neutral ("he to me"; this is the form of TEASE in (5)), +ANSWER + fl ("he to her"). That is, at stage 1 all verb forms appear as if they had a first person A argument — or put differently, the hand is bound to start near the signer's body in all cases. Seen in this light, we may describe the difference between stage 1 and 2 as a "loosening" of the hand's attachment to the signer's body in the beginning of the sign: in the second form of stage 2, fr+ANSWER+c, the hand starts outside the signer's body and moves towards the body. Still, however, the hand has to relate to the signer's body at either the beginning or the end of the sign production: the third form is +ANSWER+fl even though the verb does not have a first person A argument. Finally, in the forms of stage 3 the hand can move freely in space as evidenced by the form fr+ANSWER+fl (third column, third row) with two non-first person arguments ("he to her"). In this description I have referred both to grammatical morphemes such as the marker and non-first person agreement markers, and to places of articu lation relevant to a submorphemic description of signs such as the area near the signer's body or an area outside the signer's body. The reason is that we need to look at signs as expression in order to understand what is going on in the development of the agreement patterns. Some signs are iconic (images) in the sense that the form of the hands and their movement resemble some aspect of the signs' meaning. Double agreement verbs are typically transitive or ditransi tive verbs that denote some sort of transfer, and they are typically expressed by a linear movement of the hand(s). The double agreement verb EXPLAIN, which can be seen in Ills 1-3, is not made with a linear movement, but with a repeated circular movement, but even the repeated movement of EXPLAIN can be seen as iconic: EXPLAIN (meaning 'explain, tell') denotes a process taking place over a period of time, not just a momentaneous transfer of some thing. Moreover, deaf people use their hands in explaining something to an-
ICONIC MOTIVATIONS IN CONFLICT
53
other individual; the sign EXPLAIN resembles somewhat the sign meaning '(to) sign'. The iconic character of verb signs that can show agreement also appears from another fact about agreement verbs. In Danish Sign Language as in other signed languages, there is a small group of double agreement verbs where the movement of the hands is reversed compared with the majority of double agreement verbs (Padden 1988[1983]:133, 176-178; Brentari 1988; EngbergPedersen 1993:58-59). That is, the hand(s) move(s) from the direction of the P/IO argument's locus in the direction of the A argument's locus. Verbs of this kind in Danish Sign Language include those meaning 'invite', 'perceive' and 'take'. What is typical of these verbs is that the motion of the process denoted is also towards the agent. When I invite people to my home, I urge them to move from their present location to the location of my home. When I perceive something by ear or by eye, an audible or visual impression of that thing "moves" from the thing to me. It is important to note that by no means all signs, not even all verb signs, have an iconic character. TRAVEL, which if anything denotes motion, is made with a movement where the hands have contact with the body almost through out the production of the sign. Thus TRAVEL cannot take a marker for the locus of any of its arguments. Verbs that can show agreement, however, can be seen as forming an image with the signer's body: the signer imitates an agent sending off a letter, in viting people by summoning them, or laying something open in an explanation. Seen in this light the hands must necessarily start near the signer's body or have an orientation that reflects the signer's status as the agent or source of the explanation, mail-sending, or whatever. It is the attachment between the sign er's body and the notion of agent which explains the typological peculiarity of Danish Sign Language whereby P/IO argument agreement takes precedence over A argument agreement: the A argument is expressed by the marker, or put differently, the referent of the A argument is represented by the signer. Moreover, the attachment between the signer's body and the notion of agent explains why agreement with a first person P/IO argument is excluded in elder ly people's language; first person P/IO argument agreement would break the link between the sender's body and the notion of agent. Reference to the iconic origin of the signs also explains why agreement is generally more likely to occur when the loci are deictic, i.e. when the referents are present in the context of utterance, and when signers want to underline that they witnessed a transaction between two non-first person referents (see end of section 3). In the first case, the referent present in the situational context
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ELISABETH ENGBERG-PEDERSEN
can take over the job of representing the image of an agent. In the second case the sender locus represents the person witnessing the transaction, i.e. this "role" can demote the agent from the sender's position. Cases where the agent is demoted from the sender locus demonstrate that there is competition for the sender locus. This competition will be further demonstrated below. But first we need to consider an explanation of the generational difference that is sometimes presented by people with native competence in Danish Sign Language, namely that elderly people avoid forms such as fr+ANSWER+c ("he to me") (I11. 4) and fr+ANSWER+fl ("he to her") (I11. 5) because of influence from Danish, i.e. the forms with a c marker for the A argument (c+ANSWER+neu, +ANSWER+fl) are seen as more "Danish-like". At first sight this seems like a strange explanation since spoken Danish does not have agreement in the verb and does not use loci at all. The point is, how ever, that the forms used by elderly people look like the base forms of the verbs concerned except when the forms show agreement with a non-first P/IO argument (see Table 2). That is, in discourse produced by an elderly deaf per son there are more tokens of the base form of the verbs than in discourse produced by a younger deaf person. Especially earlier, most hearing people who used signs did not use Danish Sign Language, but spoke Danish and ac companied their speech with signs for most of the lexemes. The signs they used were usually not modified, i.e. they used the base forms of the signs. These people were parents, teachers and others in a relation of authority to deaf people. Moreover, they were often a deaf child's only or primary lan guage models up to a certain age. The explanation that elderly deaf people avoid forms such as fr+ ANSWER +c ("he to me") and fr+ANSWER+fl ("he to her") because of influence from Danish — or, more correctly, influence from hearing people's "signing" — gains some credibility from the fact that elderly people usually use Danish mouth movements with these verbs. Moreover, there are a few verbs which elderly deaf people do use in forms that show agreement with a first person P/IO argument by contrast to verbs such as ANSWER and SEND-MAIL. Ex amples of such verbs are DECEIVE+c ("he/her to me") and NOTIFY+c ("he/her to me"). These verbs are then single agreement verbs with the full range of forms (agreement with non-first as well as first person P/IO argu ments) in elderly people's language, and what is more, these forms are not accompanied by Danish mouth movements. That is, we find alternative explanations for elderly people's avoidance of forms such as fr+ANSWER+c ("he to me") and fr+ANSWER+fl ("he to
ICONIC MOTIVATIONS IN CONFLICT
55
her"). The avoidance may be due to an iconic factor; the sender locus — or rather the sender's body — represents the agent; and it may be due to a sociolinguistic factor: in the formative years, elderly deaf people were more influenced by the "signing" of hearing people who used signs in their base forms. It is, however, in itself a symptom of the iconic nature of signs that their base forms is identical with a form representing the signer as the agent. The semantic-pragmatic factors in the different agreement patterns in Table 2 are agentivity, first person reference, and non-first person reference. It can be seen from Table 2 that it is first person reference that breaks the link between the sender locus (or in submorphemic terms: the area close to the signer's body) and agentivity. At stage 2 signers may use forms showing first person P/IO argument agreement to the detriment of the link between the no tion of agent and the signer's body. The next step — the one between stages 2 and 3 — demonstrates the in creased influence of agreement as reflecting not only first person, but also non-first person referents. Lehmann (1982:228ff.) uses the semantic notion of argument to explain the function of nominal external agreement. By argument he understands a nominal concept or a referent: The relation between an argument and an NP is one of designation: an NP designates an argument. Other constituents may be in some construction with an NP, and make reference to the argument. To signal the reference to an argument is to open an argument slot. (Lehmann 1982:232) An agreeing expression is an expression with an argument slot (e.g. a verb in NP external agreement). If the argument is designated by an NP, the expres sion in question may agree with the NP. Agreement appears in argument slots because agreement markers show the categories (gender, person, number) of the NP triggering the agreement and can therefore represent the NP. Agree ment can now be understood as having the function of keeping "a linguistic object" constant: [...] part of the apprehension of a linguistic object is to keep it constant. This presupposes that the same object (i.e. nominal concept or referent, something that can serve as an argument in the above sense) can make its appearance at various places in the sentence or text. The fact that each time the same object is involved is expressed in formal languages by means of differential referential indices. In natural languages it is expressed by means of agreement in grammatical categories, i.e. by categorizing, mentioning the categories of, the apprehended object. (Lehmann 1982:233 — emphasis in the original)
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Lehmann further points out that it is not the case that there is only one place in a sentence (a noun or an NP) where the linguistic object is apprehended such that the agreement markers are only reappearances of the same already fully apprehended object. We can see this from the fact that the grammatical category need not be expressed on the noun or NP. Agreement in Danish Sign Language is agreement with respect to person (first person vs. non-first person) and locus. The function of a locus is to con tribute to the "apprehension of a linguistic object" by keeping it "constant". An increased use of non-first person agreement markers in the youngest gene ration thus contributes to the apprehension of the referents, or in a different terminology: to reference tracking (Foley & Van Valin 1984:Chapter 7; see also Engberg-Pedersen 1993:142-143 and 187-189). The emergence of non-first person A argument agreement has the same effect as the emergence of first person / argument agreement, namely that of breaking the link between agentivity and the sender locus. However, diachronically first person P/IO argument agreement has priority over non-first person A argument agreement. We can see that from two facts. First, at stage 2 it is only a first person P/IO argument that can bring about non-first person A argument agreement. Second, agreement with a first person argument is related to the phenomenon of shifted locus (see section 5) which interacts with the whole agreement system. In constructions with shifted locus the sender locus ("first person") is used to represent another referent than the signer. In all generations constructions with what I describe as polymorphemic verbs of motion and location (Engberg-Pedersen 1993:227ff.) are constructed in such a way that the sender locus represents the referent from whose point of view the events are regarded at a particular point in the discourse. Polymorphemic verbs of motion and location differ from the verbs described up to this point morphologically, syntactically, and with respect to types of discourse, poly morphemic verbs of motion and location occurring especially in narration. These verbs need not concern us any further here except to note that in constructions with these verbs the sender locus can be used to represent an other referent than the signer (namely the referent from whose point of view the events are regarded) and another locus than the sender locus can be used to represent the agent by signers of all generations. With verbs that can show agreement we occasionally find shifted-locus rather than agreement constructions among younger signers. This is demonstrated by example (8):
ICONIC MOTIVATIONS IN CONFLICT
(8)
57
PARTICIPANT DET+pl.+fsr neu+[ + ]+ B^PROFORM / neu+TEACH[+]+C /
'The participants have already learnt [been taught] the B-proform'. In (8) PARTICIPANT DET+pl.+fsr is the argument of the verb. Its referent is represented by the locus forward sideward right as manifested in the determiner, but in the verb the referent is represented by the sender locus: neu+TEACH[+]+c. The effect is that the point of view is seen as that of the referents of PARTICIPANT DET+pl. +fsr. First I pointed out a typological peculiarity in Danish Sign Language: A argument agreement in the verb presupposes P/IO argument agreement. I then demonstrated a diachronic development in the agreement pattern over three generations, a development that meant an increase in first person agreement followed by an increase in A argument agreement with non-first person argu ments. The development means that lexical verbs such as ANSWER and SEND behave increasingly like productively formed polymorphemic verbs of motion and location found in narrative discourse. The different agreement patterns of the three generations of deaf signers and the difference between discourse types reflect a competition for the use of the sender locus to express different, only partly related concepts. The different uses of the sender locus or the marker are summarized in Table 3. Table 3: The uses of the sender locus/the marker at different stages and in different discourse types
Stage 1
agreement verbs
polymorphemic verbs of motion and location
- agent (submorphemic) - first person (morphological, only a few verbs)
- agent - first person - a specific point of view
Stages 2 + 3 - agent (morphological) - first person - occasionally a specific point of view
- agent - first person - a specific point of view
The spatial modifications of agreement verbs in Danish Sign Language can now be seen as the result of the interaction of three different factors:
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1. The first factor is agentivity: the sender locus — or rather, the sender's body — stands for agentivity in the verbs' lexical structure and the verbs agree with their P/IO arguments. The origin of this principle is the iconic motivation of verb forms depicting the actor of the event or process described by the verb. 2. The second factor is agreement: verbs agree with both their A arguments and their P/IO arguments. The origin of this principle is locative, i.e. the imagined locative relations between referents and the locus markers' ability to contribute to keeping the linguistic objects constant in the sense described by Lehmann. 3. The third factor is a specific point of view: the sender locus expresses a specific point of view which means that the marker is used as a point of view marker. The origin of this principle lies in the deictic value of the sender locus, in the ability of human beings to see the world from another individual's centre and represent it as seen from their own centre ("taking the other fel low's point of view"). The first principle, agentivity, is stronger at stage 1 (not including narrative with polymorphemic verbs of motion and location), while the second (locative) principle and the third principle, the sender locus as expressing a specific point of view, are stronger at stage 3. In the development first person reference has a pivotal role. It is first person reference that breaks the link between the sender locus and agentivity in the development from stage 1 to stage 2, and it is the deictic value of the sender locus that introduces the possibility of using it to express a specific point of view.
8. Equivalents in spoken languages In spoken languages, the category of first person also interacts with the cate gories of agentivity and point of view. As pointed out at the end of section 5, spoken languages may also use basically deictic terms with another deictic centre than the actual sender. An example of this comes from Nahuatl. In two dialects of Nahuatl (Mexico), Zitlala (Una Canger — personal communication) and Ameyaltepec (Amith 1988), many verbs have affixes that can signify direction toward (intraverse action) or direction away from (extraverse action) a specific deictic reference point. For instance, the verb in a construction meaning Ί sent word there with someone' has the affix of extraverse action in Ameyaltepec, while the verb in a sentence meaning 'I sent it back here with someone' has the affix of intraverse action. The use of the in traverse and
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59
extraverse prefixes in Nahuatl is not fully understood. It seems that the most usual reference point is the sender location, but that: [...] in certain situations a speaker is free to choose a deictic reference point, and this freedom is reflected in the fact that in these situations either an intraverse or extraverse directional is correct, with corresponding changes in meaning of the verbal compound. Thus, within the context of the speech act the speaker may at times manipulate the pivot of the deixis in accordance with a particular con versational or narrative strategy and exercise some control over the orientation and identification of the addressee or audience. (Amith 1988:396) The transfer of "the pivot of the deixis" to a nondeictic reference point re sembles the use of the sender locus for non-first person referents in Danish Sign Language. (For further exemplification of the use of the intraverse and extraverse prefixes in Classical Nahuatl, see Engberg-Pedersen 1993:210-211.) An example of how first person reference can outrank agentivity comes from languages with so-called direct and inverse verb forms. In Tlahuitoltepec Mixe (Lyon 1967), markers on the verb show whether the clause is actor ori ented or goal oriented. The selection of marker depends on a hierarchy: first person, second person, third person definite, third person indefinite, animal, and thing. The difference between the sentences meaning 'I hit the person' and 'The person hit me' is that the verb of the former clause has the marker of actor orientation: the highest ranking argument, here the first person argument, is the verb's A argument. The verb of the latter clause has the marker of goal orientation: the highest ranking argument is the verb's Ρ argument. That is, the verb is marked for the highest ranking argument no matter what its semantic relation to the verb is.5 In some spoken languages, second person outranks first person. If the A argument of some Menomini verbs has second person reference and the Ρ argument first person reference (a clause meaning 'You see me'), the verb agrees with its A argument. But if the A argument has first person reference and the Ρ argument second person reference ('I see you'), the verb agrees with its Ρ argument (Bloomfield 1962:141). In spoken languages with direct and inverse verb forms such as Tlahui toltepec Mixe and Menomini, what distinguishes one of the arguments is that it controls agreement on the verb irrespective of its argument relation to the verb, but depending on a hierarchy of importance or salience reflecting either egocentrism (first person outranks second person) or the human ability to "take the other fellow's point of view" (second person outranks first person).
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In Danish Sign Language, the marker for a specific point of view is iden tical with the first person agreement marker. Thus it is not possible to "take another fellow's point of view" in clauses with an explicit first person argu ment. In direct speech signers may "take another fellow's point of view" by using the first person pronoun to refer to somebody other than themselves and they may even use another locus than the sender locus to represent themselves (see example (4) in section 5). But they cannot have a first person argument and delegate the sender locus to some other referent. This means that the dis tribution of pronouns and point of view seen in the English I'll come over to you is not possible in Danish Sign Language. In I'll come over to you the deic tic centre of the verb come is with the second person goal argument, while the subject has first person reference. In Danish Sign Language the marker can be used of a goal argument which is then seen as the deictic centre, but if there is a first person argument, the marker must be used of this argument, i.e. of the A argument in the (near-)equivalent of I'll come over to you. The marker cannot be used of both a first-person A argument and a goal argument at the same time, and in this case first person reference outranks the expression of a specific point of view: the marker is used of the first person A argument in an equivalent of I'll go over to you.
9. Iconicity, expressive means, and language-specific structure The three factors that compete for expression by the marker are agentivity, a specific point of view, and first person reference. In all three cases there is an iconic relation between a content element and its expression, the marker. The relationship between the sender's body and the agent or actor in the sign's submorphemic structure depends on the expression of certain signs being imag inai diagrams of the lexical meaning of the sign. That is, the expression as (structured) substance mirrors a content element.6 When the marker is used to express a specific point of view, there is iconicity of a different type, i.e. a diagrammatic relationship based on analogy on the content plane. There is a relation of analogy between perceiving the world from one's own position and perceiving it from another individual's position. We are here dealing with the fundamental cognitive ability to see that the other individual's perception is analogical to our own with appropriate changes depending on the difference in position. Finally, there is an indexicai relation between the marker and reference to the signer in the situational context.
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The fact that three factors compete for iconic — or indexicai — expression through the marker means that the relation between content and expression in this area of Danish Sign Language is not isomorphic. On the contrary, the marker is polysemous. Moreover, the different stages of agreement patterns (see Table 2) demonstrate that the outcome of the competition between differ ent iconic motivations is not given. At different times and in different types of texts, the outcome may differ. We cannot predict which factor is stronger at any given moment. That is, we need to analyse the structure of any given stage independently of the iconic motivations involved in the first place. At one point, iconicity and indexicality in Danish Sign Language does, however, determine the structure of the language. It seems fair to predict that reference to oneself can be expressed indexically in all signed language.7 Once the sender locus is also used to express a specific point of view, we get the conflict between expression of reference to the sender and expression of a spe cific point of view. This conflict means that it is not possible to express the equivalent of I'll come over to you. In some spoken languages such as Menomini, second person outranks first person. That does not seem to be a possi bility in a signed language because of the medium. Just as linearity is a feature of the expression substance of spoken and signed languages, so the presence of the signer as a token of a human body and as a representative of the signer is a feature of the expression substance of a signed language.
Notes 1.
The examples from Danish Sign Language are simplified versions of transcriptions by means of a score system where the individual lines indicate simultaneous actions by different articulators, the hands, the eyes, the head, the mouth, etc. The central line indicates manual signs transcribed by means of glosses in capital letters. If several words are used to transcribe a sign, the words are connected with hyphens. The gloss l.p indi cates the first person pronoun, PRON is the non-first person pronoun (see section 4), DET is a determiner. Boundaries shown by visual rhythm are transcribed as /. Modifications of signs are indicated by + followed by a label for the modification. Modifications for loci are represented by letters or letter combinations for individual loci: fr = forward right, fl = forward left, sr = sideward right, fsr = forward sideward right, fsrd = forward sideward right down, = the sender locus, neu = a neutral marker, the direction forward from the signer. The letter or letter combination before the gloss refers to the locus of the A argument and the letter or letter combination after the gloss refers to the locus of the Ρ or IO argument (see sections 3 and 6). When verbs that can show semantic agreement show pragmatic agreement (see section 3), this is indicated by +p.a.:[locus marker], e.g. PAY+p.a.:fr in example (3). l . p + p l . + s r is a
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first person plural pronoun modified for the locus sideward right (i.e. the index hand makes a semicircular movement touching the signer's chest and pointing to the signer's right). A plus in parentheses (H[ + ]) means that the verb is modified in a way that need not concern us here. Non-manual signals are transcribed in the lines above and below the line with glosses for manual signs. Gaze direction: letters corresponding to letters for loci on glosses indicate that the signer looks in the direction of the locus; + means eye contact with the receiver. Head and body orientation: rot. means that the head or body is rotated so that the signer faces the direction of the locus indicated by the following letter. ? — stands for a combination of signals indicating a question. The non-manual marking lasts for as long as is indicated by a broken line. The photos (reprinted with permission from Signum Press) were taken by Gerda Nielsen, the model is Eva Abildgaard. 2.
Cf. Banfield's characterization of the free indirect style (1973:30): "all expressive ele ments are attributed to a unique subject-of-consciousness".
3.
As always in diachronic linguistic development, there is not a clear-cut distinction be tween generations. Many middle-aged signers use the pattern here attributed to the youngest generation, and members of the youngest generation may use the pattern of the oldest generation.
4.
In the base form of ANSWER the hand starts near the signer's body and moves out ward.
5.
See also Comrie (1981:122) on direct and inverse verb forms in Algonquian languages.
6.
For an analysis of how the submorphemic structure of a signed language restricts the expression as substance (restricts "mime"), see Klima & Bellugi (1979:Chapter 1.1).
7.
This view does not preclude the possibility of other types of reference to the signer, e.g. by means of a name sign.
References Ahlgren, Inger. 1984. Deictic pronouns in Swedish and Swedish Sign Language. Scandinavian Working Papers on Bilingualism 3.11-19. Ahlgren, Inger. 1990. Deictic pronouns in Swedish and Swedish Sign Language. Fischer & Siple 1990.167-174. Amith, Jonathan D. 1988. The use of directionals with verbs in the Nahuatl of Ameyaltepec, Guerrero. Smoke and Mist: Mesoamerican studies in memory of Thelma D. Sullivan (= BAR International Series, 402) ed. by J.K. Josserand & . Dakin, 395-421. Oxford: BAR.
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Banfield, Ann. 1973. Narrative style and the grammar of direct and indirect speech. Foundations of Language 10.1-39. Bloomfield, Leonard. 1962. The Menomini Language. New Haven: Yale University Press. Brentari, Diane. 1988. Backwards verbs in ASL: Agreement re-opened. Chicago Lin guistic Society 24(2).16-27. Comrie, Bernard. 1981. Language Universais and Linguistic Typology: Syntax and morphology. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Engberg-Pedersen, Elisabeth. 1993. Space in Danish Sign Language: The semantic and morpho syntactic use of space in a visual language. Hamburg: Signum Press. Engberg-Pedersen, Elisabeth. 1995. Shifters in Danish Sign Language. Language, Gesture, and Space ed. by K. Emmorey & J. Reilly, 133-154. Hillsdale, NJ: Law rence Erlbaum. Faltz, Leonard M. 1978. On indirect objects in universal syntax. Chicago Linguistic Society 14.76-87. Fillmore, Charles J. 1973. May we come in? Semiotica 9.97-116. Fillmore, Charles J. 1975. Santa Cruz Lectures on Deixis, 1971. Mimeo, Indiana University Linguistics Club. Fischer, Susan & Patricia Siple, eds. 1990. Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research. Vol. 1: Linguistics. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Faltz, Leonard M. 1978. On indirect objects in universal syntax. Chicago Linguistic Society 14.76-87. Foley, William A. & Robert D. Van Valin. 1984. Functional Syntax and Universal Grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Givón, Talmy. 1985. Iconicity, isomorphism, and non-arbitrary coding in syntax. Haiman 1985a. 187-219. Haiman, John, ed. 1985a. Iconicity in Syntax. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Haiman, John. 1985b. Symmetry. Haiman 1985a.73-95. Jakobson, Roman. 1971. Shifters, verbal categories, and the Russian verb. R. Jakobson. 1971. Selected Writings II: Word and. language, 130-147. The Hague: Mou ton. Jespersen, Otto. 1924. The Philosophy of Grammar. London: George Allen & Unwin. Klima, Edward & Ursula Bellugi. 1979. The Signs of Language. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Lehmann, Christian. 1982. Universal and typological aspects of agreement. Apprehen sion: Das sprachliche Erfassen von Gegenständen. Teil II: Die Techniken und ihr Zusammenhang in Einzelsprachen ed. by H. Seiler & F.J. Stachowski, 201-267. Tübingen: Gunter Narr. Lillo-Martin, Diane & Edward S. Klima. 1990. Pointing out differences: ASL pro nouns in syntactic theory. Fischer & Siple 1990.191-210. Lyon, Shirley. 1967. Tlahuitoltepec Mixe clause structure. International Journal of American Linguistics 33.25-33.
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Lyons, John. 1977. Semantics. Vol. II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Meier, Richard P. 1990. Person deixis in American Sign Language. Fischer & Siple 1990.175-190. Padden, Carol A. 1988 [1983]. Interaction of Morphology and Syntax in American Sign Language. New York: Garland Publishing. (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of California. Interaction of morphology and syntax. 1983.) Perlmutter, David M. 1986. Topic...Comment: No nearer to the soul. Natural Lan guage and Linguistic Theory 4.515-523. Ravnholt, Ole & Elisabeth Engberg-Pedersen. 1986. Børn og dig og mig — Børns deiktiske brug af pronominer i talesprog og tegnsprog. Skrifter om Anvendt og Matematisk Lingvistik 12.5-27. København: Københavns Universitet.
The syntax of Danish verbs Lexical and syntactic transitivity Per Durst-Andersen and Michael Herslund Copenhagen Business School
1. Introduction One of the trivial facts about verb structures is that they are either transitive or intransitive. One of the trivial consequences of this distinction is the lexicosyntactic separation of verbs which require a complement of the direct object type from verbs which do not require anything or require an oblique comple ment, i.e. a separation of transitive from non-transitive verbs. 1.1 Verb classes and transitivity Although the notions of transitive and intransitive verbs seem intuitively correct and function smoothly in most cases, in the sense that verbs tend to be either transitive or intransitive, there are cases where verbs are involved in transitive as well as in intransitive constructions: (1)
Han læser. 'He reads/is reading'.
(2)
Han læser bøger. 'He reads books'.
(3)
Han læser bogen. 'He is reading the book'.
(4)
Han læser på rollen. 'He is preparing his part (by reading it)'.
The question arises whether we are dealing with two different verbs, i.e. an intransitive verb 'read' (i) and a transitive verb 'read something' (3) or with
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one verb 'read' which enters into two totally different constructions (1) and (3) or into four constructions where (1), (2), (3), and (4) can be seen as reflecting an increasing expansion of a basic structure. We cannot find an acceptable solution to this problem in existing theories of verb classes, because they are founded on semantic principles which cannot be said to correlate with the distinction between transitivity and intransitivity. We shall, in what follows, pursue the hypothesis that in Danish there is a clear correlation between transi tivity and the semantic content of verb phrases. In short, any kind of verb lexeme — be it a state, activity or action verb — can be either transitive or intransitive. But if we derive transitive constructions from intransitive, or in transitive constructions from transitive, it appears that all syntactic construc tions representing actions are transitive, whereas all syntactic constructions representing activities or states are intransitive. 1.2 Verb classes The characteristic feature of existing verb classifications is that they all take their starting point in the conceptual notion of time (e.g. Vendler 1967; Lyons 1977; Dowty 1972, 1979; Langacker 1987; Givón 1984; Barwise & Perry 1983; Verkuyl 1989; Parsons 1989; Bach 1986). One of the consequences of basing a typology of verbs (and situations) on time is a distinction between state verbs (or states), on the one hand, and all other verbs (or situations), on the other (the so-called stativity vs. non-stativity distinction which goes back to Kenny 1963). Although this distinction can be said to be involved in the English progressive vs. non-progressive distinction, it is not relevant in an account of the transitivity vs. intransitivity distinction, since state verbs may be transitive (e.g. Dan. holde 'hold') as well as intransitive (e.g. Dan. ligge 'lie') just as non-state verbs might be (e.g. Dan. give 'give' vs. svømme 'swim'). If we take a look at child language (e.g. Brown 1973; Atkinson 1982; Fletcher 1985; Aksu-Koç 1988) and creole languages (Bickerton 1981), we find another distinction which must be taken to be fundamental. The distinction here is that between what we shall call non-action verbs and action verbs — non-action verbs (i.e. state and activity verbs) occur in the present tense whereas action verbs (i.e. all other verbs) occur in the past tense. And the fact that, for instance, perfective and imperfective verbs in Russian form purely aspectual pairs only within action verbs points to another important distinction which has not been given due attention by previous theories: the event vs. process distinction within action verbs (see Durst-Andersen 1992). The action vs. non-action distinction, which manifests itself as a tense distinction in child
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language and the event vs. process distinction, which manifests itself either as an aspectual distinction between the perfective and imperfective aspects or, in ergative languages, as a syntactic distinction between two different structures, have not been given due attention. Since these two important distinctions, which are crucial to our subject, cannot be derived from existing verb clas sifications, previous theories are, in that respect, insufficient. This impression is confirmed by the fact that the traditional verb classifications do not distinguish what a verb lexeme names and what a verb phrase represents; in this way the significance of derivational processes is overlooked. Let us illustrate this by referring to Vendler (1967). He says that He smokes repre sents a state, while He is smoking represents an activity. Although this is felt, on a certain level, to be intuitively correct, it is important to stress that by stating it this way he in fact by-passes the question of verb classification — we must assume that smoking and smoke have something in common, i.e. that they name the same basic notion. That they differ from one another is not a matter of verb classification, which deals with lexical semantics, but a matter of grammar, which deals with propositional semantics. In the following we shall take our starting point not in the conceptual notion of time, but in the perceptual notion of picture, which is considered to be the mediating link between reality and mind in the sense that situations in reality are received by human beings in the shape of pictures and in the sense that thoughts concerning these situations are derived from the perceived pictures and not from the situations themselves. 1.3 Classification of verbs and situations On the basis of Durst-Andersen (1992) we propose a classification of situations by dividing them into states, activities, and actions. States and activities are identified and kept apart from one another by human beings by means of perception — states evoke stable pictures while activities evoke instable pictures. Actions are fundamentally different from non-actions, i.e. states and activities, although an action is composed of an activity and a state. We find state situations and activity situations in reality, e.g. a person is sitting on a chair or a person is jumping. However, we find no (genuine) action situations in reality, i.e. there is no practically possible world where the activity situation involved in the action of giving, for instance, obtains at the same time as does the state situation of that action: either the activity situation obtains (where somebody has something and is producing the required activity in order to make another person have it) or the state situation obtains (where the latter has
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it and the former has stopped his activity). Hence it follows that an action is a construct, i.e. the concept has no original in reality — unlike the concepts of states and activities that have. This means that activities and states manifest themselves in reality as situations involving, respectively, activity and no activity corresponding to instable and stable pictures, but actions do not manifest themselves as actions. An action manifests itself either as a state situation conceived to be caused by a prior activity, i.e. as an event, or as an activity situation conceived to be intended to cause a future state, i.e. as a process. State verbs All state verbs (e.g. Eng. be, have, sit, lie, stand, etc.) are used to name a single situation which involves no activity, i.e. a state. The question is how a state verb like for instance lie names a state. We shall argue that just as a common noun like boy creates an image (where we see a prototypical BOY) as well as an idea (where there is a prototypical description of BOY, which involves features like [human being, male, child]), a state verb like lie also creates an image as well as an idea. Its image side will be called a groundsituation and its ideational side a ground-proposition. We suggest that the verbal lexeme lie names a particular state by creating a ground-proposition based on a state description, which is paired to a ground-situation based on a stable image. We shall use classifiers for different kinds of state relations (location, possession, experience, and qualification). These classifiers constitute types of the class of state verbs. They can be subdivided into different modes. The verb lie is thus a location-based state verb which involves the mode HORIZONTAL. Activity verbs All activity verbs (e.g. Eng. swim, creep, crawl, cry, work, etc.) are used to name a single situation in reality which involves activity corresponding to an instable picture. Activity verbs name activities by creating a ground-proposition based on an activity description, which is paired to a ground-situation based on an instable image. But unlike the state verb model, the activity verb model involves an extra description — in the case of creep a description which says that a certain person is in a lying position. Thus we realise that activity verbs imply a certain state description, be it a description of location, possession, experience or qualification. The entailment of such a description explains the fact that a person cannot be creeping without being in a horizontal mode of existence. If we take the English verb creep for example, the verb model of
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activities involves a single ground-situation, which is instable, and a groundproposition which describes the instable element of the situation, i.e. that a certain person is doing something (producing an activity) at the same time as being in a certain state. We shall use the same classifiers for different kinds of activities based on different state relations (location, possession, experience, and qualification). The verb creep is thus a location-based activity verb which involves the mode HORIZONTAL. Action verbs All action verbs (e.g. Eng. give, sit down, lie down, run to, kill, etc.) are used to name not one, but two situations. They name, at the same time, one situation involving activity and another situation involving no activity, i.e. a state. This means that action verbs create two ground-propositions, one describing an activity and another describing a state, which are paired, respectively, to a ground-situation that is instable and to a ground-situation that is stable. We shall again use the same classifiers for different kinds of action verbs involving different kinds of state relations (location, possession, experi ence, and qualification). Give is a possession-based action verb — the classifier describes a state based on possession; the mode involved here is the feature [ownership], with respect to which give is totally indifferent, i.e. unmarked in the Jakobsonian sense, in contrast to verbs like lend or donate for example. 1.4 Summing up and preview The proposed classification of verbs and the matching ontology of situations yields three distinctions: 1) the action vs. non-action distinction corresponding to a distinction between two pictures/situations on the one hand (actions) and one picture/situation on the other (non-actions), 2) the activity vs. state distinc tion within non-actions, and 3) the event vs. process distinction within actions. It is not our intention here to demonstrate the natural link between action verbs and transitivity (for a detailed account, see Durst-Andersen 1992), but to show that although Danish, English, French, and Russian all are considered to be accusative languages, in fact, some of them differ from one another to the extent that we might distinguish subtypes within the accusative type. By using the above mentioned classification of verbs and situations it becomes possible to see what governs the syntactic structuring of transitivity and intransitivity in Danish compared to other accusative languages. It is particularly interesting to see to what extent a certain language has a more or less pronounced prefer ence for transitive or intransitive constructions. Our study suggests that Danish
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has at its disposal a considerable number of intransitive constructions, which defines the originality of Danish compared to closely related languages such as English in this respect.
2. The Danish verb lexicon When studying Danish verbs in their various syntactic environments (cf. (1)(4)) one realises quickly that they are rather vague in meaning and therefore cannot be unequivocally classified into the three verb classes just briefly examined above. This becomes even more evident if we compare Danish transitive and intransitive verbs of motion with those of French and Russian. 2.1 Danish vs. French and Russian Within intransitive stems a distinction between what is called unergative and unaccusative verbs is often made. This distinction correlates fairly well with the semantic distinction between location-based activity and location-based action verbs, so we shall mention these verbs as activity and action verbs, respectively. In French, for instance, intransitive location-based activity verbs (unergatives) and intransitive location-based action verbs (unaccusatives) are clearly distinguished lexically, viz. marcher 'walk' vs. aller 'go'. Now, apart from a handful of stems which are invariably location-based action verbs (e.g. ankomme 'arrive', besvime 'faint', dø 'dié', forsvinde 'disappear') and which always take the auxiliary være 'be', most Danish intransitive stems of motion are neutral with respect to the activity/action distinction; only syntactic environment and choice of auxiliary determine the final reading. So the same lexeme appears now as an activity verb, now as an action verb (cf. Herslund 1990, 1993). It seems then reasonable to interpret the distinction as being the result of general derivational processes which turn neutral stems into activity and action verbs. The same intransitive lexeme gå 'walk, go' can then be used as an activity verb as well as an action verb. In the first case, the verb is used without any directional phrases and the auxiliary is have 'have'; in the second case, the verb can be accompanied by a directional phrase and the auxiliary is være 'be': (5)
a. De har gået længe. 'They have been walking for a long time'.
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b. De er gået hjem. 'They have gone/walked home'. In (5a) it is asserted that some people were engaged in a walking activity for a long time (and therefore they might be tired), whereas in (5b) it is asserted that some people left by producing a walking-activity and, moreover, that this activity was intended to be sufficient for their being home. In other words, it is not the lexeme itself, but the directional phrase and the auxiliary that point to the activity or the action verb reading. Note that (5b) represents an action due to the syntactic structure, but presents it as an event because of the past tense form involved (the perfect) — an action cannot manifest itself as an action, but instantiates either as an event or as a process (cf. 1.3 above). The activity and action verb readings of location-based intransitive verbs are also differentiated in German by the choice of auxiliary: (6)
a. Er hat gefahren. 'He has been driving (the car)'. b. Er ist gefahren. 'He has left (by car)'.
If we take a closer look at transitive verbs of motion, we will see the same tendency. Here French distinguishes clearly between location-based activity verbs and location-based action verbs; sometimes this distinction is brought about by a prefixai derivation, viz. porter 'carry' and apporter 'bring', some times by two different verb lexemes, viz. porter 'carry' and monter 'carry up into': (7)
a. Elle a porté le sac. (Activity) 'She carried the sack'. b. Elle a monté le sac au grenier. (Action) 'She carried the sack into the attic'.
In Russian there is an even clearer separation of activity and action verbs: all unprefixed verbs of motion like nesti/nosit' 'carry' or vesti/vodit' 'lead' are imperfective activity verbs — the form on the left side of the oblique is determinate with respect to direction, that on the right side is indeterminate — whereas all prefixed variants of the same lexeme which constitute aspectual pairs are action verbs, e.g. prinesti (pf)/prinosiť (ipf) 'bring, carry something to somebody' privesti (pf)/ privodiť (ipf) 'bring, lead somebody to a certain place'. Russian distinguishes lexically not only between activity and action verbs, but also between different ways of motion (e.g. privesti 'bring some-
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body to a certain place without using means of transportation' vs. privezti 'bring somebody to a certain place by using means of transportation'), different modes of location (e.g. polzti/polzat' 'creep' vs. lezt'/lazit' 'crawl') and dif ferent directions of the motion itself (e.g. pri-, s-, -, ot-, vy-, pere-, do-nesti meaning carrying something from some place to some other place in various ways): (8)
a.
Ona nosila (ipf) mešok. (Activity) 'She carried the sack'.
b. Ona otnesla (pf) mešok na čerdak. (Action) 'She carried the sack into the attic'. In Danish the same lexeme (e.g. bære 'carry') is used as an activity verb (9a) and (9b), as well as an action verb (9c): (9)
a. Hun bar sækken. 'She carried the sack'. b. Hun bar på sækken. 'She was carrying Prep the sack'.
Hun bar sækken op på loftet. 'She carried the sack into the attic'.
The observed lexico-semantic differences between French and Russian on the one hand, and Danish and English on the other, can be seen as manifestations of the different derivational methods involved. In French and Russian we are dealing with a morphological derivational method where verbs are derived by morphological means -- primarily by prefixation, whereby activity verbs are automatically transformed into action verbs, e.g. Fr. porter 'carry' vs. apporter 'bring' or Ru. nesti (determinate)/ nosiť (indeterminate) 'carry' vs. prinesti (pf)/prinosiť (ipf) 'bring (by carrying)'. Since activity verbs create one ground-proposition and action verbs two ground-propositions, the prefixation method itself can be seen as a semiotic device: the prefix signals an expansion of the ground-propositional structure of the simplex verb whereby we get an iconic relation between the level of expression (two expression units, viz. the verb and the prefix) and the level of content (two content units, viz. an activity description plus a state description). In Danish, the activity vs. action distinc tion is expressed by a transitivity alternation within the same lexeme. Thus bære 'carry' in itself is indifferent to the distinction, but the lexeme appears now as an activity verb (cf. (9a-b)), now as an action verb in a transitive con-
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struction accompanied by a directional phrase (cf. (9c)). A distinction such as the one between (9a) and (9b) is quite characteristic of Danish and constitutes a general feature of the Danish verb lexicon, where extensive use of syntactic instead of morphological derivation prevails. 2.2 Derivational processes The kind of derivations we have in mind are systematic lexico-syntactic processes which apply to verb stems and produce different verbs from the same lexeme (cf. Herslund 1993). The semantic changes effected by these processes are systematically related to changes in transitivity. The systematic nature of such derivational processes resides in the fact that they apply to more than just a few lexical units without however being of the general nature normally associated with purely syntactic processes such as the formation of passives from transitive verbs. The most general of the processes to be described in what follows are the NP ~ PP alternation, as already seen in (9a) and (9b) (cf. (10a)), and the NP ~ NP PP/AP/Part alternation (cf. (10b)): (10) a. Boris skrev et digt. 'Boris wrote a poem'. Boris skrev på et digt. 'Boris was writing Prep a poem'. b. Boris skrev digtet. 'Boris wrote the poem'. Boris skrev digtet færdigt. 'Boris finished writing the poem'. Boris skrev digtet ud. 'Boris printed out the poem'. Our speaking of syntactic derivations or syntactic derivational processes is inspired by the fact that such systematic syntactic changes in Danish have the same functional content and correspond fairly closely to what in other languages is expressed by (morphological) derivational or inflectional means; furthermore, certain processes are related to and alternate with genuine, i.e. morphological, derivational processes such as prefixation (section 3.3). Derivations such as causative, antipassive, intensive, etc., whether syntactic as in Danish or morphological as in languages with richer inflectional systems, bring about changes in the basic transitivity of the lexeme.
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3. Danish clause structures and verb classes Extensive derivation makes transitivity and accompanying features apply at clause level rather than to the individual verb lexeme. It is thus crucial to be aware of the distinction between verb lexemes, or stems, on the one hand, and verb phrases, or verbs, on the other hand, because the same verb lexeme can change its semantic class according to the structure of the clause in which it occurs. It is only as manifested in a given clause type that the actual value of a given verb lexeme can be determined. This is of great importance, since for instance in Russian there is, in principle, a one-to-one correspondence between verb and semantic class. 3.1 Structures with prepositional objects By this derivational process a direct object alternates with a prepositional object, a transitive with an intransitive construction of the same stem. The most important effect of this alternation is a distinction in verb class between an action and an activity reading of the verb, cf. Durst-Andersen & Herslund (1995). Transitive state and activity verbs Among transitive stems it is often difficult to differentiate state verbs and activity verbs, since the two classes combine with the same kinds of adverbs. A case can, however, be made for the view that transitive verbs such as se 'see', mærke 'feel', høre 'hear', huske 'remember', tro 'believe' should be classified as experience-based state verbs. They may easily be understood as activity verbs due to the fact that they are transitive, but if we compare these verbs in a construction with a direct object, (11a), and in a construction with a prepositional object, (l1b), a clear difference appears (a similar distinction is not found in English): (11) a. Boris følte varmen. 'Boris felt the heat'. b. Boris følte på varmen. 'Boris felt Prep the heat'. In (11a) it is asserted that it is hot and that Boris has an experience of it, whereas in (l1b) it is asserted that Boris is producing an activity and that this activity is directed towards the heat (the radiator). If one feels that (11a)
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involves dynamicky, it is not because of the verb itself, but rather because of its transitive construction (transitivity implies dynamicity). Note however, that in spite of the transitivity of the verb in (11a) the direction is not from Boris to the heat, but from the heat to Boris — in fact, it is exactly this opposite direction which makes Boris an experiencer with a state verb. Other verbs are not clearly either state or activity lexemes. Whereas the transitive construction thus is ambiguous between the two readings, the prepositional construction seems only to convey an activity reading: (12)
State-Activity bære ngt gemme ngt holde ngt
Activity bære på ngt gemme på ngt holde på, i ngt
'carry' 'hide' 'hold'
But there seems in general to be a clear-cut semantic difference hidden in the activity readings of the two constructions — in the transitive construction we are dealing with a possession-based activity, i.e. a physical activity, in the intransitive prepositional construction we easily get an experience-based activity reading as the default case, i.e. a psychological activity (cf. bære på en tung byrde 'carry a heavy burden', i.e. be oppressed by sorrows). Such readings can be emphasised by different adverbials, or verb periphrases, which underline the dynamic character of the relation; only the prepositional construction occurs in the b-combinations: (13) a. bære ngt rundt, bære rundt på ngt b. gå (rundt) og gemme pä ngt gå og holde på, i ngt
'carry sth around' 'run around hiding sth' 'run around holding sth'
Mixed intransitive verbs Some intransitive stems (see Appendix 2) can occur with a prepositional complement, as the verb arbejde 'work' in (14). By this process intransitive and transitive verbs end up in identical structures with a distinct activity reading. (14)
Intransitive: arbejde 'work'
Transitive: skrive en bog 'write a book'
Prepositional Construction: skrive på en bog 'write Prep a book' arbejde på en bog 'work Prep a book'
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Transitive activity and action verbs The vast majority of occurrences are examples of an alternation within transitive verb stems between an activity and an action verb. Most verbs which have a transitive construction are neutral rather than downright transitive verbs, because they also occur in a number of intransitive constructions. We find, again, a correlation between transitive construction and the action reading, between intransitive construction and the activity reading (cf. Durst-Andersen & Herslund 1995):
The individual verb stem is only disambiguated by the syntactic construction in which it appears, i.e. by choice of clause type:
Transitive Clause:
V + NP skrive et digt 'write a poem'
Intransitive Clause:
V + PP skrive på et digt. 'write Prep a poem'
The general picture is that the transitive construction induces an action reading, whereas the intransitive construction induces an activity reading: (17) a.
*Han skød sin kone, men ramte hende ikke. 'He shot his wife but didn't hit her'.
b. Han skød på sin kone, men ramte hende ikke. 'He shot Prep his wife but didn't hit her'. (18) a. Ί*Ηαn skrev et brev, men blev ikke færdig med det. 'He wrote a letter but didn't finish it'.
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b. Han skrev på et brev, men blev ikke færdig med det. 'He wrote Prep a letter but didn't finish it'. (19) a.
*Hun læste bogen, da hun blev ąfbrudt. 'She read the book when she was interrupted'.
b. Hun læste і bogen, da hun blev aßrudt. 'She was reading Prep the book when she was interrupted'. One immediately noticeable difference between the two constructions is that, whereas the transitive construction, (17a), asserts that "his wife is dead because of his shooting activity", the intransitive (17b) only asserts that "he produced a shooting activity directed towards his own wife" — she need not have been affected at all. In fact, (17b) is normally used in order to prevent the hearer from drawing the conclusion that his wife was hit by the bullets. In the same way, (18a) asserts that a certain letter exists because of his writing activity — hence it is a contradiction, whereas (18b) only asserts the activity itself. (19a) asserts that "she has an experience of a certain book" because of her reading activity, whereas (19b) only asserts the reading activity. We assume then the activity presentation to be the basic value of the prepositional construction. From this basic meaning it is easy to derive several distinct but related shades of meaning such as 'partial contact', 'attempted action', 'incomplete action', 'repeated action' and the like (see further DurstAndersen & Herslund 1995).1 In an example like (20): (20) a. Boris skød tartareme. 'Boris shot the Tartars'. b. Boris skød på tattare. 'Boris shot at the Tartars'. the action denoted by the verb phrase in (20a) is presented as an event by the preterite tense form: the Tartars are dead (state) because of Boris' shooting them; in (20b) it is only asserted that Boris produced a shooting activity aimed in a certain direction. We are not even told whether a single Tartar was hit. Hence notions like partiality or affectedness do not cover such cases. This alternation between a direct and a prepositional object is found with a great number of verbs; the preposition used is, in the default case, pa; other prepositions, viz. /, til, med often induce slight meaning variations without affecting the basic activity value of the construction. We give in this section different examples of neutral verbs having the alternation, but for a more extensive list, see Appendix 1.
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The action reading of the transitive construction can be accompanied by time adverbs in på 'in' (lit. 'on'): (21)
Han skrev brevet på en time. 'He wrote the letter in an hour'. De hyggede huset på et år. 'They built the house in a year'.
whereas the activity reading of the intransitive construction combines with time adverbs in і 'for' (lit. 'in'): (22)
Han skrev på brevet i en time. 'He was writing Prep the letter for an hour'. De byggede på huset i et år. 'They were building Prep the house for a year'.
The intransitive use in the prepositional construction is incompatible with a directional PP, a particle or, of course, an object complement: (23)
*Hun bar på sækken op på loftet. 'She carried Prep the sack into the attic'. *Hun skubbede på vognen ud. 'She pushed Prep the cart out'. *Hun malede på loftet rødt. 'She painted Prep the ceiling red'.
These three kinds of constituents only occur with the transitive construction which, as seen, induces the action reading; the intransitive, prepositional construction has only the activity reading. Antipassive It appears that the three major syntactic types that are traditionally dis tinguished within linguistics are explicable in terms of the three-way distinction of our proposed verb classification. Active languages (including several American Indian languages) can be seen as being based on the activity vs. state distinction and hence differentiate active and inactive subjects in their syntax. Ergative languages are based on the event vs. process distinction and hence distinguish ergative and absolutive constructions. Besides these basic con structions, ergative languages often make a distinction between ergative and antipassive constructions, a distinction which seems to be linked to the action
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vs. non-action (activity) distinction. This leads us to the action vs. non-action distinction and the accusative language type, where a distinction between transi tive and intransitive constructions is found. This distinction between two constructions seems to correlate exactly with the action vs. non-action dis tinction. Now the prepositional construction seems to manifest what in ergative languages tends to be coded by the antipassive, which seems to be crucially linked to the activity presentation, as in the following example from the Australian language Yidiny (Dixon 1979:73f.): (24) a.
waguďa-ŋgu ďugi-Ø gunda-l galba:n-da man-ERG tree-ABS cut-PRES axe-INSTR 'The man is cutting a tyree with an axe'. b. waguďa-Ø gunda-:ďyi-ŋ ďugi-:l galba:n-da man-ABS
CUt-ANTIP-PRES
tree-LOC axe-INSTR
'The man is chopping at a tree with an axe'. 2 The resemblance and functional equivalence of the Danish prepositional construction and the antipassive of ergative languages is illustrated by the following examples from West Greenlandic (Bittner 1987:195) and their trans lation into Danish: (25) a. Jaakup illu sanavau. Jakob byggede huset. 'Jacob built the house'. b. Jaaku illі sanavuq. Jakob byggede på et hus. 'Jacob was building Prep a house'. The (a) example represents an ordinary transitive clause with illu 'house' in the absolutive case in Greenlandic. The (b) example represents a different con struction inasmuch as the Greenlandic verb has intransitive inflection and 'house' is in the instrumental case, illіk. In the Danish versions, there is, instead of the direct object of (a), a prepositional object in (b). In both cases then, the clause is intransitive, i.e. its object has been demoted to oblique status. Now, the Danish verb has no special intransitive inflection, but there is some morphological evidence that such clauses are intransitive, apart from the switch from direct to prepositional object. The intransitive nature of the prepositional construction is revealed by the fact that some transitive verbs, in
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the prepositional construction, select the auxiliary være 'be', which is reserved for intransitive uses, as already mentioned:3 (26) a. Han har/*er begyndt sine studier. 'He has begun his studies'. Han har/*er startet en ny tilværelse. 'He has started a new life'. Han har/*er nået sidste kapitel. 'He has reached the final chapter'. b. Han er/*har begyndt på sine studier. 'He has begun Prep his studies'. Han er/*har startet på en ny tilværelse. 'He has started Prep a new life'. Han er/*har nået til sidste kapitel. 'He has arrived at the final chapter'. In analysing the antipassive of West Greenlandic, Bittner (1987) argues that the antipassive suffixes constitute a set of distinct, but related, aspectual morphemes with different shades of meaning, among them a - 0 suffix, which are not all compatible with all verb stems. In Danish too, different pre positions, all of which are not compatible with all verb stems either, induce different readings, but a verb like tage 'take', illustrates most of them: (27)
Han tog glasset. 'He took the glass'. Han tog på glasset. 'He felt the glass'. Han tog om glasset. 'He grasped the glass'. Han tog i døren. 'He tried the door'. Han tog efter bogen. 'He reached out for the book'. Han tog af desserten. 'He took some dessert'.
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So if the preposition på has the status of being the general, default antipassive marker, other prepositions add different semantic shades, just like the different suffixes identified for Greenlandic by Bittner. All these shades are however compatible with our proposals about the basic nature of the activity reading of the prepositional construction. Bittner recognises in fact such a basic value for the - 0 antipassive suffix: Finally, there is some evidence that the antipassive -0 is also an imperfective aspect marker. For instance, the verb sana- 'build' can be interpreted either as an accomplishment or as an activity in its transitive form but only as an activity in its -0 antipassive form. (Bittner 1987:201) But what she calls an imperfective aspect marker, we prefer to see as a kind of diathesis marker, which presents the situation referred to as an activity with subject focus and concomitant demotion of the object, in fact what Foley & Van Valin (1985:338ff.) call a "backgrounding antipassive". That it is precisely the intransitive (prepositional) construction which correlates with the activity reading is further underlined by two other intransi tive constructions which also induce an activity reading, viz. incorporation or suppression of a non-referential object, as illustrated in (28) (cf. DurstAndersen & Herslund 1995; Thomsen 1991; Herslund 1995): (28) a. Han ' skriver på et | brev. 'He is writing a letter'. b. Han oskriver | brev. 'He is letter-writing'. c. Han | skriver. 'He is writing'. Also constructions such as (28b) and (28c) are often coded by the antipassive in ergative languages, cf. Foley & Van Valin (1985:343f.). In all cases, whether the object is marked as oblique or, as in Danish, prepositional, whether it is incorporated or deleted, what happens is that it is demoted and the clause becomes intransitive (cf. Givón 1990:624ff.). The structure of (28b) is here described as an incorporation, i.e. as an intransitive construction. It always involves a non-referential indefinite plural or indefinite singular mass noun, i.e. NPs with no determiner, and it is charac terised by the fact that the verb loses its independent stress:
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(29) a. Hun ' spiser ' gulerødderne. 'She is eating the carrots'. Hun ' spiser ' isen. 'She is eating the ice cream'. b. Hun o spiser ' guler'ødder. 'She eats/is eating carrots'. Hun 0spiser ' is. 'She eats/is eating ice cream'. So the kinds of nominals which in other descriptions (viz. Verkuyl 1972; Brinton 1988) are taken not to change the basic value of the verb are better seen as incorporated into the verb (cf. Thomsen 1991; Herslund 1995). In our approach then, the difference between (29a) and (29b) is a difference in transi tivity, hence an action reading in a and an activity reading in b. In a, the de noted action is presented as a process, i.e. an activity situation conceived to be intended to cause a future state (cf. 1.3). (29b) on the other hand has two read ings: on one reading, the activity referred to is presented as such, whereas on the other the activity is presented as being a property ascribed to the referent of the subject, i.e. as a habit. Another way of suppressing/demoting the object is by reflexivisation. The reflexive value of the antipassive is in fact often signalled in the literature (cf. e.g. Dixon 1972; Foley & Van Valin 1985:339ff.). The affinity of the Danish prepositional construction with the antipassive is again revealed by the fact that some verbs, when reflexive, select the prepositional construction (see Appendix 3): (30) a. Pia forstår GB-teori. 'Pia understands GB theory'. b. Pia forstår sig på GB-teori. 'Pia understands Refl Prep GB theory'. With verbs that allow either an affected or an effected object, the NP - PP alternation is limited to the affected reading, viz. slide en trøje 'wear out a sweater', slide på en trøje 'wear out Prep a sweater' vs. slide et hul 'wear a hole', *slide på et hul. In more general terms, it appears that the prepositional construction, as a consequence of its inducing an activity reading, always involves an "affected" reading of the prepositional object, just as the direct object construction induces an action reading, which with certain verbs involves an "effected" reading of the object. So with verbs such as bygge,
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'build', skrive 'write', sy 'sew', etc., which are followed by effected objects in the transitive construction, the affected reading appears in the prepositional construction. Compare contrasts like the following: (31) a. De hyggede et (*gammelt) hus. They built a(n *old) house'. De hyggede på et (gammelt) hus. 'They were building Prep a(n old) house'. b. Hun syede en (*gammel) kjole. 'She sewed a(n *old) dress'. Hun syede på en (gammel) kjole. 'She was sewing Prep a(n old) dress'. And this accords well with the general meaning of an activity, the undergoer of which, or at least part of it, must be in existence at the time of the activity. In order for the "partial affectedness", which is a frequent value of the pre positional construction, to be possible, the referent has of course to be in existence independently of the activity denoted by the verb. Also this value of partiality is commonly associated with the antipassive (cf. Foley & Van Valin 1985:342f.). In general, also the antipassive of ergative languages is only compatible with an affected reading, as in the following example from West Circassian (Caucasus) quoted by Comrie (1978:360): (32) a.
P:sásá-m chә-әr yadә girl-ERG cherkesska-ABS she:sews:it:TRANS 'The girl is sewing the cherkesska'.
b. P:sásá-r chә-әm yada girl-ABS cherkesska-NONDIR she:sews:it:INTRANS 'The girl is sewing away at the cherkesska'. The observation that the prepositional construction, the Danish counterpart of the antipassive, entails an affected interpretation of the object, i.e. that the referent of the object exists independently of the activity denoted by the verb, has yet another interesting corollary. With certain verbs, the prepositional construction induces in fact a reading where the referent of the object exists only in the imagination of the referent of the actor, i.e. as a kind of internal experience. So in order to utter (33) appropriately:
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(33)
Jeg skriver på en roman. 'I am writing Prep a novel'.
the actor, jeg 'I', need not have written a single word. Interestingly enough, Bittner identifies a similar value of the West Greenlandic antipassive; she suggests in fact that [...] all antipassive predicates are world-creating, even if their transitive counterparts denote purely extensional predicates. The sets of worlds that the antipassives create are subjective worlds of the agent — worlds in which things are as he perceives them or intends them to be. (Bittner 1987:225) Non-alternating action verbs Some stems are however inherently action verbs, so they do not participate in the alternation. Examples of such verbs are: afbryde 'interrupt', bryde 'break', drœbe 'kill', falde 'fell', hente 'fetch', kvœle 'strangle', låse 'lock', miste 'lose', myrde 'murder', skjule 'hide', skade 'harm', vœkke 'awake'. And yet, with certain adverbs some of them seem to acquire the appropriate semantic basis for occurring in the prepositional construction too. Such adverbs as løs 'along, away', videre 'on', and the resulting construction, seem reminiscent of the intensive derivation known from e.g. the Semitic languages.4 So with otherwise non-alternating stems we get examples as the following: (34) a. De faldede alle træerne i skoven. 'They cut down all the trees in the forest'. b.
*De faldede på alle træerne i skoven. 'They cut down Prep all the trees in the forest'.
De faldede løs på alle træerne i skoven. 'They chopped away Prep all the trees in the forest'. d. De faldede videre på alle træerne i skoven. 'They continued chopping Prep all the trees in the forest'. 3.2
"Suffixation " structures
The second major derivational process, one of transitivisation this time, con sists in the addition of a directional PP or adverb, a postverbal particle which sometimes alternates with a prefix, or an object complement.
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Verb phrases representing actions In such constructions, all verbs acquire an action reading: (35) a. Han styrede båden. 'He steered the boat'. Han styrede baden ind i fjorden/væk. 'He steered the boat into the fjord/away'. b. Han svømmede. 'He swam/was swimming'. Han svømmede ind i fjorden/væk. 'He swam into the fjord/away'. The constituents added in examples (35a) and (35b) are of the locative type and the verbs — the non-alternating activity stem styre 'steer' and the neutral intransitive stem svømme 'swim' — become location-based action verbs. But with quite a few transitive stems the added constituent can be of the predicative type, thereby creating qualification-based action verbs: (36) a. Boris skrev digtet foerdigt. 'Boris finished writing the poem'. b. Boris malede loftet rødt. 'Boris painted the ceiling red'. Boris vaskede tøjet rent. 'Boris washed the clothes clean'. The effect of this derivation with transitive stems is then similar to what one finds in causative constructions. The different predicative determiners can be seen as overt specifications of already underlying covert ones (cf. Herslund 1984; Åfarli 1984). In (36a) for instance, the predicative determiner færdig specifies in fact what would have been necessarily implied if the utterance had been uttered without the determiner: one cannot assert that a certain poem exists "on world-location" without at the same time implying that the writing activity that caused the poem to come into existence has been completed. The "suffixation" process thus plays the role of both an intensive and a kind of causative derivation.5 Many transitive stems, then, have three different constructions: the prepositional antipassive (skœre i ngt 'cut in smth', cf. 3.1), the simple transitive (skœre ngt 'cut smth'), and the suffixation construction:
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(37)
skære skœre skœre skœre skœre
ngt ngt ngt ngt ngt
af bori ud til i stykker
'cut sth off 'cut sth away' 'cut sth out' 'adjust sth by cutting' 'cut sth into pieces'
Phrasal verbs As already seen, a directional PP can alternate with a directional adverb or particle: (38) a. Boris sendte invitationer ud. 'Boris sent out invitations'. b. Boris løb ud. 'Boris ran out'. Such particles can be lexicalised with both intransitive and transitive stems, thereby creating a new phrasal verb (cf. Bolinger 1971; Herslund 1984; Brinton 1988). All these phrasal verbs are action verbs: the insertion of an extra element thus signals an expansion of the propositional structure of the original simplex verb, from a simple to a complex one. From a basic, underived lexeme new verbs with often opposite meanings can be derived: (39) a. gå 'go, walk' → gå ind 'enter' b. klœde 'dress' → lukke 'shut' → tage 'take' →
-
klœde på 'dress' lukke i 'shut' tage pa 'put on' -
gå ud 'exit' klœde af 'undress' lukke op 'open' tage af 'take off
In many cases too, such phrasal verbs have acquired quite idiomatic meanings, viz. gå ud 'go out = be extinguished'. It is important to note that the causative construction; (36), and the phrasal verb constructions, (38) and (39), are grounded on the same basis. This means that the particles involved in the phrasal verb construction should be included in the state description and not in the activity description of the action — i.e. han tog hatten på 'he put on his hat' should be analysed as "he produced an activity" and "the hat is on". This seems to be confirmed by looking at the position of the particles. In contra distinction to the other Scandinavian languages and to English, the particle invariably follows the object in Danish:6
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Boris klædte prinsessen af. *Boris klædte af prinsessen. 'Boris undressed the princess'.
The lexicalised nature of phrasal verbs is underlined by the fact that such verbs can be treated as units and have the derived, antipassive prepositional con struction of 3.1 (see Appendix 1.2): (41)
flytte ngt rundt -flytte rundt på, med ngt 'move sth around' holde ngt sammen - holde sammen på ngt 'keep sth together' lave ngt - lave om på ngt 'make changes in sth' puffe ngt rundt - puffe rundt på, med ngt 'push sth around' skrive ngt under - skrive under på ngt 'sign sth' skrue ngt ned - skrue ned for ngt 'turn sth down' skære ngt ned - skære ned på ngt 'cut sth down'
The semantic effect is predictable, cf. (42a) and (42b): (42) a. Han skrev aftalen under. 'He signed the agreement'. b. Han skrev under på aftalen. 'He signed Prep the agreement'. (42a) denotes an action which consists of two situations — an activity and a state. This means that we are dealing with two descriptions — an activity description where the subject is also the "underlying subject" (i.e. "he did something") and a state description, where the object is the "underlying subject" ("the agreement is in a certain state"). The very insertion of a preposition before the original direct object marks the loss of its status as "underlying subject", i.e. 'the agreement' cannot be seen as subject of a second predication. In that way (42b) becomes subject-oriented — we are
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looking at a single situation which involves only an activity. This shift from two predications to a single predication correlates with the shift from a transi tive to an intransitive clause, which is also a basic feature of the antipassive (see 3.1 above). Particles and prefixes An alternation between the postverbal particle of a phrasal verb and the corre sponding prefixed verb constitutes a quite general pattern (cf. Herslund 1984; Novotny 1991; Kjærsgaard 1992). The functional content of both derivational processes is one of transitivisation:
The two constructions have often quite idiosyncratic meaning differences dis tinguishing them, but in general the main difference seems to be between a concrete (locative) meaning of the phrasal verb vs. a derived more abstract meaning of the prefixed verb (less concretely locative): (44)
stille ng op 'place sb upright'
opstille ng 'nominate sb'
But usage is quite fluctuating, so one does encounter stille ng op in the politi cal sense (cf. Novotny 1991; Kjærsgaard 1992). But not the other way around, i.e. the prefixed verb which often has a kind of institutionalised meaning cannot be used with a concrete locative meaning:7 (44')
*Han ops tillede keglerne. 'He nominated (set up) the skittles'. *Husbonden udsendte Lasse på marken. 'The master issued (sent) Lasse out into the field'.
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In fact, not only the particle of phrasal verbs but other kinds of complements as well can be prefixed to the verb, such as adjectives as object complements: (45) a. De trampede kyllingerne flade. De fladtrampede kyllingerne. 'They trampled the chickens flat'. b. De gjorde projektet fœrdigt. De fœrdiggjorde projektet. They finished the project'. The two constructions, with respectively postverbal particle or object comple ment and prefix, are firmly linked to one another and merge in attributively used participles: (46)
det udsendte brev den rundsendte tekst det ops tillede stillads den opstillede kandidat
'the 'the 'the 'the
letter sent out' circulated text' erected scaffold' nominated candidate'
In such cases, a postverbal particle is excluded, for example *det sendte brev ud. Intransitive activity verbs Through the suffixating derivation intransitive activity stems (unergatives) can be turned into transitive action verbs, i.e. stems which do not occur otherwise with an object acquire an object when combined with a PP, a particle or an object complement: (47)
arbejde 'work'
*arbejde ngt
arbejde ngt igennem 'work through sth'
blade 'browse'
*blade ngt
blade ngt igennem 'browse'
kigge 'watch'
*kigge ng(t)
kiggeng(t) an 'examine sth/sb'
le 'laugh'
He ng(t)
le ng ud 'laugh sb out'
pege 'point'
*pege ng(t)
pege ng(t) ud 'point sb/sth out'
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pille 'pick'
*pille ngt
*rode ngt rode 'make a mess'
pille ngt i stykker 'pick sth to pieces' rode ngt igennem 'go through sth'
ruge 'hatch'
*ruge ngt
ruge ngt ud 'hatch sth out'
snuse 'sniff
*snuse ngt
snuse ngt ind 'sniff sth'
trampe 'trample'
*trampe ngt
trampe ngt fladt/ned 'trample sth flat/down'
All of these intransitive stems have also the derivation described in 3.1 (arbejde - arbejde på, blade - blade /, etc.). The process thus appears as a major device for transitivisation of intransitive (unergative) stems. The derivational nature of the suffixation process is enhanced by the existence of corresponding structures where the particle is prefixed to the verb. This phenomenon links the process to the prefixation process of 3.3 below: (48)
arbejde le pege rode ruge snuse trampe
gennemarbejde ngt udle ng udpege ng(t) gennemrode ngt udruge ngt indsnuse ngt flad-, nedtrampe ng(t)
'work + through' 'laugh + out' 'point + out' 'go + through' 'hatch + out' 'sniff + in' 'tramp +flat,down'
The difference between (47) and (48) seems to be one of perspective: (47) focuses on the object, (48) on the subject, cf. (42). 3.3 Prefixation structures Another transitivising process is prefixation. This is the only one of the verbcreating derivational processes of Danish which is clearly morphological in nature. As already seen in the preceding section, it interacts crucially with the suffixation process. The applicative prefix beThe very productive prefix be-, essentially a transitivising morpheme, resem bles in many respects the so-called applicative morphemes of African languages
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(cf. for example Kisseberth & Abasheikh 1977). Like applicative morphemes, the prefix enables the stem, canonically, to select as an object what would otherwise be realised as a locative complement or adjunct, but other possibi lities exist as well. Apart from totally lexicalised cases, i.e. where no simple verb exists, for instance begynde 'begin' (*gynde), and cases where the derived verb has a totally different meaning from the simple verb, for instance besøge 'visit' vs. søge 'seek', the prefix derives transitive verbs from nouns, from intransitive stems, or allows with transitive or intransitive stems a locative complement or adjunct to take over the object relation: (49) a.
Nouns grund 'reason' ordre 'order' gave 'gift' folk 'people'
-
begrunde 'motivate' beordre 'order, v.' begave 'present with gifts' befolke 'populate'
b. Intransitive stems arbejde 'work' glo 'stare' famle 'grope' sejle 'sail'
-
bearbejde 'work up, adapt' beglo 'stare at' befamle 'paw over' besejle 'sail, tr.'
Transitive stems klœde 'dress' bygge 'build' plante 'plant' -
beklæde 'cover' bebygge 'build on' beplante 'plant'
In general, the patterns produced by a be-derivation are identical to what is found in alternations of the "spray paint" type, where a locative complement becomes a direct object, cf. (50a) and (50b): (50) a. De podede virus på præparatet. 'They inoculated virus into the preparation'. De byggede huse på grunden. 'They built houses on the site'. b. De podede præparatet med virus. 'They inoculated the preparation with virus'. De bebyggede grunden med huse. 'They filled the site with houses'.
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As above (examples (47) and (48)), a difference in perspective can be ob served: the more central status of the object gives it more prominence, in (a) virus and huse, in (b) prœparatet and grunden. Since the general effect of the prefix is one of transitivisation, verbs derived with be- do not of course participate in the detransitivising construction of section 3.1, i.e. they have no prepositional construction:8 (51)
*De bebyggede på grunden.
Other prefixes, such as the intensive over- 'over', precede the applicative prefix: (52)
beglo 'stare at' bebygge 'build' -
overbeglo 'stare intensely at' overbebygge 'build (too much)'
Prefixes and prepositions The general effect of a prepositional prefix is again one of transitivisation. And in certain cases this effect is a retransitivisation, i.e. when the prefixed pre position is the one participating in the direct ~ prepositional object alternation of 3.1: (53)
Transitive begynde 'begin' tœnke 'think'
Intransitive begynde på tænke på
Retransitive påbegynde påtænke
In other cases, a prepositional prefix has the same effect as the applicative be-, and the "spray paint" alternation in general (cf. (50)), insofar as it allows a locative complement to take over the object relation: (54) a. Boris smurte olivenolie på brødet. 'Boris smeared olive oil on the bread'. b. Boris påsmurte brødet olivenolie. 'Boris smeared the bread with olive oil'. The affected/effected contrast Also in the case of prefixation a clear contrast between affected and effected readings of the object appears (cf. 3.1 above). With the applicative prefix beor a prefix alternating with a postverbal particle, only the affected reading persists (cf. Langacker 1991:362f.): (55) a. De byggede huset. 'They built the house'.
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b. Han skrev beskeden på en lap papir. 'He wrote the message on a piece of paper'. (56) a. De udbyggede huset. De hyggede huset ud. 'They enlarged the house'. b. Han nedskrev beskeden på en lap papir. Han skrev beskeden ned på en lap papir. 'He wrote the message down on a piece of paper'. Verbs having both readings of their object can only have prefixes/particles in their affected use: (57) a. Han sled materiellet. 'He wore out the equipment'. Han sled et stort hul. 'He wore a big hole'. b. Han nedsled materiellet. Han sled materiellet ned. 'He wore the equipment down'. *Han nedsled et stort hul. *Han sled et stort hul ned.
4. Conclusion In this paper we have tried to show how Danish verb lexemes undergo a massive restructuring on their way from lexicon to syntax. Most, if not all, of the restructuring processes have been found to produce structures which are well-known as genuine derivational or inflectional processes in other lan guages. What links for example antipassives and Danish prepositional objects, or applicative derivations and Danish verbs prefixed by be-, is a common func tional content. Danish has a rich arsenal of lexico-syntactic processes which can be used to express what other languages express by morphological means. But the functional content — i.e. what is expressed — is often the same. We have tried in this paper to show the tight interaction of verbal semantics and syntactic construction, but we have also tried to show that it is important to differentiate 1) what the verb itself names, 2) what the verb phrase itself represents, and 3) how the information carried by the sentence is presented to
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the hearer, i.e. semantic content at three levels: 1) the verb stem (semantic class), 2) the clause construction (transitivity) and 3) verb morphology (tense and aspect). These three levels are not always distinguished properly in modern linguistics. It is of course true to a certain extent when Brinton (1988:31) states: "Though we may continue to talk of the aktionsart of a 'verb', we must recognize that aktionsart is a feature of the entire sentence and that it is diffi cult to specify the 'basic' aktionsart of any verb". But it is, when speaking of English and Danish, not the whole truth, and not true at all when speaking of French and Russian. In French and Russian it is possible to determine the basic aktionsart of a single verb — we just prefer to call it a verb class. Rus. idti (determinate)/ xodiť (indeterminate) 'walk' are both imperfective activity verbs and cannot but be used to refer to an activity: idti (determinate) refers to a goal-directed walking-activity, whereas xodiť (indeterminate) is unmarked in that respect. Rus. ujti (pf)/ wcodiť (ipf) 'go out' are both action verbs: the perfective aspect presents the action as an event, whereas the imperfective aspect presents it as a non-event, canonically as a process. There is thus a oneto-one correspondence on the one hand between verb and verb class member ship, and on the other hand between aspect and situation, i.e. the perfective aspect represents the event structure, whereas the imperfective aspect repre sents the process structure. But this is not true of Danish. A Danish verb tends to be neutral: it names a basic kind of activity, e.g. skrive 'write', but only by considering the total verb phrase is it possible to determine the exact mode of representation: (58)
skrive 'write' • 1. Action (time adverbs with på): a. Han skrev digtet på en time. 'He wrote the poem in an hour'. b. Han skrev digtet rent på en time. 'He wrote out the poem in an hour'. Han skrev digtet ud på 1 minut. 'He printed out the poem in 1 minute'. 2. Activity (time adverbs with i): a. Han skrev i en time. 'He wrote for an hour'.
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b. Han skrev digte i flere år. 'He wrote/was writing poems for several years'. c. Han skrev på et digt i flere år. 'He was writing Prep a poem for several years'. d. Han skrev løs på digtet i en time. 'He was writing away Prep the poem for an hour'. In (58.1) we are dealing with distinct action readings, in (58.2) with distinct activity readings. Since we do not meet genuine actions in reality — an action manifests itself as an event or as a process — the examples in (58.1) all denote a past event by being in a past tense form and present this event as a flash back by being in the simple past tense form. They differ, however, from one another in the state description: (a) describes "private world-location", (b) a certain quality, and (c) "public world-location". In (58.2) we are dealing with a past activity as indicated by the past tense form, and the past activity denoted is presented as a flash-back by virtue of the simple past tense form. They differ, however, in the activity description: (a) represents a pure writing acti vity, (b) specifies it as a poem-writing activity, (c) represents an experiencebased activity (in contrast to (a) in (58.1)), and (d) an intensive activity. It is particularly crucial to stress that all action readings are represented by transi tive constructions, whereas all activity readings are represented by intransitive constructions. The difference between these two constructions is signalled by various indexicai means, that is means which signal either propositional expan sion or propositional limitation. The originality of the Danish language lies in the existence of four different intransitive structures, as exemplified in (58.2): the bare intransitive construction (a), the incorporated construction (b), the prepositional construction (c), and the intensive construction (d). Thus it ap pears that detransitivisation prevails in Danish as a strategy to manifest the action vs. non-action distinction at verb phrase level.
Notes 1.
Other writers who mention a similar phenomenon in the related languages English, Dutch and Swedish, e.g. Anderson (1971); Verkuyl (1972); Platzack (1979) and Dahl (1981), relate the distinction to distinctions such as holistic vs. partial, telic (bounded) vs. atelic (unbounded) readings. We think that such readings are but subcases of the general action vs. activity distinction.
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2.
Dixon gives the same translation of both examples, but that does not seem entirely adequate.
3.
A number of symmetrical, i.e. intransitive-transitive action verbs select the auxiliary være 'be' in their intransitive use, e.g.: Han har brækket pisken. 'He has broken the whip'. Pisken er brækket. 'The whip has broken'. Verbs such as begynde 'begin', starte 'start', stoppe 'stop', fortsætte 'continue' are also symmetrical verbs; the auxiliary used in their intransitive construction is være: De har begyndt filmen for en time siden. 'They started the film an hour ago'. Filmen er begyndt for en time siden. 'The film started an hour ago'. One has however to allow for somewhat fluctuating usage in the modern language, partly because of influences from dialects which basically only use have as an auxiliary, partly because of interferences and contaminations between the two constructions. The data described here represent a rather conservative, but dialectally neutral and consistent usage. But one finds, even in locative structures, examples like the following: Skibet er nået Göteborgs havn 'The ship has reached the harbour of Gothenburg', where the usage described here would have either: Skibet har nået Göteborgs havn or Skibet er nået til Göteborgs havn.
4.
In Biblical Hebrew for instance, the simple root kātab 'write' has the corresponding in tensive form kittēb 'write away' (Pedersen 1990:51). In Arabic, a parallel example could be kasara 'break' vs. kassara 'break into little pieces' (Lecomte 1968:28).
5.
The causative value of the intensive derivation is also found in Arabic, where the inten sive, i.e. the doubling of the second root consonant, often has this function, e.g. qadima 'be in front of vs. qaddama 'put in front of (Lecomte 1968:28).
6.
Danish differs systematically from Swedish which has always the sequence particle - ob ject, whereas Norwegian has both sequences. English has also both orders, but with a pronominal object it has only the same order as Danish, namely object - particle.
7.
These observations and the examples below are due to Lars Heltoft.
8.
Accordingly, the verbs in be- of Appendix 1 are all of the lexicalised type.
THE SYNTAX OF DANISH VERBS
Appendix 1: Alternating Neutral Verbs 1.1 Simplex Verbs afdrage - afdrage på analysere - analysere på arrangere - arrangere på bage - bage på banke - banke på, i begynde - begynde på, med behandle - behandle på bestemme - bestemme over betale - betale for bide - bide i, af bore - bore i brodere - brodere på bruge - bruge af brygge - brygge på brække - brække på, af byde - byde på bygge - bygge på bære - bære på bøde - bøde på børste - børste på debattere - debattere om digte - digte på diskutere - diskutere om dreje - dreje på drikke - drikke af drive - drive på drømme - drømme om dække - dække over fange - fange efter file - file på, i finde - finde på fiske - fiske efter flytte - flytte på flænse - flænse i flå - flå i fodre - fodre på fokusere - fokusere på forandre - forandre på forbedre - forbedre på forhandle - forhandle om forsøge - forsøge på
fortolke - fortolke på fortsætte - fortsætte med fortælle - fortælle om frede - frede om frygte - frygte for føle - føle på følge - følge efter, med gavne - gavne på gemme - gemme på glatte - glatte på gnave - gnave på, i grave - grave på, i gribe - gribe om, efter, til, i gætte - gætte på hakke - hakke på, i hale - hale på, i hamre - hamre på hilse - hilse på hive - hive på, i hjælpe - hjælpe på holde - holde på, om, i hugge - hugge på, til, i huske - huske på hækle - hækle på høre - høre på, efter, til, om høvle - høvle på, i håbe - håbe på jage -jage på, med, efter justere - justere på kalde - kalde på kaste - kaste med kende - kende til klemme - klemme på, om klø - klø på, i knalde - knalde med komponere - komponere på kradse - kradse på, i kysse - kysse på køre - køre på, i lede - lede efter lette - lette på
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linde - linde på lokke - lokke for luge - luge і lugte - lugte til lukke - lukke for lære - lære om læse - læse i, på løfte - løfte på løsne - løsne på male - male på manipulere - manipulere med modernisere - modernisere på mærke - mærke på, til måle - måle på nippe - nippe til nynne - nynne på operere - operere på opdrage - opdrage på ordne - ordne på passe - passe på passe - passe i, med piske - piske på presse - presse på prøve - prøve på pudse - pudse på puffe - puffe på, til pusle - pusle om pynte - pynte på rapportere - rapportere om rede - rede på redigere - redigere på regere - regere over, med regne - regne på regulere - regulere på reparere - reparere på rette - rette på, i rive - rive i ruske - ruske i rykke - rykke på, i rynke - rynke på ryste - ryste på røre - røre på, ved samle - samle på satse - satse på save - save i
se - se på, efter, til skamme - skamme på skrive - skrive på, om skrubbe - skrubbe på skrue - skrue på skrubbe - skrubbe på skubbe - skubbe på, til skure - skure på skyde - skyde på, efter skænke - skænke af skære - skære i, af słibe - slibe på slide - slide på, i slikke - slikke på slukke - slukke for slæbe - slæbe på slække - slække på slå - slå på, efter, til, i smage - smage på smigre - smigre for smække - smække med snitte - snitte på, i snyde - snyde på, med sortere - sortere i spare - spare på sparke - sparke på, til, i spille - spille på spise - spise af, på spore - spore på sprøjte - sprøj te på starte - starte på stikke - stikke i, til stille - stille på stramme - stramme på strikke - strikke på stryge - stryge på studere - studere på støde - støde på, til støtte - støtte på suge - suge på sutte - sutte på svare - svare på svinge - svinge med sværge - sværge på sy - sy på
THE SYNTAX OF DANISH VERBS
søbe - søbe i søge - søge efter tage - tage på, efter, til, i, af tegne - tegne på tro - tro på trykke - trykke på træffe - træffe på trække - trække på, i træne - træne med, på tygge - tygge på tælle - tælle på tænde - tænde for tænke - tænke på, over tære - tære på tærske - tærske på tæske - tæske på undersøge - undersøge på vaske - vaske på vende - vende på vente - vente på vide - vide af vifte - vifte med vippe - vippe på, med vogte - vogte på vride - vride på værne - værne om væve - væve på ændre - ændre på øve - øve på åbne - åbne for
1.2 Phrasal Verbs bakke ng(t) op - bakke op om ng(t) betale ngt af - betale af på ngt flytte ngt rundt - flytte rundt på, med ngt følge ngt op - følge op på ngt hive ngt op - hive op i ngt holde ngt fast - holde fast på, i ved ngt holde ngt op - holde op i ngt holde ngt sammen - holde sammen på ngt koste ng rundt - koste rundt med ng lave ngt om - lave om på ngt løse ngt op - løse op for ngt puffe ngt rundt - puffe rundt med ngt
99
rakke ng ned - rakke ned på ng rette ngt op - rette op på ngt rydde ngt op - rydde op i ngt samle ngt op - samle op på ngt skrive ngt under - skrive under på ngt skrue ngt ned - skrue ned for ngt skubbe ngt rundt - skubbe rundt med ngt skælde ng ud - skælde ud på ng skære ngt ned - skære ned på ngt slå ngt op - slå op i ngt sprætte ngt op - sprætte op på ngt starte ngt op - starte op på ngt stramme ngt op - stramme op på ngt sælge ngt ud - sælge ud af ngt tage ngt fat - tage fat på, om ngt vende ngt op og ned - vende op og ned på ngt
Appendix 2: Intransitive Verbs with Prepositional Objects arbejde - arbejde på bakke - bakke på bakse - bakse med blade - blade i bladre - bladre i eksperimentere - eksperimentere med famle - famle på fingerere - fingerere på, med forske - forske i fumle - fumle med glo - glo på gruble - gruble på, over hamre - hamre på herse - herse med hæge - hæge om insistere - insistere på klage - klage over knurre - knurre ad kæle - kæle for le - le ad lede - lede efter lure - lure på
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lytte - lytte til, på pege - pege på pille - pille ved pønse - pønse på rode - rode i ruge - ruge på, over sigte - sigte på skylde - skylde på skynde - skynde på snage - snage i snerre - snerre ad snuse - snuse til spekulere - spekulere på stirre - stirre på tippe - tippe på trampe - trampe på, i træde - træde på, i tvivle - tvivle på tøve - tøve med vrisse - vrisse ad vrænge - vrænge ad
Appendix 3: Reflexivised Verbs beklage - beklage sig over benytte - benytte sig af bestemme - bestemme sig til, for betro - betro sig til eksperimentere - eksperimentere sig frem til forberede - forberede sig på formulere - formulere sig om forstå - forstå sig på forsøge - forsøge sig på glæde - glæde sig til gruble - gruble sig frem til gætte - gætte sig til hævne - hævne sig på kaste - kaste sig over kvie - kvie sig ved købe - købe sig ind på more - more sig med rekonstruere - rekonstruere sig frem til slå - slå sig på
snyde - snyde sig til spekulere - spekulere sig frem til træne - træne sig op til tænke - tænke sig til udbrede - udbrede sig om værge - værge sig mod øve - øve sig på
THE SYNTAX OF DANISH VERBS
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References Aksu-Koç, Ayhan. 1988. The Acquisition of Aspect and Modality: The case of past reference in Turkish. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Anderson, Stephen R. 1971. On the role of deep structure in semantic interpretation. Foundations of Language 7.387-396. Atkinson, Martin. 1982. Explanations in the Study of Child Language Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bach, Emmon. 1986. The algebra of events. Linguistics and Philosophy 9.13-39. Barwise, Jon & John Perry. 1983. Situations and Attitudes. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press. Bickerton, Derek. 1981. Roots of Language. Ann Arbor: Karoma Publishers. Bittner, Maria. 1987. On the semantics of the Greenlandic antipassive and related constructions. InternationalJournalof American Linguistics 53.194-231. Bolinger, Dwight. 1971. The Phrasal Verb in English. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Brinton, Laurel. 1988. The Development of English Aspectual Systems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brown, Roger. 1973. A First language: The early stages. London: Allen & Unwin. Comrie, Bernard. 1978. Ergativity. Syntactic Typology ed. by Winfred P. Lehmann, 329-394. Sussex: Harvester Press. Dahl, Östen. 1981. On the definition of the telic-atelic (bounded-nonbounded) dis tinction. Tense and Aspect (= Syntax and Semantics, 14.) ed. by P.J. Tedeschi & A. Zaenen, 79-90. New York: Academic Press. Dixon, R.M.W. 1972. The Dyirbal Language of North Queensland. Cambridge: Cam bridge University Press. Dixon, R.M.W. 1979. Ergativity. Language 55.59-138. Dowty, David R. 1972. Studies in the Logic of Verb Aspect and Time Reference in English. Austin: University of Texas at Austin. Dowty, David R. 1979. Word Meaning and Montague Grammar. Dordrecht: Reidel. Durst-Andersen, Per. 1992. Mental Grammar: Russian aspect and related issues. Co lumbus, Ohio: Slavica Publishers. Durst-Andersen, Per & Michael Herslund. 1995 [forthcoming]. Prepositional objects in Danish. Papers from the 13th Scandinavian Conference of Linguistics ed. by Lars Heltoft & Hartmut Haberland. Roskilde: University of Roskilde. Fletcher, Paul. 1985. A Child's Learning of English. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Foley, William A. & Robert D. Van Valin, Jr. 1985. Information packaging in the clause. Language Typology and Syntactic Description. Part I: Clause structure ed. by T. Shopen, 282-364. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Givón, Talmy. 1984. Syntax: A functional-typological introduction. Vol. I. Amster dam: John Benjamins.
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Givón, Talmy. 1990. Syntax: Á functional-typological introduction. Vol. II. Amster dam: John Benjamins. Herslund, Michael. 1984. Particles, prefixes and preposition stranding. Topics in Danish Syntax (= Nydanske Studier & Almen Kommunikationsteori, 14.) ed. by Lars Heltoft & Finn Sørensen, 34-71. Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag. Herslund, Michael. 1990. Les verbes inaccusatifs comme problème lexicographique. Cahiers de Lexicologie 56-57.35-44. Herslund, Michael. 1993. Transitivity and the Danish verb. LAMBDA 18.41-62. Department of Computational Linguistics, Copenhagen Business School. Herslund, Michael. 1995. The object relation and the notion of incorporation. Studies in Valency I (= RASK Supplement, vol. 1.) ed. by Lene Schøsler & Mary Talbot, 1-18. Odense: Odense University Press. Kenny, A. 1963. Action, Emotion, and Will. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Kisseberth, Charles & Mohammad Abasheikh. 1977. The object relation in ChiMwi:ni, a Bantu Language. Grammatical Relations (= Syntax and Semantics, 8.) ed. by Peter Cole & Jerrold Sadock, 179-218. New York: Academic Press. Kjærsgaard, Poul Søren. 1992. Danish verbal groups revisited. I.T.L. Review of Applied Linguistics 97-98.165-185. Langacker, Ronald W. 1987. Nouns and verbs. Language 63.53-94. Langacker, Ronald W. 1991. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar. Vol. II: Descriptive application. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Lecomte, Gérard. 1968. Grammaire de ľarabe. Paris: P.U.F. Lyons, John. 1977. Semantics. Vol. II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Novotny, Robert. 1991. Danske verbers enhedsforbindelser. Mål og Mæle 4.13-19. Parsons, Terence. 1989. The progressive in English: Events, states and processes. Linguistics and Philosophy 12.213-41. Pedersen, Johannes. 1990. Hebrœisk grammatik. København: Branner og Korch. Platzack, Christer. 1979. The Semantic Interpretation of Aspect and Aktionsarten. Dordrecht: Foris. Thomsen, Ole Nedergaard. 1991. Unit accentuation as an expression device for predicate formation in Danish. Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 23.145-196. Vendler, Zeno. 1967. Linguistics in Philosophy. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. Verkuyl, Henk J. 1972. On the Compositional Nature of the Aspects. Dordrecht: Reidel. Verkuyl, Henk J. 1989. Aspectual classes and aspectual composition. Linguistics and Philosophy 12.39-94. Åfarli, Tor A. 1984. Norwegian Verb Particle Constructions as Causative Constructions (= Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax, 11.). University of Trondheim.
From lexical potential to syntactic realization A Danish verb valency model Lone Schack Rasmussen and Lisbeth Falster Jakobsen University of Copenhagen
1. Introduction In this paper the valency of simple Danish verbs is described. Verb valency is the part of the syntagmatic potential of a linguistic sign that reflects its ability to create slots for specially selected constituents. As this selection is not the same for all verbs, valency has a subcategorizing effect on the class of verbs as such. Since the sign has two sides, there are two valencies as well: an ex pression valency and a content valency. The two sides coexist in the sign, they are complementary, and their relation is not ordered. The domain of valency and 'deep case' relations has often been described in terms that reflect the confusion inherent in the distinction between 'syntax' and 'semantics' that characterizes generative and post-generative linguistics. The system adopted in Dik's functional grammar is no exception: although there is a basic distinction between semantic and syntactic functions, the socalled syntactic functions are explicitly said to have semantic content (cf. Dik 1989:Chapter 10). We look at valency in the light of those distinctions that play a central role in this volume: between content and expression, and between substance and structure. In addition, the existence and importance of a paradigmatic dimen sion will be emphasized. The descriptive apparatus will of course be somewhat more complicated as a result of enforcing these distinctions; but we hope to show that they make possible a clearer and more satisfactory account, especial ly of some types of constructions that have been more or less marginal in exist ing theories. Let us begin with the distinction between substance and structure. As dis cussed for example in Fillmore (1985), linguistic meanings must be understood against the background of the pre-linguistic context in which they arise. We
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may look at a situation, a "scene", as codable in several different ways, in cluding by means of different verbs. By choosing a particular verb, with the restrictions that this implies for our choice of surrounding constituents, we impose a semantic structuring on the scene that is not inherent in the scene as such; familiar examples are: (1)
a. He gave me a book. b. I got a book from him. c. I received a book. d. He donated a book.
All these verbal descriptions can be imposed on the same (conceived) situation. When we speak of the elements of the conceived situation regardless of the way they are presented in the coding, we treat them as "substance" elements; hence, the existence of someone from whom the book originates is a substance property of the situation regardless of which choice we make among (la-d). However, when we speak of the elements of the situation as they are presented in a specific coding, we speak not of substance as such, but of substance as structured by the linguistic choices made in coding it; and in that respect there are obvious differences between the four sentences. This illustration of the difference between substance and structure belongs on the content side; but valency also has an expression side. The need for a distinction is most easily seen in cases where we have a necessary element on the content side without a corresponding expression to code it, or a necessary element on the expression side without a corresponding element being con veyed by it, cf. respectively (2) and (3): (2)
Cæsar blev dræbt den 15. marts. 'Caesar was killed on the Ides of March'.
(3)
Det regnede. 'It rained'.
In (2), according to the coded meaning, there is an agent involved (otherwise the passive could not be used); but there is no agent expression. In (3), on the other hand, there is an expression det, 'it', resembling other expressions that code participant elements; but there is no conceived participant element that comes with the coding. Since we need to talk about valency relations on both the content and the expression side, we adopt a usage whereby elements with valency relations on
A DANISH VERB VALENCY MODEL
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the content side are called cofigures. Expression elements with valency rela tions to a verb expression will be called octants} In the standard situation, each actant codes a cofigure, and each cofigure is coded by an actant; but as we have just seen, this is not always the case. And even when it is, there is typically more than one way of coding them. It is the options involved in the coding process as we move from substance situations to linguistic cofigurations, and from cofiguration to actantial reali zations, that form the topic of this article. We begin by giving a brief outline of the way we understand semantic relations between verb and "slot-constituents" paradigmatically as well as syntagmatically. From a paradigmatic point of view the main elements in the theory are a set of three semantic parameters determining (a) a universal set of only five argument types, divided into participants, reference points and modifiers, (b) a prominence differentiation, and (c) additional distinctions, describable in terms of 'semantic fields'. From a syntagmatic perspective the lexical potential is structured as a 'cofiguration' with a number of cofigures, i.e. the content elements syntagmatically connected with a given action. The expression side contains a set of actants which are the different expres sion potentials of the constituents. Expression valency as such can be described as a set of actant patterns combinable with verb stems (actant valency). Content valency consists of cofigurations. Finally we describe the interplay between the content and expression pat terns. We briefly sketch out the "standard" cases and give a more thorough analysis of a number of examples which we think are less well understood, because they do not fit with the standard assumptions. Throughout, the path of description goes from the full semantic potential to the range of alternative realizations. We see the series of linguistic choices that have to be made on the way towards a finished linguistic utterance as successive narrowing-down operations which, in actualizing one part of the potential, simultaneously exclude the alternative choices, until all the choices have been made and no potential remains for actualization. The point of departure is the verb with a paradigmatic semantic potential, from which arguments are chosen and structured into a set of syntagmatic cofigures, and this is seen as matched by a range of expression possibilites. In determining the choice of expression, the parameter of prominence plays a dominant role, but it must be seen in the context of typical and coerced patterns. It is our hypothesis that there exists a high degree of isomorphism, but no identity, between the content and the expression side. Accordingly, there is no
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one-to-one connection between scenes and lexical meaning, nor between this and the syntactic potential of signs. We propose to analyse these relationships in terms of prototypicality with a distinction between typical and atypical relations. In order to demonstrate this we shall concentrate in our analysis on simple verbs in Danish, i.e. verbs that designate external actions of a nonmental character, as komme 'come', få 'get', vokse 'grow', sove 'sleep', etc. They are characterized by having an uncomplicated actant pattern, and their semantic scope constitutes the inner layers of the sentence, the nuclear and core predication (cf. Dik 1989).2
2. The paradigmatic content potential of verbal lexemes According to our theory, the semantic potential of a simple verb can be defined by means of two sets of paradigmatic contrasts, action schemas and semantic fields.3 The system of action schemas accounts for the range of situations that the verbs designate. There are three types, which we call static, dynamic, and force dynamic predicates. The model has two types of arguments: participants and reference points. There are two participants, an Instigator, I, and an Enti ty, E, and a reference point.4 The Entity argument and a reference point are structurally obligatory in all verbs, while the Instigator argument only appears in verbs that designate a state of affairs where a situation is brought about or maintained by force dynamics, as familiar from the work of Talmy (1985): (4)
HanE ligger i sengenL 'He lies in bed'.
(5)
HanE kørte hen ad vejenL 'He drove along the road'.
(6)
Harij trak vognenE henover plænenL 'He pulled the cart across the lawn'.
The Location, L, is conceived as a 'point' with static verbs (4), and as an 'area' with dynamic ones (5) - (6). The dynamic action schemas divide into a non-directional and a directional type. The directional verbs differ in selecting two particular points in this area, the Starting Point, S, and the Terminal Point, T, as the crucial locative reference points. This makes combinations expressing negative or positive polarity possible, such as:
A DANISH VERB VALENCY MODEL
(7)
HanE landede midt i flodenT 'He landed in the middle of the river'.
(8)
Gœsterne1 trak hamE op of vandets The guests pulled him out of the water'.
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The Starting Point and the Terminal Point acquire a special status by indicating the limiting points of the area, L. This, in connection with the dynamic struc ture of the predicate, shapes them as the focal points where the transition takes place. Applying the definition of BECOME (Wright 1968): "is not, and next is" as a description of 'movement to the Terminal Point T', we can paraphrase 'movement from the Starting Point S' in similar way, as "is, and next is not". The arguments mentioned here can be further differentiated by means of prominence. The participant arguments are normally designed as prominent. This means that they constitute an obligatory part of the lexical content inde pendent of their manifestation. The reference points vary more in degree of prominence. In static predicates the reference point is obligatorily prominent, due to the fact that the existence of two elements is a precondition for estab lishing a relation; the reference points of non-static predicates vary with respect to prominence.5 The action schemas are presented as relevant to some domain. By analyzing what is left of lexical meaning when abstracting the contribution from the action schema we can establish another general paradigmatic contrast 'semantic fields'. We find four semantic fields represented in verbs from the different action schemas.6 They can be subsumed as: Location, Possession, Condition, i.e. predicates expressing a 'permanent characteristic' or classification', and Circumstance, i.e. predicates expressing "happenings", or situations suscepti ble to change and thus imbued with temporality. Some examples of verbs with the same action schema, but from different semantic fields, may illustrate this paradigm.7 The mental scene, structured as a figure/ground relation, constitutes the basic pattern which the action schemas are based on. The action schemas represent linguistic content formed as schematizations of the mental models. They are linguistically based abstractions deduced by means of paraphrasing actual sentences; thus in (9) and (10) the same sentence constituent corresponds to the Entity argument in both (a) and (b), independent of its manner of mani festation, (myrer (9a-b), heste (10a-b)), because it can be paraphrased in all cases as the 'Entity which is situated' (10) vs. moves (9) in some domain.
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Table 1: Verbs with the same action schema from different semantic fields Action schema / Semantic field
--
static
Location
Possession
Condition
Circumstance
sidde 'sit'
eje 'own'
være 'be'
bo 'live in'
forblive 'remain'
static
durational
blive 'stay'
dynamic
non-directional
løbe 'run'
dynamic
directional prominent T
lande ;land'
force dynamic
non-directional
force dynamic
(9)
directional prominent S
bære 'carry' fjerne 'take away'
-
vedvare 'continue'
-
gro 'grow'
koge 'boil'
fä
brœkke 'break'
blegne 'turn pale'
dyrke 'grow'
'whistle'
opløse 'dissolve'
afbryde 'interrupt'
'get'
~ stjœle 'steal'
a. KøkkenetsL myldrer med myrerAE 'The kitchen swarms with ants'. b. Der s ø myldrer med rerA і køkkenetAL 'It swarms with ants in the kitchen'.
MyrernesE myldrer frem i køkkenetAT 'The ants swarm into the kitchen'.
(10) a. JansL ejer fem heste0E 'Jan owns five horses'. b. De fem hestesE tilhører Jan°L 'The five horses belong to Jan'. 8 The set of semantic functions indicated by the arguments I, E, and L, (S, T), constitutes a basic pattern of relational values. Every action schema indicates a figure/ground relation where the content is created by the oppositional fea tures. Together the arguments form a semantic hierarchy, ordered on the basis of their internal dependency:9
ι
A DANISH VERB VALENCY MODEL
I.
109
I > E > L > S/T > M
Since Fillmore's "Case for Case" (1968), one way to deal with this has been to characterize the discrete content items according to the ontological role they play in the scene, the so-called cases (case roles), e.g. Agent, Patient, Instrument, etc. There are two problems here. One is that the set of case roles is mainly understandable as related to the scene as such, and not seen as ele ments in syntagmatic relations with each other, a combination of roles related to a particular outlined action. Another problem is that "the number of seman tic roles seems to proliferate, despite the fact the grammatical inventory for expressing them is relatively small" (Lakoff 1993:27).10 In Schack Rasmussen (1994) it was suggested that a set of semantic functions representing the argu ment values, I, E, L, S, T, M, plus the notion of Agent, is sufficient to ac count adequately for relational lexical meanings. Such a set of roles is not defined in an unconnected way: they are parts of a content syntagm in a reci procal relation and in relation to the verb content. Therefore they may capture relational meanings in a more linguistically adequate way than the — ontologically based — Fillmorian cases. 3. Valency: the syntagmatic potential of verbal lexemes 3.1 Content valency: prominent arguments Obviously, comparisons between the content and expression structure can only be carried out at a language specific level of abstraction. A primary question in this connection is the nature of the relations between the paradigmatic and syntagmatic aspects of the verb potential and its manner of manifestation. In more formal terms, we may ask about the relation between the semantic poten tial and content valency of a verbal lexeme on one hand, and between content and expression valency patterns on the other hand. Although the most appropriate candidates for content valency at first sight simply seem to be the arguments, this hypothesis appears not to hold up. A comparison between the valency schema and the semantic potential of different types of verbs leads to the conclusion that only the prominent arguments count as actants. Consider for example the verbs bringe/fjerne 'bring/take away' in (lla-b). Both designate a movement of something, E(lement), by somebody, I(nstigator). The general frame for directional movements tells us that when there is a directional movement it will be from some place, S(tarting Point),
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to another, T(erminal Point). However, the content of bringe matches a schema where T is perspectivized as the ground, the reference point for the figure E, whereas fjerne perspectivizes S, if nothing else is said: (11) a. HanSI bragte hamIOT kufferten0E 'He brought him the suitcase'. b. HanSj fjernede kufferten°E fra hamAs 'He took the suitcase away from him'. They can both be compared with the non-directional force dynamic verb bære 'carry' that does not profile any reference point, only the participants I and E: (12)
Hans1 bar kufferten°E 'He carried the suitcase'.
(11a) thus has the semantic potential: force(I,dynPoss(E,S,T)) and the expression pattern S,0,IO, whereas (l1b) has the semantic potential: force(I,dynPoss(E,S,T)), and the expression pattern S,0,A, and (12) has the semantic potential: force(I,dynPoss(E,L)) and the expression pattern S,0. This shows clearly the correspondence between prominent arguments and valency status. Both content and expression valency can be described in quantitative and qualitative terms: quantitative content valency is indicated as a numbering of the prominent arguments, called cofigures: so bringe and fjerne have cofigure 1, 2 and 3, while bære has cofigure 1 and 2. Similar differences can be seen in dynamic verbs. (13a) is usually analyzed as having two actants with the expression pattern S,0, and (13b) as having one actant, S, corresponding to the semantic potentials: dynLoc(E,S,T), and dynLoc(E,L), respectively: (13) a. HansE forlader havenOs 'He leaves the garden'. b. HansE spadserer i havertAL 'He is walking in the garden'. Examples of non-locational verbs with the same match between the patterns of lexical content and expression, are: (14) a. JanS1 sætter stolenOE i standAT 'Jan repairs the chair'. b. JanS1 bruger stolen0E 'Jan uses the chair'.
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(15) a. Jans1 slår stolen0E ituAT 'Jan breaks the chair'. b. Jans1 vedligeholder stolen0E 'Jan keeps the chair in good repair'. (14) and (15) both have the expression patterns (a) S,0,A and (b) S,0, corre sponding to the semantic potentials: force(I,dyn(E,S,T)) and force(I,dyn(E,L)), respectively. The content valency of a particular verb, the cofiguration, is created on the basis of its action schema: the action of the lexeme is related to arguments with a certain perspectivization or saliency, derived from the schema. This means that the semantic potential includes the whole set of arguments belonging to the schema, prominent and non-prominent, while the content valency pattern only indicates the prominent arguments of the lexical content. Therefore, on the content side of a language we distinguish at the lexical level between 'semantic potential' and 'content valency' in the sign. 3.2 Expression valency Valency is one part of the syntagmatic potential of a verb, as was stated in 3. This stipulation implies that a distinction must be made between the potential and the realization in clauses. A potential is an abstraction from types of rea lizations; consequently, in this model the valency of a verb is an abstraction from the types of predications the verb actually participates in. The number of the actants, and sometimes the expression, as well, is to a large degree depen dent on the morphological realization of the predicate itself (e.g. actives, passives, infinitives, and imperatives have different numbers of slots for actants). As a verb is not necessarily realized with the same number or expres sion of the actants in all instances, it follows that only isolated (uncombined) items have a potential; when they are realized in a construction, one part of the expression potential is actualized, and the rest is thrown away. One problem with deciding which sentence constituents belong to the valen cy of the verb, and which represent other types of constituents (satellites), is the choice of data to work with. The minimalistic solution isolates from a data collection of examples of one and the same "predicate mode" or constructional type, e.g. only active constructions, or only passive ones, etc. It follows from this, that a lexicon of verb valency will swell considerably, because the same verb stem has to be entered into several lemmata with different valencies according to the constructional type of the verbal stem. Our model takes the
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maximalistic choice for expression valency which makes an abstraction from all possible constructions which a verb stem can participate in (cf. Helbig & Schenkel 1973).11 This again implies that a data collection of verbs, realized in active simple form, has to be the basis for determining the valency of a particular verb, because the least reduction of the quantitative valency, the valency of occurrence, will occur in these examples, and because one standard of qualitative (morphosyntactic) valency is determined in this way. The expres sion valency of the verb stem we will call actant valency. Not only the verb stem, but also the different constructional types which the verb itself can be realized in have their own regularities as well, with respect to the ability of attracting sentence constituents; we will call them sentence patterns (after the German tradition, cf. Engel 1970). 3.2.1
Expression valency criteria
Two intentions are combined in the expression valency description. One is to model the potential syntagmatics of a singular verb, i.e. its ability to select a particular set of actants; this is so to speak the abstraction over the different ways of representation the actants can appear in. The other intention is to model the valency of the singular verb in order to be able to categorize verbs according to their different valencies and hereby subcategorize the verb as a part of speech. Therefore we need to set up two sets of fairly restricted criteria for what part of the syntagmatic potential is to be considered valency, and what part is to be considered the residual syntagmatic potential. Otherwise one will end up with almost all sentence constituent types as parts of the valency of every verb, because the syntagmatic potential of a verb as such allows for most sentence constituents. 3.2.2
The potential of occurrence: quantitative valency
One thing to be considered with respect to expression valency is the question of occurrence of the constituents: which constituents must or may be realized together with the verb in a sentence? The criterion used to account for the co occurrence of actants with a particular verb stem is the dependency criterion: a) if verb and actant must be realized together, they are interdependent (= mu tually dependent); b) if the verb may be realized without the actant, but not vice versa, then the actant is dependent on the verb, cf. Table 2a. The quanti tative valency of a verb is thus based on two different dependency relations: interdependence which leads to obligatory cooccurrence, and dependence which leads to optional cooccurrence:
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Table 2a: Dependency relations in the quantitative valency scheme cooccurrence inter dependent of V
cooccurrence dependent of V
obligatory actant
+
-
optional actant
-
+
satellite
-
+
An example of a) is haven 'the garden', in (16); examples of b) are i haven, 'in the garden', in (17) and hende, 'her', in (18): (16) a. Han forlod haven. 'He left the garden'. b.
*Han forlod.
(17) a. Han spadserede і haven. 'He walked in the garden'. b. Han spadserede. (18) a. Jan skaffede hende en bil. 'John got her a car'. b. Jan skaffede en bil. c. *Jan skaffede. Notice that the dependent relation (b) does not only make the presence of such constituents as 'hende' in (18) possible, but many others as well: (19) John skaffede hende en bil (til hendes fødselsdag) (for dyre penge). 'John got her a car (for her birthday) (for quite a lot of money)'. This follows from the fact that a constituent has to be dependent somewhere in the clause. Here we choose to let all satellites (= non-actants) be dependent on the predicate.12 If interdependency is to be the only dependency criterion for valency attraction, hende in (18) does not count as an actant, because it is only dependent. This might not be desirable, for reasons to be stated below.
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In contrast to actants, all cofigures are "interdependent" with the content of the verb stem; for instance, they will always be outlined in the content of the realized complex construction, even in cases where the expression, the cor responding actant, is not realized, as in (2). This means that the number of realized actants can be smaller than the number of cofigures, due to the way the verb stem is realized in the sentence. Another type of discrepancy between the number of cofigures and of actants is determined already by the lexical structure of the verb, independent of its construction. Thus the number of cofigures may be higher than the number of actants (cf. 4.5): (20)
Kvindens aborterede 'The woman aborted'.
The opposite case is also possible: the number of actants may be higher than the number of cofigures; this is due to the fact that not all actants can be associated with arguments, as in (3), (21), and (22). (See also 4.5.) (21)
HansE œndrer sigOzero (hurtigt) 'He changesreflexive (quickly)'.
(22)
HansE tager denOrzero med ro 'He takes it easy'.
In contrast to traditional zero elements which are expression zeros combined with a content, these zeros are content zeros combined with an expression. 3.2.3
The potential of morphosyntactical expression, qualitative valency
The morphosyntactical expression of the actants as well as the semantics is determined by the verb, apart from the adverbial actants which are only seman tically determined.13 Table 2b: The morphosyntactical expression of the actants morphological determination of V nominal obliques - adv
+ adv.
+ /- (adv)
+
optional actant
+
0
satellite
-
-
obligatory actant
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The number of different expressions which valency-bound constituents can have, is rather limited. The syntagmatic combinations for simple clauses with an active verb, the sentence patterns to be found in realized clauses with simple verbs are the following:14 monovalent: S divalent: S, O; S, A; S, Sc; S, pO trivalent:15 S, , IO; S, , A; S, , Oc The constituents of the sentence patterns are much closer to the realized clause and dependent not on the verb lexeme as such, but on the conjugated verb turned into a predication. It is important to understand that sentence con stituents such as subject, object, etc., are notions that belong to the realized clause. They represent manifest items that appear in various sentence patterns. The sentence patterns of a language can be seen as generalizations over mani fest signs; the actants of the actant patterns are by nature abstract and un realized.16 Morphosyntactical expression in valency can be seen as a potential. This statement is based on various facts, one is the above-mentioned clustering between position and case (cf. note 16); another is the fact that the 1st and 2nd actant, which in the active voice are realized as S and O, have other expres sions in the passive voice: 1st actant → A, and 2nd actant → S. Therefore the abstract actant patterns must attach more than one morphosyntactical possibility to some of the actants. But again, the possibilities of variation are very limited, and therefore the number of actant patterns is relatively small. The distribution of morphology among the various actants attached to a particular verb is, to a certain degree, idiosyncratic, and cannot automatically be predicted by the argument values attached to the same actants:17 (23) a. JegS1 sendte bogen0E til hendeAT 'I sent the book to her'. b. JegS1 sendte hende10T bogen0E 'I sent her the book'. (24) a. HansT modtager brevetOE 'He receives the letter'. b. BrevetSE tilgår ham°T 'The letter reaches him'. However, the morphologal distribution among the actants is not without impor tance for the overall semantics of the cofiguration. Cofigures which end up as
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S or in active clauses are central participators in the events; they have a salient and holistic character, and they normally represent the arguments I and E. Because of this we will represent the actants by their sentence constituent symbols (S,0,A, etc.) in active simple sentences, rather than by symbols representing the morphosyntactical potential of the actant of the abstract valency. A hierarchy can be established according to factors such as government or other kinds of expression selection, their internal depencency, type of pronominalisation, and word order patterns: II.
S > > ΙΟ/pO/A/Sc/Oc18
In accordance with the same factors, especially expression and word order, the paradigm subdivides into two groups: S, O, IO are the primary constituents, and pO, A, Sc, Oc the secondary ones. When actants in an actant pattern is represented by numbers alone, will always be put before Obl, and S before 0. The active sentence pattern mirrors the actant pattern it realizes and at the same time the matching cofiguration pattern. This pattern gives the sentence constituents (and thereby the cofigures) a saliency as an added content: S has the first perspective, the second, and Obl the third. Saliency, as such, belongs to the way a scene/schema is presented syntactically by a particular verb content. There are prototypical and coerced ways to present the arguments of the scene/schema by different cofigure patterns matched with actant pat terns. These represent the basic or prime saliency of the particular verb valency. However, the saliency of valency constituents belonging to the same verb can be altered by up- and downgrading; in Danish as well as in English this is typically done by deviating from their prototypical mapping onto a sentence pattern by a change in the voice of the verb. A third source of adding to or subtracting from saliency is word order, the last level of actualization, the sentence constituent level. Here the final information packaging, the flow of information throughout the clause, is determined. Most sentence constituents have one or two unmarked, prototypical positions to choose from, as well as at least one marked position. All three kinds of saliency are clause-internal notions. Through the possi bilities of placing a saliency value on the different levels, the cofigure gets a straight or a skewed saliency content in the depicted scene on the level of sentence patterns (straight or skewed measured by the ordering of the actants in the actant valency). And the cofigure gets a content information value on from the level of positions, the final level. Thus as an actant proceeds from the
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valency level to the realized sentence constituent level, it proceeds from lexical saliency to still more pragmatic saliency as added content values. The morphosyntactical potential is also a consequence of the maximalistic approach to valency, because some actants can be realized in more than one sentence pattern with a different expression. However, the formal criterion and the dependency criterion do not correlate. Nominal and oblique actants get their grammatical expression according to formal determination from the verb stem; only adverbials are formed according to content. Both groups may be interdependent or dependent of the verb, but it follows from this double set of criteria that it will not be possible to distinguish between adverbials as satellites and adverbials as optional actants. Thus the expression valency system ends up with a set of two criteria which can alternate freely: dependency and expression determination, as can be seen in Table 2c. Table 2c: The paradigmatic structure of the expression valency system cooccurrence inter dependent of V
cooccurrence dependent of V
obligatory actant
+
-
+ /-
optional actant
-
+
+
satellite
-
+
-
morphological determination of V
'Interdependent' and 'dependent' in the table are complementary to a certain degree — but not altogether: '-dependent' does not necessarily mean '+interdependent'; it can mean "non"dependent. The third possibily on the schema is reserved for satellites, chiefly dependent adverbials or dependent subject or object complements.19 The actant patterns, the sentence patterns, and the positional patterns of the realized sentence constituents represent three different levels of abstraction, the actant level being the most abstract one. There is a prototypical correspondence between elements of the three sets, e.g. actant 1 = S = a sentence constituent in a position to the left of the other realized actants. But there are less proto-
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typical correspondences as well, e.g. actant 1 = Obl = a sentence constituent in a position to the right (or still less prototypical: to the left) of the S of the clause.
4. The relation between content and expression valency In the preceding sections we have mentioned the existence of a hierarchical ordering of the elements on both the content and the expression side: I, the hierarchy of semantic arguments, and II, the hierarchy of syntactic functions. Although the correspondence between the elements from the two hierarchies seems to be rather stable, not only in Danish but also in the other Western European languages, it does not mean that it is a simple relation. At first sight, when considering the two hierarchies, it seems that the prototypical matching of the two hierarchies could be defined as a direct correspondence — or as an assignment of S to I, of to E, etc. But an analysis of such examples as (25a-b) shows immediately that this hypothesis does not hold: (25) a. BådensE sejler The boat sails'. b. HanS1 sejler bådenOE 'He sails the boat'. Consequently the hypothesis has to be modified by saying that it is necessary to take into consideration the semantic structure of the individual lexemes when determining the assignment of the syntactic functions: one type of actant does not correspond to only one type of argument.20 Another factor which has to be taken into consideration is the match between the arguments taken from their paradigm and the cofigures in the syntagm. While the semantic potential includes the whole set of arguments belonging to the schema, prominent and non-prominent ones, the content valency patterns of a particular verb reduces the possibilities by selecting only prominent arguments form the paradigm. Moreover, the chosen arguments, now cofigures, are given an added degree of saliency in the syntagm. Consider for example fylde 'fill', which has the semantic potential: force(I,dynLoc(E,S,T), corresponding to the content valency patterns (fylde) (a) Ι,Ε,Τ / (b) I,T: (26) a. Hans1 fyldte vandOEpå flaskenAT 'He filled water at the bottle'.
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b. Hans1 fyldte flaskenOT (med vandAE) 'He filled the bottle with water'. In this example (26a) has a cofiguration matching the hierarchy of arguments and therefore a straightforward saliency among the cofigures. On the other hand (26b) gives the cofigures a saliency which goes against hierarchical ordering of the arguments by presenting a reference point as direct object. Because the syntactic functions are carriers of content themselves, in this case that of being an "object", the atypical assignment in return has a reifying effect on the Terminal point. This is what gives flaske the well known holistic flavour or meaning of "affected entity".21 The example shows that the model has to be able to account for alternative options in various dimensions. We will do that by distinguishing between prototypical and coerced assignment. Typical assignment is defined as a corre spondence between the elements of the argument and the sentence constituent hierarchies, and between the argument hierarchy and the ordering of the cofigures in saliency; coerced assignment is a deviation from this. Typical assignment should be understood in qualitative terms, not in terms of fre quency. There are other problems to be faced in this connection. For example, the fact that specific lexical meaning components, i.e. lexicalized cofigures do not necessarily need to be expressed, also decreases the possibility of a direct map ping between content and expression structure. Actually, it is often the case that a component that forms a central part of the lexical content and has a rather well-delimited range of possible referents is more easily left implicit than arguments with an unspecified range of possible referents. A cross-lin guistic example of the latter is the the verb finde 'to find', which cannot appear in absolute constructions in Danish/English/German/Spanish: Veg har fundet / *I have found / *ich habe gefunden / *he encontrado. The verb spise 'to eat', however, with a well-defined range of referents can appear in absolute con struction without necessarily expressing the 'food', precisely because an Entity argument qualified as EDIBLE is a constant element of its paradigmatic content structure independently of its being expressed or not: (27) a. I have eaten / Jeg har spist / Ich habe gegessen / He comido b. I have eaten strawberries / Jeg har spist jordbær / Ich habe Erdbeeren gegessen / He comido fresas We shall say that the expression and the content valency of spise are not al ways identical. Another example of a similar dissimilarity between expression
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and content structure is handle 'trade, deal, go shopping', which normally is used intransitively with the Entity [GOODS] as an implicit component, though this may be explicited in special expressions such as handle bil 'deal (in) car(s)'. Note that an unexpressed argument in these cases represent a default value, not just any value. Thus jeg har spist Ί have eaten' means 'I have had a meal', and not for instance Ί have eaten sweets/fruit'.22 Regarding the relationship between the non-linguistic and the linguistic dimensions, one thing to bear in mind is the fact that the set of scenes and scenarios is very rich and varied, whereas the set of linguistic signs to match it is quite poor in comparison. Therefore a radical reduction and thus abstrac tion must take place on the way from the conceived world to the content of signs. The schemas of the semantic frame are structured in semantic potentials that contain at least two (E,L), and maximally five arguments (I,E,S,T,M), depending on the type of predicate. In the case of valency, the way from the manifold relations between elements in the conceived world to the content syntax goes via an abstraction and reduction of relations, possibly to a maximum of three. This maximum corresponds to the normal maximum of prominent arguments that we find with verbs. In Danish, the number of actants attached to a verb varies from one to three. No certain combinations of actants exceeding three have been found. 4.1 Patterns, symagmatic potentials and their paradigmatic relations Table 3 shows the dimensions that a verb should be related to in its content and expression valency. The particular verb lexeme belongs paradigmatically to a schema, the action schema as part of the lexical potential. From this schema which contains an array of arguments, e.g. I,E,L, a selection is made in the cofiguration, cofigures 1, 2, and 3, related to each other syntagmatically. They are also matched with actants in more or less isomorphic ways. On the next level, a generalization over particular verb lexemes is made, concerning the set of structural elements, arguments, which can be generally discerned. This set of arguments, related paradigmatically, is the frame. The corresponding syntagmatically related patterns of cofigures are the cofiguration patterns. The patterns of expression corresponding to the patterns of cofigurations are valency patterns on an abstract, unrealized level, and sentence pat terns on a realized level. The isomorphy between these two levels of realiza tion is not total.
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Table 3: Dimensions of content and expression valency related to the verbs LEVEL/DIMENSION
PARADIGMATIC
SYNTAGMATIC CONTENT
EXPRESSION
Particular lexeme
schema: arguments I,E,L,(S,T),M
cofiguration: cofigures 1, 2, 3
valency potential: actant 1, 2, 3 realized valency: S, O, IO, , 23
Intralinguistic
frame
cofiguration patterns
actant patterns + sentence patterns
4.2 Typical assignment The system of typical assignment of cofigures to actants in Danish to be rea lized as sentence constituents can be described as a rather straight-forward relationship between the two hierarchies.24 In general we conclude that the primary sentence constituents, S and O, are matched first and foremost with the participant arguments, I and E, while the remaining ones, IO, and A, are manifestations of reference points. Nevertheless it has to be stressed that this correspondence is of a rather complex character that can only be satisfactorily described by taking into account the paradigmatic semantic potential of the verb. Subject is assigned to the first cofigure of a predicate. According to our semantic model, this means that with force dynamic verbs it will be matched with the Instigator argument, as in bøje 'bend', beruse 'intoxicate, forandre 'change', lede 'lead', ødelægge 'spoil', etc.: (28)
KrigenS1 forandrede mange ting°E til det værreAT 'The war changed many things for the worse'.
With other types of predicates, dynamic as well as static, it will be matched with the Entity argument, as in arbejde 'work', besøge 'visit', briste 'burst', dykke 'dive', smelte 'melt', vare 'last', etc.: (29)
SneensE smeltede til vanďAT 'The snow melted to water'.
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(30)
KoncertensE varer i tre timerAL 'The concert lasts three hours'.
The general rule governing object assignment is that direct object is as signed to the second cofigure. Typically, it represents the Entity argument with force dynamic predicates, see for instance (8), (11), and (31); compare to the verbs above and others such as bære 'carry', røve 'steal', vedligeholde 'keep', vœkke 'wake', etc.: (31)
HanS1 bærer kassenOE ud af stuenAs 'He carries the box out of the room'.
It can also be found with dynamic verbs where it corresponds to a reference point L or S/T depending on which argument the verb presents as prominent, with verbs such as bestige 'climb', finde 'find', forlade 'leave', krydse 'cross', nå 'reach': (32)
HansE krydsede grænsen°L og nåede sit bestemmelsesstedOT uden uheld 'He crossed the border and reached his destination without accidents'.
A group of verbs with a very peculiar action schema, which has not re ceived an adequate treatment as far as we know, is formed by the verbs with 'participating reference point', such as indhente 'catch up, overhale 'overtake', overgå 'exceed', etc. They are characterized by having not a location but an other entity as reference point for the Entity's activity. This can be detected from the fact that dynamic verbs imply that not only E, but also the reference point may be moving. This reference point/entity is manifested as object: (33)
Den røde bilSE overhalede den blåOL 'The red car overtook the blue one'.
(34)
JanSE overgår de andreOL 'Jan exceeds the others'.
Indirect object occupies a more intermediate position between the primary sentence constituent functions (S,0) and the secondary ones (obliques). This somewhat chameleonic status is a result of intertwining factors: semantically it represents a reference point, a fact that qualifies it as secondary, but syntac tically it functions as a primary constituent in its pronominalisation pattern. Indirect object is most often found with directional force dynamic verbs, such as berøve 'rob', bringe 'bring', forære, 'present', gøre 'do', række 'hand',
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scelge 'sell', yde 'render'. It is typically assigned to the third argument, the Terminal Point: (35)
JanS1 bragte ham10T et glas mœlkOE 'Jan brought him a glass of milk'.
(36)
nSI ydede ham10T hjœlp°E 'She rendered him help'.
The indirect object is prototypically related to the field of Possession, where it has the function of stressing that the reference point is an individual. This also contributes to convey to it a participant-like status. This is revealed among other things by the fact that even though some verbs such as bringe 'bring', give 'give', skaffe 'get', etc., alternate between a construction with indirect object or adverbial, they are not possible with an indirect object when the sentence has a purely locative interpretation: (37) a. Huns1 bragte ham°E til lufthavnenAT 'She brought him to the airport'. b. *HunS1 bragte lufthavnen10T ham°E *'She brought the airport him'. Indirect object is equally unacceptable with purely locative verbs: (38) a. Huns1 nærmede f odenOE til ildenAT 'She approached her foot to the fire'. b. *HunS1 nærmede ilden10T fodenOE *'She approached the fire her foot'. Adverbials and complements resemble each other semantically in that both represent reference points. Their secondary expression status has thus a seman tic foundation. A Complement may be defined as the expression of an intensional reference point. This relates it clearly to the intensional fields of Condition and Circumstance. The difference between subject and object com plement depends entirely on the type of predicate that the verb designates, the opposition 'force dynamic' vs. 'static, dynamic' is crucial. With force dynamic predicates, farve 'color', fă 'get', gøre 'make', udnævne 'appoint', etc., the Terminal Point is manifested as object complement: (39)
Huns1 gør ham°E svimmelOcT 'She makes him dizzy'.
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With non-force dynamic static predicates, the reference point, T or L, is mani fested as subject complement. Static predicates include være 'be', forblive 'stay', and hedde 'is called': (40)
HansE hedder SvensenScL 'His name is Svensen'.
The dynamic predicates are always directional with a prominent Terminal Point, T, as with blive 'become': (41 )
HanSE bliver sagførerScT 'He becomes a lawyer'.
Adverbial appears as the unmarked option of the three. But, though it can appear in all semantic fields (44), (45), it has a pronounced preference for the semantic field of Location, where an adverbial is the normal way of mani festing reference point, as in (42), (43); see also (4) - (8): (42)
HarrSEflygtede fra hospitaletAs 'He fled from the hospital'.
(43)
Hans1 opbevarer osten°E i køleskabetAL 'He keeps the cheese in the fridge'.
(44)
De S 1 skar dækket°E i stykkerA 'They cut the tyre into pieces'.
(45)
DesE deltog i festenAL 'They took part in the party'.
The normal way of expressing a modifying argument is also as adverbial. Modifying arguments are not often valency bound, but in the following exam ples the obligatoriness of the modifier which distinguishes the verb from its homonym proves that it is a prominent argument (cf. note 9): (46) a. HanS1 tager den°zero med roAM 'He takes it easy'. b. HansE opfører sig°zero pœntAM 'He behaves nicely'. (47) a. Huns1 taler 'She talks'. b. HunS1 taler med hamÁM 'She talks with him'.
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In conclusion, we can state that the assignment of the primary functions, subject and direct object, relies on the paradigm of action schemas: (48) a.
GrenensE bræker (T) 'The branch breaks'.
b. HanS1 brœkker(T) grenenOE 'He breaks the branch'. The assignment of the secondary functions, indirect object and adverbial, on the other hand depends on the other semantic paradigm, that of semantic fields — compare (35) and (37). And finally, both paradigms play a role as in (39), (40), and (41) in the assignment of complement, a fact that helps throw light on the somewhat special character of this syntactic function. 4.3 Typical assignment to non-prominent arguments The content valency of a verb was defined as a set of prominent arguments it indicates, with an added syntagmatic saliency content. But from a paradigmatic point of view the semantic possibilities of a verb are not exhausted with its array of prominent arguments. The argument values acquire their meaning from being modelled on the semantic frame in its totality. This means that the non-prominent arguments belonging to the type of predicate signalled by the verb also exist as non-salient parts of the verbal content. Such arguments, normally reference points, are usually expressed by an adverbial, a form that harmonizes with their low status in the semantic hierarchy; we call them 'privi leged satellites' in order to distinguish them from 'free elements', which are satellites without any argument status and only a secondary connection to the verb or to the predication as a whole (see Schack Rasmussen 1995): (49) a. HansE arbejder i guld og læderAL 'He works with gold and leather'. b. HansE arbejder på en bogAL 'He is working on a book'. (50)
HanS1 bruger alle sine penge0E på medicinAL 'He spends all his money on medicine'.
Modifying elements are normally presented as non-prominent. They are a good example of the difference between being a prominent part of the schema and simply a part of it. The non-prominent arguments are less idiomatic in their expression; their occurrence as privileged satellites is structurally deter-
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mined and not of an idiosyncratic character. Thus the notion of Manner is dependent on the dynamic schema, Instrument on the presence of an Agent normally in a force dynamic schema, while there are no restrictions on the Concomitant element (cf. note 9): (51) a. DrengensE sad sammen med sin rA 'The boy was sitting together with his mother'. b. HunSE rejste sig hurtigtAM opAT 'She stood up quickly'. c. HunS1 rørte(E)i grydenAL med en skeAM 'She stirred in the pot with a spoon'. In a single sentence only one S, one O, and one IO can be present. The Ad verbial, however, is the "default" sentence constituent. This means that there can be several adverbials in a sentence. This makes it problematic to distin guish whether adverbials are actants or privileged satellites in cases where more than one adverbial can be combined with a verb by subcategorizing: (52)
Fra familien LarsenAs medbringer hans1 et guldurOE til hendeAT 'From the Larsen family he brings her a golden watch'.
In Danish medbringe 'bring, deliver' shapes its T as prominent and S as nonprominent. In accordance with this, fra familien Larsen in (52) is a secondary selection and til hende 'to her' is the actant cofigure which takes the position given to valency-bound adverbials.25 The description of free elements falls outside the scope of this paper, but we want to call the attention to the fact that all types of satellites, both the privileged satellites and free elements normally have the same manner of ex pression. This contributes to blurring the distinction between them from an expression perspective. 4.4 Coerced assignment There are two ways the typical assignment can be coerced, either as a zero or a deviant assignment. In case of zero assignment, the sentence constituent type, expected according to the prototypical rules of assignment and the semantic pattern of the verb, is not manifested in the sentence. When an argument is as signed another constituent function than expected according to the prototypical rules, this can be seen as a deviance because it breaks the hierarchical order.
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4.5 Zero assignment We consider it a case of zero assignment when a participant argument, I, E, or a prominent reference point L, S, T remains implicit. Zero assignment of Instigator The Instigator is very rarely lexicalized in the lexical structure. It seems chiefly to occur with "metereological" verbs, or force dynamic verbs which have an Instigator with a very weak participant character. As in other cases of lexical incorporation, the lexicalized arguments in (53) I = BLÆST 'wind' in (54) I = REGN 'rain', may remain implicit: (53)
DørenSE blœste(1) iAT (-) Blæsten1 blæste dørenE іT 'The door blew shut' = The wind blew the door shut'.
(54)
MalingensE regnede(1) afAT 'The paint rained off.
Zero assignment of Entity Zero subject. According to the rules of prototypical assignment, in non-force dynamic verbs, a zero assignment of the Entity should result in a sentence without subject. As the subject is an obligatory actant in the Danish active sentence structure, this possibility does not exist. However, Danish has a syntactic construction with a dummy subject, det, that has a similar effect of signalling 'zero'. It is typically used with Circumstantial verbs from lexical fields such as 'time' and 'metereology': (55)
Detszero sner(E) og stormer(E) 'It is snowing and storming'.
(56)
DetSzero regner(E) 'It is raining'.
The (E) is attached to indicate that the zero actant should not be mistaken for a zero value as regards its paradigmatic potential. The verb regne 'rain' desig nates a dynamic and directional situation without prominent reference points and has [REGN] 'rain' as a lexicalized E argument. So regne has the semantic potential: dynCirc(E[REGN],S). The dummy subject emphasizes the situational character of the process. (57) shows that it is a precondition for the acceptablity of the construction that the verb be dynamic and directional:
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(57) a.
*Det soler. *'It suns'.
b.
*Det tåger. *'It fogs'.
Det may also be used as a dummy that ousts an Entity argument manifest in the sentence from its normal subject function (cf. (9)): (58)
Detsø myldrer med folikAEpå torvetAL 'It is swarming with people in the square'.
Zero object. We find cases of "real" zero assignment to the Entity, when an Entity argument that would be expected to appear as direct object, is left unexpressed: (59)
HundenS1 gør(E) The dog barks'.
This occurs mostly in connection with lexicalisation, in dynamic as well as force dynamic verbs: [EMBRYO] abortere 'abort', [FOOD] die 'suckle', græsse 'graze', servere 'serve, wait', spise 'eat, [GOODS] handle 'trade', [INHERITANCE] arve 'inherit', [SOUND] brøle, 'roar' fløjte 'whistle', gø 'bark', vrinske 'neigh'. 26 As is well known, such a lexicalized component is frequently recoverable in the sentence structure; it may be manifested in cases where the Entity needs to be further specified beyond its prototypical value (see 4.1): (60) a. HansT har arvet(E) 'He has inherited'. b. HansT har arvet et hus°E 'He has inherited a house'. (61) a. Hunss aborterede(E) 'She aborted'. b. Hunss aborterede et tre måneders fosterE 'She aborted a three month embryo'. (62) a. JanS1 tog af kagenAs 'Jan took a slice of cake'. b. JanS1 tog et stykkeOE af kagenAs 'Jan took a slice of the cake'.
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Zero assignment of reference point In verbs with prominent reference points, i.e. of the type (force)stat(E,L) / (force)dyn(E,L) / (force)dyn(E,S,T) / (force)dyn(E,S,T) / (force)dyn(E,S,T), we would expect the reference points to be manifested in form of adverbial, complement, or indirect object, depending on which semantic field the verb belongs to. We can therefore talk about zero assignment in cases where verbs with this argument structure have the following sentence patterns: S with static or dynamic verbs, and S,O with force dynamic verbs. An example of zero assignment of the prominent L argument in a verb with 'participating reference point' is sakke bagud 'fall behind': (63) a. Den røde bilE sakkede(L) bagudAM The red car fell behind'. b.
*Den røde bilE sakkede(L) bagudAM den blå 'The red car fell behind the blue one'.
Zero assignment of reference points is especially frequent in verbs of Con dition and Circumstance that have lexicalized an intensional component as Ter minal Point or Starting Point. This zero assignment produces a conflation in the expression structure between verbs with and without prominent reference points; compare for example bruge 'use', which has the action schema: force (I,dynCirc(E,L)), and reparere 'repair' with the action schema: force(I,dynCirc(E,S,T)): (64) a. Jans1 bruger stolenOE 'Jan uses the chair'. b. JanS1 reparerer(r) stolenOE 'Jan repairs the chair'. Zero assignment of lexicalized Starting Point Zero assignment of lexicalized Starting Point is found with verbs as blege 'bleach' [COLOR], smelte 'melt' [SOLID], abdicere 'abdicate' [THRONE]: (65) a. Kongen8E abdicerede(S) 'The king abdicated'. b. KongensE abdicerede fra den engelske troneAs 'The king abdicated from the English throne'.
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Zero assignment of lexicalized Terminal Point Zero assignment of lexicalized Terminal Point is found in verbs such as ælde 'age' [AGE], helbrede 'cure' [HEALTH], falme 'fade [NON COLOR], and kastrere 'castrate' [STERILE]: (66)
Huns1 fødte et barn°E (til verdenAT) 'She bore a child into the world'.
(67)
Hans1 tørrede(T) tøjetOE (helt tørt°cT) 'He dried the clothes quite dry'.
But it is important to stress that lexicalization is not a prerequisite for zero assignment. It can also appear when it simply corresponds to the argument value of the field in question, for example of Condition as in [EXISTENCE]: føde 'give birth to', virkeliggøre 'realize', as in [NON EXISTENCE]: slukke 'extinguish', visne 'wither', ødelægge 'destroy', or Circumstance as in [HAP PENING] is begynde 'begin': (68)
KoncertensE begyndte(S) 'The concert began'.
The zero assignment of S or T, is often compensated by a marking of the reference point by a prefix af-, be-, for-, or op-. The Starting Point, S, may be signalled by af- in afbetale 'pay by instalments', afblomstre 'cease flow ering', afblœse 'call off, afbryde 'interrupt, break off, affarve 'decolorize': (69)
SolenS1 havde afbleget(T) sofabetrœkketOE, så huns1 affarvede(T) detOE 'The sun had bleached the upholstery, so she decolorized it'.
Several prefixes are used to signal the Terminal Point, T. Thus we find af-: afkøle 'cool', afslutte 'finish'; be-: befri 'set free', berolige 'calm down'; for-: forbedre 'improve', formørke 'darken'; op-: opbløde 'soften', 'soak', opfriske 'freshen up': (70)
Jan afsluttede sit arbejde, afførte sig slipset og beroligede sig med en drink. 'Jan finished his work, took of his tie and calmed himself with a drink'.
Zero assignment of Modifier Both Manner and Instrument are very often part of the lexical content in Danish verbs; Instrument: sable ned [SWORD] 'cut down', save [SAW] 'saw',
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Manner: snøvle 'snuffle', vralte 'waddle', etc. (cf. 5.). Therefore it occurs normally as an implicit Modifier component that does not need to be expres sed, unless it differs from the default value: (71)
HanS1 hamrede(M) og savede(M) (med en negleklipper) 'He hammered and sawed (with a nail clipper)'.
or as an emphasis of M: (72)
Han skabte sig (som en sindssyg). 'He behaved madly (as a madman)'.
4.6 Coerced assignment The coerced assignment may be seen as a deviance when the arguments are assigned another constituent function than that expected from the hierarchy. More precisely we can talk about coercion under the following circumstances: when a) the Instigator is not manifested as S; when b) the Entity is not mani fested as S in dynamic verbs and as in force dynamic verbs;27 and when c) the reference points appear in other functions than adverbial, complement or indirect object, i.e. when reference points are not manifested as A with verbs of Location, nor as with verbs of Possession, nor as C(omplements) (Sc and Oc), with verbs of Condition and Circumstance. Coerced assignment of Instigator We do not find any force dynamic lexemes that downgrade their Instigator without upgrading another argument, normally the Entity (see below). The downgrading of the Instigator may therefore be considered a secondary effect. Coerced assignment of Entity The Entity can be upgraded to subject in force dynamic verbs. It happens very rarely and only in verbs that express atypical force dynamic relations which measure the relative force between I and E. I > Eo: vige, give efter 'yield, give way' indicates that that the Instigator is stronger than a steady Entity; I < Eo: modstå 'resist', indicates that the Instigator is weaker than a steady Entity. The atypical assignment has the function of presenting the Entity (or antagonist, as Talmy would say), as the most salient participator: (73)
DigetSE gav efter for vandpresserA1 'The dike yielded to the pressure of the water'.
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DigetSE modstod vandpressetO1 'The dike resisted the pressure of the water'.
(74)
The remaining cases of coerced assignment of the Entity argument have the character of downgrading: it is expressed as an adverbial, a valency which normally corresponds to a non-participant value. However this downgrading seems chiefly to be an effect of the upgrading of a reference point to "partici pant status" (see 4.7). Only in a very few cases in which we find a coerced assignment of the Entity to a secondary syntactic function without any object we have clear instances of downgrading, such as (75) and (76): (75)
Jans1/T spiste af kagenAE 'Jan ate (some) of the cake'.
(76)
JansI/s fortæller om filmenAE 'Jan tells about the movie'.
Also the construction with dummy subject has the function of downgrading the Entity: (77)
Detsø myldrer med folkAE på torvetL 'It is swarming with people in the square'.
Coerced assignment of reference point According to the prototypical paradigm, we can talk about coerced assignment of the reference point when this is manifested as object in force dynamic verbs, and as subject in the other types of predicate. On the whole, the mechanism of upgrading of the reference point from an oblique has the effect of making it more salient, presenting it in the expression structure as a participant. Reference point as subject The reference point can appear as subject in static as well as dynamic verbs. We find it in the following cases: Verbs that lexicalize their Entity argument can optionally have the reference point as subject: dryppe 'drip' E[LIQUID]'liquid', dufte 'smell' E[SCENT] 'SMELL', falme 'fade'E[COLOR], flamme 'flame' E[FLAME], (see also examples (78) - (81)): (78) a. b.
TræernesL/s drypper af vandAE 'The trees are dripping with water'. VandetSE drypper fra træerneAs 'The water is dripping from the trees'.
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Some verbs that subcategorize their Entity argument as 'plural', when indi cating a 'mass' or 'multitude' can optionally have the reference point as subject — thus flyde 'litter with', fyge 'drift', summe 'hum', and vrimle 'swarm': (79) a. PladsensL myldrede med folkAE 'The square swarmed with people'. b. FolkE myldrede på pladsenAL 'People swarmed at the square'. Verbs that specify their reference point as 'container': (80) a. KroensL huser 20 gœster°E 'The inn houses twenty guests'. b. DeS1 huser 20 gæster°E på kroenAL 'They house twenty guests at the inn'. Among them are, in particular, verbs from the lexical field of 'filling' (in static schemas), such as bugne 'abound', dœkke 'cover', (ud)fylde 'fill', indeholde 'contain'. The result of assigning subject function to a Location is that the Entity is presented as being as big as, or bigger than L: (81)
BordetSL bugner af madAE 'The table abounds with food'.
In the field of Possession, which is characterized by typically having ani mate reference points, reference point as subject is the most frequent structure, both with static predicates like besidde 'possess', eje 'own' and have 'have', and with with dynamic predicates like arve 'inherit', modtage 'receive', and tabe 'loose':28 (82)
JansL ejer meget jordOE 'Jan owns much land'.
(83)
Janss tabte sin tegnebogOE 'Jan lost his wallet'.
(84)
JanST arvede et ur°E fra sin tanteAs 'Jan inherited a watch from his aunt'.
Reference point as direct object Some of the verbs with 'participating reference point', namely hjœlpe 'help', følge and ledsage 'accompany', allow the reference point L to display its char acter of Agentive E with its own action potential in the very same sentence;
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this can be seen in (85) where it is implied that only L, the wife, is going to the dentist or taking the bus. E, Jan, is presented here as a mere co-Agent: (85) a. JansE ledsager sin koneL/E til tandlœgenAT 'Jan accompanies his wife to the dentist'. b. JansE følger sin koneL/E til bussenAT Jan accompanies his wife to the bus'. These verbs are dynamic, but because of the Entity character of L they are able to have the sentence pattern S,0,A. Some force dynamic verbs that designate an atypical force relation mark their reference point as direct object, as for example beskytte mod 'protect against', vœrge imod 'defend from', and vœrne 'protect': (86)
HækkenS1 beskytter markenoL mod vindenAE 'The hedge protects the field against the wind'.
In force dynamic verbs with a lexicalized Entity, it is the norm, rather than the exception, to let the next argument in the semantic hierarchy, say a refer ence point, be expressed as an object instead of keeping it as a zero assign ment: (87) a. SmedenS1 skoedem en hest°T 'The blacksmith shoed a horse'. b.
* Smeden1 skoede(E) på en hestT 'The blacksmith shoed on a horse'.
(88) a. VoltaireS1 dyrkede roserOE i sin haveAL 'Voltaire grew roses in his garden'. b. VoltaireS1 dyrkede roserOE 'Voltaire grew roses'. VoltaireS1 dyrkede sin have°L 'Voltaire grew his garden'. d. *Voltaire1 dyrkede i sin haveL 'Voltaire grew in his garden'. The manifestation of a reference point as an object has the reifying effect earlier mentioned, but we want to stress that this does not alter its semantic function as reference point. This can be seen from a paraphrase like (87):
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(87')
135
Smeden1 forårsage.de at en (heste)sko(E) kom på en hest(ehov)T 'The blacksmith caused (horse)shoe to come on a horse(hoof)'.
An especially complex example of how several content structures can be merged by means of codification is seen in (89): (89)
Hun51 flaskede(Ins) kalven0E/T opAT med sødmælkAE 'She bottled the calf with milk'.
The apparent clash between E/T and the presence of two Entities, reveals the complex structure of opflaske which can be paraphrased by means of an action chain combining predicates from three different fields. This phenomenon falls under what Talmy calls "conflation" (cf. 5.): (89')
Location: 'hun1 hældte mælkE på kalvenT med en flaskeIns mange gange' → Circumstance: 'hun1 fodrede(E) kalvenT med mælkIns i lang tid'→Condition: 'hun1 opfodrede(r) kalvenE→kalvenE blev storT' Location: 'she1 poured milkE into the calfT by bottleIns several times' → Circumstance: 'she1 fed(E) the calfT with milkIns for a long time' → Condition: 'she raised(T) the calfE' → 'the calfE became bigT'
Our semantic theory makes it possible to describe in a more controlled way which patterns of conflation can be merged in a single lexeme. Until now they have more or less escaped attention, in particular the more sophisticated exam ples combining several semantic fields. The reference point character of the object is especially clear in verbs that alternate between a static and a force dynamic action schema, such as dcekke 'cover', pynte 'decorate', spærre 'block', etc. (90a-c) shows that, by means of alternative codification, Danish has the choice of emphasizing the participant character of L or presenting it as a simple reference point: (90) a. HunS1 pyntede bordetOL med blomsterAlns 'She decorated the table with flowers'. b. Blomsterne8E pyntede bordetOL 'The flowers decorated the table'. BlomsternesE pyntede på bordetAL the flowers decorated at the table 'the flowers decorated the table'.
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Reference point manifested as object is frequently found with verbs of dif ferent predicate types in connection with a prefix, as in be-, for example bebo 'inhabit', bebygge 'build on', beklæde 'cover', belyse 'illuminate', and belægge 'coat' — with the concomitant holistic meaning: (91) a. DesE bebor en ejendomOL 'They inhabit a house'. b. DesE bor i en ejeiidomAL 'They live in a house'. (92) a. FirmaetS1 bebygger(E) en grundOL 'The firm is building over a site'. b. FirmaetS1 bygger(E) på en grundAL 'The firm is building on a site'. Similarly fra- as in frarøve, fratage 'deprive of: (93)
De s 1 frarøvede hende10s hendes smykkerOE 'They robbed her of her jewels'.
Force dynamic verbs from the lexical fields of 'filling and emptying' are characterized by specifying their reference point, S or T, as a container. They are also very frequently expressed in a coerced construction with an upgraded reference point, as in dække 'cover', fylde 'fill', læsse 'load', proppe 'pack, squeeze', puste op 'blow up', and stoppe 'stuff: (94) a. Hans1 fyldte flaskerOT med vinAE 'He filled bottles with wine'. b. Hans1 fyldte vin°E på flaskerAT 'He filled wine into bottles'. (95) a. DeS1 tømte vognenOs for sækkeAE They emptied the car of sacks'. b. DeS1 tømte sække°E af vognenAs 'They emptied sacks off the car'. Finally 'factitive' verbs may be analyzed as having a T object. Factitive verbs, such as bygge 'build', flette 'weave', forarbejde 'manufacture', forme 'form', modellere 'model', and skabe, 'create', are characterized by desig nating that the argument that matches the object is brought into existence:
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(96)
137
HanS1 flettede måtterOT af sivAE 'He wove mats of rush'.
Coerced assignment of Modifying argument Some verbs have the function of highlighting the Instrument. These so-called 'Instrument verbs', such as anvende 'apply', benytte 'employ', bruge 'use', etc., do so by introducing the Instrument in the sentence as a participant assigning it object function; a trace of the conflated Instrument is found in the adverbial med:29 (97)
HanS1 bruger knivenOE til at skære pølseAsec.T medAIns 'He uses the knife to cut salami'.
The entity character of Instrument is also outstanding in verbs that alternate between a static and a force dynamic action schema (cf. (90a-b)). We will not go into details with coerced assignment in the form of a shift between adverbial, indirect object and complement, but limit ourselves to giving a few examples of a coerced sentence pattern in force dynamic Posses sion verbs where a construction with O,IO rather than O,A is predictable; compare (35) and (37) and: (98) a. Jans1 forcerede hestenOE til sin sønAT 'Jan made his son a present of the horse'. b. Jans1 forcerede sin søn10T hestenOE Jan presented his son the horse 'Jan presented his son with the horse'. 4.7 Secondary deviances When I and E appear in other syntactic functions than S and we may talk about a coerced assignment of participant arguments. This type of deviance seems chiefly to be a secondary product caused by the upgrading of a reference point to participant status, as we saw in 4.6. This upgrading of an argument lower in the hierarchy has necessarily the effect of downgrading the participant concerned. This may be totally relegated from the sentence or appear in a sat ellite position. As we have only found few examples of coerced assignment of the Instigator to a lower function than subject, it is mainly the Entity argument that is involved in this downgrading. In (99), however, we have a case of an Instigator which is assigned object function with a verb that emphasizes the atypical force dynamic relation by upgrading E to subject:
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(99)
DigetSE modstod vandpresseto1 'The dike resisted the pressure of the water'.
Also with verbs blafre 'flap', bølge, and vaje 'wave', which lexicalize the Instigator [WIND] — a very rare situation — the Instigator stays implicit or appears in satellite position: (100)
SejletSE blafrede (for vindenA1) 'The sail flapped (in the wind)'.
The atypical force dynamic verbs may also downgrade their Entity argu ment: (101)
Hækkens1 beskytter markenOL mod vindenAE 'The fence protects the field against the wind'.
When verbs of 'filling' and 'emptying' upgrade a reference point as object, the Entity is correspondingly marginalised to a satellite function expressed by for with 'emptying' verbs, and med with 'filling' verbs, or it is simply left out: (102) JanSI fyldte svømmebassinetOT (med vandAE) 'Jan filled the pool (with water)'. (103)
JanS1 tømte svømmebassinetOs (for vandAE) 'Jan emptied the pool of water'.
With verbs with a lexicalized Entity argument this may appear in a satellite function disguised as Material or Instrument. Many verbs alternate between this construction and a typical assignment: (104) a. HunS1 stak ham°T med en nålAE 'She pricked him with a needle'. b. HunS1 stak en nålOE i hamAT 'She pricked a needle into him'. With other verbs the coerced assignment is the only way of manifesting the Entity, with either static (105), dynamic (106), or force dynamic verbs (107). These are clear cases of downgrading: (105)
BordetSL bugner med madAE 'The table abounds with food'.
(106) a. Hunss nedkom(T) med en sønAE (cf. 66) 'She gave birth to a son'.
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139
*Hunss nedkom(T)
(107) a. HanSI fodrer køerneOT - med grœsAE 'He feeds the cows - with grass'. b. HanS1 forsyner dem°T - med benzinAE 'He provides them - with fuel'. HanS1 handler med brug te vogneAE 'He deals in second-hand cars'. d. Hans1 bidrog til festenAT med 500 krA 'He contributed 500 crowns to the party'. With static and dynamic verbs the deplaced Entity is more often attached to the sentence by means of af:30 PladsensL myldrer af/(med) folkAE 'The square is crowded with people', (cf. (58))
(108)
(109) a. TræernesL/S drypper af vandAE 'The trees are dripping with (lit. 'of') water'. b. ( 110)
VandetSE drypper fra træerneAs 'The water drips from the trees'. BordetSL bugner af madAE 'The table abounds with food'.
Finally, the 'verbs of concomitance' have the possibility of downgrading the Entity to a satellite by means of med 'with'. These verbs are characterized by having an entity argument designating several individuals. These may appear in the syntagmatic potential as actants of equal status, or they may be presented as parts of an asymmetrical relation where one is represented as a modifica tion, thus making the other partner more salient: (111) a. Storebœltsbroens1 forbinder SjællandOE og Fyn°E 'The Great Belt Bridge connects Zealand and Funen'. b. Storebœltsbroens1 forbinder SjællandOE med FynAE 'The Great Belt Bridge connects Zealand with Funen'. Verbs of all predicate types are found in this lexical field; they often switch between being dynamic and force dynamic predicates, for example with (ad)skille 'separate', dele 'divide', forbinde 'combine', forene 'unit', samle 'join', sammenføje 'unify', sammensætte 'compose', and sammentrække 'contract':
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(112) a. JansE og PeterSE samarbejder om projektetAL 'Jan and Peter cooperate on the project'. b. HanS1 samarbejdede de to projekterOE+E1 /projekt ΛΟΕ og B°El 'He fused the two projects I project A and B'. Characteristic groups of Circumstantial concomitance verbs are those of 'co operation', both dynamic as with hjœlpe 'help', and samarbejde 'cooperate, collaborate', and force dynamic as with adskille 'separate', samarbejde 'coor dinate, fuse', sammenlægge 'unite', and sammensætte 'combine': (113) a.
PeterSE og LisesE samarbejder 'Peter and Lise cooperate'.
b. PeterSE samarbejder med LiseAE 'Peter cooperates with Lise'. And also verbs of 'confrontation', which may be seen as the negative counter part to cooperation, both dynamic, as with kœmpe 'struggle', konkurrere 'compete', slås 'fight', and force dynamic, with konfrontere 'confront': (114) a. PeterSE og LisesE slås 'Peter and Lise fight'. b. PeterSE slås med / mod LiseAE 'Peter fights with / against Lise'. 4.8 Atypical assignment to non-prominent arguments In dynamic verbs without prominent reference points we should not expect these to qualify as primary syntactic functions. Nevertheless, it happens occa sionally that a non-prominent reference point is manifested as direct object. As the object is a manifestation of the second argument value, the atypicality of the assignment is not due to a deviance from the hierarchy, but to its missing prominence. We find it in the so-called 'internal object construction': (115)
DesE dansede en vals°L 'They danced a waltz'.
Also in dynamic, non-directional verbs with an object that indicates 'exten sion', thereby changing the sentence structure to directional (S-T): (116)
HansE løb tre kilometerOL 'He ran three kilometers'.
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4.9 Atypical assignment to sentence constituents without argument status Finally we want to mention some cases of atypical assignment to sentence constituents without argument status. Both object and indirect object can rep resent this type of element. A secondary reference point Τ can be expressed as a central participator by means of a syntactical upgrading. The object con struction in (117a) is only found sporadically, typically in advertising style, while normal language has an adverbial construction (117b): (117) a. Ring(1) enpizzaOsec.T 'Phone a pizza'. b. Ring(1) efter en pizzaAsec.T Thone for a pizza'. The indirect object construction corresponds to the well known role of "Benefi ciary", i.e. a non-valency-bound indirect object representing an individual whom the speaker wants to relate more intimately to the action designated by the verb than the normal adverbial construction can (cf. note 19): (118) a. HunS1 har sy et mig10sec.T en kjoleOT 'She has made me a dress'. b. HunS1 har sy et en kjoleOT til migAT 'She has made a dress for me'. Its much discussed peculiarity is a result of syntactic structuring as a 'primary syntactic function' of a sentence constituent without argument value. One could say that it is a satellite masked formally as a participator. This has a pragmatic upgrading effect.
5. Sentence structure If one compares the array of structural combinations that may be found at the lexical level in different languages, as for example in Danish and Spanish, it is worth noticing that in spite of their being notoriously different, there seems to be no remarkable difference between the semantic potentials of their verbal lexemes. The respective verb lexicons seem to contain about the same combi natorial possibilities. This means that the difference between these languages must be sought, not in their semantic potentials, but somewhere else. In Talmy (1991) we find a typological analysis of natural languages. He
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suggests that there are fundamentally two types: "Verb framed and Satellite framed languages". The two typological categories are distinguished on the basis of which parts of the semantic schema the verb allows to be expressed in a satellite and which are lexicalized in the verb. European languages belong in majority to satellite framed languages, among them Danish as well as English; only the Romance languages are "verb framed". The former allow an indication of 'path' in satellite position and tend to lexicalize 'manner', while the latter lexicalize 'path' and express 'manner' as a satellite'. Talmy's exam ple given for Spanish versus English is also valid for Spanish versus Danish: (119)
HanS1 blæser(M) lysetOE udAT vs. Apaga(l+T) la vela°E soplándolaAM 'He blows out the candle' vs. 'He extinguishes the candle blowing it'.
According to our semantic model, this typological difference can be de scribed as a question of which of the dynamic action schemas represents the basic one: the directional or the non-directional one. In Danish the nuclear lexicon is constituted by non-directional lexemes that specify 'the way in which the action takes place', or 'the manner in which something is done', while in Spanish and other Romance languages, the nuclear schema is directional, speci fying 'the place, owner, quality or state from which or towards which the action is directed'. This does not mean that there are no directional verbs in Danish; we have examples such as ankomme 'arrive', forsvinde, 'disappear', dø 'die', just as Spanish has non-directional ones, andar 'walk', crecer 'grow', trabajar 'work', etc.; they just do not constitute the basic pattern. A fact that corroborates the existence of these different typological patterns is that, seen from a Danish (or English) point of view, Spanish lacks lexemes designating location or movement plus manner; specifically, Spanish has no verbs for: sidde 'sit', ligge 'lie', stå 'stand', sparke 'kick', vinke 'wave hand', etc. But Danish (as well as English) has the possibility of compensating for the absence of directionality as the basic paradigmatic lexical pattern by syntagmatically creating sentence patterns containing complex lexemes in which the manner and situation type indicated by the non-directional verb is combined with an adverbial indicating direction: (120)
HansE kravlede(M) ud ad vinduetAs og satte sig(m) ind i bilenAT. HansE ville kørem ud til havetAT 'He crawled out of the window, entered (lit. sat down into) his car. He wanted to drive out to the sea'.
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The tendency to incorporate manner as the core element and associate the directional argument by syntactical means, creating a sentence pattern of type IR(E,L-S,T), or IR(E,L,S,T), finds its expression in the multitude of com pound lexemes that exists in Danish: slå ihjel 'kill' = "beat to death" (Spanish only matar), gå i stykker / slå i stykker 'go to pieces / break to pieces' (Span ish romper (se)), vaske rent 'wash clean' (and Spanish only limpiar 'clean'). Semantically, this elaboration of the reference point falls within the structur al possibilities of dynamic verbs because of the earlier mentioned implicational relation between the different types of locative arguments [[T→S]→L]. Further more, by means of "unit accentuation of the expression" the adverbial is pre sented on the expression side as an integrated part of the verbal complex, not marginalized as a satellite. A way of accounting for these facts is to analyze the complex as a verbal derivation: a "noun incorporation predicate" (Nedergaard Thomsen 1990). The implicational pattern of the simple and the complex verbal expression makes the change from a non-telic to a telic situation ex plicit: (121) a. Han spiste ikke sin mad Han har ikke spist. 'He did not eat his food' → 'He has not eaten'. b. Han spiste ikke sin mad op Han har spist. 'He did not eat up his food' → 'He has eaten'. These facts account for the typical feature of Danish sentence structure, its huge number of verbs of Location with incorporated manner that combine rath er freely with a wide range of directional adverbials. They are both used con cretely and with an extended meaning. A typical example is gå 'walk', which is found, among other combinations, with: af sted 'along', bagover, baglæns 'backwards', efter 'after', foran 'before', frem 'forwards', igennem 'through', ind 'in', henad 'along', hjem 'home', ned 'down', omkring 'around', op 'up', rundt 'about', tilbage back', tvœrs over 'across', ud 'out', and videre 'ahead': (122)
Han gik ned ad trappen, ud ad døren, hen ad gaden, rundt hjørnet, tvœrs over pladsen, og tilbage igen. 'He went down the stairs, out of the door, along the street, round the corner, across the square, and back again'.
A similar set of adverbials is accepted by other locational, dynamic, nondirectional verbs, such as: falde 'fall', løbe 'run', kravle 'crawl', hoppe 'hop', rulle 'roll', stolpre 'totter', svømme 'swim', vade 'wade', vakle 'stagger', and vimse 'bustle':
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Han faldt, rullede og kravlede ned ad bakken. 'He fell, rolled, and crawled down the hill'.
Also force dynamic verbs explore this combinatorial possibility to a great extent: sparke døren ind (op / і) 'kick the door down / open / up' slå ind / ned / sammen / ud 'knock in / down / together / out' slå tilbage 'throw back', slå igennem 'strike through' slå op 'look up', 'break off', slå hen 'minimize' Many verbs of movement and bodily movement are coerced into this force dy namic pattern by means of a reflexive object which does not match an argu ment: (124)
HansE sneg sig°zero ind i stuenÁT 'He sneaked into the room'.
(125)
HunsĘ rystede sig°zerofrì af omfavnelsenAs 'She shook herself free of the embrace'.
Another piece of evidence supporting the claim that non-directionality constitutes the basic lexical pattern in Danish is that in this language it is the non-directional verbs that acquire auxiliary status: fare 'rush', gå 'go', slå 'beat, knock, stick', etc., while in Spanish it is the directional ones: ir 'go to', volver 'turn', etc.: (126)
Empezó(E) a plancharT vs. HunE gik і gang medT at s tryge 'She began to iron' vs. 'She went into the course of ironing'.
For the note of completeness it should be mentioned that there are also nondirectional verbs in Danish that do not accept a directional adverb, namely those designating 'body movements': hikke 'hiccup', ryste 'shake', skælve 'shiver', vaje 'wave', etc. — that is, unless they are coerced into the sentence pattern mentioned under (124)-(125): (127)
*Han hikkede ind i stuen 'He hiccupped into the room'.
But all things considered, the tendency is so pronounced that the combination of 'verb plus adverbial with unit intonation' is also used optionally with di rectional verbs: hente cyklerne ind 'fetch (in) the bikes', knœle ned 'kneel down', visne bort 'wither away', etc. The directional adverbials are often used in non-concrete relations to indi cate the resulting state of the act, as in:
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HanS1 sparkede(M) og hamrede(M) spanden0E flad°cT 'He kicked and hammered the bucket flat'.
(129) HanS1 vaskede(M) skjorten0E ren0cT 'He washed the shirt clean'. (130)
Huns1 drak ham°E fuldOcT 'She made him drunk'.
(131)
Hans1 slog drengen0E til krøblingAT 'He beat the boy until he was a cripple' (lit. 'into a cripple').
The following adverbials are especially used to stress that the action results in the 'non-existence' of the entity: bort 'away', hen 'up to', op 'up', ned 'down', and ud 'out': brœnde op, ned, ud visne bort, hen gå f slå itu gå /puste ud jage til døde
'burn up, down, out' 'wither away' 'go to pieces' / 'break to pieces' 'go / blow out' 'hunt to death'
This possibility of compressing information into a single sentence pattern is named "conflation" by Talmy (1985) who shows that the fact that the verb presents related actions as one single one can be detected from paraphrases: (132) DuS1 skubbede(M) bolden0E nedAT = boldensE rullede nedAT fordi duS1 skubbede(M) den°E 'You pushed the ball down' = 'The ball rolled down because you pushed it'. Compare our analysis of example (89). His wildest example of conflation is: "Could you reach me that bottle down off the shelf with this clasper", of which a near equivalent exists in Danish: (133)
Med en lang pind hentede han flasken ned fra reolen fra omme bagved bøgerne 'With a long stick he fetched the bottle down from the shelf from behind the books'.
Other examples from Danish of syntagmatic compensation for non-directional paradigmatical potentials are: byde maden rundt 'hand the food round', gå ned efter øl 'go fetch beer' (lit. 'go down for'), hænge tøj til tørre 'hang clothes out to dry', vugge barnet i søvn 'rock (lit. cradle) the child to sleep'. They
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characteristically combine several semantic fields, especially Location and Cir cumstance as in: hænge tøj til tørre, vugge barnet i søvn.
6. Conclusion What is the advantage of a valency model which distinguishes radically be tween content and expression, and between paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations? Our data support the idea that perspectivization is an important factor which can be found on both the content and the expression side, and on all levels of abstraction, in the form of lexical prominence as well as of syntagmatic saliency. The essence of perspective is that it establishes an asymmetrical 'figure/ground' relation among units, whereby it functions as a differentiating factor. Thus, in a paradigmatic content perspective, verbs can be described as having a set of arguments which are differentiated into participants and refer ence points. From a paradigmatic expression perspective we can isolate a set of sentence constituents which divide into primary and secondary syntactic functions, S, O, IO vs. C, A, pO. The syntagmatic content pattern of the verb lexemes, the cofiguration, is based on the distinction between prominent and non-prominent arguments, while the syntagmatic expression pattern of the verb lexemes, their actant pattern, has the distinction between actants and satellites as its basis. The crucial point is that the division between the two types of units is not identical when one goes from one dimension to another. Therefore the correspondence between them is only symptomatic. The individual verbs choose content and expression elements from the hierarchies in the shape of a set of cofigures and a set of actants. These form the structural basis of sentences. But the choices that the individual verbs make are not equal. Thus reference points can, for example, appear both as actants and satellites and be expressed as a primary as well as a secondary syntactic function. Furthermore, in realized sentences we find other sentence constituents than verbs and actants, normally in the form of satellites. It depends on the lexical structure of the verbs whether these satellites have the function of privileged satellites or of free elements. We have established a set of rules for typical assignment. On the basis of this set it is possible to predict which actant pattern a given verb will have according to its semantic potential. The typical assignment will match each cofigure with an actant, so that the hierarchical ordering of the arguments is reflected in the cofiguration pattern and in the match with the actant and
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sentence constituent patterns. But these predictions do not always hold good. Some verbs have an assignment which goes against the main principles of codification. These untypical assignments occur in form of zeroing or coercion. Both result in a cofigure not coming out as the expected sentence constituent. Zeroing is a way of downgrading a cofigure by not manifesting it. It occurs mostly with verbs that have a lexicalized argument; this constant and invariable part of the verb content is easily presented as non-topical background informa tion (cf. opflaske in (89)). As an outcome of zero assignment we would expect the matching with an actant/sentence constituent to be skipped, but mostly this does not happen. Instead this constituent function is taken over by the next cofigure in the cofiguration pattern, which thereby is upgraded. The resulting sentence pattern is then intact, but the saliency of the cofigures is altered. A downgrading without a corresponding upgrading of another cofigure is a possi bility too. Coercion has typically the character of upgrading a cofigure to an untypical actant, and thus to an unexpected sentence constituent. However, when one constituent in a pattern is upgraded, then another one is necessarily down graded, owing to a sort of domino effect. Again, the result is both an up grading and a downgrading (cf. for example dryppe in (78), and sko in (87)). The upgrading makes an expected oblique, mostly an A(dverbial), appear as one of the primary syntactic functions S(ubject) or O(bject), the upgraded cofigure thereby obtain participant status. The downgrading takes the opposite direction, by presenting a cofigure, normally a participant, which is expected to appear in a primary function, in a secondary function, mostly an A, thereby masking its status as a non-participant. These obliques are satellites in their expression, but they have the status of privileged satellites because they have an argument in their content. Coerced assignment occurs sporadically also as a pure downgrading (cf. tage af kagen in (62a)). In sum, we have shown that even atypical assignments contain a great deal of regularity in their special patternings. Verbs with an atypical assignment are used to present a scene within an atypical perspective and have thereby a special pragmatic load. What then is the advantage of a valency model which distinguishes radically between content and expression, and between paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations? Valency has a rich literature in linguistics, but most models are "conflated": they are generally based on either expression or on content, thus making the relation between the two sides more isomorphic than the data war rant. Or they simply explain one side by the other, or even base themselves on
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a short circuit between the conceived pre-linguistic world and the content of linguistic signs. In our analysis of the valencies of Danish verbs, we have shown that the variation in grammatical content between the singular valency-bound consti tuents is due to syntagmatic choices from paradigms: the actant patterns, as well as the sentence patterns, are syntagmatic expression choices from the paradigm of actants and sentence constituents; the cofiguration patterns are syntagmatic choices from the paradigm of arguments. The delimitation of both paradigms — thus also the argument paradigm — is result of analyses of syn tagmatic occurrences in the language. Both the paradigms and the patterns are sets of only a few members; and the seemingly rich variation in the match be tween cofiguration and actant and sentence patterns is due to varied choices from these rather small sets. Recognition of this, however, is only possible when the content side and the expression side are treated as occurrences in their own right, with their own characteristics. Neither of them is derivable from or subservient to the other side. An analysis of the full range of the pat terns as well as of the paradigms is necessary. Therefore we believe that con flated theories of valency do not do justice to the economy and the forces of variation and combination of a language.31
Notes 1.
This is in accordance with the German tradition, with Gerhard Helbig as the main protagonist.
2.
Correspondingly, the complex verbs are verbs that express internal situations, i.e. of mental character, such as vide 'know', love 'promise', ville 'will, want', etc. Syn tactically they are characterized by having a more complicated pattern with their scope of activity at the higher layers of the sentence, those of extended predication, proposition and clause.
3.
This presentation is based on the ideas presented in the Ph.D. dissertation on "Spanske verbers semantiske grundstruktur" ('The basic semantic structure of the Spanish verbs', Schack Rasmussen 1987).
4.
Instigator and Entity in interactional situations are similar to Agonist and Antagonist in Talmy (1985). Following him we consider force dynamics as an interaction between two participants, i.e. entities without the character of a reference point, of which the one, the Instigator, exerts influence over the Entity in a way that is opposite to E's natural
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tendency towards movement/action or towards rest/non action. The final result of the act depends on their relative force, but the prototypical pattern is I > Eo: 'an Instigator stronger than the Entity overcomes E's tendency to rest → movement'. However, our combination of the force dynamic pattern with the paradigm of semantic fields confers the present approach with a higher degree of generality than Talmy's, making it capable of accounting for such verbs as spise 'eat', oplyse 'light up' as in lygterne oplyste hele fortovet 'the street lamps lit up the whole pavement', virkeliggøre 'realize as in han virkeliggjorde sin plan 'he carried out his plan' (and others with lexicalized or intensional arguments, etc.) within the same framework. 5.
'Static verbs' is an abbreviation for 'non-durational static verbs', seen in opposition to 'durational static verbs'. 'Non-durational' does not allude to the duration of the situation as such — since static situations are 'homogeneous' the verb will most likely refer to an enduring situation — but to the fact that it only requires a moment, "one glance", to verify a 'non-durational static situation', while it takes an interval, at least "two glances", to verify all other types of situations, durational static, as well as dynamic ones. This boundedness to intervals is the reason why dynamic verbs do not necessarily require a prominent reference point. With verbs like sleep, walk, etc. the verb denotes that E is the carrier of the action, e.g. walk, in (at least) two phases, or say, Peter walks establishes as a relation between Peter in t1, t2..tn.
6.
The paradigm of semantic fields is not a primitive notion, but a linguistic category which can be distinguished on the basis of the parameters 'essential or accidental relationship' on the one side, and 'extensional or intensional' on the other. The first paradigm, essential/accidental, establishes the situation denoted by the predicate as 'characteristic' or as just 'happening'. The second paradigm, extensional/intensional, determines the character of the arguments as concrete or abstract. Thus verbs with 'extensional argu ments and expressing an accidental relationship' are verbs of Location; verbs which have 'extensional arguments but express, or imply, an essential relationship' are verbs of Possession. Verbs that have, at least, one intensional argument are verbs from the fields of Condition and Circumstance. They express, respectively, an 'essential and an acci dental relationship', as in they appointed him ambassador or John got ill. For a more detailed presentation see Schack Rasmussen (1995). As to the difference between the two intensional fields, Condition and Circum stance, which may be the most difficult one to understand, it consists typically of the designation of a qualitative change vs. a phasal one. A test that captures this meaning difference is the test of irreversibility. Verbs expressing irreversible actions belong to the semantic field of Condition: Jan faldt tre gange. 'Jan fell three times'. vs. *Blomsten visnede tre gange. 'The flower withered three times'.
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Other verbs are neutral regarding the parameter of 'essential or accidental relationship': Hun brændte hans skjorte. 'She burnt his shirt' → (a) destroyed it; (b) made holes in it Although this set of semantic fields resembles that of Jackendoff, the resemblance is only superficial. The major difference lies in the existence of exact criteria for deciding which field a verb belongs to, and, also, in the fact that that the field of Circumstance appears as a fullfledged field elaborated on a par with the other ones, not as a minor parasitic one containing only a small group of aspectual verbs such as 'start, stop, keep', etc. The notion of semantic fields used here is thus of a more general character; the four fields constitute an obligatory set of choices for all simple verbs. In the formalization of the action schemas the following notation is used: Predicate type: stat = static, dyn = dynamic, force = force dynamics. Arguments: I = /nstigator; E = Entity; L = Location; S = Starting Point; T = Terminal Point. Prominent arguments are indicated with bold face: E, T, etc. S(ubject), O(bject), IO (Indirect Object), A(dverbial) are indications of the sentence constituent values (cf. note 14). The internal hierarchical ordering of the arguments is based on the following criteria (where > means 'hierarchical superior to'): I > E because of the force dynamic relationship between them with I as the initiating force; I, E > L (S,T) because of the Instigator's and the Entity's status as participants versus reference points: the figure is more salient than the ground. Among the reference points the ordering can be subsumed as: [[T→S]→L]. L > S,T because of L's status as the global domain of which S and T are parts; and finally, S > T, because the Starting Point is temporally prior to the Terminal Point. Otherwise, the hierarchical order between L and S,T is locally based, but temporally based between S and T. Modifier is included in the hierarchy to account for a whole range of elements that appear in the Semantic Potential by some kind of secondary attachment: a.
Drengen sad sammen med sin mor. 'The boy was sitting together with his mother'.
b.
Hun rejste sig hurtigt op. 'She stood up quickly'.
Hun rørte i gryden med en ske. 'She stirred the pot with a spoon'.
The final meaning of the modifying element depends on the part of the meaning potential it is attached to. Thus, a Modifier on the Entity gives Concomitance: drengen - med sin mor; Manner, when on the predicate: rejste sig - hurtigt; and on the Instigator it gives an Instrumental meaning: hun - med en ske. The reason why we include Modifier in the hierarchy on a par with the other arguments mentioned above is that in some verbs it
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figures as a prominent element with distinctive function. This proves its argument character:
10.
11.
a.
Lægen behandlede ham. 'The doctor treated him',
b.
Lægen behandlede ham venligt. 'The doctor treated him kindly'.
In the light of the present semantic theory, the semantic functions in FG (Dik 1989: Chapter 5) may be analyzed as combinatorial products. They represent a conglomerate of factors, in particular argument values colored by the type of semantic field and by special features; take for example such a notion as "Possessor" and "Reference", which in our terminology correspond to 'the reference point of static predicate in the semantic field of Possession and that of Condition' respectively; "Recipient", which can be identified as an 'animate Terminal Point (T) in non-locational semantic fields'; or "Processed and Goal", which may be analyzed as 'the Entity in force dynamic and non force dynamic schemas' respectively (cf. Schack Rasmussen 1995). a.
Rektor overrækker (lektoren) årets pris. han ('he') hende ('her') den ('it') 'The chancellor presents the lecturer with the prize of the year'.
b.
Arets pris bliver overrakt (lektoren) (af rektor). den ('it') hende ('her') 'The prize of the year is presented to the lecturer (by the chancellor)'.
c.
Lektoren bliver overrakt årets pris (af rektor), hun ('she') den ('it') 'The lecturer is presented with the prize of the year (by the chancellor)'.
d.
Der bliver overrakt
e.
At overrække (lektoren) årets pris var vanskeligt. hende ('her') den ('it') 'To present (the lecturer) with the prize of the year was difficult'.
(lektoren) årets pris (af rektor). hende ('her') den ('it') *'There is presented (the lecturer) the prize of the year (by the chancellor)'.
If the minimalistic point of departure is taken, the choice of only one construction for the isolation and measurement of the valency, the result (from these examples alone) is five different valencies for the Danish verb at overrække ('to present'). This leads to writing different lexical entries for each construction in a valency dictionary. If the maximalistic point of view is taken, however, there ought to be only one valency scheme for at overrække; but at the expense of a complication of the valency description. What is the problem? The expressions which the various actants end up in will vary according to the sentence constituent type they get connected with; and the number of realized actants will vary as well. (Brackets in the examples mean that the constituent
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is optional.) What is gained, then, by the maximalistic approach? Here the result is only one lexical entry for the verb, but its syntagmatic potential has grown. If this is the desired approach to valency, the data must be collected in such a way that all sorts of constructions are represented more than once, in order to catch the possible formal differences and the differences in number. Only one example as the basis for the cal culation of the valency of a linguistic item is not sufficient. Another reason for having a larger selection of data per verb is the fact that there is a certain difference between valency realizations in isolated sentences and in coherent texts as regards the obligatory or optional status of the actants. Especially constituents which are judged optional from a larger collection of instances may seem obligatory in a sentence in a text. This stems from the fact that the requirement of valency and of information is not the same thing. Valency belongs to the features of a word as a type; when realized, valency appears in the grammatical correct form of the sentence. The informational importance belongs to the features of a word as a token and belongs to the content side of the sentence construction, or rather of the text. Therefore a collection of relatively independent sentence constructions is considered the best basis for the cal culation of valency, as such a collection will hopefully reveals what a disciplined, restricted array of surroundings for a realized token is like. Another possibility is to let satellites be dependent on more complex constructions, e.g. predicate + actants. Possibly in a construction with many levels, as in Dik's sentence model (1989). If satellites are taken not to be dependent on the predicate alone, the arguments for interrelating the dependency and the morphogical criteria as it is done here, have to be reconsidered. However, prepositional objects must be understood as formally determined by their prepositions. S = subject; = object; A = adverbial; pO = prepositional object; Sc = subject complement; Oc = object complement. A/pO,Sc/Oc are sometimes subsumed under the term Obl. The use of cofigure I, 2, 3, and actant 1, 2, 3, to indicate valency is reminiscent of that in Dik's Functional Grammar (1989). Nevertheless the two approaches are different. In FG the sentence constituent level (= his syntactic functions) is reduced to a minimum. Dik operate with S and O, and this only in cases where the same argument can be assigned two sentence constituent values (typically by voice differences or upgrading to object). This takes care of only the perspectivization side of the con stituents. In all other cases he relies only on the semantic function of the arguments to account for their expression, i.e. the additional content attached to the expression of the various sentence constituents. What Dik does is to reduce sentence constituent function to cases of only marked assignment. But in our opinion the match of a cofigure (and argument) with a given actant (expression) may add a content and is not as straight forward as Dik seems to believe. Because of this added content value, we prefer to respect the doublesidedness of the linguistic sign on all derivational levels.
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153
Examples of tetravalent verbs are few and dubious; one pattern which is sometimes men tioned is S,0,A,A, as in: a. HanS1 bragte sin søster0E fra LondortAs til KøbenhavrtAT 'He brought his sister from London to Copenhagen'. b. HanS1 oversatte bibien0E fra hebraiskAs til danskAT 'He translated the bible from Hebrew to Danish'. However, as only one of the A is obligatory, the other A can easily be regarded as a satellite. This tallies with cofiguration patterns which do not exceed 3 as a norm; more over, the arguments attatched to the two A's can be understood as a semantic split: S and T of the hierarchically superior L. The word order in Danish will normally place the most important A first among A's. Another, more intricate one, is S,O,IO,A, where both reference points seem to be prominent in the semantic potential of overbringe, although they express a syntagmatic preference for T by means of the choice of an indirect object versus adverbial; the A is here marginalized in the word order, and can therefore be regarded as not partaking in the valency:
16.
Hansι overbragte hende10T et guldur0E fra familien LarsenAs 'He brought her a goldwatch from the Larsen family'.
The sentence patterns should be considered as on a higher level of linguistic abstraction than the set of sentence constituents in the finally realized particular clause. First, a sentence constituent normally has a positional potential of more than one position, and the actual choice as such has consequences for the information content of the clause construction; secondly, the position may determine the final expression of the sentence constituent, if it is actant 1 : a.
Kun hanSnom er kommet 'Only he has come'.
b.
Der er kun kommet hamSacc *there has only come him 'Only he has come'.
17.
This contrasts with the way Dik (1989) tries to regulate the relation between argument and expression: in most cases, the argument is considered to trigger the expression.
18.
Cf. note 14. Obl = Oblique is short for IO/pO/A/Sc/Oc.
19.
One category causes trouble: the so-called ethical dative referring to an interested party in the event: Denne ferierejse er mig lidt for dyr. this holiday journey is me a little too expensive 'This holiday I find a little too expensive'.
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The "ethical dative" does not relate to the event, but to the speaker of the utterance (it is mostly the first person singular). It has the form of an object (therefore in Danish it should be "ethical accusative", if the distinction between expression and content is to be taken seriously) and this means that it is formally selected by the verb, which is a criterion for an actant, according to the schema. As it is only dependent and rather freely combinable with all sorts of valencies, it has no real subdividing capacity. Therefore, it is considered a satellite here. Cf. Tables (2a-c), 3.2.3, and 4.9. 20.
That one type of sentence constituent does not match only one type of argument explains why it is impossible to determine the content of the sentence constituents by basing the analysis on the expression of the constituents. Therefore the existence of such contents is frequently denied by linguists.
21.
The verb fylde has several restrictions on its arguments: E is subcategorized as 'mass' or 'liquid' and E has the same volume as T: E = T. All this contributes heavily to creating a holistic reading.
22.
Cf. Jakobsen & Harder (1994:279-280).
23.
is here an abbreviation of Sc and Oc (subject and object complement); A is an abbreviation of A and pO (adverbial and prepositional object).
24.
The content analyses of all types of action schemas from the different semantic fields have been made on the basis of the different active sentence patterns.
25.
Finally it should be mentioned that free elements in the form of indications of time, outer location, purpose, cause, etc., are normally also are expressed as adverbials. They combine with almost all predicates and are without doubt free elements, because they are dependent and do not subcategorize verbs as a part of speech: Jan studerede til lœge0uitr T i København 0uter L I fem ărTim< *Jan studied for doctor in Copenhagen for five years 'Jan studied medicine in Copenhagen for five years'.
26.
Assignment of object function to the Entity in dynamic verbs is only found in those dynamic verbs that upgrade the reference point to subject; cf. 4.7.
27.
The change between transitive and intransitive constructions that we meet in verbs that switch between dynamic and force dynamic meaning, i.e. verbs such as: bade 'bathe', banke 'knock', begynde 'begin', brœkke 'break', brœnde 'burn', dampe 'steam', drive 'drift', drukne 'drown', dunke 'thump', and sejle 'sail', is not considered a deviant assignment: a.
ArbejdetSE begynder 'Work starts'.
A DANISH VERB VALENCY MODEL
155
b. HanS1 begynder arbejdet°E 'He starts working'. 28.
The occurrence of indirect object with force dynamic possession verbs may be seen as part of the same upgrading function employed to integrate the reference point as a central participator.
29.
Instrument as subject is usually analyzed as atypical assignment: En sten knuste vinduet. 'A stone broke the window pane'. It is found with force dynamic verbs that normally have an Agentive Instigator: Han knuste vinduet med en sten. 'He broke the window pane with a stone'. We prefer to consider it a case of complicated assignment: Instrument is a notion dependent on that of Agent, because 'the Agent uses the Instrument to realize an act'. Agent itself may be analyzed as a modification of the first participant. In agreement with that, Instrument can be defined as the 'Entity argument in the modifying force dynamic function expressing Agency' (for a detailed presentation, see Schack Rasmussen 1995).
30.
The nuclear meaning of the preposition af is Starting Point, but not so clearly as its "synonymon" fra, which may count as the prototypical Starting Point: Han faldt ned af /fra bordet. 'He fell off (lit. down off / down from) the table'. but: Han er *af /fra Jylland. 'He is from Jutland'. With af this meaning is weakened almost to a simple "hook" function, as we also know it from the Romance languages when 'de' is used as a connector between nominals: taza de café 'coffee cup'.
31.
We are indebted to Peter Harder for many insightful and critical comments.
References Croft, William. 1991. Syntactic Categories and Grammatical Relations: The cognitive organization of information. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Dik, Simon C. 1989. The Theory of Functional Grammar. Part I: The structure of the clause. Dordrecht: Foris. Engel, Ulrich. 1970. Die deutschen Satzbaupläne. Wirkendes Wort 20.361-392.
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Engel, Ulrich & Helmut Schumacher. 1976. Heines Valenzlexikon. Tübingen: Gunter Narr. Fabricius-Hansen, Cathrine, Lisbeth Falster Jakobsen & Jørgen Olsen. 1986. Die nominalen Satzbaupläne im Dänischen und Deutschen. (= KBGL-Sonderreihe KONTRA, Abeitsbericht, 7.). Copenhagen: Reitzel. Fillmore, Charles J. 1968. The case for case. Universals in Linguistic Theory ed. by E. Bach & R.T. Harms, 1-88. London: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Fillmore, Charles J. 1985. Frames and the semantics of understanding. Quaderni di Semántica VI no. 2.222-254. Halliday, M.A.K. 1985. An Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Edward Arnold. Helbig, Gerhard. 1992. Probleme der Valenz- und Kasustheorie: Konzepte der Sprachund Literaturtheorie. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Helbig, Gerhard & Wolfgang Schenkel. 1973. Wörterbuch zur Valenz und Distribution deutscher Verben. Leipzig: VEB Bibliographisches Institut. Hjelmslev, Louis. 1966 [1943]. Omkring Sprogteoriens Grundlæggelse. København: Akademisk Forlag. (= Louis Hjelmslev. 1963. Prolegomena to a Theory of Lan guage translated by Francis J. Whitfield. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press.) Jackendoff, Ray. 1990. Semantic Structures. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Jakobsen, Lisbeth Falster. 1988. Valency Grammar. Valency: Three studies on the linking power of verbs (= Copenhagen Studies in Language, 11.) ed. by Finn Sørensen, 35-56. Copenhagen: Arnold Busck. Jakobsen, Lisbeth Falster. 1994. Perspective, markedness, and paradigmatic relations between predicates: A case study of Danish. Function and Expression in Function al Grammar ed. by E. Engberg-Pedersen, L. Falster Jakobsen & L. Schack Ras mussen, 127-152. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Jakobsen, Lisbeth Falster. 1995. Valency description: A question of strategy and pur pose. Expression and content valency. Part I. Schøsler & Talbot 1995.161-183. Jakobsen, Lisbeth Falster & Peter Harder. 1994. Valency in a Hjelmslev-inspired functional grammar: Substance, form, expression and content in a functional analysis of valency. Linguistic Studies in Honour of Jørgen Rischei (= Acta Linguistica Hafniensia, 27.) ed. by J. Elmegård Rasmussen, 275-284. Copen hagen: .A. Reitzel. Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors we live by. Chicago: The Univer sity of Chicago Press. Lakoff, George. 1993. The syntax of metaphorical semantic roles. Semantics and the Lexicon ed. by J. Pustejowsky, 27-36. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Nedergaard Thomsen, Ole. 1990. Unit accentuation as an expression device for predicate formation in Danish. Functional Grammar in Denmark ed. by L. Falster Jakobsen, 66-86. Copenhagen: The Functional Grammar Committee, Department of English, University of Copenhagen.
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Schack Rasmussen, Lone. 1987. Spanske verbers semantiske grundstruktur: En lokalistisk funktionsteori ['The basic semantic structure of Spanish verbs: A localistic functional theory']. Ph.D. dissertation. University of Copenhagen. Schack Rasmussen, Lone. 1994. Semantic functions in perspective: Reconsidering meaning definitions. Function and Expression in Functional Grammar ed. by E. Engberg-Pedersen, L. Falster Jakobsen & L. Schack Rasmussen, 41-63. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Schack Rasmussen, Lone. 1995. Valency description: A question of strategy and pur poses. Expression and content valency. Part II. Schøsler & Talbot 1995.185-210. Schøsler, Lene & Mary Talbot, eds. 1995. Studies in Valency I (= RASK Supplement, vol. 1.). Odense: Odense University Press. Somers, Harold L. 1987. Valency and Case in Computational Linguistics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Talmy, Leonard. 1985. Force dynamics. Chicago Linguistic Society 21(2).293-337. Talmy, Leonard. 1991. Path to realization: A typology of event conflation. Berkeley Linguistics Society 17.460-519. Welke, Klaus M. 1988. Einführung in die Valenz- und Kasustheorie. Leipzig: VEB Bibliographisches Institut. Wright, G.H. von. 1968. An essay in Deontic Logic and the General Theory of Action (= Acta Philologica Fennica, 21.).
Danish directional adverbs Content syntax and complex predicates: A case for host and co-predicates Peter Harder, Lars Heltoft, and Ole Nedergaard Thomsen University of Copenhagen, University of Roskilde, and University of Copenhagen
1. Introduction1 All languages have ways of conveying basic directions such as up and down, in and out, etc. They differ, however, in the ways in which this type of meaning is organized in the language system. Germanic languages have a series of adverbs for this job; in addition, the Scandinavian languages have a suffixal opposition which is more or less unique to them. A non-suffixed form such as Danish ud corresponds to out in contexts like he went out and marks transition, i.e. movement to a new place. This form contrasts with a series ending in the morpheme -e (pronounced as schwa, or, in sandhi, as syllabic lengthening of the preceding segment). These have a positional, static sense, thus ude translates out in the context he is out. The naked form can further more be combined with the suffix -ad which indicates movement but not tran sition, compare the English suffix -wards, as in outwards, corresponding to Danish udad.2 Apart from this morphological specialty, what makes Danish directional adverbs typologically interesting from the point of view of functional grammar is the systematic relationship between particular features of their semantic field and their syntactic role, especially as part of Danish complex predicates. These adverbs cannot be described solely in terms of paradigmatic content contrasts of the kind provided above; nor can they be treated — as has been the case in handbooks of Danish grammar (e.g. Diderichsen 1946, but cf. Hansen 1966) — as an exotic, minor peculiarity of the morphological system. On the con trary, their paradigmatic features are systematically related to basic features of
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Danish syntax, both on the side of content and of expression syntax (for the latter distinction, see Harder, this volume). Chief among the expression fea tures is the phenomenon of "unit accentuation", which signals that certain constituents go together with the verb ("incorporate") to create a complex clausal predicate. The main aim of the article is to give an account of the content-syntactic job of the dynamic adverbs, and in doing so to highlight some pervasive features of the way clausal meaning is carved up and organized in the syntax of Danish. We shall argue throughout that the syntactic relations between the elements cannot be captured satisfactorily within a syntax that does not clearly see syntax as having a content side, since the types of constituents and the forms of obligatoriness we find can only be grasped if we understand what semantic choices each syntactic element codes. As a major issue within this discussion, we argue that an adequate description of the Danish system cannot be given if it is assumed that the category "verb" is understood as a monolithic syntactic primitive: Danish syntax habitually splits prototypically verbal meaning be tween two syntactic constituents, a "host predicate" and a "co-predicate", whose manner of collaboration forms a central part of the organisation of meaning in Danish clauses. Part of this pattern reflects that Danish is what Talmy (1985) has called a "Satellite-framed language": an adverbial particle codes what in other languages forms part of the meaning of the verb. But the story is more complex than that; and the dynamic spatial adverbs have an inter esting role in that context.
2. Morphology: expression and content In this section we describe the semantic choices that are bound up with the different forms of directional adverbs themselves. In Table 1 the full set of forms treated in this article is given. Some are arranged in pairs corresponding to the semantic contrasts they code. The contrasts between these Danish adverbs correspond to what is usually called aktionsart: static/dynamic and transitional/non-transitional (identical to "transformative/non-transformative" in the terminology of Fabricius-Hansen 1975, and roughly to "telic/non-telic"). The tripartite set of oppositions is analogous to the contrasts in Durst-Andersen & Herslund (this volume) between 'states', 'activities' and 'actions'. 3 The difference between the static and transitional sets of spatial adverbs in combination with verbs of movement corresponds to the difference in German
DANISH DIRECTIONAL ADVERBS
161
Table 1 : Danish spatial adverbs4 STAT
English glosses
ud ind
udad indad
ude inde
'outward)' 'in(ward)'
ned op
nedad opad
nede oppe
'down(ward)' * up (ward)'
frem tubage
fremad
fremme tubage
'forward/out in the open' 'back'
hjem bort5
hjemad
hjemme borte
'home/at home/homeward* 'gone'
over af [a:?] hen
overad omad
ovre omme /[:ә] henne
'over' 'away and off the direct route' 'off '(horizontal default)'
henad
between dative and accusative complements to certain prepositions (cf. Hansen 1980). This can be shown by the following examples (1)-(2):6 (1)
a. er geht in den Wald (hinaus) he walks in the:ACC forest (out) 'He walks (out) into the forest'. b. han Һ
o går
goes
'UD
I
out.TRANSIT
into
skoven forest:the
'He walks out into the forest'. (2)
a. er geht in dem Wald (herum) he walks in the:DAT forest (around) 'He walks in the forest'.
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b. han 'går 'ud-e i skoven he walks out-STAT in forest: the 'He walks in the forest'. There are also other cases where choices resembling aktionsart are determina ble outside the verbal lexeme: for instance, Durst-Andersen & Herslund (this volume) show how Danish systematically forms non-transitional, intransitive clauses with demoted, prepositional objects from full transitive ones, prototypically involving verbs of transition ("action verbs" in their terminology): (3)
a. de byggede huset they built house: the They built the house'. b. de byggede på huset they built on house: the They were working on the house, they were building the house'.
The transitional meaning in (3a) is absent in (3b), which is dynamic but nontransitional. This grammaticalized relationship is semantically analogous to the relationship between verbs followed by the transitional and the non-transitional adverb forms, respectively: (4)
a. ogå 'UD go
out:TRANSIT
'go out' b. ogå 'UD-AD go
out-NON.TR
'go outwards' Again, the (b) form is dynamic but non-transitional. Our main concern here is with the role of especially the transitional set of forms in the structure of clause content in Danish. This subject involves a somewhat intangible aspect of the semantics of these words in Danish, which it is necessary to grasp in order to describe the precise situations in which the spatial adverbs are standardly used. These words reflect a conceptualization of (trans)location as occurring in relation to a presupposed subjective position. Thus, whenever the location designated (which may typically also be signalled by a prepositional phrase, PP) is understood in relation to the speaker's 'pre supposed domain', one or another of these words will normally occur. Only when the location is 'objective' or 'unrelated to the speaker's domain' can they be left out. When places within the home are involved, such as the kitchen, the
DANISH DIRECTIONAL ADVERBS
163
basement, the cupboard, etc., which are most naturally conceived of in relation to one's subjective position, one of these words will accompany any place de scription, as in the following pair (5a-b): (5)
a. kaffekanden står ude i køkkenet coffee:pot:the stands out:STATIC in kitchen:the The coffee-pot is standing (out) in the kitchen'. b. kaffekanden står i køkkenet coffee:pot:the stands in kitchen:the 'The coffee-pot is in the kitchen'.
Both would translate naturally into English as 'the coffee-pot is in the kitchen'. The first case would be the natural formulation; the second one, without a place adverb, would require a context where the subjective relationship to the position of the coffee-pot was somehow irrelevant — e.g. in a generic state ment about the canonical place of the coffee-pot. Many movements described in geographical terms show a distinction between a subjectively anchored spatial reading and a non-anchored one, as in (6a-b): (6)
a.
vi 'OP TIL 'Nordnorge orejste we travelled up:TRANSIT to North:Norway 'We travelled up to Northern Norway'.
b. vi TIL 'NORDNORGE orejste we travelled to North:Norway 'We travelled to Northern Norway'. where (6a) reflects a (possibly) Danish perspective, and (6b) is 'objective'. The spatial domain related to one's subjective position can be of vast proportions. In talking about something taking place on Mars, most people would omit the adverbs, but someone who is used to thinking about planets as being located in relation to himself might choose to include them, as in (7a-b): (7)
a. der er kanaler (ude) på Mars there are canals (out:STAT) on Mars 'There are canals (out) on Mars'. b. raketten flyver (ud) til Mars rocket:the flies (out:TRANSIT) to Mars 'The rocket flies (out) to Mars'.
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However, the closer one gets to home, the more clearly the tendency to specify the location in subjective spatial terms will manifest itself. The 'home' area, where specification is more or less obligatory, can be used to describe the un translatable pair hen - henne, which is perhaps the most interesting member of the group. Its spatial orientation is horizontal, and it may be regarded as the most neutral of the horizontally oriented members of the paradigm. In other words, although it cannot replace the vertically oriented members op 'up' and ned 'down' (nor the marginal prepositional pair af [a.:?]/af [:ә] 'off'), it can replace the rest of the paradigm and is often used where other members are in appropriate, referring to any location close to the subjectively conceived point of origin, and horizontally oriented towards it.7 Thus, one would use hen/henne about locations within reach or sight (e.g. in relation to the window): (8)
a.
ogå
'HEN TIL vinduett go horiz:TRANSiT to window:the 'Go over to the window!'.
b. den 'står 'henne ved vinduet it:COMM stands horiz:STAT by window:the 'It is standing by the window'. In relation to locations that are not close to home, it cannot be used; geo graphical locations, for example, could not be accompanied by hen(ne) (cf. *de orejste 'HEN TIL 'Norge, lit. 'they traveled horiz:TRANSIT to Norway'). The directional adverbs can also function in two ways that are slightly different from the one that constitutes our main subject, but which they share with their English counterparts. First of all, they form idiomatic phrasal pre dicates like osmide 'UD ('throw out, reject'), okaste 'OP ('throw up, vomit'), in which the element of direction is more bound up with a specific action type ('reject', 'vomit') than with directionality in a situational perspective. With some adverbs there is a cline between cases where the directionality can be understood purely as an internal, conceptual part of the meaning of a compos ite predicate, and cases where the directionality involves the situational aspect that is the central point in the present article. Often the two elements are diffi cult to tease apart, because inherent conceptualization and subjective perspec tive match: you can almost only come "up" from a coal mine. In other cases, the subjective choice is clearer: kom ud/ind i køkkenet! ('come out/in into the kitchen!') depends on whether the kitchen is seen as the 'in' or the 'out' place. With hen(ne) there is only the situational option, since there is little inherent ideational content.
DANISH DIRECTIONAL ADVERBS
165
Secondly, they occur as nuclear aspectual operators (cf. Foley & Van Valin 1984:209-212) denoting solely transitional (completive) aspect. Compare (9b) with (9a): (9)
a. han 'spiste maden med god appetit he ate food:the with good appetite 'He ate his food with good appetite'. b. du skal ospise maden 'OP you must eat food:the up 'You must eat up your food'.
This is an even more idiomatic phenomenon: typically the adverbs in such combinations have lost their directional meaning, retaining only their transitionality. Also, different verbs are seen to require different directional adverbs to express the transitional aspect, as those in (10): (10)
odrikke
'UD; 'drink up';
ohøre
'OP; ogrine 'AF 'cease'; 'finish laughing'
3. Unit accentuation and complex predicate meanings The focus above was on the meaning of the adverbs considered as items, with their syntax in the background. We now change the perspective and look at the syntactic slot(s) that they enter into. In doing so, we shall base our account on the distinction between content and expression in syntax, such that the content side is basic; the expression side is the means whereby the content relations are signalled. A central issue that can be raised only from this perspective has to do with the way in which clause meaning is carved out and distributed between elements in the clause. If we presuppose a clause meaning of a given complexity — and also pre suppose that this clause meaning is kept constant during language-specific structuring (by means of different coding options) — a coding into few ele ments means that the elements are semantically rich, and the composition is simple; if, on the other hand, there are many separately coded elements, the elements are semantically simpler and the composition is more complex. From the top-down perspective, this is a structural choice with no predetermined "natural" division. As against this unprejudiced way of raising the question of differentiation, Talmy's concept of 'conflation' (e.g. Talmy 1985) presupposes a natural typology of elements, some of which can be swallowed up by others.
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Such a view of how substance is naturally structured may be diachronically plausible. However, the neutral path of investigation is to begin with an "amorphous" semantic substance (with no presuppositions as to which individual notions might be found and what is naturally coded together) and then to de scribe individual languages with respect to the coding patterns they evince. This is relevant in the present context because during the period of logical dominance in linguistic semantics there was a strong tendency to abstract com plex structures down to a level where everything is exhaustively divided into predicate-argument relations (including, in FG terms, restrictor-variable rela tions). This "carving" pattern, however, is not necessarily the only differentia tion strategy possible. In the present context in particular, it leaves no room for differentiating the role of the predicate itself: the predicate-argument dis tinction forces anything that is chipped off from a predicate to be assigned to argument or satellite position. We shall argue that one can only understand the syntax of the spatial adverbs if we recognize that Danish differentiates structurally between two syntactic positions within the domain of the clausal predicate. In contrast to the description of complex predicate meaning given in the tradition that grew out of generative semantics, however, we do not think in terms of wholesale seman tic decomposition; our focus is precisely on those semantic components that are separately coded in the language. It is because they are separately coded that they must be understood as part of the 'content syntax', i.e. the way in which whole clause meanings are constructed out of separately coded meanings. In FG, complex predicate meanings are handled by means of processes of 'predicate formation'. The problem with this is the same as with other similar accounts, namely that it is seen as a pre-syntactic process: first we form a pre dicate, and only afterwards do we build a clause around it, just as we form a clause round a basic predicate. As discussed by Nedergaard Thomsen (1992a), we need instead to recognize that the processes whereby a clause is constructed may contain, as a fully 'syntactic' subpart, processes that combine smaller elements into full predicate meanings. To see how differentiation into sub-predicate items is part of the structure of Danish, it is instructive to begin with the phenomenon of 'unit accentuation' (cf. Jespersen 1897-99; Rischei 1983; Basbøll 1990; Nedergaard Thomsen 1991, 1992a; Herslund 1995; Heltoft 1993, 1995). Viewed as a feature of the expression system, unit accentuation can be said to occur when a main verb is pronounced with weak stress while a constituent associated with the verb receives full stress. Unit accentuation can be regarded as (part of) the expres sion side of a grammatical sign whose content side is the formation of a com-
DANISH DIRECTIONAL ADVERBS
167
plex clausal predicate (cf. Nedergaard Thomsen 1992b: 155). Absence of full stress from the verb signals that the verb does not serve as clausal predicate on its own, and that the element that receives full stress, i.e. which carries the "unit accentuation", is part of the semantic domain of the clausal predicate. In many cases, this phenomenon can be seen as a process whereby certain constituents which naturally belong outside the clausal predicate become in corporated into the predicate. In other cases, it is a basic pattern with no nonincorporated parallel. All kinds of sentence members can take part in this 'analytic' incorporation; some non-incorporated parallels are added for illustra tion in (11)-(15):8 (11) a.
b.
otale
'RENT talk proper:ADV 'To talk properly'.
(+Inc: manner adverbial)
'tale 'smukt talk beautifully:ADV 'To talk beautifully'.
(-Inc: manner adverbial)
(12) a. oskyde 'KRAGER shoot crows 'To shoot crows'. b.
(13)
(14)
(+Inc: non-referential object)
'skyde 'kragerne shoot crows: the T o shoot the crows'.
(-Inc: referential object)
0blive
(subject complement)
'VANVITTIG become crazy :SG T o go mad'.
ogøre
'nogen 'GLAD make sby happy :SG 'To make somebody happy'.
(object complement)
Of particular interest in this context is (15): (15)
ogå
go
'UD
(+Inc: transitional adverb)
out: TRANSIT
'To go out'.
Whenever predicate meaning is divided between two constituents, of which one retains the formal characteristics of a verb (e.g. Tense/Aspect/Mood affixa-
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tion), we shall speak of the latter as a host predicate, while the other con stituent is called the co-predicate.9 This terminology applies both to those cases which we consider as incorporated, and to those cases where the division between host and co-predicate is a basic pattern, as in the maximally grammaticalized copula verbs discussed below. There are other ways of carving out the verbal content substance; thus, when to "transport oneself by car" is rendered by Danish bile ('to car'), we may speak of "lexical" incorporation (cf. Talmy 1985 on 'conflation'). The motional element is conflated — or perhaps better — coded together — with the vehicle of motion, which would otherwise be an incorporated satellite (compare køre I 'BIL 'drive a car'). Different coding strategies can be a salient characteristic of different languages. With respect to the semantic substance that is coded by the transi tional adverbs, we can compare Danish with two related but structurally differ ent languages, Spanish and German. These languages exemplify three different major coding strategies in this area. In Spanish, the whole meaning is coded into one "monolithic" verb; in German, the local part of the meaning is coded into separate elements that oscillate between having a separate position in the syntactic expression and being placed together with the verbal meaning (discon tinuous compounding); in Danish the meanings are coded separately but tied together by analytic incorporation. As an illustration, consider the two sets of examples below, (16) and (17); the bold-face words cover roughly the same semantic substance in the three languages: (16) a.
entró en la pieza entered:3SG in(to) the:FEM room 'He went into (entered) the room'.
b. er ging ins Zimmer her-ein he went into:the:NEUTR:ACC room PROX-into 'He went into the room'. c. er wollte ins Zimmer her-ein-gehen he wanted into:the:NEUTR:ACC room PROX-into-go:INF 'He wanted to go into the room'. d. han ogik 'IND / 'værelset he went into:TRANSIT in(to) room:the:NEUTR 'He went into the living room'.
DANISH DIRECTIONAL ADVERBS
169
(17) a. salió de la pieza exited:3sG from the:FEM room 'He went out of (exited from) the room'. b. er ging aus dem Zimmer her-aus he went out:of the:NEUTR:DAT room PROX-out 'He went out of the room'. c. er wollte aus dem he wanted out:of the:NEUTR:ACC 'He wanted to go out of the room'.
Zimmer her-aus-gehen room PROX-out-go:iNF
d. han ogik 'UD AF 'værelset he went out:TRANSIT of room:the:NEUTR 'He went out of the living room'. The point of these examples is to show that there is no God-given natural coding in this area, and that the differentiation between host predicate and copredicate in Danish cannot be explained away as an aberration in relation to some 'natural' pattern. We shall return to co-predicativity in the next section; but first we need to be precise about one aspect of the content side of the incorporation pattern in Danish. It concerns the conditions under which the dynamic adverbs are oblig atory in Danish. This occurs when intransitive verbs of movement are followed by a PP indicating the spatial end-point of the movement — where the endpoint is within the subjectively oriented space, as discussed above. Compare (18): (18)
han „gik 'HEN/'UD/... TIL 'museet he went horiz:TRANSIT/out:TRANSIT/... to museum:the 'He went to the museum'.
(Note that the English parallel does not contain a transitional adverb.) There is one qualification to the obligatory nature, which also involves the division between host and co-predicate. The spatial-only reading must have unit accentuation, except for cases of focal stress on the verb when it expresses emphatic positive polarity; in such cases the adverb is optional, as in (19): (19)
han 'gik (hen) til museet he went:EMPH horiz:TRANSIT to museum:the 'He did go to the museum'.
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Apart from such instances, examples without a dynamic adverb convey a reading that may be called "institutional", where the central content is 'make contact with' rather than 'movement on foot': (20)
han ogik TIL 'MUSEET med sine fund he went to museum:the with his finding:PL 'He went to the museum with his findings, he addressed himself to the museum (as an institution) with his findings'.
The same opposition can be exemplified with the following pair, (21a-b): (21) a. ogä 'HEN TIL 'lœgenl go horiz:TRANSIT to doctor:the 'Walk/go (over) to the doctor!'. b. ogå TIL 'lægen! go to doctor: the 'Go see a doctor!'. Here the absence of a transitional adverb indicates the institutional reading. Thus (21a) is spatial, whereas (21b) is institutional — no particular doctor or place is intended, and the English translation would be, as indicated, something like 'go see a doctor'. An alternative description would be to say that the versions without the adverb are idiomatic "set phrases". But as pointed out in Nedergaard Thomsen (1992a), this description would overlook two important points about unit accen tuation. (a) Non-spatial idiomatic cases may contain dynamic adverbs, as seen in the following example (22): (22)
jeg er også gået 'OVER TIL Prince I am also gone over:TRANSIT to Prince 'I have also gone over to Prince cigarettes'.
(b) By simply imposing unit accentuation on a new phrase, one can impose an institutional reading on it. This is a free and creative mechanism whereby words can be combined into designators for an activity with institutional status. Thus when a new type of official, the 'county mayor', came into being with the reform of local government in 1969, one could immediately say a sentence like (23): (23)
jeg ogår TIL 'AMTSBORGMESTEREN I go to county:mayor:the 'I shall go to the county mayor'.
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The meaning would be 'approach him in his institutional capacity', i.e. by writing a letter to him, whereas the spatial sense would have to be accompa nied by one of the transitional adverbs. In a subjectively oriented context, spatial meaning goes with an obligatory dynamic adverb, and the absence of such an adverb indicates the choice of non-spatial, institutional meaning. Note that the PP takes over the co-predicate function, with unit accentuation. Unit accentuation, in other words, is not simply alignable with 'spatial' or 'institu tional' or any other specific reading; it occurs whenever constituents form a complex clausal predicate. The remaining features of the relevant constructions therefore have to be accounted for in other ways.
4. The structural category of 'predicatives' in Danish: dependency and topology In examples (11) and (12) above we saw a direct paradigmatic contrast between incorporated and non-incorporated cases, involving items with a clear argument or satellite function. Here the co-predicate can be understood as conquered territory, as material which is only secondarily swallowed up by the clausal predicate. We shall now describe those cases where we claim that there exists a special structural slot for elements which are basically co-predicates. In order to do so, let us begin by looking at those cases where the transitional adverbs occur as "ordinary" satellites. This occurs with verbs that involve a directional element without being verbs of motion, e.g. the verb kigge ('look'): (24) a. han 'kiggede 'ned-Ø på he looked down-TRANSIT on 'He looked down at his papers'.
sine papirer his:REFL paper:PL
b. han 'kiggede 'op-Ø fra sine he looked up-TRANSIT from his:REFL 'He looked up from his papers'.
papirer paper:PL
Here the adverbs occur as satellites, with full stress on both verb and adverb. However, if we replace the verb with a verb of motion, the unit accentuation pattern, signalling host and co-predicate status, typically becomes obligatory as discussed above. It should be emphasized that there are cases where motion verbs take free directional satellites; this occurs for example in those readings of kigge ('look') where it has been reinterpreted as a motion verb:
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(24) . han 'kiggede 'op til os i går he looked up to us yesterday 'He came up to visit us yesterday'. Even typical motion verbs may occur in contexts where they do not incorpo rate, as in (25): (25)
han okom 'lebende 'ind ad døren he came running:ADV in:TRANSIT via door:the 'He came running in through the door'.
All grammars leak (compare also the discussion of borderline cases in section 5 below). What we claim is that the typical pattern for motion verbs is one in which there is a slot reserved for the directional element, hence no regular paradigmatic opposition between the incorporated and the non-incorporated constituent. The co-predicate role is part of the regular syntactic pattern, not a sign of idiosyncratic idiomatization. However, the semantic relation between the incorporated co-predicate and the host predicate still corresponds to what we find in non-incorporated sentence members, i.e. the role of directional satellite. In other words, we claim that there is a basic (non-derived) syntactic category, which is filled (in the cases we describe) by elements which share all other properties with non-incorporated constituent types. Such regular co-predicativity, however, is not reserved for transitional adverbs following motion verbs: other constituents, notably certain types of subject and object complements, share this property. In the role of object complements we find not only the transitional, but also the other series of adverbs with obligatory unit accentuation. Compare (26a) with (26b): (26) a.
b.
oholde
'vægten 'NEDE (object complement, static adverb) keep weight:the down:STAT 'To keep the weight low.'
o
få vægten 'NED(AD) (object complement, tr/non-tr adverb) get weight:the down:TRANSIT/NON.TR 'To get the weight down(wards).'
The same applies, however, to adjectival complements, and these two types of construction also share other expression and content features; we shall try to show that adjectival complements and directional adverbs belong to the same syntactic category, both in expression syntax and in content syntax, forming one hyper-category which we shall term 'predicatives' (cf. Hansen 1966; Hel-
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toft 1993, 1995). There are two sides to the argument, one based on depend ency, one based on topology. In all dependency-based accounts, the verbal clause predicate stands as the pivotal element; in FG terms, the predicate frame expresses the central depend ency relation according to which the choice of clausal predicate determines the choice of other clausal elements. In the case of copula constructions this raises the issue of what the 'real' clausal predicate is. According to standard FG (e.g. Dik 1989:173 and Hengeveld 1992), it is solely the predicative complement that governs the choice of dependent arguments, i.e. constitutes the clausal pivot, not the copula. In seeing such constructions as instances of 'host-plusco-predicate' constructions we differ from this approach, and we shall return to the matter in section 5; but first we shall look at the point where we agree with the FG analysis, namely the importance of the dependency properties of what we call the co-predicate. Building on this point, we shall now try to high light the parallel between predicative complements and directional adverbs in the case of the most grammaticalized host verbs. Let us consider first the role of the adjectival predicative complement as subject complement, when it serves as dependency pivot. When the adjective behåret 'hairy' occupies the role of subject complement it has an argument slot which is reserved for NPs designating first order entities that could potentially have hairs on them, excluding for example a sentential argument. This is solely due to the adjective behåret 'hairy'. Similarly, the adjective sandsynlig 'likely' when functioning as pivot has an argument slot which is basically reserved for propositions or nouns denoting third order entities (like for example teori 'theory'', forklaring 'explanation'). Hence, it is the adjectival predicative com plement that determines the identity of the subject argument (the examples are Danish, but note that the translations provide equally convincing contrasts for English): (27) a.
b.
(28) a.
armen er behåret arm:the is hairy 'The arm is hairy'. *det er behåret at det bliver regnvejr it is hairy that it is:going:to:be rain:weather 'It is hairy that it is going to rain'. *armen er sandsynlig arm:the is likely 'The arm is likely'.
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b. det er sandsynligt at det bliver regn it is likely that it is:going:to:be rain 'It is likely that it is going to rain'. Similarly, in terms of selection restrictions, the dependency pivot of constructions in which we have a locative adverb instead of an adjectival complement is the locative adverb. A locative adverb may be analysed as basically restricting an argument designating a physical object rather than a proposition, just as with behåret 'hairy' above. This can be seen from the following Danish examples (29a-b):10 (29) a. katten
0er
cat: the is
'UDE out:STAT
The cat is out(side)'. b.
*at det bliver regn 0er 'UDE that it is:going:to:be rain is out:STAT 'That it is going to rain is out(side)'.
*det 0er 'UDE, at det bliver regn it is out:STAT that it is:going:to:be rain 'It is out that it is going to rain'.
In this type of context, with the verb være 'to be', the parallel between adjecti val copula constructions and constructions with locative adverbs is obvious and familiar; it is pointed out e.g. in the classical semantics textbook by Lyons (Lyons 1977:469f.). To follow up on the parallel, let us take the static verb være 'be' which occurs in both construction types and see what happens if we want to replace it with a transitional version. With ordinary subject comple ment constructions, we replace være 'be' with blive 'become': (30) a. de 0var 'meget 'LYKKELIGE they were very happy:PL 'They were very happy'. b. de 'meget 'LYKKELIGE oblev they became very happy:PL 'They became very happy'. Note that, in contradistinction to the case of locational incorporation, Danish shows no dynamicity contrast in the adjectival complement: in (33b) the adjec tive is not marked as transitional, even though the construction is resultative. While være 'be' combines equally well with subject complements desig-
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nating properties and (static) positional adverbs, blive 'become' only combines with adjectival subject complements, compare (31):11 (31)
*de oblev 'UD they became out: TRANSIT 'They became out5.
The dynamic process of getting to a new location has to be coded by komme 'come' (or other motion verbs), as in de okom 'UD 'tһӘ came out'. The closest parallel to blive 'become' in Danish in combination with dynamic spatial adverbs is the verb komme 'come'. In some contexts it has the deictic orientation contrast with gå 'go' which is familiar from the cognate English verbs come and go, but in other contexts komme 'come' tends to grammaticalize as the most abstract motion verb serving as host for directional copredicates. In the relevant contexts, this verb seems to be just as devoid of powers of selection restriction as the traditional copula. Note, however, that være 'be' and blive 'become' subcategorize different semantic roles for their primary argument/subject — zero in the case of static være 'be', Processed in the case of dynamic blive 'become'. A similar contrast applies to the most grammatical uses of spatial være 'be located' and komme 'come'. In (originally) metaphorical extensions of locatives to cover cases of more abstract change-of-condition, the verb komme 'come' is readily used; more specific selectionai restrictions can always be ascribed to the co-predicate, as in (32): (32)
det okom 'FREM at Dronningen var it came forward:TRANSIT that Queen:the was 'It came out that the queen was ill'.
syg ill
The verb komme 'come' can therefore be seen as filling a paradigmatic slot left open by limitations in the dynamic copula blive 'become'. The parallel can be illustrated by a case where a co-predicate hovers between the 'property' seman tics of subject complement constructions and a (figurative) movement sense. The standard version is the latter, as in (33a): (33) a. de Jcom 1 'TVIVL they came in(to) doubt lit. 'They came into doubt'. [NB = 'they began to doubt'] But there exists an innovative variant of the above construction containing the dynamic blive 'become' copula rather than komme 'come', as in (33b):
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(33) b. de I 'TVIVL oblev they became in(to) doubt lit. They became in doubt'. [= 'they began to doubt' again] There seems to be no reason to doubt that the two verbs can perform the same job; the only difference is whether the semantic entity they link up with is understood as indicating a spatial ending point or (changed) property. Because of the role of komme 'come' as the seemingly most grammaticalized and abstract indicator of transitional movement in these contexts, Hansen (1966) suggests that it should be understood as the locative transitional copula. (For English and Spanish Aske 1989:6 describes verbs like come and go as copu las.). We can thus (partially) tabulate the Danish copula and copulative verbs as in Table 2: Table 2: The maximally abstract host verbs host verbs
copula
spatial
static
være
være
dynamic
blive
komme
However, the criterion for positing a special category of predicatives is not their ability to form dependency pivots (which can be seen as basically a question of semantic compatibility rather than a matter of how language marks structural categories, an important difference according to the principles expounded in this book). The structural status of the category can be supported by topological criteria, i.e. based on constituent order. The coding system of Danish syntax is mainly topological, with highly re stricted morpho-syntactic affixation (as in English). If we look at this system in terms of the category of "predicative", it turns out that the adjectival and spatial adverbial predicatives share positional properties which serve to dis tinguish them clearly from normal direct objects and also from complex NP predicative complements. Danish has an intricate set of adverbial positions. Manner adverbials, for instance, can occur in three positions, the semantic implications of which cannot be dealt with in any detail here. They can occur in sentence adverbial position (after the finite verb and the subject), in final position (after the non-
DANISH DIRECTIONAL ADVERBS
177
finite verb, the object, and the predicative) especially when they are heavy, and, crucial in the present context, in a position which is reserved for light level one and level two satellites (i.e. satellites specifying additional properties of the SoA denoted and representational satellites denoting temporal and spatial location, respectively). This last position is after the object but before the 'predicative' (in our extended sense). Thus, we never find the satellite between the (non-finite) verb and the object: * Vnon-finite ^ Satellite ^ Object ^ Predicative ^ Satellite Thus compare the following ungrammatical sentence (34): (34)
*han har be 'handlet 'grundigt 'manden he has treated carefully man:the 'He has treated the man carefully'. (Manner, level 1)
By contrast, we do find: Vnon-finite ^ Object ^ Satellitelight ^ Predicative ^ Satellite This can be seen in (35-39): (35)
han er 'tidligt SE'NIL oblevet he is become:PAST:PTC early senile 'He has become senile early'. (Time, level 2, in Satellitelight posi tion)
(36)
han er Jcommet he
'tidligt 'HJEM
is come:PAST:PTC early
home:TRANSIT
'He has come home early'. (Time, level 2) (37) a.
han er 'SENIL i en tidlig alder oblevet he is become:PAST:PTC senile in an early age 'He has become senile at an early age'. (heavy Time, level 2, in final Satellite position)
b. han er *i en tidlig alder 'SENIL oblevet he is become:PAST:PTC in an early age senile 'He has become senile in an early age'. (heavy Time, level 2, in Satellitelight position) (38) a.
han er 'HJEM på et tidligt tidspunkt okommet he is come:PAST:PTC home:TRANSIT in an early time 'He has come home early'. (heavy Time, level 2, in final Satel lite position)
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HARDER, HELTOFT, AND NEDERGAARD THOMSEN b.
*han er *på et tidligt tidspunkt okommet he is come:PAST:PTC in an early time 'HJEM home: TRANSIT 'He has come home early'. (heavy Time, level 2, in Satellitelight position)
(39) a. de har osendt ham alt for tidligt 'UD at tjene they have sent him all too early out to serve They have sent him into domestic service much too early'. b. de har ¿sendt ham 'UD at tjene på et tidligt tidspunkt they have sent him out to serve at an early time 'They have sent him into domestic service at an early age'. Bare nouns as subject complements ('role ascription' in Hengeveld 1990b) also stand in the Predicative position (i.e. after light, non-interpersonal satellites); this can be seen as an essential characteristic of the category we call predi catives: (40) a. hun er ¿blevet 'tidligt 'MOR she is become:PAST:PTC early mother 'She has become a mother early' (i.e. at an early age). b. hun er 'MOR på et tidligt oblevet she is become:PAST:PTC mother:NON.REF in an early tidspunkt time 'She has become a mother at an early age'. In contrast, determiner-introduced NPs standing as subject complements are full argument NPs and belong positionally to the same class as the object. Therefore the following sentence is ungrammatical: (41) a.
*han *tidligt en 'dygtig oer oblevet he is become:PAST:PTC early a competent 'HÅNDVÆRKER craftsman 'He has early become a competent craftsman'.
DANISH DIRECTIONAL ADVERBS
179
b. han er bleve t en 'dygtig 'HÅNDVÆRKER he is become:PAST:PTC a competent craftsman tidligt early 'He has become a competent craftsman early'. (light Time, level 2, in Satellitelight position) A number of other classes of expression can fill the predicative slot; we cannot here discuss them in detail, but semantically they all share the less-than-full predicate status that is characteristic of the two central categories discussed above, the adjectival predicative complement and the transitional adverb. As an example, bare object nouns marked as incorporated by unit accentuation also show predicative topology, as in (42): (42) a. de havde flittigt 'AVíS olœst they had read:PAST:PTC intensively paper:NON.REF 'They had read intensively in the newspaper(s)'. (light Time, level 2, in Satellitelight position) b. de havde 'læst 'avisen flittigt they had read:PAST:PTC papenme intensively 'They had read the newspaper intensively'. Summing up this section on incorporation and complex predicates, we can repeat that copulas are "born" as host predicates and that we therefore do not speak of them as (synchronical) incorporators. Incorporation will be reserved for the complex predicate option where there is a grammatical alternation between for example full argument NPs on the one hand and bare NPs in com plex predicates on the other, or between full manner adverbials and manner adverbials in complex predicates. Since adjectival predicatives always call for the unit accentuation pattern, we also deliberately avoid speaking of this as stress reduction. (Stress reduction and incorporation would only be appropriate terms for adjectival copula constructions as diachronic processes robbing the 'be' and 'become' verbs of their independent stress and autonomous predicate status.)
5. Perspectives and problems with the co-predicate analysis When clausal predicate meaning is differentiated into subparts, the question arises as to which characteristics of the "monolithic" predicate go with each
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of the different slots. Above we have operated with a pattern whereby one could distinguish between a host predicate category identified morphologically since it carries the marks of finiteness, and a co-predicate category, the predi cative, which could have different types of characteristics, and whose shared expression device was placement in the slot described above — copula con structions were mentioned as a case in point. The interpretation whereby copula and subject complement divide the role of clausal predicate between them is controversial in an FG context, because of the FG assumption that the copula is not a content-syntactic verb at all but just a prosthetic expression device that is needed to help expressively handi capped predicates to function as main predicates in the clause (cf. Dik 1989: 165f.). The FG solution for copula constructions is not completely ruled out for the most schematic be-type copula, which adds virtually nothing to the meaning of the clause. In our terms, this emerges as an extreme case with respect to the division of the semantic substance of the clausal predicate function: almost all the semantic substance goes to the co-predicate, while the host predicate is semantically almost empty.12 Our solution, however, would seem to have an advantage when it comes to accounting for those (more contentive or lexical) copula-like verbs that are clearly imbued with semantic substance, and so cannot easily be reduced to "expression devices". It also fits with the fact that there is usually one remaining bit of semantic substance left with even the most semantically neutral copula, namely the distinction between stative and transi tional: the be/become distinction in English.13 To illustrate the advantages of the present solution where there are two structural slots, let us see how the semantically more substantial host verbs function in terms of semantic dependency, as in (43): (43)
de
osjoskede/osneg
they slouched/sneaked
sig/orejste REFL:PRON/travelled
'UD out:TRANSIT
'They slouched/sneaked/travelled out'. These more substantial verbs have dependency restrictions of their own where their agents are concerned. Only animate beings with legs are able to slouch, and only beings exercising stealth can sneak. In constraining the choice of subject this restriction is added to the restrictions stemming from the direction al adverb (in this case ud 'out') — a typical restriction being that only a firstorder entity can move in spatial direction (a restriction that in this case over laps with the restrictions imposed by the verbs). A similar situation is found with adjectival subject complements, as in (44):
DANISH DIRECTIONAL ADVERBS
(44)
181
han 0agerede/'ospillede 'DUM he acted/played stupid 'He acted/played stupid '. (+NI)
Again, the subjects have to be not only animate (as determined by dum 'stu pid'), but something else as well, as determined by the host predicate, in this case to be capable of deception. Also, copula-type verbs can be differentiated with respect to whether they permit NPs as subject complements; for example, the verb forekommer ('seems, appears') permits only adjectival complements: det forekommer besynderligt ('it seems odd') but not * det forekommer et bsynderligt sammentræf ('it seems an odd coincidence'). As we have seen, the account in terms of host and co-predicate makes it possible to describe different types of copula verbs in terms of a division of semantic content between complement and copula. Either of the two slots can receive certain types of semantic substance; and the host verb may be more or less lexically empty — more or less schematic and grammaticalized. Judged by dependency properties, copula verbs are more grammatical than the adjectival subject complement expressions they combine with. But as we have seen, this is a matter of degree; if one does not believe in as rigid a bipartition into lexical and grammatical elements as that adopted within FG, the possession of grammatical properties does not mean that an element loses its lexical status entirely. We can therefore recognize adjectival complements as dominant with respect to selectionai restrictions without depriving copula verbs of all lexical status or dependency properties. A more adequate description would, perhaps, describe adjectives in languages with "rigid" adjectives as default attributes; only by being combined with a copula may they have a predicating function. A case where the co-predicate is more grammatical than the host predicate was seen in the examples above where the directional adverbs function as aspectual operators. Here the aspectual operators do not have any subcategorization re strictions, only the host predicate has. Languages where the copula is absent in some contexts must then be de scribed as cases where the host role, as defined by formal properties ( modification), is sometimes superfluous, and the role possibilities of items without formal verbal properties are therefore expanded (in such cases) to cover the central territory of the full verb. Such languages are therefore auto matically described as structurally different from languages where the copula is obligatory — whereas standard FG treats the two types of language as iden tical on the semantic ("underlying") level, i.e. as having no host predicate. The structural pattern that characterizes this type of clause in Danish should
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now be clear in principle. However, as frequently happens when there is an overarching structural category containing semantically diverse items, there is a degree of tension between the semantics of the linguistic items and the struc tural "straitjacket". The structural position of the host verb, which includes weak stress as an expression feature, goes "naturally" with a somewhat sche matic semantic content. Since the types of expression that go into the host verb slot can differ somewhat in terms of degree of semantic substantiality, as we have seen, it is not surprising that there should be cases which may exemplify both the unit accentuation pattern characteristic of the host-plus-co-predicate analysis and a "full stress" pattern. In this connection, we would like to em phasize that an interest in being precise about the structural distinctions made in an individual language does not preclude an interest in being precise also about the types of cases where such distinctions are fuzzy. On the contrary, both forms of precision are necessary if you want to know how the language "ticks". The interplay between the two factors can be seen in cases where the structural pattern is optional, or when it occurs outside its standard distribu tion. The first case is exemplified by the verb virke 'appear'. In contrast to most other copula-like verbs, its most natural manifestation is with full stress, even without an emphatic reading, as in (45): (45)
Jens 'virker 'uinteresseret Jens appears uninterested 'Jens appears uninterested'.
The almost synonymous synes has both options, as in (46): (46)
Jens (')synes 'uinteresseret Jens appears uninterested 'Jens appears uninterested'.
Intuitively, the contrast between appearance and reality can be seen as making "appearance" copula verbs that much more substantial than the ordinary reality copula verbs, so that they opt out of weak-stress position. These verbs also occur in constructions without the incorporation option, as in (47a-b): (47) a. Jens 'synes at være 'uinteresseret Jens appears to be uinterested 'Jens appears to be uninterested'.
DANISH DIRECTIONAL ADVERBS
183
b. det 'synes som 'om Jens er uinteresseret it appears as if Jens is uninterested 'It appears as if Jens is uninterested'. The verb være 'be' can also fill this slot, either with or without full stress: (48)
det (')er som ' Jens er uinteresseret it is as if Jens is uninterested 'It is as if Jens is uninterested'.
Crucially, however, the verb in this position comes to mean much the same as synes 'appear' and virke 'appear'. As we have seen, the static series of spatial adverbs does not usually occur in co-predicate position. The only exception is with the maximally schematic verb være 'be' — which equally "incorporates" fully lexical locatives. Com pare (49a-c): (49) a. Jens 0er 'UD-Ε (at lege) Jens is out-STAT to play 'Jens is out(side) (playing)'. b. Jens 0er 'NED-Ε i parken Jens is down-STAT in park: the 'Jens is down in the park'. Jens er i '"parken" Jens is in park: the 'Jens is in the Park. ' (institutional: in the national stadium Idrœtsparken) Here too være 'be' can occasionally take stress. This is the case when it as sumes the meaning of a full locational predicate, as in (50a-b): (50) a. pungen 'er i 'skuffen purse:the is in drawer: the 'The purse is (placed) in the drawer'. b. pungen 'ligger i skuffen purse: the lies in drawer: the 'The purse lies in the drawer'. This means that the structural pattern of host and co-predicate, when applied to particular construction types, interacts with a scale between fully lexical and grammatical status, such that the closer a verb gets to the grammatical end and
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the more schematic its meaning, the more iikely it is to occur with the (unit accentuated) incorporation pattern — and the more substantial its content is, the more likely it is to break out of this pattern. There is a contrast between two points of view involved in the choice between analysing copula verbs as host predicates as opposed to analysing them as cases of "predicate formation" in the manner of FG — a contrast between the "item" perspective and the "syntactic" perspective. Predicate formation views this from the point of view of the word, the adjective, while the present article emphasizes the syntactic point of view, aiming for a description of the semantic choices that go into the construction of a full clause meaning. But as already implied, there is more than a point-of-view difference. As discussed by Fortescue (1992), the distinction between processes of predicate formation (morphological derivational processes) and inflectional affixation (morphologi cal operators in the clause grammar) cannot be rigorously made in polysynthetic languages without forcing them into the procrustean bed of Standard Average European languages. Something similar applies to Danish, where compounding incorporation (morphological predicate formation) and analytical incorporation (syntactic predicate formation) are almost in complementary distribution (cf. Nedergaard Thomsen 1991, 1992a). The analogy with polysynthesis is closer than one might expect: the Koyukon "extended derivations" described by Fortescue have certain parallels with the adverbs we discuss in the present article in terms of their function as "predicate-extenders". The derivational point of view, in which we see what happens from the perspective of a single item rather than of the clause as a whole is of course not in itself wrong. If we return to the FG view of copula constructions as non-verbal predication, this descriptive procedure makes very good sense as an answer to the question: what do we have to do with an adjective if we want to use it as (part of) the main clausal predicate? The answer to that question is that since an adjective cannot in itself assume the predicating power that is the privilege of a finite verb, we can attach it to a verb that has very little meaning, not much more than just that semantic potential which the adjective lacks. This resembles the question: what do I do if I have a verb whose meaning Î want to include in argument position? Here, one answer is that you can use a noun derived from the verb, e.g. behandling 'treatment' instead of behandle 'treat'. But from the syntactic point of view the cases are very different. In the latter case, the noun can be treated just as any other noun, and thus be present at the beginning of the whole syntactic derivation: no syntactic slots have been pre-empted by choosing the derived noun treatment rather than a basic noun
DANISH DIRECTIONAL ADVERBS
185
such as disease. In the former case, however, the derivational process applied to the adjective yields an output that occupies two distinct syntactic slots in the clause: host and co-predicate. Thus instead of merely constructing a new word, we are starting to construct a clause. Nevertheless, we think it is preferable to maintain that this is indeed an instance of predicate formation, i.e. a process whereby we construct a derived predicate out of a basic predicate. However, we have to realize that just as with polysynthetic languages, we cannot rigidly separate word-formation from syntax. The only language-neutral way of de scribing such phenomena is to say that prototypically derivational choices, which transform one kind of item into another kind without affecting syntactic options, and prototypically syntactic choices, which gradually build up a whole clause meaning out of items, are just two kinds of linguistic option. Other types of linguistic choice share properties of both — a case in point being the copula construction, which is simultaneously a way to derive an extended verb and a construction fulfilling the role of syntactic predicate: it allows an adjec tive to function as the relational centre of the clause (the derivative function), assigns it a "subject" slot, and combines independent syntactic primitives (host predicate and co-predicate) into a larger syntactic complex. If we insist on one of these perspectives only, we only get half the picture.
6. Content-syntactic relations in motion verb constructions The differentiation pattern that we claim for Danish when we set up a category of predicative whose basic job it is to assist their host verbs implies that verbs of motion in Danish in some of their distributions are something less than full "monolithic" predicates. This applies to the intransitive series like ogå 'go; walk', okøre 'move-on-wheels', oløbe 'run' as well as the transitive (causative) series that includes okøre 'drive', o flytte 'move', etc. In addition to the argu ment slots that are describable in terms of the usual predicate-argument carving pattern (i.e. subject and object), these verbs have an additional element of semantic unsaturatedness (cf. Nedergaard Thomsen 1991). The terminology of cognitive grammar (e.g. Langacker 1991) is apt in this context: these verbs possess an elaboration site reserved for a specification of the kind that is proto typically provided by dynamic adverbs, but may also be provided by an incor porated PP (or the prepositional head within it). This means that we find it plausible to assume that it is (non-)transitionality that is central in relation to the unsaturatedness of the verb. An analysis of Danish verbs (cf. also Durst-Andersen & Herslund, this volume) according to
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which some stems are neutral with respect to whether the motion is transitional or non-transitional also implies that the non-transitional, imperfective option is not usually signalled by absence of a transitional adverb alone — rather, an explicit imperfective coding must be selected, as in (51a-b): (51) a. han ogik 'HJEM he went home:TRANSIT 'He went home'. b. han ogik 'HJEM-AD he went home-NON.TR 'He went homeward'.
(transitional)
(non-transitional)
One option, as seen in (51b), is the non-bounded series of dynamic, local adverbs ending in ad '-ward'; but there are many others. For movement within the space denoted by the dependent PP, the adverb rundt 'around' is the stan dard option, as in (52): (52)
de ogik 'RUNDT i haven they went around:NON.TR in garden:the 'They went around the garden'.
One can also choose two coordinated transitional adverbs that then neutralize each other, as in (53): (53)
de ogik 'OP og 'NED AD gulvet they went up:TRANSIT and down:TRANSIT via floor:the 'They paced up and down the floor'.
In cases where the adverb is left out, the transitionality situation is most often disambiguated by the incorporated PP, as in (54a-b): (54) a. ogå TIL 'LÆGEN go to doctor: the 'Go see a doctor'. b. ogå TIL 'PSYKOANALYTIKER go to
analyst:NON.REF
'See an analyst'. The referential PP in (54a) in the institutional reading is transitional, while the non-referential PP in (54b) is non-transitional. When the verb stands alone with full stress, it is non-transitional, profiling manner of motion.14 The static series cannot fill out the co-predicate slot after movement verbs
DANISH DIRECTIONAL ADVERBS
187
— which is natural enough, since static meaning is incompatible with the job of specifying the nature of a movement. The static series does occur with verbs of motion, but it occupies the role of circumstantial locative, indicating the space within which the movement takes place, typically together with a PP (on the relationship between adverb and PP, see section 7). Compare (55a-b): (55) a. han ¿gik 'IND 'henne i Østergade he went in:TRANSIT horiz:STAT in Østergade 'He went in (horizontal-static) in Østergade'. b.
'hvorhenne
ogik
han
where:horiz:STAT went he
'IND? in:TRANSIT
'Where(horizontal-static) did he go in?'. In terms of layering, members of the static series are thus much further 'out' than the dynamic series — the former are level two satellites, not arguments or argument-like. The static series only has co-predicate status together with the static locational verb være 'be' and in more or less idiomatic cases. The question is now what the precise semantic relation is between the content of the host predicate and the co-predicate. It would be natural to try to place the semantic relationship within the framework of the layered model (e.g. Hengeveld 1990a). Since we claim that host and co-predicate together take up the semantic role of clausal predicate, the layered structure must move inwards in order to capture this relationship: it requires a subdivision of the predicate into two sublayers (cf. Nedergaard Thomsen 1992a). The whole predicate (nucleus) is the innermost layer in all standard versions. In relation to this predicate nucleus, host and co-predicate might, as one possibility, be seen as having a quark-like status in these verbs of movement, neither sentence mem ber being more central than the other — a bi-polar nucleus. It would also be possible to regard the host as the ultimate pole and the transitional adverb as constituting a layer that operates upon the host verb — a uni-polar nucleus.15 The layering analysis is the obvious one to the extent that there is a natural semantic one-way dependency between the host and the co-predicate. This would appear to be the case with the (non)transitional element (i.e. the choice between ud 'out:TRANSIT' and ud-ad 'outwards'): it seems to be naturally understood as requiring some semantic substance to modify, a motion concept on which it confers (non)transitionality. We can thus set up a layered structure with respect to one part of the content associated with the adverbs: transitionality operates upon the host verb and in that sense constitutes a micro-layer around it.
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There seems to be no inherent reason, however, why the direction-specifi cation should be seen as modifying the verb meaning (motion) rather than vice versa. In Danish the direction meaning and the transition meaning are com bined in the adverbs; and they are partly capable of taking over full verbal functions: directional adverbs may, as in English, occur alone as quasi-imperatives like ud! 'out!'.16 As pointed out by Talmy (1985), coding the manner-ofmotion element into the verb stem is characteristic of languages like Danish and English (we have verbs like walk, swim, float combined with directional adverbs like up, down, forward). In languages of the Romance type, as men tioned in the discussion in section 3, we have the directional component coded in the predicate whereas the manner-of-motion is coded in an adverbial parti ciple, i.e. a verbal form, thus salió corriendo 'he ran out' ('he move-out-past running:ADV'). In both languages there is a verbal meaning component 'motion'; the difference is whether the main predicate codes 'direction' or 'manner' together with the motion element or separately. The only semantic element that is invariably associated with the function of 'host predicate' is the predicating power that goes with the potential finiteness of a verb: the ability to carry out the speech act of predication, i.e. of as cribing a property or relation to an entity. This raises the issue as to whether the predicate can be truly ascribed to that entity. Danish adverbs and adjectival complements — by solely denoting a relational or property concept — lack this component of predicativity. This may then be supplied by a host verb (in cluding the category of copulas). Functioning together, the host verb and copredicate thus signify both predicativity and relationality. By using them to gether as a composite predicate, one ascribes a relation or property to a subject term. The property of "predicativity" — the potential to ascribe a property to an entity, thus bringing about a predication — may be seen as the semantic privi lege that goes with membership of the word class of verbs; however attenuated the semantic content may be, as long as the word remains a verb it retains that semantic property.17 There is a scale such that non-finite forms may be pre dicating in various degrees; thus they sometimes presuppose a subject to be supplied from the syntactic co-text (e.g. in Equi-constructions). "True" copulas — the semantically most bleached ones — only have this property of predicativity, whereas the range of "semi-copulas" and "quasicopulas" (cf. Hengeveld 1992), as well as ordinary incorporating hosts and normal fully verbal predicates also contain the property of relationality.18 The structural role as carrier of finiteness can then be understood as a language-specific mark of structural centrality: even if cross-linguistically there
DANISH DIRECTIONAL ADVERBS
189
may be no "natural" scope between the meanings expressed in a host and a copredicate, we can regard the predicating role of the verb as defining the inner most site in the semantic structure of the clause. Whatever semantic content is put in this position plays the role of semantic core in the clause.
7. The relation between adverb and prepositional phrase We pointed out in the introduction that the transitional adverbs cannot be omitted when they occur in certain contexts, the prototypical case being when they occur between a verb of motion and a PP indicating the end-point of the movement. We shall now address the question of the syntactic relation between directional adverbs (esp. the transitional series), the PPs, and the host predicate (the verb) in such combinations. It follows from the analysis above that the transitional adverbs typically stand as co-predicates, i.e. as part of the "extended verb". However, this says nothing about the relationship with the following PP in obligatory contexts. We suggest that there is an element of dependency involved. As a first approxima tion, the PP in some respects stands as a locative satellite in relation to the whole complex predicate, typically indicating end-point. In the following example ud ('out:TRANSIT') is obligatory: (56)
de o flyttede 'UD TIL Victor they moved out:TRANSIT to Victor 'They moved out to Victor's place'.
Here o flytte 'UD ('move out') is the extended predicate, and TIL Victor ('to Victor') is very much like a satellite, an optional specification of end-point. Understood as such, the PP is clearly the dependent member: an end-point location can only occur in the context of something whose end-point it can indicate. The directional adverb is the part that is most closely associated with the PP, because the transition element of the adverb is what is elaborated by the PP: without the element of transition, there would be no ending-point to specify. In terms of this relationship, ud is obligatory for the same reason that heads are obligatory in relation to modifiers (compare the format suggested in Vet (1986) where the relation between satellite and predication is analogous to the relation between nominal heads and adjectival modifiers). The only non standard thing about this relation is that the satellite has a privileged relation to the co-predicate rather than to the whole verb — if the co-predicate is removed, the satellite has to be removed as well:
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HARDER, HELTOFT, AND NEDERGAARD THOMSEN
(57)
de 'flyttede (*til Victor) they moved (*to Victor's place) 'They moved'.
However, this is not the whole story; there is also a dependency that goes the other way. The choice of the abstract direction denoted in ud presupposes the information denoted in the PP: the adverb denotes subjectively conceived spatial orientation, and we cannot see the movement in the relevant subjective perspective without knowing where the movement is going (in this case to Victor's place). Thus we cannot, after all, understand it in terms of a move ment designated by flyttede 'UD ('moved out') which is made more concrete (restricted) by a PP satellite. What is wrong with this satellite account concerns the subjective aspect of the directionality. In the discussion of the layering relation between directionality and mannerof-motion it was tacitly assumed that the directionality could be seen as a conceptual element that could simply be added to the verb meaning, but this leaves out a crucial element of its meaning. That this is so can be seen from what happens if we try to understand de flyttede 'UD ('they moved out') with no preconception about the end-point: it is then understood as indicating only that they vacated the premises (the combination is understood as a semiidiomatic phrasal predicate — the case where the direction is part of a move ment concept only, without involving the deictic perspective, compare what was said above about smide ud = throw out). Since the direction designated by ud is concept-inherent rather than subjective, it indicates nothing about the end-point, and hence does not involve any unsaturated elaboration site. From this point of view the relationship between 'UD and the following PP resembles the relationship between a verb and a non-subject argument, as with the verb ende 'end up' in examples like: (58) a. han 'endte i fængsel he ended in prison 'He ended up in prison'. b.
*han endte he ended *'He ended up'.
The verbal meaning requires complementation with a constituent specifying the location; and the situation seems to be closely analogous with that involving directional adverbs. In line with this analogy, we suggest that in adding a co-predicate like ud
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to a host verb, we simultaneously provide it with a predicate frame including an end-point (an elaboration site, in the terminology of cognitive grammar). By adding the element of subjective orientation, one simultaneously makes the information about the end-point necessary for a full understanding; and the PP is thus a kind of argument of the co-predicate. This relationship also obtains with respect to the static series, the positional adverbs. This is syntactically a different context, since the adverbs in the static series do not generally function as co-predicate. The typical context is one in which adverb plus PP together function as a free locative (level 2) satellite, as in (59): (59)
de spillede fodbold ned-e på plænen they played football down-STAT on lawn:the They played football down on the lawn'.
Here the adverb can be left out if the conceptualization is non-subjective; but the PP can only be left out in circumstances which match those discussed above in the transitional series. Thus nede ('down') must be understood as having a frame requiring elaboration of a positional location (which is "down" in terms of subjectively conceived space). The type of elaborative relation between adverb and PP is different from "ordinary" predicate-argument relations, in that the adverbs are abstract direc tional categories which subsume the more concrete direction specifications provided by the PP. This understanding might suggest a classifier-like analysis of the spatial adverb. However, the classifier analogy is fairly remote: ac cording to this analogy, the choice of a specific locational PP with a movement verb should trigger a quite specific "adverbial classifier". But this is not the case: one can for example say both the alternatives in (60): (60)
de o flyttede 'OVER/'HEN/'NED/... they moved over:/horizontally:/down:/...:TRANSIT 'Victor Victor 'They moved over/horiz/down/... to Victor'.
TIL to
It is the pragmatic directionality, not the linguistic properties of the PP which dictate the choice of adverb, whereas classifiers are bound up with specific word groups. One aspect of the structural position of these adverbs in Danish can be seen if we compare with English, where we find two-adverb sequences like (61):
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(61)
he's too stupid to come in out of the rain (two directional adverbs)
In these two-adverb combinations, the first adverb is more closely aligned with the preceding verb, while the second is oriented towards the following element (the order cannot simply be reversed).19 In Danish, there is only one directionadverbial slot, and a word-by-word translation of (61) is therefore ungrammatical. That the adverbs in Danish have relations in the direction both of the verb and the PP can be seen as related to the existence of this single slot.
8. A summary of semantic choices and relations In the preceding discussion we have mentioned the following semantic choices as characteristic of Danish motion-verb constructions: 1. 2.
3.
4.
5.
a choice of appropriate (typically manner-of-motion coding) verb stem; a choice of dynamic (either transitional or non-transitional) vs. static form of a spatial adverb: dynamic in co-predicate position, static in locative satellites; a choice of indicating subjectively conceived spatial location (as coded by choice of a directional adverb) — as opposed to either an "objective" or "institutional" conception of the movement, where a PP is incorporated; a choice of specific directionality within subjectively conceived space (as coded by the choice of a specific adverb: op 'up' vs. ned 'down', etc.); a choice of lexical specification of the locational complement of the adverb, as coded by the choice of a specific PP.
These choices must be seen as the paradigmatic dimension of a content struc ture whose syntagmatic dimension is the organization which the content syntax imposes on the build-up of clause content. According to the analyses suggested above, the verb stem is the clausal pole (host predicate) on which the adverb as co-predicate operates to yield a full clausal predicate (which is thus specified as (non-)transitional). The way Dan ish is structured, two different things must happen at the same time: a subjec tive spatial orientation is chosen, and a specific direction. The complication involved in these two semantic choices is that as opposed
DANISH DIRECTIONAL ADVERBS
193
to the choice of (non-)transition, they do not only involve the verb stem and adverb: because they presuppose a specific spatial orientation, they carry an elaboration site which goes with the meaning they add to the whole predicate meaning — they require the content of a PP. The adverb indicates an abstract categorization of the spatial relationship ('path' in Talmy 1985) between the verb meaning ('movement') and the end-point ('ground'). In sum, the dynamic adverbs operate on both the verb stem and the locational specification, simultaneously indicating a (non-)transitional "aktionsart" inter pretation of the verb and creating a new predication in which the PP is a bound rather than just a free satellite - because the abstract specification coded by the adverb needs a specified location as an argument. The static adverbs share the second but not the first relation. What all three series contribute to the Danish language is the more or less forced choice of specifying subjective orientation in space. A clearcut dichotomy between obligatory and optional specification does not capture the status of this choice; we need to recognize something corresponding to the choices described above in order to specify where Danes feel forced to make the choice. The fact that meaning is organized in a particular way and by being so creates pervasive semantic choices should neither be over- nor underestimated. What we claim is simply that it tells us something about how the coding task that faces speakers hangs together. In German, as pointed out above, the dy namic/static choice is coded as a case distinction between accusative and dative in the PP, with a specific (subjective) direction attached in the form of a pro nominal adverbial (cf. er ging in das Zimmer (c) hin/herein 'he went into the room DIST/PROX-in'). Subjective orientation in space is coded to varying degrees in other languages, but the absence in other languages (as far as we know) of an element corresponding to the Danish horizontal transitional default hen shows that Danish has its own twist here. We suspect that it would be idle to look for an explanation of this type of fact. Languages are motivated by their functions, but motivation within a functional system is not deterministic; there are "degrees of freedom" within which individual languages can differ in similar functional domains. To the extent that functions are equally well served by different structures, structure is arbitrary; to the extent that functions make certain structures impracticable, structure is motivated. As a final con clusion, let us just return to the main premise of the analysis proposed: the basic approach in analyzing syntactic relations should be to find out the way meanings are organized by content-syntactic choices. Where functional pres sures, as reflected in cross-linguistic comparisons, can be seen to provide a
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rationale for a particular form of organization, well and good; when the indi vidual language just happens to organize meanings in one of several different ways, this is something that simply has to be accepted.
Notes 1.
The following abbreviations are used in the analyses of the examples given in this chapter: STAT static/positional, DYN dynamic/directional, TRANSIT transitional, NON.TR non-transitional; DAT dative, ACC accusative; PROX, proximal, DIST distal; COMM common gender.
2.
It should be mentioned that these forms enter into a rich set of compounds with deictic adverbs and prepositions (e.g. der-ud-ad 'DIST-out-NON.TR'), which cannot be dealt with here.
3.
But it is not clear to what extent their theory would match the claims made about verbadverb combinations in the present article.
4.
Tilbage ('back') has been put on the list because there is a general rule in Danish whereby schwa + schwa becomes simple schwa. The opposition af [a:2] vs. aƒ [:Ә] is not rendered in the orthography. There are many more spatial adverbs in Danish, but they do not "inflect" for the above "aktionsart" categories, e.g.: DYN TRANSIT vœk rundt
NON-TR -
STAT
English glosses
-
'away' 'around'
5.
Bort is not a straightforward opposite number to hjem; less frequent than hjem, it is frequently replaced in that capacity by ud (cf. a weekly journal called ude og hjemme 'away and at home').
6.
Capitals indicate (the main part of) the incorporated constituent; ' indicates full stress and zero subscript weak stress.
7.
Hansen (1980) speaks of a distance from a few meters up to some kilometres. This is, of course, to confound substance with form.
8.
Copula constructions are obligatorily unit accentuated and have no parallels. We will come back to that issue in a later section.
9.
We ignore here the issue of how verbal meaning can be distinguished from auxiliary meaning, presupposing that the auxiliaries can be identified by independent criteria.
DANISH DIRECTIONAL ADVERBS
195
Auxiliary + main verb combinations have the same stress pattern as host predicate + co-predicate; the common factor, we assume, is the less-than-full verbal status. 10.
Where (29c) has been designed to exclude cleft-sentence interpretation, which would be grammatical but irrelevant.
11.
In fact, there is one instance of the dynamic blive 'become' copula where it is combined with a local adverb, namely (i): (i)
a.
han oblev borte/vœk he became away:STAT 'He disappeared'.
b.
han 'blev borte/vœk he stayed away: STAT 'He stayed away'.
In this case it is evident that the lack of stress on the verb signals that the meaning is (perfective) transitional. 12.
The copular "host predicate" is semantically so weak that one might want to conceive of it as a nuclear operator that turns a non-verbal predicate into a verbal predicate.
13.
The alternative, of course, is to have several different expression rules for copula support — cf. Hengeveld (1986) on ser and estar in Spanish. The more lexical copulas in this kind of analysis "code" different operators on the non-verbal predicate/predica tion, e.g. aspectual (or better: aktionsart) ones; become is then equal to be plus the aspectual (aktionsart) operator 'ingressive'.
14.
The fact that full stress with attendant emphasis on manner-of-motion is needed to prevent verbs of motion from incorporating a co-predicate suggests an interpretation according to which the meaning that is coded into the host is too weak to stand on its own feet — and the focal stress then gives the 'manner' element a degree of prominence that is unusual in order to enable it to serve as a full verb meaning. An alternative analysis would, of course, be one which sees the manner-of-motioncomponent as defocused when the verb occurs in an incorporation construction. Defocusing, then, is a prerequisite of incorporation. Yet another alternative is that the motion verbs occur in two variants, namely (a) a more grammaticalized variant in which the manner-of-motion is in the base of the verbal denotation, thus leaving an elaboration site for a predicative, and (b) another more lexical one where this semantic component is in the profile so that the translocal end-point is (more) circumstantial (for the notions of base and profile, see Langacker 1987).
15.
This layer was termed 'nucleon' in Nedergaard Thomsen (1992a).
16.
This imperative variant may, however, be seen as a minor sentence type, outside of the productive system of the language, thus providing no pattern to interpret from.
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HARDER, HELTOFT, AND NEDERGAARD THOMSEN
17.
Another semantic component which has been invariably associated with the class of verbs — ever since the beginning of the Western grammatical tradition, and most recent ly in the works of Langacker — is the temporal component. Verbs denote cum tempore, i.e. there is said to be a sequential scanning of the process designated by the verb (Langacker 1987). We believe that temporality should be abstracted away from the defi nition of verbs but we shall not pursue this claim here.
18.
When viewing copulas as performing the central function of the clause, we see a demarcation problem with the auxiliaries and modal verbs which code operators of the tense-aspect-mood complex. The auxiliaries and modals are combined with infinitives or participles which could be viewed as co-pred i cates. However, we shall say that the governed forms are heads and the governing verbs, the auxiliaries and modal verbs, are "exocentric" operators, taking the predicate or the predication in their scope.
19.
Note that English also has a construction where both adverbs go with the verb: (i)
we want you to come back up immediately
Note too that in English the anaphoric distal element is coded after the place-denoting particle — compare in there (Da. derinde 'there-in(side)'). This may be conceived of as an adverbial which may then be combined with a preceding adverbial, as in (ii): (ii)
it's up in there
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Fortescue, Michael. 1992. Aspect and superaspect in Koyukon: An application of the functional grammar model to a polysynthetic language. Fortescue, Harder & Kristoffersen 1992.99-141. Fortescue, Michael, Peter Harder & Lars Kristoffersen, eds. 1992. Layered Structure and Reference in a Functional Perspective. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Hansen, Erik. 1966. Prædikativ og adverbial. Et eksperiment i traditionel grammatik. Svenskans beskrivning 2. ed. by Bengt Loman and Bengt Sigurd, 70-81. Lund: Institutionen för Nordiska Språk, Fonetiska Institutionen, Lunds Universitet. Hansen, Erik. 1980. Motorik und Lokalbestimmung einiger hochfrequenter verba ponendi im Dänischen. Kopenhagener Beiträge zur germanistischen Linguistik (= Festschrift ßr Gunnar Bech), Sonderband 1.189-198. København: Institut for germansk filologi. Harder, Peter. This volume. Linguistic structure in a functional grammar. Heltoft, Lars. 1993. Revision af indholdsfeltet. Rapport fra Det 4. møde om Udforskningen af Dansk Sprog (MUDS) ed. by Mette Kunøe, 119-133. Århus: Nordisk Institut, Århus Universitet. Heltoft, Lars. 1995. Danish predicative adjectives and adverbials as valency bearers. Schøsler & Talbot 1995.211-235. Hengeveld, Kees. 1986. Copular verbs in a functional grammar of Spanish. Linguis tics 24.393-420. Hengeveld, Kees. 1990a. The hierarchical structure of utterances. Nuyts, Bolkestein &Vet 1990.1-23. Hengeveld, Kees. 1990b. Semantic relations in non-verbal predication. Nuyts, Bolke stein & Vet 1990.101-22. Hengeveld, Kees. 1992. Non-Verbal Predication: Theory, Typology, Diachrony. Ber lin: Mouton de Gruyter. Herslund, Michael. 1995. The object relation and the notion of incorporation. Schøsler & Talbot 1995.1-18. Jespersen, Otto. 1897-99. Fonetik: En systematiskfremstillingaf læren om sproglyd. København: Det Schubotheske Forlag. Jespersen, Otto. 1924. The Philosophy of Grammar. London: Allen & Unwin. Keizer, M. Evelien. 1992. Reference, Predication and (In)Definiteness in Functional Grammar: A functional approach to English copular sentences. Amsterdam: Free University. Langacker, Ronald W. 1985. Observations and speculations on subjectivity, lconicity in Syntax ed. by John Haiman, 109-149. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Langacker, Ronald W. 1987. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar. Vol. 1: Theoretical prerequisites. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Langacker, Ronald W. 1991. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar. Vol. 2: Descriptive applications. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Lehmann, Christian. 1985. Grammaticalization: Synchronic variation and diachronic change. Lingua e Stile 20.303-18.
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Lehmann, Christian. 1992. Word order change by grammaticalization. Internal and External Factors in Syntactic Change (= Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Mono graphs, 61.) ed. by Marinel Gerritsen and Dieter Stein, 395-416. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Lehmann, Christian. 1993. Theoretical implications of grammatical ization phenomena. The Role of Theory in Language Description (= Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs, 69.) ed. by William A. Foley, 315-340. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Lyons, John. 1977. Semantics. Vols. I-II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nedergaard Thomsen, Ole. 1991. Unit accentuation as an expression device for predicate formation? Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 23.145-196. Nedergaard Thomsen, Ole. 1992a. Unit accentuation as an expression device for predicate formation. The case of syntactic noun incorporation in Danish. Fortescue, Harder & Kristoffersen 1992.173-229. Nedergaard Thomsen, Ole. 1992b. Fonologiens plads i en kognitiv grammatik. Kom mentar. Sprogvidenskabelige arbejdspapirer fra Københavns Universitet!. 151-157. Nuyts, Jan, A. Machtelt Bolkestein & Co Vet, eds. 1990. Layers and Levels of Repre sentation in Language Theory. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Rischel, Jørgen. 1983. On unit accentuation in Danish - and the distinction between deep and surface phonology. Folia Linguistica 17.51-97. Talmy, Leonard. 1985. Lexical ization patterns: Semantic structure in lexical forms. Language Typology and Linguistic Description ed. by T. Shopen, 57-149. Cam bridge: Cambridge University Press. Talmy, Leonard. 1991. Path to realization: A typology of event conflation. Berkeley Linguistics Society 17.460-519. Schøsler, Lene & Mary Talbot, eds. 1995. Studies in Valency I (= RASK Supplement, vol. 1.). Odense: Odense University Press. Vet, Co. 1986. A Pragmatic Approach to Tense in Functional Grammar (= Working Papers in Functional Grammar, 16.). Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam. Visser, F. 1973. An Historical Syntax of the English Language. Part III: Second halfSyntactical units with two and with more verbs. Leiden: E.J. Brill.
Danish passives and subject positions as a mood system A content analysis Lars Heltoft and Lisbeth Falster Jakobsen University of Roskilde and University of Copenhagen
1. Introduction The present article deals with two subsystems of Danish grammar that from the outset might seem to be unrelated, namely the morphology and meaning of the two passives in Danish, and the word order rules and the meanings attached to indefinite subjects (irrespective of voice).1 We shall claim that in spite of all traditional analyses and views these two subsystems are intimately related as far as their content structures are concerned. We shall confine ourselves to Danish, but we are confident that the results will form a fruitful point of de parture for descriptions of the differences between Danish, Swedish and the Norwegian languages. The two passives The modern so-called mainland Scandinavian languages have two passives, a morphological passive in -s, and a periphrastic passive consisting of an auxil iary + past participle. Both are passives, in that they demote the subject of the active construction and allow promotion of an object to subject status. (1)
a. I de år hærgedes havene nemlig af in those year ravage: PAST:S-PASS the:seas for by algierske sørøvere Algierian pirates Tor in those years the seas were ravaged by Algierian pirates'.
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b, Jylland blev hærget af svenske tropper Jutland become: PAST ravage:PAST:PTC by Swedish troops 'Jutland was ravaged by Swedish troops'. We shall analyse this content distinction in detail and claim that what is actual ly involved can be best described as a mood distinction.2 However, there is no similar distinction in the active voice, and we are left with the somewhat un usual picture of a language that has a mood distinction in the passive voice, but not in the active. Once this content distinction has been established, however, it is a legitimate strategy to ask whether there might be other expression sys tems involved in doing the job of the passives in the active voice. Somewhat unexpectedly, we find this alternative system in the word order rules for in definite subjects. Indefinite subjects Danish has a 'there' construction that treats content subjects as positional objects, inserting der 'there' in subject position, e.g.: (2)
der var faldet en sten ned fra there was fallen a tile down from 'A tile had fallen down from the roof'.
taget the: roof
This construction is particularly productive and frequent with indefinite sub jects and has normally been regarded as an option for introducing subjects as discourse referents. In many cases, however, new indefinite subjects occur in normal subject positions, e.g.: (3)
en sten var faldet ned fra taget a tile was fallen down from the: roof 'A tile had fallen down from the roof'.
Such clauses are not free variants, although the contrast is probably hard to evoke for non-native speakers. Provisionally, (2) is a description of a factual situation, whereas (3) is a kind of narrated scenario; many native speakers would identify (3) as fiction. We shall claim that the opposition between (2) and (3) concerns the very same content features that are involved in the passive distinction, and we shall follow this idea in detail to determine how far the par allel extends. We shall claim that at the content level the systems are identical. The outcome of this analysis will call for new conceptual tools. The classi cal notion of a paradigm will not suffice, since the options involved do not have the same syntagmatic distribution although they must be allowed to co-
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exist (in systematic ways). To account for such situations, we shall need the notion of a content-based paradigm, as distinct from normal, expression-based paradigms; compare Heltoft (this volume), where these notions are discussed in relation to grammaticalization. The content distinction in question lies within the same domain as the distinction in Dikian Functional Grammar betweem subjective and objective (propositional) mood (Hengeveld 1987; Dik 1989; Nuyts 1992). It cannot, however, be reduced to any purportedly universal content features, but remains an instance of specifically Danish content structure (or 'content form', the term preferred in our tradition). Our point is precisely that this distinction is highly language-specific and that it could not have been uncovered without careful scrutiny of the Danish language system by means of the 'commutation test' (Hjelmslev 1943; Harder, this volume). At this point our stance would seem to be at variance with the cognitive trend in much of international functionally oriented linguistics, and we shall therefore try to clarify it through a brief discussion of the relation between the positional rules for Danish subjects and iconically conceived message structure. We do not deny the relevance of the study of universal, cognitively based meaning; but this is to be understood as "content substance" and is not identical to linguistic meaning, in the sense of language-specific content. What we do insist on is a level of linguistic seman tics organized in highly language-specific patterns; it is in this sense that our article is an analysis of content structure.
2. Mood in Danish The distinction between the two Danish passives has remained a puzzle to grammarians and linguists seeking its content along the parameters of voice, e.g. in semantic shades of agenthood (Rehling 1934), or of Aktionsart (Mikkel sen 1911; Juul & Skadhauge 1995). Aktionsart is certainly involved, but only secondarily. We shall claim that this distinction is much better understood when analyzed as a distinction of mood within the passive system. Both are passives, but as far as the difference between them is concerned we shall speak of the (inflectional) s-mood vs. the periphrastic mood. Thus, the outcome is a set of portmanteau morphemes. The morphology of the opposition is shown in Table 1. The s-passive mor pheme is constantly -s, the schwa in -(e)s being morphophonemically deter mined. The morphemes -ede/-te are variants of the past morpheme. An exam ple is (4).
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Table 1 : The Danish morphological passive system: periphrastic and inflectional passive, present and past tense periphrastic passive
Į
s-passive (inflectional)
bliver/er + PAST PTC
-(e)s
blev/var + PAST PTC
-ede/-te -s
periphrastic passive
s-passive
bliver/er + hør-t
hør-es
blev/var + hør-t
hør-te-s
2.1 Content Analysis: applying the commutation test Our focus of interest is not expression structure, however, but content struc ture, or content form, as we shall call it. Content form is the set of coding instructions attached to these morphemes, delimited in principle via their posi tion in the global semiotic system of Danish and in practice accessible through systematic applications of the commutation test. A first approximation may run as follows: (5)
a. tales der dansk i speak:PREs:s.MOOD there Danish in 'Is Danish spoken in Scania?'.
Skåne? Scania
b. bliver der talt dansk i Skåne? become:PRES there speak:PAST:PTC Danish in Scania 'Is Danish spoken in Scania?'.
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(6)
a. der tales ikke mere dansk i Skåne there speak:PRES:S.MOOD no more Danish in Scania 'Danish is no longer spoken in Scania'. b. der bliver ofte talt there become:PRES often speak:PAST:PTC Skåne Scania 'Danish is very often spoken in Scania'.
(7)
a.
indledningen skrives til sidst the:introduction write:PRES:S.MOOD last The introduction is to be written last'.
b.
indledningen bliver skrevet the: introduction become: PRES write: PAST:PTC The introduction will be written last'.
dansk i Danish in
til sidst last
(5a) and (6a) (with the s-morpheme) indicate what is generally the case ac cording to a norm, as opposed to (5b) and (6b) which are simple constative utterances denoting actual events. (5a-b) ask different questions and (6a-b) are not mutually inconsistent, since individual Danes talking Danish in Scania does not preclude the fact that Danish is no longer the language generally spoken there. In (7a) the s-morpheme indicates a decision that need not be the speak er's, or a norm (the ambiguity of the English translation is also in the Danish), whereas (7b) is the speaker's prediction and nobody else's. The s-mood can indicate general statements and norms, but as (7a) shows, it can also indicate that non-speaker consciousness or intention is involved in the propositional content described. In (7a) the speaker presents the content as somebody else's decision or intention. Since this is the interpretation of the smood that has been overlooked both by Danish tradition and in the sparse treat ments in the international literature (Hopper & Traugott 1993; Kemmer 1993), we shall document it at some length. (8) is a particularly instructive example: (8)
a. NYE FORHANDLINGER Parterne і slagterikonflikten blev i går enige om at gøre et nyt forhandlingsforsøg i dag. Strejken, der nu har varet en måned, afblœses dog ikke call: off: PRES: S.MOOD however not 'is not to be called off because of this'
af den grund for that reason
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og det er stadig spørgsmålet om arbejdstid, der skiller parterne. (Berl.T. 030593:1,1) 'RENEWED NEGOTIATIONS The parties in the slaughterhouse conflict agreed yesterday to try one more round of negations today. The strike, which now has lasted for a month, is not to be called off because of this, and it is still the issue of working hours that divides the parties'. b.
Strejken [...] bliver dog ikke afblœst the:strike [...] become:PRES however not call:off:PAST:PTC af den grund for that reason The strike will not be called off because of this'.
In (8a) the s-mood marks intentional coherence with the preceding clause. The conflicting parties have agreed to meet again to resume negotiations. The smood afblœses 'is called off marks the sentence as the decision or intention of the negotiating parties, not necessarily as the speaker's. By contrast, (8b) is plainly the judgment and responsibility of the speaker. The s-mood inserts, so to speak, a layer of non-speaker consciousness with propositional scope. In (9) the consciousness responsible for the instruction quoted in the sub ordinate at- 'that' clause is represented in the main clause, and the function of the s-mood in this case is very close to the use of subjunctive be in academic varieties of English. (9)
Øvelse: Forsvarets Markskadekontor på Ringsted Kaserne har over for deltagerne i NATO-øvelsen i Syd- og Vestsjælland indskærpet at der tages hensyn til landmændenes that there take:PRES:S.MOOD due:regard to farmers' marker fields 'that due regard be taken to farmers' fields' (Berl.T. 160993:2) 'Manoeuvre: The Defence Office for Field Damage at Ringsted Barracks has impressed on the participants in the NATO-manoeu vre in Southern and Western Zealand that due regard be taken to farmers' fields'.
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But as examples (5-8) have already shown, the Danish s-mood is not a depen dent mood, and it covers a larger variety of senses. (8-9) show the function of the s-mood as what we shall call propositionally located consciousness or inten tion (intention in the sense of 'aim, purpose, meaning'). This intention is propositionally located coded meaning; it is not to be confused with the 'com municative intention' of the speech act performed by the speaker in a given utterance. Several further examples of this reading are given in the following paragraphs. By contrast, most declarative sentences with periphrastic passives simply count as plain assertions with no non-speaker consciousness involved; the only consciousness involved is the speaker's own. Since they are at the same time bound up with Aktionsart because of the semantics of the auxiliary contrast blive 'become,turn' vs. være 'be', they classify something as an event with a spatiotemporal dynamic contour. We shall discuss the relations of the passives to Aktionsart below. The s-mood of propositionally located consciousness is further generalized to encompass inserted narrators. (10) is a matter of 'reported consciousness' in this sense. (10)
D1NOSAUREN SOM KRITISK INTELLEKTUEL [...] Plottet er måske be kendt: en ældgammel rigmand planlagger en forlystelsespark af hidtil ukendte dimensioner og budget på en ø ud for Costa Rica. Den befolkes af genetisk genopvakte it populate: PRES: s.MOOD by genetically revived dinosaurer [...] dinosaurs [...] 'It is populated by genetically revived dinosaurs'. [...] Øgler fra vidt forskellige tidsaldre befolker så forskellige indhegninger på øen, der er ved at blive gjort klar til åbning, da et hold af palæontologer med flere sammen med milliardærens egne børnebørn indbydes til en rundtur f...] invite:PRES:S.MOOD on a round:trip 'are invited on a round trip [...]' elt fra starten ved vi fra to små sidehistorier at det vil gå galt:
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en skambidt arbejder fra øen, der flyves a mutilated worker from the:island whofly:PRES:S.MOOD til fastlandet, to the: mainland 'a mutilated worker who is flown to the mainland' hvor små rovøgler, flygtet fra øen, allerede gnaver sig ind på spædbørn langs kysten [...] (Inf. 15.09.1993:10) Full English translation: T H E DINOSAUR AS A CRITICAL INTELLECTUAL The plot < of Spielberg's film Jurassic Park> is possibly wellknown. An exceedingly old billionaire is planning a pleasure park of hitherto unknown dimensions and budgets on an island off Costa Rica. It is populated (populate:PRES:S.MOOD) by genetically revived dinosaurs [...] So lizards from various ages inhabit various enclosures on the island, which is being made ready for opening, when a team of paleontologists — together with several of the billionaire's own grandchildren — are invited (invite:PRES:S.MOOD) on a round trip [...] From the very beginning we know from two minor side anec dotes that things will go wrong: a mutilated worker from the island who is flown (fly:PRES:S.MOOD) to the mainland where small predator dinosaurs, escaped from the island, are already gnawing at babies along the coast [...]'. (10) is from a summary of a film plot (Spielberg's Jurassic Park). The s-mood forms befolkes, indbydes, and flyves mark the text as a story told by others. (This holds indisputably for indbydes and flyves, which denote single occur rences in the plot, whereas befolkes could be taken to denote the normal state of affairs). This function of the s-mood to mark narrated or even imaginary worlds or scenarios (the latter term suggested to us by Peter Harder) is as far as the semantic generalization involved here will take us. We are no longer speaking of a mind planning or intending something, but only of the content as rendered by some narrator (and this narrator, of course, can be a textual narrator (Booth 1961), not necessarily one existing in the real world).
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2.2 The past of the s-mood Space will not allow us to deal in detail with the past tense of the s-mood, although we shall return briefly to it in 2.5. A number of intricate problems with the past s-mood of the strong verbs (the majority of which probably never formed an s-mood) call for separate treatment. Hansen & Heltoft (in prep.) will offer an account of this, compatible with the present analysis of the pas sives as a mood system within the passive voice. We shall insist, however, that where the weak verbs (and one of the strong classes) are concerned, the past is fully alive as a structural option. In (11) it is used to describe norms in the past, namely the rules for ordeal by fire. (11)
[...] den anklagede skulle tage et stykke glødende jern og bære det ni skridt [...] Bagefter blev han iført en vante, som forsegledes og først aftoges that seal: ΡAST:S.MOOD and not:until take:off:PAST:s.MOOD efter nogle dages forløb some days after 'that was sealed and not taken off until some days after' (Skalk 1994,4:28) 'The accused was to take a piece of red-hot iron and carry it nine steps [...] Afterwards a glove was put on, which was sealed and not taken off until some days after'.
The past s-mood is also the way to mark a text as the minutes of a meeting, marking the text as the decision of others rather than of the person writing. (12)
Alle pengene uddeltes og adskillige all the: money award :PAST:S.MOOD and several medarbejdere oprykkedes i andre lønemployees promote:PAST:s.MOOD to other salary klasser [...] Mødet afsluttedes kl. 18.30. grades the:meeting terminate:PAST:s.M00D at 18.30. ' All the money was awarded and several employees were promot ed to other salary grades [...] The meeting was terminated at 18.30'.
The undoubtedly low frequency of the past of the s-passive and its confinement to written styles and genres calls for a discussion of markedness, for which see 2.5.
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2.3 The two passives as a distinction between subjective and objective mood Mood has to do with subjectivity (or its opposite: non-subjectivity or objectivi ty). Subjectivity, the fingerprint of the speaker on the utterance, is used in the sense it has in Benveniste (1958) and Lyons (1977, 1982). Mood distinctions indicate various ways in which the speaker can show his attitude or position with respect to the propositional content of the utterance. Meillet (1964:224226) stands as our representative of the traditional view of mood in the IndoEuropean tradition. For Meillet, as far as the classical languages are con cerned, mood covers the distinctions between what is positively affirmed or denied, what is expected, and what is possible or impossible (counterfactual). Similarly, Lyons (1968) characterizes modality (his term for the content sub stance field of mood) along three dimensions: wish and intention, necessity and obligation, certainty and possibility. Our analysis of the content opposition between the two passives in Danish is a language-specific variety of mood in the general sense above. The function of the periphrastic passive is not to manifest the assertive speech-act frame of declarative sentences, but to empha size that only the speaker's perspective is involved. The s-passive, by contrast, indicates the presence of another consciousness or intention located in the propositional layer. Again, there is no contrast here between the s-passive and a declarative speech act frame. The s-passive has two subgroups: generic/normative readings and particular/non-generic readings. It marks a relation of distance between speaker and propositional content. Where generic and normative sentences are concerned, the relevant point-ofview is not solely with the speaker. Norms are norms by virtue of their being observed also by others. In a similar way, particular readings insert an agent/narrator so to speak between the speaker and the propositional content. The factuality of the clause is in part dependent on this propositionally located consciousness or intention. The closest analogy seems to be the point-of-view of narrative theory. In fact, we shall formulate the general opposition between the two moods in terms of point-of-view. Either the speaker's consciousness (with the periphrastic passive) is the only relevant point-of-view, or (with the s-passive) another point-of-view is inserted: the general narrator behind generic sentences and norms, or a particular point-of-view, a narrated person or a narrator. In this sense, we shall speak of subjectively anchored clauses vs. objectively (non-subjectively) anchored clauses. The periphrastic mood is the subjective mood (anchored solely in the speaker), the s-passive an objective, propositionally anchored mood.
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To use the concept 'modal factor' from the Danish structuralist Gunnar Bech's description of modal verbs in German: the periphrastic mood has a sub jective modal factor, the s-mood has an objective modal factor (cf. Bech 1952). 2.4 Modal verbs and passive mood Strikingly, subjective (epistemic and volitional) readings of the modal verbs select the periphrastic mood of the infinitive, while non-subjective (deontic and causal) readings take a s-mood infinitive. This distribution is well known — and in fact it strongly hints that mood is involved. (13) a.
b.
(epistemic) kaninerne kan blive spist af ræven the:rabbits can become:INF eat: PAST:PTC by the: fox 'The rabbits may be eaten by the fox'. (non-epistemic) spidsmus і spises shrews
can
not
eat:INF:S.MOOD
'Shrews cannot be eaten (i.e. are inedible)'. (14) a.
b.
(15) a.
b.
(epistemic) disse roser må snart blive beskåret these roses must soon become:INF prune:PAST:PTC 'These roses will be pruned soon'. (non-epistemic) disse roser må snart beskæres these roses must soon prune:INF:s.MOOD 'These roses must be pruned soon'. (subjective wish) den lille sorte høne må ikke blive spist the little black hen may not become:INF eat:PAST:PTC 'May the little black hen not be eaten'. (negated non-subjective permission = non-subjective instruction) den lille sorte høne må ikke spises the little black hen must not eat:INF:s.MOOD 'The little black hen must not be eaten'.
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(16) a.
b.
(promise: subjective guarantee) denne postej skal blive spist this paté shall become: INF eat:PAST:PTC ugens udgang the week end 'This paté will be eaten before the week end'. (instruction) denne postej skal spises inden ugens udgang this paté must eat:INF:s.MOOD before the week end This paté is to be eaten before the week end'.
Whatever the voice distinction and aspectual distinction that have been sug gested to account for the distinction between the passives (Mikkelsen 1911; Rehling 1934; Juul & Skadhauge 1995), under these interpretations the rela tionship between modal verbs and the passives remains a semantic riddle. The present analysis is straightforward and simple: lexically, the core system of Danish modal verbs consists of the following four modal verbs (note the homonymy in the case of måtte between a possibility reading and a necessity read ing). This lexical system is neutral with respect to the readings given in brackets: kunne (inf.)lkan (pres.) matte (inf.)/ma (pres.) måtte (inf.)/må (pres.) skulle (inf.)/skal (pres.)
'can/may' 'may' 'must' 'must/shall'
(causal/epistemic possibility) (permission/wish) (causal/epistemic necessity) (obligation/promise)
The function of the passives in relation to this system is to narrow down the content of the modals. All readings with the periphrastic mood of the infinitive are speaker-bound, while — to put it crudely — the s-mood produces unmarked examples. Again, we take this opposition to be one of subjective anchoring vs. objective anchoring, the periphrastic form being the marked term, the s-mood the unmarked one. Without committing ourselves to his framework, we would say in Langacker's terms (Langacker 1985, 1990) that all readings with the periphrastic mood of the passive infinitive are unequivocally grounded already as an effect of the periphrastic mood whereas readings with the s-mood have no such effect. Notice in particular, that the unmarkedness of the deontic readings means that they are unmarked with respect to the difference between performative readings (ordering/allowing) and non-performative readings (obligation/permission).
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(17)
den lille sorte høne må gerne spises Ί hereby permit (you): the little black hen may be eaten all right' or 'It is permitted to eat the little black hen'.
(18)
den lille sorte høne skal spises 'See to it that the little black hen is eaten' or The norm or plan is to eat the little black hen'.
2.5 Markedness Having stated the opposition above in terms of markedness, we must clarify the sense of this concept in context. We distinguish between two concepts of markedness, depending on the context defining it. The markedness of the passives turn out differently, depending on the concept of markedness applied. Structural markedness At the level of the code (la langue), the Danish passives show a general pattern of mutually exclusive terms, the default version of markedness. We think of markedness in the Hjelmslevian vein: the marked option insists on sense A, the non-marked option is non-A. In one interpretation of this there is a sharp divi sion of labour between marked and unmarked forms, in Hjelmslevian terms be tween a +category and a -category (Hjelmslev 1935:100). The marked option insists on A, but the unmarked option cannot be A. We speak of the unmarked term in this sense as the default term. The periphrastic passive insists on sub jective anchoring, the s-passive does not reject this, but adds non-subjective (objective) anchoring as well.3 Markedness in language use The structural concept of markedness is different from contextually defined, statistical markedness. Since this difference is not always observed, we shall resume our discussion of the past s-mood here in this light. We have not touched upon all the problems connected with the past of the smood, for the reasons stated in 2.2. Especially relevant in the present context is the low token frequency of the past. We have asserted that the s-mood should be considered the unmarked term. This would not be in accordance with statistically based views of markedness. We shall restrict ourselves to considering briefly Givón's view (1990:945f.). In Givón's exposition marked ness involves, not unexpectedly, structural complexity, frequency distribution, and cognitive complexity, 'structural' referring to the level of syntactic expres-
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sion, frequency to discourse modes, and cognitive complexity to accessibility (easy vs. difficult to process).4 In our view, frequency belongs to textual markedness, a completely differ ent concept of markedness, at the level of language use. Some text types have subjective anchoring as a constitutive feature, while other text types (accounts, rule texts, etc.) call for objective anchoring. In this sense markedness varies over text types, and some text types may give the impression that the peri phrastic mood is the unmarked structural form. In historical narrative, the generic and normative reading of the s-mood can be replaced by the periphras tic mood: (19)
'Not least the prosperous triangular trade played a major role'. Fra London fragtedes varer til Afrikas from London transport:PAST:s.MOOD goods to Africa's vestkyst, hvor de blev byttet west:coast where they become:PAST exchange:PAST:PTC wed fangne afrikanere, der sow slaver blev for captive Africans who as slaves become:PAST sejlet til Amerika. sail:PAST:PTC to America Trom London goods were transported to the West Coast of Af rica, where they were exchanged for captive Africans who as slaves were sailed to America'.
We would claim that there is no mystery in this. The periphrastic readings are not in themselves synonymous with the s-mood. Preference for them may re flect attempted journalistic style. More importantly, in historical narrative the s-mood need only be signalled once, and the general readings of the periphras tic mood in (19) are brought about by the context, here especially by the pre ceding s-mood. The example gives the modal key to the text (fragtedes): what follows is to be taken as a description of what generally took place. The effect of changing afterwards to the periphrastic mood is also discernible, since this mood in declarative sentences would normally produce descriptions of single, actual events directly, and hence in the general reading it codes repetitions of actual events. The constitutive rules for text types lead to highly differentiated rules for the use of systematic oppositions such as the passives in actual text types.
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Status as marked or unmarked in a text type is determined by the rules of that particular genre and hence by the communicative needs behind it. Therefore, systematically unmarked forms can be textually marked and vice versa. This does not imply, of course, that there are no interesting relations between these two concepts of markedness. In the present context the relatively higher frequency of the periphrastic mood may very well be the basis of a future generalisation process making the past s-mood obsolete. 2.6 Why Aktionsart is only secondarily involved As hinted at in various places in this text, it is commonly held that Aktionsart is the semantic field involved in this distinction, the s-passive being a static, or non-dynamic form, the periphrastic form being the dynamic passive. It is true that the periphrastic mood is specified for a dynamic vs. resultative/static option, by virtue of its being formed by means of Danish copular morphology (Hansen 1966; Heltoft 1995; Harder, Heltoft & Nedergaard-Thomsen, this volume). The dynamic option of the periphrastic mood is shown in (20a), the resultative/static option in (20b): (20) a. Han bliver
bestemt
udnævnt
he
surely
appoint:PAST:PTC to
become: PRES
til
forsvarsminister minister :of: defence 'Surely, he will be appointed minister of defence'. b. Han er bestemt udnævnt til he İS:PRES surely appoint:PAST:PTC to forsvarsminister minister :of : defence 'Surely, he has been appointed minister of defence'. The 'auxiliaries' være/blive are identical with the copulas found in subject complement constructions. The s-passive knows of no such distinction, but is unspecified for or even outside the category of Aktionsart. Therefore a pair of verbs, which differ only with respect to the features +/- dynamic, such as have 'have' (inherently static) and få 'get'(inherently dynamic), both combine with the s-passive, as in (21) below, whereas the periphrastic forms, which would intersect with the Aktionsart system by means of blive/være, are as im possible as in other Germanic languages. In Dikian terms, we could support
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an analysis of the s-form as unspecified for Aktionsart and of the periphrastic forms as belonging to the extended predication.5 (21)
Kolonialvarer haves året rundt, fisk groceries have:PRES:S.MOOD the:year round, fish fås kun om sommeren get:PRES:S.MOOD only in the:summer 'Groceries are stocked all year round, fish is obtainable only in summer'.
Although generic and normative readings could readily be conceived of as a subtype of states, our central point remains that in many cases Aktionsart is simply not relevant. Pairs such as (7a and b), repeated here for convenience, have nothing to do with Aktionsart. Both readings indicate an action of writing that may be completed in the future, but (7a) is objectively anchored, (7b) subjectively anchored: (7)
a.
indledningen skrives til sidst the:introduction write:PRES:s.MOOD last 'The introduction is to be written last'.
b.
indledningen bliver skrevet the:introduction become:PRES write:PAST:PTC 'The introduction will be written last'.
til sidst last
If the s-passive were sensitive to distinctions of Aktionsart, we would not expect it to be formed freely with all verb classes. If it were inherently static, or non-transitional, it ought not to be formed with verbs of transition (action verbs) denoting simple instances of change, but neither stative nor process nor iterative interpretations are relevant to the contrast in (22a-b). The headline (22a) does not mean that the theatre is in the process of being closed, but that there is a decision or intention to close it:6 (22) a. FIOLTEATRET LUKKES the:Fiol:Theatre close:PRES:s.MOOD 'The Fiol Theatre is to be closed'. (Inf. 05.09.1994:1; headline) b.
FIOLTEATRET BLIVER LUKKET the:Fiol:Theatre become:PRES close:PAST:PTC 'The Fiol Theatre will be closed'.
Nor would we expect both passives to occur freely in the major syntactic ex pression system for Aktionsart in Danish, namely detransitivization (object
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demotion) as described in Durst-Andersen & Herslund (this volume). But in fact both passives can undergo change from transitional (action) constructions to non-transitional (activity) constructions. Nothing prevents us from reading (23) as something going on, should the context invite us to do so. But it cannot be shown to be a coded opposition to the periphrastic passive as far as Aktions art is concerned: the s-mood is just more abstract in this respect. (23)
der skrives på indledningen there write:PREs:s.MOOD on the:introduction The introduction is being written, such is the plan' or 'The introduction is to be written'.
(24)
der bliver skrevet på indledningen there become:PRES write:PAST:PTC on the:introduction 'Actual writing of the introduction is going on'.
2.7 Status We have now delimited what we believe should be regarded as the inflectional mood paradigm within the Danish passive category, and we have characterized it in terms of an opposition between subjective anchoring (subjective conscious ness) and objective anchoring (propositionally described consciousness). There is no such inflectional system in the active voice. This situation in vites the question whether there are alternative ways of manifesting this content distinction, that can — partly or fully — serve the same purpose in the active voice. We find such a way in the word order rules for indefinite Danish sub jects.
3· The linear coding systems of Danish We shall now briefly overview the content and expression functions of Danish word order. Danish word order is densely coded: Beginning with the content, we can set up four different content systems that word order can express: -
grammatical relations (esp. the indirect object vs. direct object opposition) illocutionary frames (and illocutionary suprasegmentals) information structure (in the sense of topic-focus articulation) mood
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We shall discuss these systems with a particular focus on mood.7 This use may seem paradoxical, since tradition reserves the term for inflectionally manifested modality (cf. 2.3 above). Our point, however, is that not only does Danish word order manifest similar content to that of the inflectional passives: in fact, it manifests the very same language-specific content options. Of the above word order systems, grammatical relations will be omitted in this context. We shall briefly sketch the illocutionary frame system before turning to the modal system. 3.1 Illocutionary frame With respect to main clause word order, Danish is a strict V2 language, or rather finite V2 language: apart from conjunctions, there is only one position P1 to the left of the finite verb (Vf). Although Danish is generally considered to be an SVO language, its main clause surface word order is really XVSO, where X can, but need not be the position for S. A constituent in P1 marks the clause as declarative, whereas a main clause with a zero P1, thus starting with Vf, is marked as nondeclarative, preferably interrogative: (25) a. Dansk er et Vfì-sprog Danish is a Vf2~language 'Danish is a Vf2-language'. b.
Ø Er dansk et Vfì-sprog? Ø is Danish a Vf2-language 'Is Danish a Vf2-language?'.
This contrast constitutes the illocutionary frame for Danish main clauses, in so far as this is determined by word order. (26)
main declarative clause: P1
Vf
Subj
Adv l
Vi
Obj
Muligvis har jeg ikke forstået det possibly have I not understood it 'Possibly, I haven't understood it correctly'.
Adv2 rigtigt correctly
P1 is the only position to allow almost any constituent. Structurally viewed, P1 is a free position (although in actual text the unmarked choices are in fact quite
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restricted). Full NP subjects or the dummy der 'there' are very often placed in P1, as favoured unmarked constituents. The rest of the positions are more or less defined by relational values; alter native fillings of these positions are heavily restricted. The rightmost part of the clause is reserved for the constituents that consti tute the rest of the State of Affairs (SoA) of the clause, in so far as they have not found a position further left in the clause. Notice that two objects can share the position Obj. as in (27a), but not a subject and an object (27b): (27) a.
b.
P1 Vf Vi Obj. Adv2 En mand har givet sin kone et slag i ansigtet 'A man has given his wife a blow in the face'. P1 Vf Vi Obj. Adv2 *Der har slået en mand sin kone i ansigtet there has beaten a man his wife in the: face 'A man has beaten his wife in her face'.
3.2 Der ('there')-constructions — the traditional view A factor that is crucial for our purposes is the function of the so-called dummy der 'there'. The insertion of this dummy has been seen as a consequence of the morphological definiteness option, such that definite Danish subjects are said to occur in P1 or in the specific subject position Subj., and indefinite subjects to go to object position. There is general agreement that such indefinite sub jects are by all topological criteria objects, whereas other criteria, e.g. identity of semantic roles, point to their subject status. This common Scandinavian feature is then interpreted as a reflection of the principle of the growing in formational importance of sentence constituents proceeding from left to right along the word order of the clause, which again gives rise to pragmatic inter pretations in the following vein: 'der-constructions are used whenever the subject is new information, or focus' (cf. e.g. Enkvist 1974). If that were true, all new, indefinite subjects would be introduced by der, but this is not the only content option behind Danish der-clauses. Of course focalization is involved, but there are two more systems involved and thus no clearly isomorphic rela tion between word order and for example the principle of focus structure. We have already mentioned the interplay between clause type and illocutionary frame. The second constraint is linear expression of mood.
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3.3 Mood and linearity in Danish Danish topology includes a mood system. With indefinite subjects, Danish draws the very same content distinction as with the passives: the indefinite subject of the der 'there' construction is in object position and manifests sub jective mood while the indefinite subject in normal subject positions expresses objective mood.8 The system is neutralized in clauses with a definite subject (categorial sentences), but comes into full bloom with indefinite subjects, i.e. with discourse referent introduction. This distinction is probably hard to grasp for the non-native reader, but simple declarative clauses with an indefinite subject in subject position cannot function in Danish as assertive statements of fact. To attune the English speak ing reader to the problem, we shall borrow from Peter Harder (1991) the following example, which we shall interpret for our own purposes. The modal function of the indefinite subject in Danish is a pervasive feature of Danish topology, in fact its rules are even transferred to non-native English spoken by Danes. Most Danes know about the state of Denmark from Hamleťs famous lines, but few people get the wording right: Something is rotten in the state of Denmark, since this pattern cannot be a simple, subjectively anchored consta tive in Danish. The word order pattern of Danish subjective linear mood lies behind the alternative popular wording: There is something rotten in the state of Denmark. The following examples must be understood with this in mind. 3.4 The content of topological mood We shall begin by showing the opposition between instances of simple factual description and inserted narrators — thus reversing the order of senses given in the analysis of the passives. The situational description (28a) shows the subject in object position in the der 'there' construction, whereas the non-subjective reading has the indefinite subject in normal subject position (28b): (28) a. Der kommer en mand gående ud fra there come:PRES:ACT a man walking out from Bellevue Strandhotel Bellevue beach:hotel 'A man comes walking out from the B.S.' or 'There is a man walking out of the B.S.'.
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b. En mand kommer gående ud fra a man come:PRES:ACT walking out from Bellevue Strandhotel Bellevue beach:hotel 'A man comes walking out from the B.S.'. (28a) is a simple assertive statement of fact, whereas every Danish speaker will be able to identify example (28b) as a possible extract from fiction, anecdotal storytelling or the like. When introducing discourse referents, Danish speakers have to choose between anchoring the discourse subjectively, i.e. in the speak er, or inserting some non-subjective consciousness or narrator. Similar tests could have been made on the basis of (29), but we use this example to exclude another parameter, namely importance and non-importance as a discourse referent. In (29), the beginning of a famous Danish novel, the indefinite subject establishes an important discourse referent continuing for pages, while in (30), also from a novel, no important referent is established. Indefinite subjects in subject position are new discourse referents, but they do not code communicative importance. (29)
For en del år siden døde en œldre mand på Østerbro some years ago died an elderly man in Østerbro efter at have spist et maltbolsje. after having eaten a malt: drop 'Some years ago an elderly man died in Østerbro after having eaten a malt drop'. Han holdt meget af maltbolsjer. Han havde spist dem regelmœssigt gennem mange år og det var gået godt hidtil... 'He was very fond of malt drops. He had eaten them regularly for many years, and it had gone well up till now...'. (Sch:5)
(30) is a police rehearsal of the facts and possible evidence of a murder case; the facts are reported, i.e. the speaker is enacting a text within the text, in serting a narrator that summarizes the facts of the case, reminding the other policemen of them. They are not presented as the direct experience of the speaker: (30)
Det er naturligvis den teori I må gå ud fra, siger Jakobsen [...] Gammeldags motiver. Et civilt mord! - Men ikke et rovmord? siger Nielsen lavt. - Ikke med en maskin pistol? - Baumann havde et betydeligt beløb i tegnebogen.
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This is of course the theory you must start from, says Jakobsen [...] Old-fashioned motives. A civil murder. - But not a murder with intent to rob? says Nielsen in a low voice. - Not with a machine-gun?'. - Baumann had a considerable amount of money in his wallet. Og et værdifuldt armbåndsur sad på hans håndled. And a valuable watch was on his wrist'. (Bo:21) These examples show that also an indefinite subject can manifest narrated or imaginary worlds or scenarios, e.g. as here a summary of facts. We shall now proceed to instances of propositionally inserted consciousness or point-of-view. The text in (31) describes an incident between Afghani resis tance groups and Soviet troops: (31)
Da et vindstød rev hul i røgen og støvet, så han banditternes stilling. Den lå skråt nede til venstre. De havde kilet maskin geværet fast mellem to klippeblokke. Morteren måtte være lige bagved det lille plateau. Han talte fem'When a blast of wind tore a hole in the smoke and the dust, he saw the bandits' position. It was way down to the left. They had jammed the machine gun between two pieces of rock. The mortar must be behind the small plateau. He counted five or seks mand i kikkerten. six men in his binoculars.
En stor knœgt A young lad
lå på was lying on
kanten af en klippe og prøvede at dirigere morterskytten. De var for langt væk til at de kunne ramme dem med sikkerhed. Morter en var den farlige. the edge of a rock trying to direct the man firing the mortar. They were too far away to be able to hit them with any certainty. The mortar was the dangerous thing'. (Da:18) Whereas (28b) and (30) were plain examples of thetic sentences in fiction, (31) shows that the position of the indefinite subject can manifest particular objec tive (non-subjective) consciousness: the indefinite subject marks the point of view as inside the soldier using his binoculars, and not inside the empathetic narrator, experiencing the incident through his fictive character with the bino culars. And finally, we have generic interpretations:
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(32)
en ræv spiser a
fox
ikke
eat:PRES:ACT not
gulerødder carrots
4
A fox does not eat carrots'.
(33)
Og de gange i løbet af 50'erne, hvor min far brød sammen psykisk og måtte tage på lange rekreationsophold, bevarede jeg det som en dyb hemmelighed, hvor han var. 'And those times during the 50's when my father broke down mentally and had to go on convalescence for long periods, I kept where he was as a deep secret'. En mand brød jo ikke sammen på den måde, a man broke for sure not down in that way, rystede og græd og gemte sig i huset, hvis der kom besøg. 'A man did not break down in such a way, shaking and weeping and hiding himself, if there were visitors'. (Beh:30)
3.6 Transitive verbs and der-clefts This modal contrast in the position of the indefinite subject is only a plain sys tematic option where the clause contains no object, i.e. with intransitive verbs. As stated above, a subject and an object cannot coexist in object position; thus (34a) is impossible. In cases with an object two possible word order patterns are open: one the default option, whereby the subject goes to one of the re maining possible positions P1 or Subject, as shown in (34b). (34) a.
*Der forlader en mand Bellevue there leave:PRES:ACT a man Bellevue 'A man leaves Bellevue Beach Hotel'.
Strandhotel beach:hotel
b. En mand forlader Bellevue Strandhotel. a man leave:PRES:ACT Bellevue beach:hotel. 'A man leaves Bellevue Beach Hotel'. Bag ham svinger døren og dæmper musikken. 'Behind him the door swings and subdues the music'. (Bo:5) (34b) automatically becomes a non-subjective reading; the fiction reading is obvious from the context of the construction. The third option — and in fact the only way transitive verbs can partake of subjective readings and thus circumvent non-subjectivity — is the so-called der cleft sentence construction. This construction makes use of the general morpho-
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logy of the subjective reading: the positional subject marker der 'there' + copula være/blive 'be/become' + the subject in object position. The now disal lowed object is attached to the subject together with the remaining constituents of the original clause in the shape of a relative clause: (34) c. Der er en mand der forlader Bellevue Strandhotel there is a man that leaves Bellevue beach:hotel 'A man leaves Bellevue Beach Hotel' or 'There is a man leaving Bellevue Beach Hotel'. The result is the existential cleft, the typical and in fact the only way of intro ducing indefinite subjects as discourse referents with transitive verbs in an exclusively subjective reading. An indefinite subject in Pl/subject position automatically evokes an objective reading. The objective reading with transitives is particularly frequent in texts like news telegrams. We interpret this usage as narrator marking, in this case the existence of former actual narrators. The modal signal in news texts is: we have this from elsewhere. Reservation on the speaker's part is not structurally implied, although this is of course a possible, contextually determined extra dimension. (35)
En 73-årig tidligere overbetjent fra Horsens skal tilbringe yderligere en halv snes dage i arresten i Silkeborg. 'A 73-year old former police inspector from Horsens is to spend another 10 days in gaol in Silkeborg'. (Pol.20.2.1993:1,4)
It goes without saying that such examples are also promoted by the need for compact text, but there is no reason to disregard this genre as an example of mood. 3.7 Delimiting the contrast: the role of der We have claimed that the expression system involved is only a matter of the positions involved (subject vs. object position). One might ask why der (and its deictic counterpart her) are not involved. The reason why we think they have no links to the mood system, neither to the inflectional passive system nor to the linear system, is that they combine freely with the two passive moods. Given that the meaning distinctions involved are the same for linear and in flectional mood, we would expect a restriction here, if der were involved in subjective linear mood. There is no such restriction:
DANISH PASSIVES AND SUBJECT POSITIONS
(36) a.
223
der snydes there cheat:PREs:s.MOOD 'people/they cheat, as a rule'
b. der bliver snydt there become:PRES cheat:PAST:PTC 'actual cheating is going on' (37) a. her rulles here mangle:PRES:s.MOOD 'mangling offered' b. her bliver rullet here become: PRES mangle:PAST:PTC 'mangling is (actually) going on' Thus, there is reason to believe that der and her do not contribute to the sub jective meaning of other der/her-constructions either, but that this is signalled solely through the object position of the valency-bound subject (see (28a)).
4. Mood as a paradigm in Danish Does mood form a paradigm in Danish? It certainly forms a content category with two distinct options. As far as the concept of a paradigm is concerned, it is normally taken to imply variation in one column in relation to another invariant column, the frame. Another characteristic of classical paradigms is that only one member of the paradigm can occur in the syntagmatic frame at a time. Judged on the basis of this traditional notion of paradigm, mood in Danish would seem to be a rather unusual one, bringing together a morpho logical distinction within the voice system and a subsystem that is neutral with respect to voice, namely a feature clustering for the subject: a linked option be tween definiteness and subject positions. The morphological verb paradigm is asymmetrical from the outset in two respects (there is no mood in the active, and it consists of an inflectional and a periphrastic member). What unites these seemingly disparate expression systems is the exact parallelism of the content options in the two subparadigms, passive and subject position. What this situa tion calls for is actually a revised and extended notion of paradigm, where a content-based subtype is recognized.9 Just as traditional paradigms are expres sion-based, a paradigm can be content-based. We shall count as content-based paradigms only cases where the content oppositions are fully stable. In our
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case, the superparadigm of mood is content-based only, and so is the word order system for the indefinite subject, while the two remnant subparadigms (mood within the passive and definiteness) are also expression-based para digms. Setting up this content paradigm for mood does not imply that the two im mediate subparadigms are symmetrical in their respective paradigmatic struc ture. First, the morphology of the verb neutralizes the mood distinction in the active voice, and secondly, the positional subject opposition exists only for the indefinite subject; the definite subject is neutral. The heterogeneous expression structure of the Danish mood paradigm facili tates syntagmatic combinations of members from the two subparadigms, since the two expression systems of the paradigm (predicate formation and subject formation) come together in most sentences in a natural way. The passives combine with an option from the definiteness paradigm within the same clause, and this again raises the question of redundancy and inconsistency. Redundancy occurs in many examples, for example (10), (11), (21), and (note 5:1). This is not detrimental to our idea, since content reduncancy is a normal feature of the way grammaticalized systems function (e.g. number agreement between predicate and subject). Inconsistency would be expected to arise from choices within the same clause of opposite members of the paradigm. Such inconsistencies do not arise, and this, then, is the phenomenon in need of explanation. In two of the cases, no inconsistency can arise, for internal structural rea sons alone. In active clauses the active verb does not inflect for mood, and the mood distinction lies with the definiteness distinction in the Pl and the subject position alone: (38) a. En tør hvidvin gør sig til forretten a dry white wine will go well with the first course 'A dry white wine will go well with the first course'. b. Den tørre hvidvin gør sig til forretten the dry white wine will go well with the first course The dry white wine will go well with the first course'. In passive clauses, only noun phrases in P1 or subject position have subject status; no promotion of an object noun phrase is obligatory in passive sentences in Danish (cf. Hansen & Heltoft, in prep.). Unpromoted constituents in object position in Danish are still objects.10 Objects do not participate in the mooddistinction, which then rests with the predicate alone:
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Der drikkes en tør hvidvin til there drink:PRES:S.MOOD a dry white:wine with forretten the: first: course 'A dry white wine will be drunk with the first course'. Der bliver drukket en tør hvidvin there become:PRES drink:PAST:PTC a dry white:vine til forretten with the:first:course 'A dry white wine will be drunk with the first course'. The only combination that could allow a contradiction to arise is the following type: (40)
En tør hvidvin bliver drukket til a dry white:wine become:PRES drink:PAST:PTC with forretten the:first:course 'A dry white wine is normally drunk with the first course' or 'A dry white wine is being drunk with the first course'.
Here the indefinite subject in itself marks objective mood and the passive in itself marks subjective mood. The example is neither inconsistent nor ungrammatical. Therefore this raises the question as to which marking wins out and why. Generally, as in this example, it seems to be the subject: the subject sets the point of view, the location of consciousness, and once this is set, the speak er is free to choose either option in the passive system. The subject is the mo dal key to the text: the point of view is set to that of an inserted narrator, which again opens a separate textual universe. Inside this universe one is free to locate the consciousness in both moods: either the original speaker can use the s-mood to continue marking the inserted narrator or he can retire from the textual surface and let the inserted narrator take over. The inserted narrator now acts as the speaker, hence the subjective mood of the predicate. In terms of the layered structure of the clause, the mood signalled by an indefinite S in P1 (or in Subj.) takes scope over the mood signalled by the choice of passive. Notice that in the normative/generic reading of (40) the explanation is fully parallel to the analysis of cooccurring past s-moods and periphrastic moods in 2.4. The periphrastic passive has a general or iterative reading leading to an interpretation virtually identical to that of the s-mood.
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Summing up this section, we would stress the importance for grammaticalization studies of the notion of complexity in category-formation. A language such as Danish, with a limited inflectional morphology and a word order system with very few free positions, can put these seemingly restricted means to a variety of uses, by letting options of other well-established paradigms cluster to form yet another grammatical category. Sticking to single parameters or to functions of already well-known cate gories is a strategy that may hamper our understanding of the economy and complexity of particular grammatical systems.
5. Linear expression of mood and information structure The choice of variables from two parameters was sufficient for the shaping of a mood paradigm, namely the content option +/- identifiable (the content sys tem of definiteness) and the three possible subject positions: P1, S and O. Our point in this context is that these systems are obligatory and hierarchically prior to the information structural system of old and new information, of non-focus and focus. Indefinite non-generic subjects are new discourse referents and in this sense new information, but what determines the position of an indefinite subject is not its status as 'new' but its modal function. Nor are focus and Hallidayan given-new structure primarily involved, since a choice in P1 in the +/- definite system does not seal off the position: it is still open for choices within the parameters +/- given and +/- focus. We have announced a widening of the perspective in order to relate our analysis to theories of iconicity within information structure. This we shall now do with a view to clarifying our position as to linguistic content. Therefore no in-depth analyses will be offered of theories of clausal message structure. We shall refer to just as much alternative theory as is necessary to clarify our own position. Theories of iconicity in message structure claim a direct relationship be tween cognitively based information structure and linguistic expression. We shall consider two possible interpretations of what iconic information structure might mean: (a) Informativity increases as we move from left to right with respect to clausal positions. The more we move to the right, the greater the information load the linguistic items involved will carry. In plain terms: iconic linearity means that contextually given elements will show up at the beginning of the sentence, contextually unbound (new) elements will go to the right, towards the
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end of the clause. This applies to the concept of focus as well. A normal focus will fall in the rightmost part of the clause. This assumption of naturalness lies behind the information-structural works of the modern Prague School (Firbas 1964). (b) The positions inside the clause contain less and less information load as we move from left to right. In Givon's version the first position contains the most salient piece of information (1990:972). The principle behind this is 'task urgency'. Iconicity is taken — loosely — to imply naturalness conditions on syntactic structure or isomorphism between the syntactic code and its semantic or prag matic designatum. The key notion implied here is transparency, namely that between expression and 'natural' designata. Syntax is supposed to mirror (cognitively or pragmatically) natural content distinctions. We have no wish to contest the view that 'natural' cognitive and discoursefunctional distinctions are important for linguistic theory and for syntax in particular. What we do want to oppose is the preconception that isomorphism in the sense defined above (i.e. between cognitive universais and grammatical expression systems) should be a basic and straightforward notion which applies in the same manner to all languages (cf. Engberg-Pedersen, this volume). As far as the relationship between word order and message structure is con cerned, we argue that in Danish, whichever version of iconic linear constituent ordering one might adhere to, the content layer of this iconic relation is buried below thick layers of conventional, historically determined and topologicals expressed content systems. Furthermore, the mood system is apparently the stronger one. Where iconicity as a superior ordering principle in message structure is concerned, Danish respects neither the principle of interpretating old information before new information, nor the principle of task urgency in terpretation: informative constituents are placed to the right in one mood, but to the left in the other. The same positions and the material filling them serve several content purposes at the same time. The outcome of this observation is a warning: one should not attach functions to isolated parameters, but only to parameters seen in a hierarchical ordering.
6. A final perspective The category of mood is part of the specific expression and content system that Danish imposes on the semantic substance of subjectivity. Subjectivity is dealt with in many recent contributions to content-oriented linguistic theory, e.g.
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Lyons (1977); Langacker (1985, 1990); Givón (1984, 1990); Dik (1989); Hengeveld (1987); and Nuyts (1992). Whatever the differences between these authors and schools, they have one outlook in common, namely the identifica tion of content with cognitive and/or communicative substance. The Danish mood paradigm we have presented was derived from the analy sis of the morphological s-mood: the expression form has a content form, and this again has been abstracted from concrete Danish clausal contrasts. Content forms cannot come from nowhere, but once they have been abstracted it is ful ly legitimate to search for alternative manifestations. We see this kind of hermeneutic circle as fruitful since it has an empirical foundation in the language investigated. What we cannot do is to postulate meaning elements, let alone universais of meaning. The point of departure for linguistics is the sign in its totality. Thus our analysis points to the need to insist that coding takes place at both levels: expression and content. In this sense, the unity of content structure and expression structure in the sign is socially and historically determined (hence the arbitrariness of the sign). It is exactly in such language-specific, historically determined meaning distinctions that we have been investigating that this be comes apparent, and there is no other access to such content distinctions than the laborious way of digging them out through detailed analyses of particular languages. An adequate metaphor would thus be not just a plain mirror (with more or less dirt on it), but rather one of the sort you will find in the gallery of mirrors in Copenhagen's Tivoli, distorting iconicity in the sign relation, sometimes strongly, and sometimes even to the point of making it unrecognizable. Most important is the position of the mirror. It is not just hanging on the expression side of the sign, but is bolted to its language-specific content.
Notes 1.
We are grateful to a number of linguists who have criticized former versions, especially to Peter Harder for thorough criticism, and to Per Durst-Andersen, Svein Lie (Oslo), Una Canger, Michael Fortescue and Elisabeth Engberg-Pedersen.
2.
This idea was originally suggested to us by Per Durst-Andersen.
3.
Since we are not primarily discussing markedness, we need not discuss the alternative, participative relationship, where the unmarked option is a zero-category.
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4.
Central to Givón's notion of markedness is the view that it arises from the relationship between discourse functional and cognitive contextual factors and syntactic expressions. The notion of normality behind the scenes is of course a 100% isomorphic relationship between content and expression, and deviations from that ideal result from stretching or shrinking of the syntactic expression, stretching being underdetermination of the syntactic expression, shrinkage being overdetermination, and isomorphism again being the ideal state, where iconicity is reflected one-to-one.
5.
(la) and (2a) below are examples from headlines. Here a dynamic reading within the category of Aktionsart seems tempting: (1) a.
DANSK ALARM: EF-REGLER BRYDES Danish alert EC-rules break:PRES:S.MOOD 'Danish alert: EC-rules are being broken' or 'EC-rules are broken (as a norm)'. (Berl.T. 16.09.1993:1, headline)
(2) a.
GORAZDE EROBRES Gorazde seize: PRES:S.MOOD 'Gorazde is being seized' or 'Gorazde reported to be seized' or (less rele vant in situation) 'Gorazde to be seized'. (Berl.T., on the very day of the capture of G. by the Serbs, with no 100% reliable sources.)
We claim, however, that this is due to the s-mood's lying wholly outside the Aktionsart system and therefore neutral with respect to the opposition dynamic vs. static. The alter natives (lb) and (2b) demand readings that are in their actual context undesired, namely predictions of change or statements of perfective result: (1) b.
DANSK ALARM: EF-REGLER BLIVER/ER BRUDT Danish alert EC-rules become:PRES/is:PRES break:PAST:PTC 'Danish alert: EC-rules will be broken' or 'EC-rules have been broken'.
(2) b.
GORAZDE BLIVER/ER EROBRET Gorazde become: PRES/is: PRES seize: PAST: PTC 'Gorazde will be/has been seized'.
To the undesired semantics here the s-form remains the only available alternative (the lesser of two evils). The s-form never demands an Aktionsart reading and is therefore open to a contextually determined imperfective interpretation, as in for example (2a). The normal interpretation of (2a) is that there is a decision according to which Gorazde will be seized. But by means of contextual influence the s-mood is here squeezed into the semiaspectual function of a passive: what it says is that the taking of Gorazde has not been completed. Because the s-mood also still demands its own semantic functions, the example is polysemous, and it remains somewhat awkward to the native speaker. 6.
Example (22a) documents the propositional intention reading. This reading of the s-mood is frequent in headlines; compare also:
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(1)
NEPOTISME TAGES OP I TINGET nepotism bring:PRES:S.MOOD up in Parliament 'Nepotism to be brought up in Parliament'. (Berl.T. 16.09.1993:9, headline)
Such s-mood headlines report the content of somebody else's mind, so that the 1st per son of newspaper headlines does not vouch for the realization of the action described in the verbal predication of (22) for example, but only for the existence in some agent of an intention to make the predication come true. In (1) the speaker vouches only for the existence of an intention to bring up the case. 7.
Danish traditional grammar (Høysgaard 1752; Mikkelsen 1911; Diderichsen 1946) and Danish topological theory (Diderichsen 1946; Bjerrum et al. 1966) have overlooked this system, although the generic/normative reading has been noticed (Mikkelsen 1911; Diderichsen 1946). Its relation to the passives has not been noticed, but strikingly, in Mikkelsen (1911:24-25) all examples of the normative/generic subject reading have the s-passive, and all examples of der-constructions with the subject in object position have the periphrastic passive.
8.
The positional or expletive subjects der 'there'/her 'here' do not contribute to the opposi tion (see 3.7).
9.
For a more detailed exposition, see Heltoft (this volume).
10.
Sceptics should notice three further interesting things about the passive in Danish. First, the constitutive feature in passive formations is subject demotion. If there is no object promotion, der is inserted. The rule applies even to intransitives, e.g. (1)
der danses there dance:S.PASS 'dancing is planned, scheduled'
(2)
der bliver danset there become: PRES dance: PAST: PTC 'dancing is going on'
Secondly, already at the outset when Danish still had morphological case, the first step in the grammaticalization process leading to (39b) in Modern Danish, was in evidence, namely the formation of subjectless clauses with the object in the accusative and no agreement. Thus from the Old Danish dialect of Scania (Bjerrum 1966): (3)
fore thy ath summum statlıum for this:DAT that some:DAT:PL place:DAT:PL taxs undan twa lotar af take:PRES:s.PASS:3SG away two:ACC lot:NOM/ACC:PL of rughsœth rye: grain 'Because in some places two lots of rye grain are taken away'. (ScL 238, Text 2)
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Thirdly, the reflexive pronouns sig 'himself/herself/itself, themselves' and sin 'his/her/its/their' can refer to subjects only. They refer neatly to subjects in object position: (4)
der kommer en student med sin kœreste there comes a student with REFL: PRON sweetheart 'A student comes with his sweetheart'.
The lack of coreference in (5) is a good indication that the object in (5) is not in any sense a subject and thus it is not a demoted passive subject (Svein Lie, personal commu nication). (5)
*der blev hentet en student af sin kœreste there was fetched a student by REFL. PRON sweetheart 'A student was picked up by his sweetheart'.
(5) demands a genitive, hans 'his' in the present example.
References Bech, Gunnar. 1952. Semantische Entwicklungsgeschichte der hochdeutschen Modaîverba. Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Seiskab. Historisk-Filologiske Med delelser bind 32, nr. 6. København: Ejnar Munksgaard. Benveniste, Émile. 1958. De la subjectivité dans le langage. Journal de Psychologie. Reprinted in: Émile Benveniste. 1966. Problèmes de Linguistique Générale I-II. Paris: Gallimard. Bjerrum, Anders. 1966. Grammatik over Skånske Lov [Grammar of the Scanian Law]. København: Københavns Universitets fond til tilvejebringelse af læremidler. Bjerrum, Anders, Eli Fischer-Jørgensen, Henning Spang-Hanssen & Knud Togeby, eds. 1966. Paul Diderichsen. Helhed og Struktur: Udvalgte sprogvidenskabelige Afhandlinger. København: C.E.G. Gads forlag. Bolkestein, Machtelt. 1992. Anaforische subjecten en tekststructuur in het Latijn. Gramma/TTT 1:2.111-124. Bolkestein, Machtelt, Jan Nuyts & Co Vet, eds. 1990. Layers and Levels of Represen tation in Language Theory: A functional view. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Booth, Wayne 1961. The Rhetoric of Fiction. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Diderichsen, Paul, 1946. Elementær dansk Grammatik. København: Gyldendal. Dik, Simon . 1989. The Theory of Functional Grammar. Part 1: The structure of the clause. Dordrecht: Foris. Durst-Andersen, Per. 1992. Mental Grammar: Russian aspect and related issues. Columbus: Slavica. Durst-Andersen, Per & Michael Herslund. This volume. The syntax of Danish verbs: Lexical and syntactic transitivity.
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Engberg-Pedersen, Elisabeth. This volume. Iconicity and arbitrariness. Enkvist, Niels Erik. 1974. Några textlingvistiska grundfrågor. Språket i Bruk ed. by Ulf Teleman & Tor G. Hultman, 172-206. Lund: Liber läromedel Lund, Gleerups. Firbas, J. 1964. On defining the theme in functional sentence analysis. Travaux Lin guistiques de Prague 1.267-280. Givón, Talmy. 1984. Syntax: Λ functional-typological introduction. Vol. I. Amster dam: John Benjamins. Givón, Talmy. 1990. Syntax: A functional-typological introduction. Vol. II. Amster dam: John Benjamins. Haberland, Hartmut & Lars Heltoft. 1992. Universais, explanations and pragmatics. Grammar and Meaning: Cross-linguistic perspectives ed. by Michel Kefer & Johan van der Auwera, 17-26. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Hansen, Erik. 1966. Prædikativ og adverbial: Et eksperiment i traditionel grammatik. Svenskans beskrivning 2. ed. by Bengt Loman & Bengt Sigurd, 70-81. Lund: In stitutionen för Nordiska Språk, Fonetiska Institutionen, Lunds Universitet. Hansen, Erik & Lars Heltoft. In prep. Grammatik over det Danske Sprog [Grammar of the Danish Language]. København: Munksgaard. Harder, Peter. 1991. Kontrastivt kompendium.. København: Engelsk Institut, Køben havns Universitet. Harder, Peter. This volume. Linguistic structure in a functional grammar. Harder, Peter, Lars Heltoft & Ole Nedergaard-Thomsen. This volume. Danish direc tional adverbs. Content syntax and complex predicates: A case for host and copredicates. Heltoft, Lars. 1994. S-modus og perifrastisk modus i dansk. Språkbruk, grammatik och språkförandring: En festskrift till Ulf Teleman 13.1. 1994, 155-165. Lund: In stitutionen för Nordiska Språk, Lunds Universitet. Heltoft, Lars. 1995. Predicative adjectives and adverbials as valency bearers. Studies in Valency I (= RASK Supplement, vol. 1.) ed. by Lene Schøsler & Mary Talbot, 211-235. Odense: Odense University Press. Heltoft, Lars. This volume. Paradigmatic structure, word order and grammaticalization. Hengeveld, P.C. 1987. Clause structure and modality in Functional Grammar. Ins and Outs of the Predication ed. by Johan Van der Auwera & Louis Goossens, 53-66. Dordrecht: Foris. Hjelmsiev, Louis. 1935. La Catégorie des Cas. Étude de grammaire générale, 1.(= Acta Jutlandica, 7.1). Århus: Universitetsforlaget i Aarhus. Hjelmsiev, Louis. 1966 [1943]. Omkring Sprogteoriens Grundlæggelse. København: Akademisk Forlag. (= Louis Hjelmslev. 1963. Prolegomena to a Theory of Lan guage translated by Francis J. Whitfield. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press.) Hopper, Paul J. & Elizabeth Closs Traugott. 1993. Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Høysgaard, Jens Pedersen. 1752. Methodisk Forsøg til en fuldstændig dansk Syntax (= Danske Grammatikere, vol. V, ed. by Henrik Berthelsen, 1923. København: Gyldendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag). Juul, H. & P. Skadhauge. 1995. Perspektiver i dansk passiv. Manuskript. Keenan, Edward L. 1976. Towards a universal definition of "Subject". Li 1976.303333. Kemmer, Suzanne. 1993. The Middle Voice (= Typological Studies in Language, 23.). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Kleiber, Georges. 1993. Prototypensemantik: Eine einführung.Narr Studienbücher. Tübingen: Gunter Narr. Langacker, Ronald W. 1985. Observations and speculations on subjectivity. Iconicity in Syntax ed. by John Haiman, 109-149. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Langacker, Ronald W. 1990. Concept, Image and symbol: The cognitive basis of language. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Li, Charles N., ed. 1976. Subject and Topic. New York: Academic Press. Li, Charles N. & Sandra A. Thompson. 1976. Subject and topic: A new typology of language. Li 1976.457-490. Lyons, John. 1968. Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lyons, John. 1977. Semantics. Vols. I-II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lyons, John. 1982. Deixis and subjectivity: Loquor, ergo sum? Speech, Place and Action: Studies in deixis and related topics ed. by Robert J. Jarvella & Wolfgang Klein, 101-124. Chichester: John Wiley. Meillet, Antoine. 1964 [1937]. Introduction à l'étude comparative des langues indo européennes. Forge Village: Alabama University Press. Mikkelsen, Kristian. 1975 [1911]. Dansk Ordföjningslære. København: Hans Reitzel. Nuyts, Jan. 1992. Subjective vs. objective modality. Layered Structure and Reference in a Functional Perspective ed. by Michael Fortescue, Peter Harder & Lars Kri stoffersen, 73-98. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Rehling, Erik. 1934. Om brug af passiv på dansk. Sprog og kultur: Studier tilegnede Verner Dahlerup paa Femoghalvfjerdsaarsdagen, 80-88. Aarhus: Universitetsfor laget i Aarhus. Vries, Lourens de. 1993. Notional and. Coded Information Roles (= Working Papers in Functional Grammar, 52.). Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam.
Sources ScL = The Scanian Law. Danmarks Gamle Landskabslove 1,1-2. Skånske Lov ed. by Johs. Brøndum-Nielsen & Svend Aakjær, 1933. København: Gyldendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag.
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Novels, newspapers, periodicals etc.: Beh = Poul Behrendt: Bissen og Dullen. København: G(yldendal) P(aperback) 1984. Berl.T. = Berlingske Tidende. = Anders Bodelsen. Mørklægning. Gyldendal 1988. Da = Leif Davidsen. Den sidste spion. Lindhardt & Ringhof 1991. Inf. = Information. Pol. = Politiken. Sch = Hans Scherfig. Det forsømte forår. Gyldendals Tranebøger 1968. Skalk = Tidsskriftet Skalk.
Information structure and the anatomy of noun phrases The expression of subject and object in Danish noun phrases Irene Baron Copenhagen Business School
1. Introduction Information structure is usually not considered in relation to units below clause level. In this article I try to show that this functional pragmatic type of organi sation plays a crucial role within the complex NP in Danish. In comparison with the clause, which is the maximally complex linguistic structure, the expression potential of an NP with a deverbal head noun is lim ited. While the subject and object relations are coded differently in the clause by position and/or case, the two corresponding relations are in a great number of cases identically coded in noun phrases, i.e. the opposition subject/object is neutralised in the NP (cf. Benveniste 1966).1 In Danish one has the possibility of expressing these two relations (content) between the head noun and its complements (expression) either as a genitive or as a prepositional phrase, as in (la-c): (1)
a. hvert kalenderårs udløb/udløbet af hvert kalenderår 'each calendar year's end/the end of each calendar year' b. selskabets samtykke /samtykke fra selskabet 'the company's consent/consent by the company'
kontraktens indgåelse/indgåelse af kontrakten 'the contract's signing/the signing of the contract'
In (la-b), there is a subjective complement {kalenderår 'calendar year', sel skabet 'the company'), expressed respectively as a preposed genitive and as a
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postposed preposition phrase (PP). In (lc), the same double possibility exists for the objective complement (kontrakten 'the contract'). But, contrary to what is the case in English, such a choice is not always possible in Danish. One could not have, for instance: (2)
a.
*afgørelsen af domstolen һӘ decision of the court'
b.
*køb/udførelse fra selskabet 'purchase/execution by the company'
*traktorernes køb һӘ tractors' purchase'
The close analogy between complex NPs with deverbal head nouns and clauses is obvious: the deverbal noun is a nominal version of a verb and, as such, it reproduces, mutatis mutandis, the distributional patterns observable at clause level. Whereas the content of such a noun basically is verbal, its expression and syntactic distribution is nominal. Such complex NPs consequently contain a head noun with different expansions in the shape of complements, which de note the entities between which the head establishes relations, or in the shape of modifiers, which qualify these relations by ascribing them a quantity or a property (cf. Herslund & Sørensen 1993, 1994; Baron 1994a, 1994b, 1995). Here, I shall limit my analysis to the subjective and objective complements because the alternative, genitive or PP, in all other cases is restricted to very few types.2 Since subjective as well as objective complements in some cases, but not in all, can be expressed by both structures, genitive or PP, one has to ask the following questions: 1. When such an alternative exists, what factors determine the choice of one or the other of the two constructions and to what extent are such factors ame nable to a functional explanation, i.e. identifiable as pertaining to information structure? 2. How can one distinguish, among Danish NPs, the cases where one can use a genitival as well as a prepositional phrase in order to express a subjective or an objective complement from cases where there is no choice? And is the absence of such a choice also functionally motivated or is it due to purely structural constraints? I shall show, first, that when the language user has a choice, pragmatic fac tors are decisive; these factors will be described in terms of notions originally
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elaborated in order to study the progress of information in the sentence. I pro pose in particular that the constituents of an NP, like those of a clause, can be divided into theme and rheme, thus extending the analogy between the clause and the complex NP mentioned above.3 And the analysis shows that the un derlying structure of the message contained in an NP is that of a progression from less to more complex information. This observation corresponds to the universal tendency of organising the elements of an utterance in an order of increasing complexity, as underlined by Simon Dik in his LIPOC principle ('Language Independent Preferred Order of Constituents', cf. Dik 1981:189ff., 1983:23ff., 1989:351f. where, however, the principle is recast as a more spe cific formulation of his general Principle of Increasing Complexity; see also Rijkhoff 1992:211 ff.): to a more complex content corresponds a more complex expression. Since the complexity of a certain content is measured relatively to a certain other content, a constituent conveying new information will, ceteris paribus, be more complex than a comparable constituent conveying known in formation by the very fact that it is new. Secondly, in the limited number of cases where the language user has no choice, the distribution of subject and object in the shape of a genitive or a PP is determined by a small set of well defined lexico-syntactic constraints. The analysis is based upon a corpus of 8000 NPs excerpted essentially from an electronic corpus of legal texts covering the period 1978-1987. Such texts are characterised by the frequency and diversity of their nominal constructions (Eyben 1989:36ff.) and by the absence of images and creative metaphorical ex pressions, whose analysis would be irrelevant in the present context. That legal texts are particularly rich in complex NPs is due to the fact that such texts very frequently discuss general types of situations, not actually occurring events. And general situations are often expressed by NPs, actually occurring events rather by finite clauses. In the first part of the paper, I investigate the pragmatic constraints which determine the content of the theme and the rheme in an NP. In the second, I examine the lexico-syntactic constraints which govern the distribution of sub ject and object in pre- or postposed position, and which make the choice be tween a genitive and a PP impossible; they are, as will be shown, not without connections with functional considerations: for instance pragmatic factors de termine phenomena such as definiteness or the choice of a subjective or objec tive genitive phrase.
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2. Pragmatic constraints determining the content of theme and rheme If a complex NP is, as I propose, the nominal analogue of a clausal structure, its constituents can, like those of a clause, be divided into theme and rheme: the theme is the first constituent and the rheme the constituents following the head noun. It is important to underline that I only consider theme and rheme as positions, in the same sense as Halliday (1970), i.e. as expression devices. The theme corresponds to the preposed genitive and the rheme to a postposed PP; so theme and rheme are not content categories. In the canonical case the theme coincides with the subject and the rheme with the object.4 The examples in my corpus reveal further that, inside an NP, the theme is the locus of al ready known information, whereas the rheme corresponds to the more informa tive part of the message by conveying new or focalized content (see 2.1 Rhematic subject and 2.2 Rhematic object). I emphasize that this is an observation based upon the study of a corpus, not a hypothesis. Whereas 'theme' and 'rheme' only define positions and not content categories, they have some privi leged relations with certain content categories without however being identified with them. So we find here, within the complex NP, the well-known coa lescence of theme, known information and subject, on the one hand, and of rheme, new information and object, on the other (cf. Halliday 1970).5 In Danish there is a very firm correlation between a definite subject, i.e. a known or given subject, and the thematic position, both at clause and NP level: (3)
Tropperne ankommer. The troops arrive'. troppernes ankomst 'the troops' arrival'
and between an indefinite subject, i.e. a not known or new subject, and the rhematic position, again both at clause and NP level: (4)
Der kommer nye tropper. there (dummy) arrive new troops 'New troops arrive'. ankomsten af nye tropper 'the arrival of new troops'
But we shall also see, in studying the pragmatic factors which determine the respective positions of the subject (2.1) and the object (2.2), as well as the
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function of pragmatic choice (2.3), that the canonical correspondence "subjectgenitive" and "object-PP" can sometimes be reversed. 2.1 Thematic or rhematic position of the subject The choice between a genitive or a PP depends upon the information structure with all kinds of head nouns, with the sole exception of a small class of verbonominal predicates which will be presented in 3.1 below. Thematic subject The thematic position of the subject, i.e. as a genitive, corresponds to the ca nonical structure. In this position the following kinds of subjects are found: - The subjects which are textual topics (which I define as the question(s) treated in a text and hence as known information or information presented as known). In contracts, for instance, where typical textual topics are aftale 'agreemenť, parterne 'the parties', or, according to the type of contract, agenturgiver 'principal', forhandler 'dealer', etc., one finds only, allowing for a few lexico-syntactic constraints to be analysed below (cf. 3.2), such kinds of constructions: (5)
aftalens ophør 'the agreement's expiry' parternes fortolkning 'the parties' interpretation' agenturgivers tilladelse 'the principal's permission' forhandlerens betaling for det udførte arbejde 'the dealer's payment of the work carried out'
The textual topic can be the topic of a chapter or a section, as in the following cases from chapters and sections in legal textbooks called respectively Acceptfristen 'The deadline of acceptance' and Kontraktsforpligtelser 'Contractual Obligations': (6)
acceptfristens/fastens/den fastsatte frists udløb 'the (fixed) deadline (of acceptance)'s expiry' de kontraktlige forpligtelsers indhold 'the content of the contractual obligations'
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or in example (7) from a contract: (7)
AFTALEPERIODEN OG AFTALENS OPHØR $20 Aftaleperioden Aftalen træder i kraft den 1. marts 1987 og er gyldig for en peri ode på 2 år. Opsiges aftalen ikke senest 6 måneder før aftaleperiodens udløb, løber aftalen videre på ubestemt tid. T H E AGREEMENT PERIOD AND THE AGREEMENT'S EX PIRY. Art.20 The agreement Period. The agreement comes into force on March 1st and is valid for a period of 2 years. If the agreement is not cancelled before the agreement period's expiry, the agreement will continue indefinitely'.
- Subjects which have a generic value, whether morphologically indefinite or definite, and which are thus presented as universally known, as "topics of the world": (8)
... reglen і §2 placerer risikoen for hœndelige begivenheders indtræden hos acceptanten. '... the regulation of art.2 places the risk of the occurrence of accidental events with the acceptor'. De senere års udvikling inden for aftaleretten er først og frem mest karakteriseret af standardkontraktemes fremmarch. The evolution in recent years in the domain of agreement law is first and foremost characterised by the progress of standard con tracts'.
- Anaphoric subjects, which resume a previously mentioned element: (9)
... en kunde aftaler med en blomsterhandler, at denne skal sende en buket ud til en tredjemand. Der foreligger i så fald en tredjemandsaftale (blomsterhandlerens løfte til kunden er et tredjemands løfte). 'A customer agrees with a florist that he should send a bunch of flowers to a third person. This is a case of a third party's agree ment (the florist's promise to the customer is a third party's promise)'. Ifølge §7, stk. 2, er en forbrugeraftale en aftale, som en erhvervsdrivende indgår i sit erhverv, når den erhvervsdrivendes deise i alt fald hovedsagelig er bestemt til ikke-erhvervsmæssig anvendelse for den anden part (forbrugeren).
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'According to art.l, par.2, a consumer agreement is an agree ment which a trader concludes within his profession when the trader's services at least mainly are intended to a non-profes sional use by the other party (the consumer)'. Rhematic subject Two types of subjects are found in rhematic position: new subjects and focal ized subjects. In such cases the head noun must be in the definite form. - The first type of rhematic subjects in the examined corpus are subjects mentioned for the first time, hence subjects containing new information: (10)
Agenturgiveren skal senest tre uger efter adgangen af hvert kalenderkvartal tilstille agenten en oversigt over alle provisionsberettigende salgsaftaler, som. er indgået i løbet af denne periode. The principal must at the latest three weeks after the end of each calendar quarter present the agent with a survey of all sales agreements warranting commission which have been concluded within this period'. Dette princip indebœrer, at indholdet af et løfte, en aftale eller en anden retshandel, skal fastlægges ved en fortolkning. This principle entails that the content of a promise, an agreement or any other legal transaction, must be established by interpreta tion'.
- The second type of subjects in rhematic position are focalized subjects. The focalization is the highlighting of a constituent of the rheme. It works, inside NPs, by placing in rhematic position a constituent which one would expect to find in thematic position according to the pragmatic rules studied so far. The perceived focalization is thus an effect of a conflict between content and ex pression: the status of subject and the position after the head.6 It consists in presenting known information as if it were new and thereby im- or explicitly contrasting it with some other information, as in (11), which illustrates the role of the pragmatic factors in making the content of a message more precise: (11)
Nærværende kontrakt træder і kraft, den 1.januar 1988 og kan i en prøveperiode på 6 måneder opsiges af begge parter med 2 måneders varsel til den første i en måned. Efter udløbet af prøve perioden kan opsigelse fra begge parters side ske med 6 måned ers varsel til den første i en måned.
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'The present contract comes into force on January 1st 1988 and can for a test period of 6 months be cancelled by both parties with 2 months' notice to the first day of a month. After the ex piry of the test period cancellation by both parties with 6 months' notice can take place on the first day of a month'. According to the rules discussed so far, one would be entitled to expect efter prøveperiodens udløb 'after the test period's expiry', which would actually have been quite acceptable (cf. (7)). But the author of this contract has pre ferred to highlight the element prøveperioden 'the test period', because the expiry of precisely that period and not of just any period will modify substan tially the legal situation of the contract's parties. The possibility of inserting ... og ikke af afialeperioden '...and not of the agreement period' reveals that it is a kind of contrastive focalization, where one constituent is implicit. It is also the accentuation of one element in contrast with another which is found in (12): (12)
...A og B... Hvis det i et konkret foreliggende tilfælde fastslås, at løftet fra til A er et egentligt tredjemandsløfte er det altså ensbetydende med, at T ved selve løftet er blevet berettiget til at kræve ydelsen, når den forfalder. '... A and ... If in a concrete case it is established that the promise from to A is a proper third person's promise, it is then the same as to say that T by the promise itself has been en titled to claim the payment when it is due'.
or in (13) where the individualization of two subjective complements presented as an alternative by way of enten - eller 'either - or' is to be emphasized: (13)
... den aktive og den passive part... de positive handlinger f ra enten den aktives eller f ra den pas sives side '... the active and the passive party ... the positive actions on the part of either the active or the passive party'.
Cases where the subject resumes a previously mentioned word or expres sion, not as a simple anaphor, i.e. by the repetition of the same word, but in a different shape are instances of focalization too. The resuming element is highlighted in order to avoid possible ambiguities. An example of this is (14) where the phrase samme område 'same area' is resumed by agenturet 'the agency':
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(14)
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Agenturgiver har ret til at ansætte andre agenter inden for samme område. Agenturgiver kan med 30 dages varsel ændre omfanget af agenturet, og såvel reducere som udvide omfanget af agenturets geografiske område.7 'The principal has the right to employ other agents within the same area. The principal can, with 30 days' notice, change the extent of the agency, and reduce as well as increase the agency's geographical extent'.
The rhematic position is also chosen and the resuming element thereby fo calized when the element resumed in a different shape is a whole clause, and not just a single word or expression: (15)
Efter reglen і myndighedsloven §44, stk.1, skal den umyndige, hvis han ikke kan tilbagelevere, hvad han har modtaget, kun erstatte medkontrahenten værdien af delsen i det omfang, det skønnes at være kommet ham til nytte.8 'According to the rule of art.44, par. 1, of the Custody of Minors Act the minor must, if he is unable to pay back what he has re ceived, only restore to his joint contractor the value of the pay ment to the extent it is judged to have been to his profit'.
2.2 Thematic or rhematic position of the object The choice between a genitive and a PP to express the object relation depends on the information structure with all kinds of transitive nouns, apart from the exceptions to be studied in 3.3 below.9 Similar pragmatic constraints as those on the subject apply in this case. Thematic object Objective genitives are particularly frequent in legal texts, which are linguis tically rather conservative. In less specialised genres and in the modern lan guage in general, there is a pronounced tendency to avoid thematization of objects, i.e. the objective genitive is sparsely used. In the legal texts upon which this study is based, the following kinds of objects are found in thematic position:10 - Objects which correspond to textual topics, as in the following extracts from contracts:
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kontraktens opfyldelse/forståelse 'the contract's fulfillment/interpretation' nærværende aftales indgåelse/opsigelse 'the present agreement's conclusion/termination'
or in chapters from textbooks like the following labelled Accept 'Acceptance': (17)
acceptens modtagelse 'the receipt of the acceptance' A thematic object is particularly frequent in titles in general (cf. Knudsen 1967:77; Togeby 1994:191). The following headlines of sections within chap ters on Aftaler 'Agreements' recall in addition different aspects of the textual topic: (18)
Aftalers fortolkning og udfyldning 'The interpretation and implementation of agreements' Aftalers indgåelse gennem mellemmœnd 'The signing of agreements by intermediaries'
Non-specific and universally known objects are thematic as well, but only when they correspond to the textual topic (except in titles, cf. above): (19)
Fuldmægtigens overskridelse af fuldmagt/bemyndigelse En fuldmœgtigs bemyndigelse sœtter grœnsenfor de kontrakter, han efter fuldmagts giverens tilkendegivelse er beføjet til at indgå med tredjemand. 'The proxy's transgression of his authority/authorisation. A proxy's authorisation defines the limits of the contracts he is entitled to sign with a third party according to the principal's notification'. OM HÅNDHÆVELSE AF LOVE Markedsføringslovens håndhævelse ... 'ON THE ENFORCEMENT OF LAWS. The marketing law's enforcement ...'
Note that when the referent of the genitive phrase could be the object as well as the subject of an action verb from which the head noun is derived, the de fault interpretation, i.e. when the context does not force the interpretation, is as an objective complement (cf. Comrie & Thompson 1985:371ff.; Nielsen & Wegener 1991:127; Baron 1995), as in agentens afskedigelse 'the agent's dis-
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missaľ(i.e. 'x dismisses the agent'), selskabets forvaltning 'the company's management' (i.e. 'x manages the company'). - Objects which correspond to derived topics. The object can be part of a co hesive chain of constituents linked together by underlying semantic relations and it can thus convey a piece of information which is felt as known (this is the "derived theme" of Danes 1974:119-120, and the "chain of collocational cohesion" of Halliday & Hasan 1976:284ff.): (20)
Foreligger der ikke noget kontraktsforhold mellem skadelidte og arbejdsgiveren, vil denne ikke blive ansvarlig overfor skadelidte, hvis den ansatte har forvoldt skaden ved en "privat" handling, som ikke har nogen naturlig forbindelse med arbejdets udførelse. 'If there is no contractual relation between the injured party and the employer the latter will not be responsible to the injured party if the employee has caused the damage by a "private" act which has no natural connection with the execution of his work'.
- Anaphoric objects, which resume a previously mentioned constituent: (21)
Undertiden kan en aftale anses for sluttet helt uden accept. Anmoder en handlende sin leverandør om at sende et parti varer omgående, behøves der ingen accept. Leverandøren kan blot udføre ordren, og accepten vil så at sige falde sammen med aftalens opfyldelse. 'Sometimes an agreement can be considered made without any acceptance. If a dealer asks his supplier to send a stock of goods immediately, no acceptance is needed. The supplier can just exe cute the order and acceptance will so to speak merge with the agreement's fulfillment'. Det kan skyldes flere forskellige omstændigheder, at et løfte får et andet indhold, end løftegiveren har villet det. Det kan tænkes, at løftegiveren selv (eller en af hans folk) begår en fejl i for bindelse med løftets udformning, f.eks, skriver forkert. Tt can be due to several different contingencies that a promise gets another content than the promisor had intended. It is possible that the promisor himself (or one of his employees) makes a mis take in connection with the promise's formulation, e.g. makes an error in writing'.
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One can see that the two necessary conditions in the present context for the thematization of the object, i.e. its anaphoric status combined with the absence of a subject, recall the conditions which determine the use of passive clauses, as repeatedly stated in the literature, cf. e.g. Keenan (1985); Givón (1990:565 ff.). Compare in this respect example (22) with the corresponding passive clause in (23) which would have been used in a non-specialised text: (22)
Princippet aftalersforpligtende virkning er(.. .) hievet beskåret ved (...) at man i dag anerkender en videregående adgang end tidligere til at træde tilbage fra en (løbende) kontrakt under henvisning til, at forholdene har ændret sig siden kontraktens indgåelse. The principle of the binding effect of agreements has (...) been reduced (...) by the recognition today of a wider range of possi bilities than formerly for retreating from a (current) contract by claiming that circumstances have changed since the signing of the contract'.
(23)
Passive clause: ... siden kontrakten blev indgået. '... since the contract was signed'.
Rhematic object The rhematic position of the object, i.e. as a PP, conforms to the canonical structure. As in 2.1 Rhematic subject two types of objects are found in this position after a definite head: new objects and focalized objects. - The first type consists of objects mentioned for the first time in a text, a chapter or a section, hence indefinite and containing new information: (24)
opnåelsen af en handel 'the securing of a deal' den stadig mere udbredte anvendelse af standardvilkår 'the still more widespread use of standard conditions' den største påvirkning af dansk aftaleretiig lovgivning 'the greatest effect on Danish agreement legislation'
In the last mentioned example, the novel and thereby more complex character of the information of the rhematic element is enhanced by the qualifying epi thets of the object.
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- The second type consists of focalized objects. These are the objects which, according to the pragmatic rules mentioned above in 2.2 Thematic object, one would expect to find in thematic position. They are constituents which convey known information, but which the language user has preferred to present as new information, i.e. as a PP in rhematic position, the position where one finds focalized elements conveying an im- or explicit contrast. Such an object resumes a previously mentioned element, but the distance between the two is found to be too great for the object to be repeated as a simple anaphor in the matic position. As in the case of the subject (cf. 2.1 Rhematic subject) it is perfectly possible for certain anaphors to be focalized. The distance will vary in different text types and will be relatively short in legal texts because of the need of concision and its corollary, the desire to avoid all ambiguity: (25)
... produkter ... BE-VI forbeholder sig ret til straks efter at nærværende aftale er opsagt eller bragt til ophør at træffe alle forberedelser med henblik på den fortsatte markedsføring af produkterne i området. '... products ... BE-VI reserves the right immediately after the present contract has been cancelled or has expired to make all necessary preparations in view of continued marketing of the products in the area'. ... misligholdelsesbeføjelser ... Man har fra retsordenens side ved udformningen af misligholdelsesbeføjelserne søgt at tilgodese forskellige hensyn. '... clauses of non-fulfillment... It has been attempted on the part of the legal system through the formulation of clauses of non fulfillment to accommodate different considerations'.
Sometimes it is even the function as textual topic of an element which is felt by the language user as being somewhat bleached out. He therefore chooses to place the object in rhematic position, as in the following extracts from a contract (26a) and from a chapter on "Aftaler" 'agreements' in a textbook (26b). The contrasting of the focalized objects with an implicit element is here further underlined by the attributive adjectives nærværende 'present' and formueretlige 'pertaining to property law': (26) a. Hver part bærer sine egne omkostninger i forbindelse med oprettelsen af nærværende kontrakt. 'Each party assumes his own costs connected with the signing of the present contract'.
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b, Indgåelsen af formueretlige aftaler er som absolut hovedregel ikke bundet til bestemte former. 'The primary rule pertaining to the conclusion of agreements un der property law is that it is not restricted to specific forms'. In the next example two non-specific textual topics are contrasted explicitly: (27)
Anvendelsen af standardkontrakter og ikke af individuelt udformede kontrakter har også sine negative sider. 'The use of standard contracts rather than individually drafted contracts has also some negative aspects'.
2.3 The function of pragmatic choice I have shown above how the language user in order to articulate the content of his message has the possibility of postposing certain elements which one would have expected to find in thematic position. He thereby highlights an already mentioned part of his discourse. We have here a currently used and easily identifiable functional mechanism (cf. 2.1 Rhematic subject and 2.2 Rhematic object). Now the function of pragmatic choices can have much more far-reaching effects insofar as the real content of a choice does not reveal itself when read for the first time, and it is not meant to either. Actually, the pragmatic factors can, depending on text type, serve more or less concealed subjective aims. That the role of a pragmatic choice is far from negligeable in conveying the underlying intentions of a message, is eloquently illustrated by the following passage from an advertising pamphlet about specialised textbooks: (28)
Med erhvervslivets internationalisering og Det Indre Markeds etablering sker der en tilsvarende internationalisering af erhvervsretten. Denne lærebog tager højde for denne udvikling. [On the book Erhvervsjura i et markeds-økonomisk perspektiv, in Bogkatalog '94, Handelshøj-skolens Forlag.] 'With the internationalisation of trade and the establishment of the Internal Market a comparable internationalisation of trade law results. The present text-book takes this development into con sideration'.
It is the introductory part of a text. In spite of that, the two first objects, erhvervslivet 'economic life' and Det Indre Marked 'the Internal Market' are placed in thematic position, although they are neither textual topics nor pre-
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viously introduced. It is thereby postulated that, from an informational point of view, they are known, but at the same time it is insinuated that more gener ally speaking they are of less importance than the third object, erhvervsretten 'trade law', which is placed in rhematic position, not only in the NP but in the sentence. Although this position within the NP is determined by a syntactic constraint — the head noun is indefinite, cf. 3.2 below — it is contrasted with the first two objects whose positions, as far as they are concerned, are not syn tactically determined. One could very well have had: (29)
Med internationaliseringen af erhvervslivet og etableringen af Det Indre Marked sker der en tilsvarende internationalisering af er hvervsretten. 'With the internationalisation of trade and the establishment of the Internal Market a comparable internationalisation of trade law results'.
or even a different text where the NP containing erhvervsretten 'the trade law' is placed in thematic position in the sentence: (30)
Internationaliseringen af erhvervsretten er en følge af internationaliseringen af erhvervslivet og etableringen af Det Indre Marked. 'The internationalisation of trade law is a consequence of the internationalisation of trade and the establishment of the Internal Market'.
But the effect would undoubtedly not have been the same. By the choice made in the original text, the writer underlines the importance of erhvervsretten 'trade law' and stimulates by the same token the interest for the textbook of trade law he is eager to sell. 2.4 Summary In order to determine the role of pragmatic factors in the distribution of subject and object as a genitive or as a PP, I have introduced the notions of theme and rheme. I consider these notions only as positions, i.e. expression devices, and I have investigated the content — subject or object — to be assigned to them within the NP. This investigation has shown that it is the information structure of the text which determines the choices of the language user, with, as an ac companying factor, a progression from the least to the most complex, i.e. new or focalized, information.
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I am now going to undertake the analysis of the lexico-syntactic constraints which determine the position of subject and object on either side of the head noun, and which thereby prohibit the free choice of the language user.
3. Lexico-syntactic constraints on the position of subject and object The lexico-syntactic constraints governing the automatic selection of a preposed genitive or a postposed PP either follow from pragmatic factors, e.g. the choice of indefiniteness, or from purely structural limitations of the expression potential of the language, e.g. the lexical class of the head noun or the impos sibility of having more than one preposed genitive. 3.1 Automatic selection of the genitive: only with the subject Only a subjective genitive can be automatic in the sense just defined. An object cannot occur as a genitive for purely lexico-syntactic reasons. The compulsory selection of the genitive for the subject is however only found in a restricted number of cases, namely with head nouns derived from verbo-nominal predi cates denoting states. The predicates of this type are intransitive verbal con structions created by semantically more or less general verbs followed by a noun with or without a determiner. The verbal part of the predicate can be either have 'have' or one of its variants such as indtage 'occupy', or it can be være 'be' or one of several variants, especially inchoative, such as gå 'go': 11 (31)
fordringshaverens ret til pengene (have ret til) 'the creditor's right to the money' forbrugerens stilling (indtage en stilling) 'the consumer's position' giverens konkurs (være/gå konkurs) 'the donator's bankruptcy'
These examples conform to the canonical structure of the expression of the subject within an NP. That a preposed genitive is the preferred and most fre quent expression of the subject with all kinds of deverbal nouns, is nevertheless in most cases due to the pragmatic factors discussed in 2 above,
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3.2 Automatic selection of a PP to express subject In this section I study the conditions for the automatic selection of a subject introduced by one of several prepositions (for the choice of preposition, see Baron forthcoming). The array of prepositions is a corollary of the absence in Danish of a sole "genitival" preposition like English of. The postposition of the subject takes place under the following conditions. Some of these conditions, i.e. the semantically indefinite status of the NP and the presence of an objective genitive, are themselves of a functional nature and depend on textual or extra-textual factors, the thorough analysis of which how ever excedes the limits of this study, which concentrates on the distribution of subject and object within the NP. The NP is semantically indefinite or demonstrative This is often the case in legal texts where an indefinite or generic utterance corresponds to the need of impersonality which defines this kind of discourse, and where the demonstrative ensures the precision required within the text. The genitive cannot be used as an alternative in cases like the following because a preposed genitive makes the entire NP definite (cf. below): (32)
ophør eller udløb af nærværende aftale 'expiry or end of the present agreement' et tilbud fra en person til en anden 'an offer from one person to another' enhver misligholdelse fra låntagerens side 'any non-fulfillment on the borrower's part'12 denne aftale mellem parterne 'this agreement between the parties'
An objective genitive occurs at the same time in the NP This can be the case when the head noun is derived from a trivalent verb. The subject can then only be marked with the preposition fra 'from', an objective genitive being incompatible with a subject introduced by af within the same NP:13 (33)
produktern.es levering fra sœlger til køber 'the products' delivery from seller to buyer'
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forretningens overdragelse fra far til søn 'tһӘ shop's transfer from father to son' In cases such as these, the genitive phrase acts as a definite determiner, i.e. the NP is definite. So whereas the NP produkternes levering 'tһӘ products' deliv ery' (cf. (33)) is definite, the NP samtykke fra selskabet 'consent by the com pany' (cf. (lb)) is indefinite. That the automatic selection of a PP to express the subject is the conse quence of an objective genitive occurring at the same time in the NP, and not the other way round, follows from the fact that there can be several postposed PPs at the same time; hence, a postposed subject could not block the postposi tion of the object. And further, a known, but not focalized, object will be placed in thematic position (cf. 2.2 Thematic object).14 When such an object occurs, the subject can only be expressed as a PP. If there is no genitival ob ject however, the position of the subject as thematic (sælgers levering til køber һӘ seller's delivery to the buyer') or rhematic (leverìngen fra sælger til køber һӘ delivery from the seller to the buyer') is determined by the pragmatic factors studied in 2.1 above. The following cases are rather of a structural nature: the very expression form prohibits the use of a genitive. The subject contains itself an expansion The expansion can, for instance, be a genitive, an apposition or a relative clause: (34)
følgerne af løfiegiverens fejlvurdering 'tһӘ consequences of the promisor's misjudgment' størrelsen af morarenten, d. v.s. renten efter forfaldsdagen һӘ amount of the penalty interest, i.e. the interest after the day of payment' gyldigheden af kontrakter, der er afsluttet under sådanne stœndigheder 'tһӘ validity of contracts which have been signed under such cir cumstances'
The subject is a subordinate clause Subordinate clauses have no genitival form, so a prepositional construction is the only possibility:
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retsvirkningerne af, at de ikke opfyldes 'the legal consequences of the fact that they are not fulfilled'
3.3 Automatic selection of a PP to express the object As already mentioned in 3.1, an object cannot occur as a genitive for lexicosyntactic reasons only. The compulsory selection of a PP occurs in the follow ing situations. The NP is semantically indefinite or demonstrative As seen above, an indefinite or generic head makes the utterance impersonal, and general in scope, and the demonstrative is required by the need of preci sion which is a characteristic feature of legal texts. And as above, the genitive is incompatible with a semantically indefinite head noun or with a demonstra tive determiner: (36)
levering af en maskine 'delivery of a machine' en tilbagekaldelse af løftet 'a withdrawal of the promise' sådanne overtrœdelser af loven 'such infractions of the law' denne misligholdelse af kontrakten 'this non-fulfillment of the contract'
A subjective genitive (or a possessive determiner) co-occurs with the object in the NP When the genitival position is blocked by a subjective complement for pragma tic reasons, the object is of course expressed by a PP: (37)
agentens godkendelse af opgørelsen 'the agent's approval of the statement' løfiemodtagerens/hans antagelse af et tilbud 'the promisee's/his acceptance of an offer'
The object itself contains an expansion This expansion is for instance a genitive, a PP, a participle or a relative clause. This is a purely expression-structural constraint:
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bedømmelsen af kundernes solvens 'the assessment of the customers' solvency' oprettelsen af et byggelån i en bank 'the raising of a construction loan in a bank' afholdelsen af de med disse opgave r forbundne omkostninger 'the payment of the costs connected with these tasks' monteringen af de dele, der er leveret af forhandleren eller selskabet 'the assembling of the parts which are delivered by the dealer or by the company'15
The object is a subordinate clause As above, subordinate clauses do not occur as genitives for purely structural reasons, so a PP is the only possibility: (39)
afgørelsen af hvilke momenter man vil tillægge vægt 'the decision as to which factors importance should be attributed to'
The object is associated with a -suffixal root nominal Derived nouns such as køb 'purchase', salg 'sale', tab 'loss', brug 'use', forbrug 'consumption', have less of a verbal appearance than derived nouns with suffixes such as -else, -ing, -ning or -tion (cf. Knudsen 1967:76): (40)
købet af en hest/butikken/traktorerne 'the purchase of a horse/the shop/the tractors' tabet af kundekreds/ejendommen 'the loss of customers/the property' forbruget af vand 'the consumption of water'
The rule of automatic selection of an object PP with this class of derived nouns suffers some exceptions. This seems to indicate that it is a tendency which, however obvious it is, retains some traces of an earlier usage (cf. Knudsen 1967:76).16 But the trend in Modern Danish is clearly to avoid the objective genitive, especially in cases where the relation between an NP and a clause is less transparent. It is in particular in legal texts, where obsolete expressions are more frequent than elsewhere, that one encounters from time to time such
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departures from the common rule as ejendommens salg 'the property's sale' or maskinens brug'tһӘ engine's use'. Such exceptions follow the rules of pragma tic thematization of the object, which have been analysed in 2.2 Thematic object. Combination of factors The different factors which make the selection of a PP compulsory can be combined: (41)
kommissionærens uberettigede videresalg af kommittentens gods (genitival subject and expansion of the object) 'the commission-agent's unwarranted resale of the principal's goods' en afvejning af de modstående interesser i aftaler mellem erhvervsvirksomheder og forbrugere (indefinite head and expan sion of the object) 'a weighing of conflicting interests in agreements between com panies and consumers'
4. Conclusion In this paper, I have analysed the constraints which determine the distribution of informative elements in NPs: the pragmatic factors which prevail in most cases and the lexico-syntactic constraints, which apply in a small number of well-defined situations. They correspond to two ways of organising the pro gression of the information contained in an information unit (in casu an NP): by a "free" progression making personal choices possible in the first case, and by an automatic and from a synchronic point of view constant informational progression in the second. In both cases the elements are organised in an order of increasing complexity, which is not however a decisive factor per se, but which is a side effect of the pragmatic and lexico-syntactic constraints. The "free" progression of information, which is only limited by the restricted num ber of lexico-syntactic factors, some of which are even functionally motivated, is what in the final analysis governs the canonical distribution of subject and object in the NP. That is, in the overwhelming number of cases the subject is placed in thematic position for pragmatic reasons thereby leaving no alternative for the expression of the object. That is why there never is a choice for the object when the subject is present, apart from the case of nouns derived from
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trivalent verbs (cf. the examples of (33) in 3.2). It is this pragmatic or func tional priority of the subject which determines the canonical form of the noun complements: the subject as a preposed genitive, the object as a postposed pre position phrase.
Notes 1.
Speaking about 'subject' and 'object' in a complex NP is of course in accordance with the traditional (Latin) grammar's 'subjective/objective genitive', and is, indeed, standard practice in the recent literature on the subject, as e.g. Comrie (1976); Comrie & Thomp son (1985); Koptjevskaja (1986); Givón (1990), and several others.
2.
Examples such as the following are cases at hand: varens pris/prisen på varen 'tһӘ merchandise's price/the price of the merchandise' (prepositional object), tantes gave/ gaven tilffra) tante 'auntie's gift/the gift to(from) auntie'(indirect/ prepositional object), Roskildes domkirke/domkirken i Roskilde 'Roskilde's cathedral/the cathedral in Roskilde' (circumstant), ni måneders varsel/et varsel på ni måneder 'nine months' notice/notice of nine months' (modifier).
3.
I shall base this part of my investigation mainly upon the ideas of Halliday (1967, 1970) and Firbas (1964, 1966, 1975).
4.
Here and in what follows, 'canonical structure' is not regarded as a factor determining the pre- or postposition of subject and object on a par with the pragmatic and lexicosyntactic constraints. 'Canonical structure' only means the most typical or preferred structure. As shown in the text, the canonical structure itself depends mainly upon prag matic factors.
5.
I recall that I only examine the internal thematic and rhematic structure of NPs and not their thematic or rhematic position within the clause.
6.
The focalized element can also be contained within the theme, but in that case it is oblig atorily highlighted prosodically and is thus beyond the scope of this study, e.g. Det er agenturgiverens godkendelse, der er nødvendig, ikke agentens 'It's the principal's ap proval which is necessary, not the agent's'. This prosodic highlighting is revealed by reading aloud examples such as this: the focalized constituent must be pronounced with contrastive stress.
7.
The noun omfang 'extent' is derived from a verbo-nominal predicate have et omfang 'have an extent'. See 3.1.
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ject complements with verbs like være 'be', e.g. vœrdi 'value', from være værd 'be valuable, have a value', cf. Baron forthcoming. 9.
It should be mentioned however that certain nouns derived from psychological verbs cannot have a preposed objective genitive, e.g. opfattelse 'conception', vurdering 'evalu ation', forklaring 'explanation', (cf. Baron 1995: note 12).
10.
It goes without saying that the different thematizing factors I identify can sometimes be combined.
11.
For a definition of verbo-nominal predicates (or support verb constructions) and their role in the analysis of complex noun phrases, see Baron (1994a, 1994b, 1995); Herslund (to appear).
12.
To the indefinite pronouns like enhver 'any' one could add certain attributive adjectives such as samtlige 'all' which can function as determiners and thereby saturate the position of the genitive, e.g. samtlige ydelser fra låntagerens side 'all payments on the borrow er's part'.
13.
It is interesting to observe the evolution of Danish in this respect. In 1911 the Danish grammarian Mikkelsen still accepted examples like the following: blomsternes vanding af gartneren 'the flowers' watering by the gardener', Strassburgs erobring af tyskerne fulgtes af Metzes 'Strasbourg's conquest by the Germans was followed by Metz's' (p. 168), with subjects introduced by af which is completely unacceptable today. But notice that the closely related Swedish still accepts such constructions, e.g. Amerikas upptäckt av Columbus 'America's discovery by Columbus' (cit. Platzack & Platzack 1983:28),
14.
On the other hand, objects introduced for the first time will always be postposed: leveringen af produkter fra sælger til køber 'the delivery of products from the seller to the buyer'.
15.
Exceptions to this rule are the rare cases where the object and its expansion are regarded as a single entity, e.g. Guds ords forkyndelse 'the preaching of the word of God' (cit. Mikkelsen 1911:169).
16.
It is noteworthy in this respect that Mikkelsen, in 1911, still quoted as commonly used, expressions such as Norges tab 'the loss of Norway' (p. 164) where only tabet af Norge would be possible today.
References Baron, Irene. 1994a. Franske nominal syntagmer og oversættelse af fagsproglige tekster. ARK 71.1-27. København: Handelshøjskolen i København.
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Baron, Irene. 1994b. Les syntagmes nominaux français dans une perspective valentielle. Linguistica XXXIV, 1. Mélanges Lucien Tesnière, 29-45. Baron, Irene. 1995. Complex noun phrases in Danish: A valency perspective. Studies in Valency I (= RASK Supplement, vol. 1.) ed. by Lene Schøsler & Mary Talbot, 29-62. Odense: Odense University Press. Baron, Irene. Forthcoming. The ordering of valency complements within the noun phrase. Studies in Valency II (= RASK Supplement, vol. 2.). Odense: Odense Uni versity Press. Benveniste, Emile. 1966. Pour ľanalyse des fonctions casuelles: le génitif latin. E. Benveniste. 1966. Problèmes de linguistique générale 139-148. Paris: Gallimard. Comrie, Bernard. 1976. The syntax of action nominals: A cross-language study. Lingua 40.177-201. Comrie, Bernard & Sandra A. Thompson. 1985. Lexical nominalization. Language Typology and Syntactic Description. Vol. III: Grammatical categories and the lexicon ed. by T. Shopen, 349-398. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Daneš, František. 1974. Functional sentence perspective and the organisation of the text. F. Daneš. 1974. Papers on Functional Sentence Perspective, 106-128. The Hague: Mouton. Dik, Simon . 1981. Functional Grammar. Dordrecht: Foris. Dik, Simon C. 1983. Basic principles of functional grammar. Advances in Functional Grammar ed. by S.C. Dik, 3-28. Dordrecht: Foris. Dik, Simon C. 1989. The Theory of Functional Grammar. Part 1: The structure of the clause. Dordrecht: Foris. Firbas, Jan. 1964. On defining the theme in Functional Sentence Analysis. Travaux Linguistiques de Prague 1.267-280. Firbas, Jan. 1966. Non-thematic subjects in contemporary English. Travaux Linguis tiques de Prague 2.239-256. Firbas, Jan. 1975. On the thematic and the non-thematic section of the sentence. Style and Text. Studies presented to Nils Erik Enkvist ed. by H. Ringbom et al., 317334. Stockholm: Skriptor. Givón, Talmy. 1990. Syntax: A functional-typological introduction. Vol. II. Amster dam: John Benjamins. Halliday, M.A.K. 1967. Notes on transitivity and theme in English - Part 2. Journal of Linguistics 3.199-244. Halliday, M.A.K. 1970. Language structure and language function. New Horizons in Linguistics ed. by J. Lyons, 140-165. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Halliday, M.A.K. & Ruqaiya Hasan. 1976. Cohesion in English. London: Longman (9th edition: 1989). Hansen, Aage. 1967. Moderne dansk 2. København: Grafisk Forlag. Herslund, Michael. To appear. Verbo-nominal predicates and the object relation. Herslund, Michael & Finn Sørensen. 1993. Valence theory: An introduction to the Danish project. LAMBDA 18.1-22. København: Handelshøjskolen i København.
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Herslund, Michael & Finn Sørensen. 1994. A valence based theory of grammatical relations. Function and Expression in Functional Grammar ed. by E. EngbergPedersen, L. Falster Jakobsen & L. Schack Rasmussen, 81-95. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Keenan, Edward L. 1985. Passive in the world's languages. Language Typology and Syntactic Description vol. I. ed. by T. Shopen, 243-281. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Knudsen, Trygve. 1967. Kasuslœre. Bind 2: Dativ - genitiv. Oslo: Universitetsfor laget. Koptjevskaja, Maria. 1986. Some considerations on the subjective and objective geni tive. Papers from the Ninth Scandinavian Conference ofLinguistics ed. by Ö.Dahl, 172-182. Stockholm: The University of Stockholm. Mikkelsen, Kristian. 1911. Dansk Ordføjningslære. København: Hans Reitzel (1975). Nielsen, Søren Juul & Helle Wegener. 1991. Some problems related to automatic analysis of nominalizations in Danish. Nine Studies on Language for Special Purposes (= Copenhagen Studies in Language, 14.) ed. by N. Davidsen-Nielsen, 120-140. Platzack, Christer & Sven Platzack. 1983. Substantivets accidenser 1: Kasus. Sve-regram 10. (Rapport från projektet: En svensk referensgrammatik). Lund: Depart ment of Nordic Languages. Rijkhoff, Johannes Nicolaas Maria. 1992. The Noun Phrase: A typological study of its form and structure. Amsterdam: Academisch Proefschrift. Togeby, Ole. 1994. Speech acts and information structure in Functional Grammar. Function and Expression in Functional Grammar ed. by E. Engberg-Pedersen, L. Falster Jakobsen & L. Schack Rasmussen, 183-195. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Eyben, W.E. von. 1989. Juridisk Grundbog. Bind 3: Dommen - sproget. København: Jurist- og Økonomforbundets Forlag (4. udg.).
Corpus Dansk juridisk korpus. A corpus of Danish legal texts comprising: 1. laws, 2. judg ments, 3. contracts, 4. textbooks, and 5. articles. There is a total of one million words. Copenhagen Business School.
Topic continuity and prosody An experimental study in Danish1 Erik Kristiansen University of Copenhagen
1. Introduction The present paper is the result of a study into the relationship in Danish be tween the prosody (stress) of pronouns placed sentence-initially and their refer ential function. Of particular interest is the reference-tracking of pronouns in cases where there are more than one candidate for the antecedent function. This paper deals both with some theoretical issues and describes an experiment and the results obtained. The aim is quantitatively to study certain hypotheses about topic continuity and switch reference — i.e., hypotheses put forward by Givón (1983a, 1983b, 1989), Nedergaard Thomsen (1992, 1993), and Danes (1974), among others, and to relate them to Danish. The experiment conducted was designed to investigate cases where there are more than one possible candidate for the antecedent function (this is what Givón 1983a terms potential interference). Pronouns alternate between + stressed and - stressed manifestations in the sentence-initial positions in Danish together called the fundamental field — that is positions before the finite verb and after the conjunctional slot (the P 0 , PI, P2 and P4 positions; cf. Dik 1989). This prosodic alternation partly seems to control the process of reference-tracking. Givón has tentatively shown (for English) that unstressed pronouns sentence-initially signal topic continuity and stressed pronouns signal topic discontinuity (Givón 1983a:59, 1983b, 1989), but this has never been quantitatively investigated for Danish (cf. Nedergaard Thomsen 1992; Hansen & Lund 1983; Lundkvist 1983).
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2. Pronouns, reference-tracking, and prosody in Danish This investigation concentrates on the sentence-initial pronouns (that is, pro nouns placed after the conjunctional slot but before the finite verb). In sen tence-initial position pronouns can have either + or - stress in Danish. This position must be considered a structurally highly pertinent one, since it often indicates topic and focus elements, and is the communicative starting point for the ongoing discourse. This means that pronominal stress, as found in English (inter alia Chafe 1976, 1979 and Givón 1989) among other languages, seems to play an important role in general information structuring. Most of the examples given in this paper are taken from a corpus of inter views from a quantitative study in urban sociolinguistics (Gregersen & Peder sen 1991). They represent spontaneous spoken Danish. If we look at the two examples below we can observe how pronominal stress may be used in dis course (the following notations are used: Ρ pause; Τ hesitation; Η breathing; ' full stress; " emphatic full stress; o unstressed): (1)
og 0dem brugte oman så tilT Ρ redskabsrum ogT Ρ sådan et lille RI R2 P1 P1' udhus ik' og der havde ¿de koks i deres PH og odet havde ode for P2 R3 P1" P3 P2' for vane at hente om morgenen 'and othese one used forT Ρ sheds andT Ρ a little outhouse and R1 R2 P1 P1' there othey had coal in otheir PH and othis othey used to fetch in P2 R3 P1" P3 P2' the morning'
The unstressed pronoun det 'this' (P3) could, if we only consider the gender, refer either to koks 'coke' (R3) or deres [redskabsrum] 'their [shed]' (P1"). As koks is new and the focus of attention it is treated as a typical topic in the fol lowing clause, by means of anaphorical reference. The pronominal reference is unstressed because it signals thematic continuation rather than thematic change, and as spoken discourse is highly continous the less salient prosodic feature seems to be used for the default information structuring. An example of a stressed pronoun is given in (2): (2)
da havde oman en stor gruekedel PH Η og Τ Ρ dén fyldte oman Rl R2 P2 Pl så op med vand dér
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'othey had a iarge copper PH H and Τ Ρ this othey filled with R1 R2 R2 P1 water there' The pronoun den 'this' can only refer to gruekedel 'copper', but nevertheless it is stressed. This implies that the coding of pronominal stress is connected with the process of identifying the antecedent. The pronominal stress seems to signal topic continuity versus topic discontinuity, even when both functions are not applicable (i.e., there is no ambiguity in identifying the antecedent). Another function of pronominal stress is to signal contrasting information. Contrasting information occurs in 10% of fundamental fields in Danish (incl. both pronominal and non-pronominal, cf. Nedergaard Thomsen 1992:199). Rather unexpectedly contrastive information is seldom coded by non-pronominals (only around 10%). This could be explained as indicating that a pronoun is chosen for this position when it is important to communicate the contrastive aspect of the utterance, as the prosody of the pronoun can signal contrastiveness. The following is an example of contrast where a pronoun contrasts part of an NP: (3)
nu havde ovi sådan et lidt œldre par der hoede på første sal der R1 = > R1a , R1b ogT "hún havde for vane HP at ohun hentede altså koks (...) P1 P1' 'owe had an elderly couple living on the first floor there andT Rl = > R1a , R1b "she used HP to 0she fetched coal (...)' Pi PI'
The pronoun (P1) can not refer to the total antecedent (Rl). The pronoun is stressed to indicate that it is contrasted with another comparable referent. As the NP 'an elderly couple' contains both referents as sub-topics (R1a and R1b), the pronoun hun is implicitly contrasted to the other sub-topic (R1b). Another use of the pronominal stress is the resumptive use following left dislocation (reduplication). This tends to be frequent in Danish discourse (around 8%, Nedergaard Thomsen 1992:200): (4)
den nye sang, den er alle tiders 'the new song, that is great'
This function of the pronominal stress is not altogether clear (cf. Nedergaard
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Thomsen 1992:141) — since only 67% (Nedergaard Thomsen 1993:271) of the reduplicated pronouns are stressed. It seems that a stressed pronoun generally signals that special attention is required to parse the referent, compared with the unstressed pronoun which then is used to signal default referent parsing.
3. Topic continuity and prosody There are two main types of information structure, corresponding repeatedly to reusing the topic from the previous sentence or changing the focus of atten tion to a new topic. The latter is also termed switch-reference (cf. Haiman & Munro 1983 among others). Danes has termed them constant theme and linear theme (Danes 1974), Givón topic continuation and discontinuation (Givón 1983a). These two kinds of information structure are considered in the present paper. (5)
Constant theme / topic continuation: SA: NPA1 (topic in SA) - NPA2 SB: Pron. ref. to NPA1 (topic in SB) ...
The topic of the next sentence is coreferential with the topic of the previous sentence. (6)
Linear theme / switch reference: SA: NPA1 (topic in SA) - NPA2 SB: Pron. ref. to NPA2 (topic in SB) ...
The topic of the new sentence refers to a previous non-topical NP (often the last NP in the previous clause). According to Givón (1983a:55) topic continuity is the unmarked case (constant theme), because its structure makes it possible to express more information about a single topic, which presumably is desira ble in any discourse. Topic continuity is a question of reference predictability. The more predictable a reference is, the more continuous the information struc ture will be. From (1) and (2) it seems that maximally continuous structures correlate with the use of stressless pronouns, and less continuous ones with stressed pronouns. If this is true, topic continuity should indeed be the un marked case and stressless pronouns should be predominant in the fundamental field.
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Fig. 1 shows the distribution of prononimal reference to new and given information. The figures were obtained from interviews with 6 informants (Nedergaard Thomsen 1992:202). New information - Stress + Stress Total
G ven information
9.7 %
62.9 %
90.3 %
37.1 %
100.0 %
100.0 %
Figure 1: Distribution of sentence-initial pronouns in Danish Let us first note that pronouns referring to a known entity (given) tend to be unstressed, and pronouns referring to an unknown entity (new) tend to be stressed. But observe the difference between the figures — new information is usually coded with the same type of stress, whereas given information is more likely to be manifested with both types of stress. I think this shows the differ ent function of the prosody for given and new pronouns. For given pronouns the unstressed manifestation signals topic continuity and the stressed manifes tation switch reference. This cannot be the case for new pronouns — it must be some other function. If we add to the figures above the fact that given pro nouns are four times as frequent as new pronouns (Nedergaard Thomsen 1992: 203), constant theme or topic continuity must be the unmarked (that is the default and presumably more frequent) case for Danish. This does not mean that topic discontinuation is infrequent in spoken Danish — rather it seems that an ordinary piece of discourse is a mixture of both kinds of information struc turing, as in the following example (see also Nedergaard Thomsen 1992:173): (7)
S1: jeg kan huske det første- ét af de første møntvaskerier i R1 omegnen '1 remember the first- one of the first laundrettes in the Rl neighbourhood' S2: ßet ligger forøvrigt den dag idag P1 'oit is still there today' Pl
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S3: "det var nede i Borgergade dummy "'that was down in Borgergade' dummy S4: oder lå et konditori 'dét-dér Salon-de-Paris R2 P2 'othere was a tea room 'that Salon-de-Paris' R2 P2 S5: ode havde e- et konditori demede exoforic R3 'othey had a- a tea room down there' exoforic R3 S6: og "det blev så lavet 3 'and "that was then changed' P3 S7: og så blev odet så til møntvask 3' R4 'and then oit then became a laundrette' P3' R4 SS: og "det er odet forøvrigt stadigvæk idag P4 3' 'and "that oit is incidentally still today' P4 P3' This example illustrates the theory outlined above. The referents have been labeled Rx and the subsequent reference(s) Px. P1 is a continuation of the topic R1 in S1 and unstressed. The dummy pronoun in S3 is probably stressed be cause it signals a return to the narrative. P2 is a reference to the immediately preceding NP and stressed. R3 is referred to three times. First by a stressed P3 since it is the nearest preceding NP, the second time in S7 by an unstressed pronoun since it is a continuation of the topic in S5. The last clause is a good example of potential interference (Givón 1983b: 11), containing two references to two NPs of the same grammatical gender. These references are differenti ated by the pronominal stress. P4 is stressed since it refers to the last NP of S7, and P3 unstressed since it refers to the first NP of S7.
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We can observe that both kinds of information structuring play an important role in the discourse, apparently constantly alternating between the two types. This may explain why the pronominal stress is necessary — it seems to be a fundamental coding device for information structure. Irrespective of the context it will code the current topic and enable the listener to follow the speaker's flow of thought from topic to topic (cf. Chafe 1979).
4. Topic identification and potential interference When there is more than one candidate for the antecedent function it is called potential interference (cf. Givón 1983b: 11). It is a hypothesis of this work that the prosody of the pronoun will tend to disambiguate the reference, so that prosody is part of the topic identification. Let us look at some examples and possible analyses (b-'s and c-'s are possible continuations of the a-clause): (8)
a. Lene kom til festen 'Lene came to the party' b. ohun gik senere 'oshe left later' c.
(9)
?hún gik senere ?'shé left later'
a. Lene kom til festen sammen med Bo 'Lene came to the party together with ' b. ohun gik senere 'oshe left later' c. hán gik senere 'hé left later' d. hún gik senere 'she left later' e.
?ohan gik senere ?'ohe left later'
(10) a. Lene kom til festen sammen med Helle 'Lene came to the party together with Helle'
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b. ohun gik senere 'oshe left later' c. hún gik senere 'she left later' Sentence (8b) is a straightforward continuation of the topic in (8a). Sentence (8c) has a stressed pronoun, but doesn't 'match' the second NP {til festen 'to the party') of the previous sentence. The stress cannot signal a contrast as (9d) does since there is no obvious other participant. The question is: does the stressed pronoun refer to the subject anyway or will the utterance not be ac cepted as grammatical? Sentence (9b) is an example of topic continuation again. Sentence (9c) is an example of topic discontinuity. The new topic is signalled both by the gramma tical property 'male' and the prosody of the pronoun, to be the second NP from the previous sentence. Sentences (9d) and (9e) are examples where the stress is unexpected. The stress in (9d) can, as mentioned, be analyzed as a contrastive stress, but (9e) seems improbable. Sentence (10a) introduces two NPs that both share grammatical and seman tical properties. The pronominal stress in (10b) and (10c) is the only way of disambiguating the reference. The question is which part of the double-coding of the reference is the stronger? Are the grammatical/semantical properties more important for deciding the reference than the prosody? According to what was said in the previous section, (8c) and (9e) should not occur in Danish discourse. This will supported by the experiment described in the next section. For potential interference to occur two or more NPs must have some prop erties in common. As we have seen above it is not just a question of gramma tical agreement but also of other properties. At least the following properties must have some influence: -
Syntactic Semantic Pragmatic / textual Order of occurrence Distance from pronoun to possible antecedent (referential distance)
These properties all affect the possibility of two NPs being equal/compatible with respect to reference. The grammatical agreement is normally taken for
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granted when looking for a possible antecedent, but if the prosody of the pro noun is a 'low-level' coding for reference-tracking, prosody might be more important than agreement. The pragmatic/textual properties — i.e., how the potential referent is used in the overall discourse, will usually tend to make the NPs incompatible. Interference is therefore most likely to occur with topics of lesser importance. The order of the NPs will automatically tend to promote the first NP (if it is a topic) as antecedent for any reference, since topic continuity is the un marked and most common information structuring principle. As information placed earlier in the utterance tend to be less predictable (cf. Givón 1989:224), and consequently more important this will also tend to promote the first NP as antecedent. The distance from the pronoun to the antecedent is frequently not more than 1-2 clauses, seldom more than eight (cf. Kristiansen 1992:12; Givon 1989: 217). Pronominal reference over longer stretches is seldom found. Competing NP's then have to be placed close to each other if the referential distance and word order is to have as little impact on the reference as possible. Examples (b-s and c-s are possible continuations of the corresponding a-clause): (11) a. Peter skulle til Kalundborg sammen med Jens 'Peter was supposed to go to Kalundborg together with Jens' b. men ohan fik ikke lov 'but ohe was not allowed to'
men han fik ikke lov 'but hé was not allowed to'
(12) a. Peter skulle til Kalundborg sammen sin far 'Peter was supposed to go to Kalundborg together with his father' b. men ohan fik ikke lov 'but ohe was not allowed to'
men hán fik ikke lov 'but hé was not allowed to'
(13) a. Birthes søn skulle til Kalundborg sammen med borgmesteren 'Birthe's son was supposed to go to Kalundborg together with the mayor' b. men Jianfik ikke lov 'but ohe was not allowed to'
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. men hán fik ikke lov 'but hé was not allowed to' (14) a. Peter på syv år skulle til Kaiundborg med sin far Teter aged seven was supposed to go to Kaiundborg together with his father' b. men ohan fik ikke lov 'but ohe was not allowed to'
men hán fik ikke lov 'but hé was not allowed to'
The clauses (l1b), (12b), (13b) and (14b) above are all examples of topic con tinuity of the preceding a-clause. Those marked are not only examples of switch-reference but also gradually more improbable with respect to the con text. This could show that the context is more important than the pronominal stress, since the meaning of the utterance is less likely if the pronominal stress is taken to signal switch-reference, which also is the less common information structuring principle. If the order of the NPs is reversed for utterances (13) and (14) the situation is different: (15) a. Borgmesteren skulle til Kalundborg sammen med Birthes søn 'The mayor was supposed to go to Kalundborg together with Birthe's son' b. men ohan fik ikke lov 'but ohe was not allowed to'
men hán fik ikke lov 'but hé was not allowed to'
(16) a. Peters far skulle til Kalundborg med sin søn på syv år 'Peter's father was supposed to go to Kalundborg with his seven year old son' b. men ohan fik ikke lov 'but ohe was not allowed to'
men hán fik ikke lov 'but hé was not allowed to'
If the contexts of the NPs in the examples given in (14a), (15a) and (16a) are altered the likeliness of the suggested continuations would change, but this does not alter the basic hypothesis of prosodically coded reference-tracking.
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The sentences here illustrate how topic continuation signals the less likely meaning of the utterance. Sentences (15a) and (15b) seem even less probable than (12c), (13c) and (14c), since topic continuity is the unmarked information structure but produces a less likely meaning of the utterance. We have now seen that the identification of the antecedent, where there is more than one possible, is subject to different factors which may make one of the candidates more likely than the others. The question is whether these fac tors or pronominal stress is the most important for establishing the reference.
5. Experimental setup and results The aim of the experiment was to further investigate some of the questions and hypotheses outlined above. The main hypothesis is that unstressed pronouns signal topic continuation and that stressed pronouns signal switch reference. To investigate this, test sentences with potential interference were used in a lis tening test. The following questions were also considered: - What is more important when determining the information structure: pro nominal stress or the semantic/pragmatic compatibility between pronoun, NP's, and the context? - Does the order of NPs have any influence on the information structure with respect to reference? - Do stressed and unstressed pronouns control the information structure the same way? A listening test was designed to illuminate the questions above, consisting of several test sentences (the experiment is thoroughly described in Kristiansen 1992). The sentences chosen were of the following kind: (17)
Mary talked to Ann. Later on she left.
The tape was made up of sentences similar to (17), in two versions, one with stressed and one with unstressed pronoun. The listening test consisted of eight een different test sentences, numbered 1 to 20 (number 13 and 18 are omitted). The test sentences are listed in the appendix. Each of the test sentences was recorded both in a version with stressed pronoun and in a version with un stressed pronoun and each was repeated three times to be able to check for any
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variation. This amounted to 108 test sentences recorded in random order on the final tape. Each test sentence occurs with a few seconds' interval, giving a lis tening test of some 20 minuttes. The participants were selected according to two criteria: they had to speak Copenhagen Standard Danish and have no academic knowledge of Danish. They were given a sheet of paper with all the test sentences in the same order as the tape. The test sentences on the sheet had the pronouns of interest in italics. Before the listening test the participants were given a short introduction and were briefly instructed to cover the sheet and listen to each sentence, un cover the sentence and underline the NP they understood as referred to by the pronoun in italics. This way it was possible, in a straightforward manner, to measure the participants understanding of the sentences through the underlined NPs. With thirteen participants this gave a total of 1430 samples, giving the raw figures: 0.9% unanswered, 50.1% having the first NP underlined, and 49.0% having the second NP underlined. The test sentences fall into the following groups (the test sentences can be found in the appendix): - Test sentences where the NPs are semantically/pragmatically compatible - i.e. potential interference is cued. (Test sentences: 1, 4, 5, 7, 14) - Test sentences where the NPs are semantically/pragmatically incompatible - i.e. potential interference is less likely. (Test sentences: 2, 3, 8, 10, 12, 16, 17) - Test sentences with and without switched NPs (to test to what extent word order has an effect on the reference): (Test sentences (pairs): 7,17; 8,9; 10,11) - Test sentences for testing the relation between the semantics of the verb and the reference. (Test sentences: 19, 20) The results were measured as follows. An index of relative reference was calculated as the mean value of the answers for each test sentence, where the first NP underlined is given index 0 and the last NP index 1. A relative refer ence of 0.8 means that in 80% of the answers the participants had underlined the last NP (and in 20% the first NP). Similarly a relative reference of 0.0 means that all answers had the first NP underlined and none the last NP. This index together with the prosody of the pronoun is depicted as tower diagrams
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for each test group (Fig. 2 - 6 ) . On each figure a light and a dark column is shown for each test sentence. The light column shows the referential index for the version with an unstressed pronoun, the dark column the index for the stressed version. A column near 0.5 shows that the test sentence with the corresponding pro nominal stress was marked to refer equally often to the first as to the last NP. A column above 0.5 that the last NP was marked accordingly. From Fig. 2, where the results from all the test sentences are showed, the following can be observed:
Figure 2: Relative reference shown for all test sentences A relative reference for a test sentence with unstressed pronoun lower than the relative reference for the same test sentence but with stressed pronoun, in dicates that the results confirm the hypothesis (the unstressed pronoun tends to refer to the first NP, and the stressed pronoun to the last NP). This is the case for all the test sentences, as Fig. 2 shows. There is a tendency for the unstressed pronouns more often to refer to the first NP than for the stressed pronouns to refer to the second NP (the light col umns are comparatively shorter than the dark columns are taller). This shows that the unstressed pronouns establish a reference that is more uniformly under-
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stood as referring to the first NP, than the reference of the stressed pronouns to the last NP. If no other factors than the pronominal stress affected the results, the stressed version of a test sentence would have a relative reference of 1 and the unstressed version a relative reference of 0. This is never the case, although test sentences like 4, 5, 7, 14 and 15 are close. If we look at test sentence 5: 5.
Margrethe skal til fest hos konsulen med blandt andre Eva, men hendes mand vil ikke deltage. 'Margrethe is going to a party at the consul's with Eva among others, but her husband won't be coming'.
The results in Fig. 2 for this test sentence shows that almost every time the un stressed hendes 'her' was heard, it was understood as referring to 'Margrethe', whereas almost every time the stressed hendes 'her' was heard it referred to 'Eva'. This shows that the semantics and pragmatics of the NPs with respect to the context had little or no impact on the pronominal reference — we can say that the NPs are semantically compatible. If either the index for the stressed version is below 0.5 (mean value) or the index for the unstressed version is above 0.5, it is taken that the semantics/pragmatics of the NP and the context render it almost impossible to understand the test sentence with the pronoun referring to respectively the first or the sec ond NP, as in test sentence 3: 3.
Endelig så Ib sin rival. Han var ligbleg. 'At last lb saw his rival. He was white as a sheet'.
It does not seem likely from the context that 'lb' should be 'white as a sheet', as we are told that 'lb' is seeing the other person. If we look at the results from the different test groups the following obser vations are worth noting. For the test group where the NPs were meant to be compatible (Fig. 3) the difference between the columns is nearly always more than 0.5, showing that there is a significant difference in the understanding of the sentence with and without pronominal stress. The relative reference for the stressed versions is always more than 0.5 and for the unstressed versions less than 0.5. This shows that the unstressed pronoun refers to the first NP, and the stressed pronoun to the second NP for these test sentences. Note that for the unstressed pronoun in test sentence 14 the relative reference is 0.0, showing that it generally is understood as referring to the first NP.
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Figure 3: Reference to sentences with potential interference
Figure 4: Reference to sentences with no potential interference The test group where the NP's were meant to be incompatible (Fig. 4) the distance between the light and dark columns are comparatively small or both columns are either below or above mean. This shows that the context makes
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it most likely that the pronoun refers to a certain NP, regardless of the pronominal stress. Note that the stressed pronouns always tend to refer to the second NP, and the stressed always to the first NP (the dark columns are always taller than the light columns). This shows that the pronominal stress is a more important factor than the semantic/pragmatic factor even when the con text makes reference to one of the NPs unlikely.
Figure 5: Reference to sentences with switched NPs The test group containing test sentences with and without switched NPs (Fig. 5) shows that for the pairs 7, 17 and 8, 9 the columns switch more or less in accordance with the NP switch, whereas for 10, 11 nothing happens. Now look at the pair 8, 9: 8.
Ved det kongelige taffel sad vor medarbejder Maja overfor prin sessen. Hun er datter af storfyrs t Igor. 'At the royal banquet our correspondent Maja was seated oppo site the princess. She is daughter of the Grand Duke Igor'.
9.
Ved det kongelige taffel sad prinsessen overfor vor medarbejder Maja. Hun er datter af storfyrst Igor. 'At the royal banquet the princess was seated opposite our corre spondent Maja. She is daughter of the Grand Duke Igor'.
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The results show that for test sentence 8 it is much more likely for the 'prin cess' to be 'daughter of the Grand Duke' than for 'our correspondent' — both columns are above 0.5. When the NPs are switched in 9, the results show that the sentence is still taken to mean the same. Looking at the pair 7, 17 the picture is a little different. When the NP's are switched only, the 'unstressed' column changes showing that it is more likely for a summer cottage to need painting than for an ordinary house!
Figure 6: Reference to sentences with different context The last test group (Fig. 6) shows a significant difference as regards relative reference if the verb is changed. Test sentence 19 has the verb arbejder 'works' whereas test sentence 20 has kommer 'passes by'. The results show that it is more likely that people 'work' in a company and 'pass by' a railway station than the opposite. A secondary result of the experiment is that semantic correspondence between the NPs and the verb can be measured through the relative reference of the pronominal stress.
6. Conclusion From the results of the experiment the following observations can be made
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concerning pronominal reference in Danish when there is more than one possi ble NP that could be antecedent. Unstressed pronouns generally refer to the first NP (or topic) in the pre vious clause. Stressed pronouns generally refer to the last NP in the previous clause. This shows that unstressed pronouns signal topic continuity whereas stressed pronouns signal switch reference (or contrast) — if the semantic/prag matic context does not overrule this principle. Unstressed pronouns establish a 'safer' reference than stressed pronouns. If we view this together with Givón's code-quantity scale of referential pre dictability (Givón 1989:217) we can se that unstressed pronouns generally refer to more predictable referents than stressed pronouns (the referential distance is 1-2 as opposed to 2-3 clauses). The prosody of the pronoun is relatively more important than any semantic or pragmatic aspect of the NPs and the context. This we take as indicating that the prosody is apparently a low-level function, i.e. working early on in the parsing of a sentence. It has not been tested whether it is more important than grammatical agreement, e.g. whether a pronoun, properly stressed, can es tablish reference to an NP of another grammatical category (e.g. gender or number). The unmarked information structure seems to be topic continuity. The re sults contain examples of uniform agreement among the participants of the ex periment when unstressed pronouns are used but none when stressed pronouns are used. The semantic/pragmatic relationship between the NPs and the context can be measured through the relative reference of the pronoun.
Notes 1.
Thanks for valuable comments to Ole Nedergaard Thomsen, Peter Harder and Michael Fortescue.
Appendix The test sentences. 1.
Else sad og betragtede Bodil Hun sm Hede. 'Else was sitting looking at Bodil. She smiled'.
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2.
Statsministeren overvejer at afskedige fiskeriministeren. Han er under pres fra mange sider. 'The Prime Minister is considering dismissing the Minister for the Fishing Industry. He is under pressure from many sides'.
3.
Endelig så Ib sin rival. Han var ligbleg. 'At last lb saw his rival. He was white as a sheet'.
4.
Palle Lauring er en ligeså fremragende historiker som Erling Bjøl, man hans speciale er et andet. 'P.L. is just as eminent a historian as E.B., but his field of interest is an other'.
5.
Margrethe skal tilfest hos konsulen med blandt andre Eva, men hendes mand vil ikke deltage. 'M. is going to a party at the consul's with E. among others, but her husband won't be coming'.
6.
Grete holdt spejiet for sin mor, mens hun drejede sig. 'G. held the mirror for her mother, while she was turning round'.
7.
Deres sommerhus ligger 65 km fra huset i Glostrup. Det trænger forresten til at blive malet. 'Their summer cottage is situated 65 km from the house in Glostrup. By the way, it needs painting'.
8.
Ved det kongelige taffel sad vor medarbejder Maja overfor prinsessen. Hun er datter of storjyrst Igor. 'At the royal banquet our correspondent Maja was seated opposite the prin cess. She is daughter of the Grand Duke Igor'.
9.
Ved det kongelige taffel sad prinsessen overfor vor medarbejder Maja. Hun er datter of storjyrst Igor. 'At the royal banquet the princess was seated opposite our correspondent Maja. She is daughter of the Grand Duke Igor'.
10.
De danske banker er foruroliget over de udenlandske investorer. De støttes af Bruxelles med midler fra EE-fondene. 'The Danish banks are alarmed by the foreign investors. They are supported by Bruxelles with money funded by the EEC'.
11.
De udenlandske investorer er foruroliget over de danske banker. De støttes of Bruxelles med midler fra -fondene. 'The foreign investors are alarmed by the Danish banks. They are supported by Bruxelles with money funded by the EEC'.
12.
Allerede som 19-àrig meldte hun sig ind i partiet. Selvom moderen også var medlem hævder hun at det ikke har påvirket hende. 'She became a member of the party when she was just nineteen. Even though her mother was a member too, she claims that this has not influenced her'.
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14.
Østerport er mindre end Hellerup station, og den ligger nærmere byen. 'Ø. station is smaller than H. station and it is situated nearer the city'.
15.
Østerport er mindre end Hellerup station, men den ligger nærmere byen. ' 0 . station is smaller than H. station but it is situated nearer the city'.
16.
Jehovas Vidner tager ikke írnod hjœlp fra la',gerne. De er bange for blodtransfusionerne. 'Jehovah's Witnesses refuse to receive assistance from doctors. They are afraid of blood transfusions'.
17.
Huset i Glostrup ligger 65 km fra deres sommerhus. Det trænger forresten til at blive malet. 'The house in Glostrup is situated 65 km from their summer cottage. By the way it needs painting'.
19.
Og så stod jeg i lære i et firma som hedder Hilbert Marine. Det ligger nede ved Svanemøllen station. Det er et sted hvor der arbejder mange mennesker. 'And then I was apprenticed in a company called Hilbert Marine. It is situated at S. station. It's a place where many people work'.
20.
g så stod jeg i lære i et firma som hedder Hilbert Marine. Det ligger nede ved Svanemøllen station. Det er et sted hvor der kommer mange mennesker. 'And then I was apprenticed in a company called Hilbert Marine. It is situated at S. station. It's a place where many people pass by'.
References Chafe, Wallace L. 1976. Givenness, contrastiveness, definiteness, subjects, topics, and point of view. Subject and Topic ed. by C. Li, 25-55. New York: Academic Press. Chafe, Wallace L. 1979. The flow of thought and the flow of language. Discourse and Syntax ed. by T. Givón, 159-182. New York: Academic Press. Daneš, Frantisek. 1974. Functional sentence perspective and the organization of the text. Papers on Functional Sentence Perspective, ed. by F. Daneš, 106-128. The Hague: Mouton Dik, Simon . 1989. The Theory of Functional Grammar. Part I: The structure of the clause. Dordrecht: Foris. Givón, Talmy. 1983a. Topic continuity in discourse: The functional domain of switchreference. Haiman & Munro 1983.51-82. Givón, Talmy. 1983b. Topic continuity in discourse: An introduction. Topic Continui ty in Discourse: A quantitative cross-language study ed. by T. Givón, 1-41. Am sterdam: John Benjamins. Givón, Talmy. 1989. Mind, Code and Context: Essays in pragmatics. Hillsdale: Law rence Erlbaum.
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Gregersen, Frans & Inge Lise Pedersen, eds. 1991. The Copenhagen Study in Urban Sociolinguistics (= Institutfor dansk Dialektforsknings publikationer, Serie A, nr. 30.). København: CA. Reitzel. Haiman, John & Pamela Munro, eds. 1983. Switch-reference and Universal Grammar. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Hansen, Erik & Jørn Lund. 1983. Sæt tryk på (= DLH-forskningsserien, 6.). Køben havn: Lærerforeningens Materialeudvalg. Kristiansen, Erik. 1992. Pronominer, pragmatik og prosodi i dansk talesprog. Manu skript. Institut for Almen og Anvendt Sprogvidenskab, Københavns Universitet. Lundkvist, Lita, ed. 1983. Tekstlingvistik: Teorier og analyser (= ARK, 16.). Køben havn: Handelshøjskolen i København. Nedergaard Thomsen, Ole. 1992. Pronouns, word order, and prosody. Information structuring in preverbal slots in spoken Danish. Copenhagen Working Papers in Linguistics 2.119-232. Nedergaard Thomsen, Ole. 1993. Pronouns, word order, and prosody. Proceedings of the XVth International Congress of Linguists, Québec, Université Laval, 9-14 August 1992, 269-272. Québec: Les Presses de l'Université Laval.
Discourse particles in Danish Niels Davidsen-Nielsen Copenhagen Business School
1. Introduction In the literature on Danish language the monosyllabic words da, dog, jo, nok, nu, sgu, skam, vel and vist are in some of their uses occasionally — though by no means generally — analysed as modal particles (see Harder 1975:106; An dersen 1982). This analysis is chosen if they are used interactively, i.e. as dis course markers, and occur in a frame like Det er uheldigt That's unfor tunate'. The aim of the present paper is to examine the formal, functional and semantic properties of these words and in so doing to investigate whether an analysis of them as modal particles, i.e. as invariable grammatical words ex pressing modality, is justified. It has been pointed out that the German words which are in some of their uses by many researchers analysed as modal particles {denn, doch, ja, wohl, etc.) are functionally Janus-headed (see Abraham 1991:12; Nehls 1989:283). If the Danish forms listed above are analysed as modal particles, this is the case in Danish as well. In examples like the following, for instance, the ad verbs da, dog, nok, nu and vel are not used as discourse markers the way they uheldigt: are in a frame like Det er (1)
Indtil da havde jeg ikke lagt mærke til noget. until then had I not laid notice to anything 'Until then I hadn't noticed anything'.
(2)
Hun var syg, og dog passede hun sit arbejde. she was ill, and yet attended she her work 'She was ill, and yet she attended to her work'.
(3)
Vi har penge nok. we have money enough 'We have money enough'.
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(4)
Nu har jeg spist min morgenmad. now have I eaten my breakfast 'Now I have eaten my breakfast'.
(5)
Lev vel! live well 'Take care of yourself!'.
In the following examples, similarly, the adjective vist (in which -t is an inflec tional ending marking neuter gender), the noun skam and the interjection j are not discourse words either: (6)
Det er sikkert og vist. it is certain and sure 'It is dead certain'.
(7)
Det var en skaml that was a pity 'What a pity!'
(8)
Jo, jeg har forstået det. yes, I have understood it 'Yes, I have understood it'.
Sgu — a mild swearword derived from så Gud (hjælpe mig) 'so (help me) God' — differs from the other words in not being functionally Janus-headed, i.e. this word can only be used interactively as a discourse marker. In examples (1) through (8) the forms under investigation are pronounced uheldigt, on the other hand, they are un with stress. In a frame like Det er stressed with the exception of nok, which is not obligatorily pronounced in this way. Though nok is classified as consistently unstressed in the 'central posi tion' (as this term is understood in Danish field analysis) along with da, jo, nu, sgu, skam, vel and vist by Hansen & Lund (1983:39), strong stress on this word cannot be ruled out in examples like Det er nok uheldigt and Han er nok fra Århus 'He's from Århus, I suppose' (Galberg Jacobsen, personal communi cation). And if nok is preceded by another particle, as in Han er nu nok fra Århus, it is more naturally pronounced with stress than without. Dog, it should be added, can also be stressed in the central position but only if it means 'yet/nevertheless' and is not used interactively. This specific question will be taken up in section 3 on polyphony and section 4 on grammaticalization. Section 5 discusses whether the nine words under investigation should be analysed as modal or not, and sections 6 and 7 are devoted to scope and to combinations
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of particles respectively. Let us begin, however, by examining the orientation of da, dog, jo, nok, nu, sgu, skam, vel and vist in their interactive use in rela tion to the hearer and the speaker.
2. Discourse markers Functionally, the most characteristic property of the words examined in this ar ticle is that they are used interactively. If discourse is viewed psycholinguistically as "a dynamic process of expression and comprehension governing the performance of people during linguistic interaction" (Crystal 1991:107), they are discourse markers. This sheds light on the observation commonly made that they occur more frequently in spoken than in written language. Da, jo, nu and skam are primarily orientated towards the hearer in the sense that they re flect the speaker's reaction to what he believes is the hearer's conception of the state of affairs described in the proposition: (9)
John er da/jo/nu/skam en flink fyr. 'John is a nice guy'.
(10)
John er da/jo/nu/skam і London. 'John is in London'.
While jo signals that the hearer is assumed to be aware of and accept the states of affairs described by these examples, da and nu signal potential disagree ment.1 As pointed out by Andersen (1982:90), da differs from nu in being pragmatically presupposing: when uttering John er da і London, for example, the speaker assumes that the hearer is in fact aware of the state of affairs referred to, in spite of the fact that at the moment he does not appear to accept it. Furthermore, da is weaker than nu, which is objectively corrective. Finally, skam is characteristically used to eliminate the doubts the hearer apparently has as to the truth of the proposition, i.e. it has a reassuring function (see Harder 1975:107). The basic difference between these four words becomes apparent when they are inserted in a negative frame like Det passer ikke That's _ not true'. Nok, vel and vist, on the other hand, are primarily orientated towards the speaker in the sense that they reflect the speaker's conception of, or attitude to, his own knowledge of the state of affairs referred to: (11)
John er nok/vel/vist en flink fyr.
286 (12)
NIELS DAVIDSEN-NIELSEN
John er nok/vel/vist і London.
Here the speaker informs the hearer that he is not certain about the correctness of the states of affairs referred to. By selecting vel, he includes the hearer in the assessment of the situation, i.e. an inquiring element is superimposed here. Note in this connection that negative tag questions are in Danish formed by adding the adverb vel to a negative declarative sentence: John er ikke і Lon don, vel? 'John isn't in London, is he?'. In choosing vist the speaker — in ad dition to expressing his own lack of certainty — informs the hearer that there are others besides himself who believe the situation referred to to be true (see Galberg Jacobsen 1992). In this way vist is similar to the modal verb skal 'shall' of report. But while the speaker in producing e.g. John skal være en flink fyr 'John is said to be a nice guy' may himself doubt that John is in fact a nice guy and may therefore continue his turn with an utterance like Men selv er jeg nu ikke sikker på det 'But I'm not certain that he is myself', he has to consider this state of affairs probable when producing John er vist en flinkfyr. Consequently he cannot here question the likelihood of the situation referred to in a following utterance. By selecting nok, finally, the speaker informs the hearer that the evaluation of probability is made by himself alone.2 Sgu and dog sometimes seem to signal merely that the speaker is emphatic about his utterance: Det var sgu uheldigt! Det var dog uheldigt! 'How unfortu nate!' Here these words appear to be practically neutral in their orientation. In many other cases, however, the situation is different. In an example like Hør mig dog til endel 'Do hear me out, will you!' dog is clearly hearer-orientated in signalling the speaker's reaction to the hearer's apparent unwillingness to hear him out. And in an example like Du er sgu hievet fodsportsmand 'You've become a hiker, I see' sgu is speaker-orientated in signalling an inference from external evidence on the part of the speaker that the hearer has taken up hik ing, i.e. it reflects the speaker's conception of his own knowledge. These uses of dog and sgu will be taken up in section 3. A distinction which has to be taken into consideration when investigating discourse markers in Danish is whether the verbal complement expresses a sub jective evaluation as in (9) and (11) or an objective description as in (10) and (12) (Carl Bache, personal communication). I shall return to this distinction in section 3, where it is pointed out that with the former type of complement nu may be ambiguous. The discourse function of the monosyllabic words examined in this paper is reflected in the way they are translated into English in Vinterberg & Bodelsen's comprehensive dictionary. While jo, nu and skam are translated into com-
DISCOURSE PARTICLES IN DANISH
287
ment clauses with you (you know, you see), nok, vel and vist are translated into comment clauses with I (I suppose, I dare say, I think, I believe). Further more, the hearer-orientated words da, dog and nu are translated into surely and really, both of which are often used to signal a difference between speaker and hearer in their evaluation of the state of affairs referred to. For example, Han er da ellers gammel nok is translated into 'Surely he is old enough'. The difference between hearer-orientation and speaker-orientation comes across clearly in the following exchange (DNT 68): (13)
- Du er nok blevet fodsportsmand, henkastede han. - Det ved jeg da ikke af, svarede jeg. '-I see you've become a hiker, he observed casually. - Not to my knowledge, I replied.'
In one of their uses da, dog, jo, nok, nu, sgu, skam, vel and vist are thus typi cal discourse words, i.e. they are characteristic of linguistic interaction and serve to ensure that what is communicated is understood in the right way (see Harder 1975:107). This is the reason why they are commoner in spoken than in written language. In written language involving little or no interaction, for example that found in instruction manuals, they are virtually absent. But in written language of a more interactive type they are alive and well. In argu mentative prose, for example, where the writer seeks to win over the reader to his own cause or point of view, they are particularly frequent. This is amply illustrated in the following text, a letter to the editor in Information (November 30th, 1992, p. 3, my italics). Though difficult to appreciate fully by readers without a good command of Danish, it will be of special interest to Danes and has therefore been included: (14)
5
10
Lad os nu bare køre derudad for fulde gardiner i stedet for alt det miljøpis og fremtiden i vore hænder, og hvordan vores tip-, tip- og tipoldebørn skal leve. Noget er der da sikkert om det, men hvorfor trække livet ud til et selvplagerisk sejpineri med forsigtig mig her og der, det hele går jo alligevel totaltpårøvenfør eller siden, så vi kan lige så godt mærke, at vi lever her og nu. Det er sgu da i byerne, at der er noget ved at leve: biler, værtshuse, megatons af smart tøj, rødvin og bajere. Hvem gider sidde og drikke bajere ude i Øster Vildelse Kro? Og der er, ja det ved vel alle, ingen gode skår ude i skoven eller men, det sku '
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NIELS DAVIDSEN-NIELSEN
15
20
25
da lige være Huldremosen [...] Det er simpelt hen out at bo pâ landet, og folkflytterjo også derfra, der er snart ikke andet end skovridere og mejetærskerpiloter tilbage, og så nogle halvdøde pensionister. Byerne de kan sagens brede sig meget hurtigere, og sikke en masse fede grunder [probably a misprint of grunker 'cash' 'dough'], der kan tjenes på det, enhver fornuftig borger ved, at det er økonomien, der skaber trivsel, skråt op med den hersens økologi, der ævles så meget om. Vi skal vel ikke allesammen gå rundt og ligne sådan nogle hængerøve som for eksempel de Grønne eller de Røde og Grønne. Der er jo heller ingen der stemmer på dem. - Næh, lev stærkt, dø ung og bliv et smukt lig — og glem at få børn. [...] P.S. I er vel ikke fordomsfulde over for ikke-akademiske sprogkoder [...] 'Come on, let's just open the throttle and really let her rip instead of all that environmental crap and the future in our hands and how our great-, great- and great-great-grandchildren are going to live. There is probably some truth in it, but why drag out life to masochistic slow torture and be cautious fuddy-duddies here, there and everywhere, sooner or later we are all going to fall on our arses anyway, you know, so we might as well feel that we are alive here and now. It's in the cities, surely, that life is worth living: cars, pubs, mega tons of smart clothes, redwine and pints of beer. Who could be both ered to hang about drinking beer in Nether-Nowhere Inn? And as everybody knows, I suppose, slick chicks are nowhere to be found in the forest or are they? — except perhaps in the witches' bog [...] Living in the country is simply out, and as you know people are moving away from it, there's hardly anybody left except forest super visors and combine-harvester pilots, and then some half-dead old age pensioners. We can easily let the cities spread, and what a lot of cool cash you could make that way, every sensible citizen knows that it's the economy that promotes well-being, you know where you can stick that ecology rubbish everybody is drivelling about. You wouldn't want us all to walk around looking like wimps the same way as the Greens and the Red-and-Greens, would you? Nobody votes for them anyway, as you know. - No, live hard, die young and become a beautiful corpse — and forget about having children. [...] P.S. You aren't prejudiced against unacademic language codes, I hope [...]'.
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Throughout this text the writer is engaged in interaction with his readers. The function of nu in line 1 is to challenge those who for environmental reasons consider a full-speed ahead way of life irresponsible. The function of da in line 9 is also to challenge the view evidently held by some readers that the quality of life is poorer in the city than in the country. In lines 4 and 14 da is used in compound sentences which — while indicating agreement up to a point (4) or concession on a specific point (14) — as a whole express disagreement with the reader (yes, but. ..). Jo (7, 25) signals that the reader is assumed to be famil iar with and to accept the evaluations put forward. And vel (12, 23, 28) signals that the writer is not completely sure that the states of affairs referred to are correct, and at the same time it serves as a request to the reader to confirm that they are. Needless to say, the entire letter is heavily ironic and thus repre sents an upside down attempt to make people attach more importance to the en vironment and the future of the planet than to personal consumption and the economy.
3. Polyphony Polyphony — a semantic-pragmatic theory worked out by Oswald Ducrot and developed further in Denmark by Henning Nølke — will be shown to be of direct relevance to the study of discourse particles. As explained in Nølke's 1989 monograph, it is a fundamental claim of this theory that an utterance may contain several embedded discourses. For example, an utterance like Peter isn't tall contains not just one but two points of view. According to that of the sender Peter is not above average height; but according to another view — held by the receiver or other persons — this is precisely what Peter is, and it is this view the sender responds to with his utterance. In polyphonic utterances the sender introduces and directs a number of players — the so-called enuntiators — who express their views on the subject of discourse. The sender, in other words, lets different voices make themselves heard (see Nølke 1989:16). For a full introduction to polyphony the reader is referred to Nølke's monograph. For the purposes of the present article, however, it is necessary to point out that a distinction is there drawn between enuntiators, i.e. voices which make themselves heard in the utterance, and the discourse individuals — sender, re ceiver, vox publica or other (groups of) persons — who stand behind these enuntiators. Three types of relations are assumed to exist between enuntiators and discourse individuals (most importantly the sender): attachment, acceptance and separation. This means that a discourse individual by the sender can be
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identified with a view, can be held to admit a view or can be divorced from a view. In the example Peter isn't tall the relation between the sender (enuntiator 2) and enuntiator 1 (the receiver or other discourse individuals) is one of separation: by means of the negative adverb the sender rejects the view held by e1 that Peter is tall. In an utterance like To be sure Peter is tall (but he is no giant), on the other hand, the relation between the sender (e2) and enuntia tor 1 is one of acceptance: by means of the adverbial to be sure the sender ad mits the view held by e1 that Peter is tall. The third relation (attachment) will be illustrated below. All the Danish words examined in this article except nok and sgu would seem to signal polyphony. In the preceding section da, jo, nu, skam were claimed to be primarily hearer-orientated and vist, vel primarily speaker-orien tated. Within the framework of the theory of polyphony, these two groups of words differ from each other in the following way: in utterances with da, jo, nu, skam, the discourse individual who stands behind e1 is the receiver or an other person (or group of persons) different from the sender while the dis course individual behind e2 is the sender. In utterances with vel, vist the dis course individual behind e1 is the sender while the discourse individual behind e2 is the receiver (vel) or another person or group of persons (vist). In terms of relations, da, nu and skam signal separation between the sender (e2) and enuntiator 1. In utterances like John er da i London, John er nu i Lon don and John er skam i London the view held by e1 that John is elsewhere — or, in the example with skam, that he is not certain to be in London — is re jected by the speaker. On the other hand, jo, vel and vist signal attachment. In John er jo i London the view expressed by e2 (the sender) that John is in Lon don is assumed to be familiar to and shared by the receiver and possibly others as well. In John er vel i London the view expressed by e1 is also assumed to be shared by the receiver (e2), though in this case an inquiring element is superimposed. In John er vist i London the view held by e1 is assumed to be shared by other people besides those engaged in the conversation, i.e. the dis course individual behind e2 is a third party. Polyphony is also sometimes found in utterances with dog: (15)
Så hjælp mig dog, mandi 'For God's sake help me, man!'. (DNT 105)
(16)
Hør mig dog til endel 'Do hear me out!'. (DNT 93)
The discourse individual behind e1 is here the receiver and the discourse indivi-
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dual behind e2 the sender. In terms of relations, dog signals separation between the sender and e1. In both respects it thus belongs in a group with da, nu and skam. Dog differs from these words in signalling strongly emphatic disapprov al, and unlike most of the other words examined in this article it occurs in all sentence types. We find it in imperative sentences like (15) and (16), in ex clamatory sentences like Hvor er her dog koldt! 'How cold it is here!' (DNT 76), in interrogative sentences like Kan vi dog ikke diskutere objektivt? 'Can't we have an objective discussion?' (DNT 94) and in declarative sentences like Det var dog forfœrdelig uheldigtl 'How terribly unfortunate!' (DNT 55). The other words examined in this article are restricted to declarative sentences ex cept da and nu, which occur also in imperative, interrogative and occasionally exclamatory sentences (e.g. Gå da/nu i sengi 'Do go to bed!', Er du da/nu sikker på det? 'Are you certain of that?' and Hvor er det da/nu sørgeligt med Johni 'How sad it is with John!'). The nearest equivalent of dog is da, which is subjective and presupposing. In an example like Du kunne da lige have ventet til jeg var rejst 'You might have waited till I had left' (DNT 189) dog could have been used instead of da with little or no difference in meaning. Conversely, da could replace dog in an example like Det var dog forfœrdelig uheldigti 'How terribly unfortunate!' (DNT 61). Dog also occurs in the main clause of complex sentences which signal ac ceptance + separation. In examples of this type it is close to the adverb il lustrated in (2) above (yet/nevertheless) and is sometimes pronounced with stress: (17)
[...] og selv om jeg ikke har besøgt det ægte samiske Finland, har jeg dog set byer som Kajaani, Oulu og Kі. '[...] and although I haven't visited the real Sami Finland, I have seen towns like Kajaani, Oulu and Kemi'. (Berlingske Tidende, December 5th, 1992, feature article)
Acceptance + separation can also be signalled by compound sentences in which one of the two clauses contains da. This is illustrated by the following example (repeated from (14) above): (18)
Noget er der da sikkert om det, men hvorfor trække livet ud til et selvplagerisk sejpineri... 'There is probably some truth in it, but why drag out life to selftormenting slow torture..'.
Here the first part of the utterance signals acceptance, and da would therefore seem not to signal separation as in the example John er da i London given
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NIELS DAVIDSEN-NIELSEN
above. But acceptance, it will be noticed, is signalled also in the absence of da, and the function of this word therefore here seems to be to prepare the lis tener for the separation signalled by the second part of the utterance. The theory of polyphony operates not only with voices heard from different persons as illustrated in the examples above (external polyphony) but also with internal polyphony. According to Nølke (1989:22f.) internal polyphony exists in those cases where one enuntiator is connected with the utterance sender, i.e. the one who exists exclusively by virtue of the specific utterance situation, while another enuntiator is connected with the individual sender, i.e. the one who exists independently of the specific utterance situation. Among the dis course particles in Danish, nok and sgu might seem to be natural candidates for such an analysis. Consider the following examples: (19)
Du er nok blevet fodsportsmand. 'You've become a hiker, I seem to notice'.
(20)
Du er sgu blevet fodsportsmand. 'You've become a hiker, I see'.
In (19), it might be argued, the individual sender (e2) — owing to one or more clues, for example frequent encounters on mountain paths — endorses the view expressed by e1 (utterance sender). Two voices thus appear to be heard from the speaker here. This might be argued to be the case in (20) as well. While in selecting nok the individual sender endorses the view expressed by e1 tenta tively, he endorses it without qualification by means of sgu. I shall not adopt such an analysis here. As pointed out by Harder (personal communication), the distinction between 'individual sender' and 'utterance sender' is intuitively not fully convincing; on reflection it somewhat resembles an artifice the function of which is to generalize the concept of polyphony to situations where there is only one relevant originator. Instead of assuming that the sender speaks with a forked tongue, I shall therefore analyse the particles nok and sgu as monophonic and assume that it is through this quality that they differ from the remaining particles. Before leaving polyphony, it should be pointed out that nu and jo are not always used with the functions described above. In examples like the following nu is — as described — hearer-orientated and corrective: (21)
John er nu i London. 'John is in London, as a matter of fact'.
DISCOURSE PARTICLES IN DANISH
(22)
Det plejer hekse nu ikke at have, indvendte jeg. 'Witches don't usually have that, I objected'. (DNT 75)
(23)
Jamen hvis de nu lide det? 'But what if they like it?' (DNT 71)
(24)
Men det er nu slet ikke derfor. 'But that's not the reason at all'. (DNT 73)
(25)
I begyndeisen var det nu ingen sag. 'At first it was no problem'. (DNT 75)
293
As pointed out in the discussion of example (9), this may also be the case with John er nu en flink fyr. But another reading is also possible in an example like this where the verbal complement expresses a subjective evaluation. If John's behaviour has been the topic of discussion, the speaker can use nu monophonically to conclude that his behaviour warrants an evaluation of John as a decent person. Out of context examples of this type are thus ambiguous (corrective or concluding). That jo is not invariably used to signal that the view expressed by e2 (the sender) is assumed to be familiar to the receiver appears from the following example, in which the complement expresses an objective description: (26)
Jamen, det er jo John der går derovrel 'Why that's John over there!'
Here jo expresses surprise. But even in examples of this type it retains an ele ment of polyphony in the sense that the identity of the person referred to is as sumed to be agreed on and thus accepted by the hearer the moment he directs his glance to the other side of the street. To what extent can the theory of polyphony help us account for the mean ings and uses of the nine words under investigation? If we disregard the special monophonic uses of dog, jo and nu mentioned above, we can divide the dis course particles into three groups on the basis of monophony vs. polyphony and sender vs. receiver behind e1: 1. nok, sgu: monophonic 2. vel, vist: polyphonic and sender behind e1 3. da, dog, jo, nu, skam: polyphonic and receiver behind e1 In group 1 nok differs from sgu in being unemphatic and in that the acceptance it signals is assumptive. In group 2 the two words differ from each other as described above: the
294
NIELS DAVIDSEN-NIELSEN
discourse individual behind e2 is the receiver in the case of vel and another per son or group of persons in the case of vist. In group 3 jo differs from the other words in signalling attachment. The basic differences between the remaining words are as follows: da is pragmati cally presupposing (like jo), and the separation signalled by it is subjective and — though emphatic — connected with some uncertainty while that signalled by nu is objective and certain. Note in this connection that utterances with da often end in a question tag: (27)
Det er da indlysende, er det ikke? 'That's obvious, isn't it?'. (DNT 24)
(28)
Det lyder da som en sirene, gør det ikke? Tt does sound like a siren, doesn't it?'. (DNT 104)
(29)
John er da i London, er han ikke ? 'John is in London, isn't he?'.
On the other hand, question tags can only be readily added to utterances with nu if the verbal complement expresses a subjective evaluation, as in (27) and (28). If the verbal complement is objectively descriptive, as in (29), a tag can only be added to an utterance with nu if it represents a reconsideration by the speaker of his objectively presented correction: (30)
John er nu і London ...Er han ikke?
The reason why a question tag can unproblematically be added to utterances with da not only if the verbal complement is subjectively evaluating but also if it is objectively descriptive as in (29) is that the separation signalled by da is subjective and thus weaker than that signalled by nu. As pointed out in section 2, skam is typically used to resolve an uncertainty on the part of the hearer. This can be illustrated by the following exchange: (31) A: Er John і London eller Paris? Ts John in London or Paris?'. B: Han er skam i London. 'He is in London, you may rest assured'. While da — though not nu — could also be used here, skam differs from it in signalling full certainty and being non-presupposing. It was pointed out above that in examples like (17) dog is close to the ad verb dog 'yet/nevertheless'. This use is also found in the following example:
DISCOURSE PARTICLES IN DANISH
(32)
295
På filmen var jeg som regel skurk. En rædsom skurk i rædsomme melodramaer! Men det var dog mig. Der var dog momenter af ægthed. 'In films I usually played the villain. An awful villain in awful melodramas! And yet it was me. There were elements of authen ticity'. (BUI 63)
In its other use — the one illustrated by examples like (15) and (16) — dog signals emphatic disapproval. As mentioned, it occurs in all sentence types and is the only word among the ones investigated except da and nu found in ex clamatory sentences. The following examples provide further illustration of its use in such sentences: (33)
Som det dog trak ud med den smule mad. 'How slow they were in serving that measly meal'. (DNT 61)
(34)
Som der dog frådses med strømmen her i julemåneden. 'How they squander electricity this month of Christmas'. (BUI 125)
In its exclamatory and disapproving use the distribution of dog is noticeably different from that of the other particles. In declarative sentences its occurrence is restricted. For example, it does not occur in a context like John er і Lon don, which accepts ail the remaining words. In imperative sentences it differs from da in being unsympathetic and from nu in being strongly emphatic (see Durst-Andersen 1991:57f. ) : (35)
Sæt dig da ned. 'Do sit down, please'.
(36)
Sæt dig nu ned. 'Do sit down, will you'.
(37)
Sæt dig dog ned! 'Do sit down, for God's sake!'
In imperative sentences nu obviously cannot be factually corrective, but here it signals impatience and in this sense also separation. In interrogative sen tences, however, its corrective meaning is often retained: (38)
Men sammenligningen halter. - Gør den nu det 'But the comparison halts. - Does it, in point of fact -'. (BUI 121)
296
NIELS DAVIDSEN-NIELSEN
Diagrammatically, the above polyphonic analysis of the Danish discourse par ticles can be summed up as in Fig. 1. This analysis can also be expressed by means of semantic features. This is done in the following table, in which not only dog but also da and sgu are classified as negative attitudinal markers. Ac cording to this table da and dog are closely related in differing with respect to one feature only (± presupposing), and the same goes for nu and skam ( ± em phatic) and vel and vist (± e2 receiver). As nok and sgu are monophonic, the features [el receiver], [e2 receiver] and [separation] naturally do not apply to these discourse particles.
Discourse particles
Example:
Det er 'That's
uheldigt. unfortunate'.
Figure 1 : Classification of particles
297
DISCOURSE PARTICLES IN DANISH
da
dog
jo
nok ' sgu
nu
skam
vel
vist
4. Grammaticalization The reason why the present investigation is restricted to nine monosyllabic words and excludes discourse words — whether polyphonic or monophonic — such as unœgtelig 'undeniably', åbenbart 'evidently', rigtignok 'to be sure' and faneme 'damm it' appears from the choice of the word particle in the title of this paper. Many linguists analyse invariable items with grammatical function as particles, particularly if they do not readily fit into the standard classifi cation of parts of speech (see Crystal 1991:251f.). As understood in this paper the term particle refers to an invariable (indeclinable) word with grammatical function. Particles may be non-modal and e.g. indicate syntactic functions, the way adpositions often do. In many languages there are assumed to be modal par ticles: in the Australian language Ngiyamba, for example, there are sentenceinitial particles which express that the propositional content of an utterance is regarded as true or as dubious (see Palmer 1986:46). Within the Germanic lan guage family, similarly, there are assumed to be languages with modal parti cles. This is widely taken to be the case in German {doch, ja, denn, wohl, etc.), the language which has been investigated most thoroughly within this field. The aim of this section is to discuss the degree of grammaticalization of the nine words investigated and the justification of classifying them as par ticles. A good account of grammaticalization as such has been given by Lehmann, who describes it as "a process which turns lexemes into grammatical forma-
298
NIELS DAVIDSEN-NIELSEN
tives and makes grammatical formatives still more grammatical" (1985:303). It is widely agreed that it is more appropriate to operate with grammaticalization as a continuum than to distinguish absolutely between lexical and gramma tical signs. For example, verbal inflections are more strongly grammaticalized than auxiliaries which in their turn are more strongly grammaticalized than semi-auxiliaries and catenative verbs. Diachronically, the process of grammaticalization is typically unidirectional and tends to move from lexis via syntax to morphology, as illustrated by the development of the future tense marker in the Romance languages from the postpositive verb habeo in Vulgar Latin (e.g. cantare habed) into a verbal in flection (e.g. French chanterai, Italian canterò and Spanish cantare). Lehmann proposes six parameters according to which the degree of gram maticalization of a linguistic sign can be assessed. While inflections, for ex ample the tense suffixes -er and -ede, -te in Danish, are strongly grammatica lized according to all of these, the words investigated in this paper are clearly less so. Nevertheless, they are strongly grammaticalized with respect to at least two of the parameters proposed: "paradigmatic weight" and "syntagmatic vari ability". In order for a sign to be autonomous (lexical), Lehmann argues, it must have a certain weight, a property which endows it with prominence in the syntagm. Paradigmatically, the weight of a sign is its substantial size, both semantically and phonologically. The weight of the discourse words under in vestigation is clearly quite light. For example, sgu is weak as compared with så Gud (hjælpe mig) 'so (help me) God' from which it is derived. A good deal of desemanticization has taken place, and phonologically it is not only mono syllabic but also obligatorily unstressed. According to Lehmann, reduction of paradigmatic weight also involves "morphological degeneration", i.e. the loss of ability to inflect. In this respect as well the discourse words examined here are grammatical. As pointed out in section 1, nok and dog are not obligatorily unstressed when occurring in the central field of the sentence. Note, however, that while nok is only optionally stressed when used for the expression of assumption, it is obligatorily stressed when used concessively (see note 2). What we find in an example like John er nok en flink fyr, men så flink er han nu heller ikke 'John is a nice guy, to be sure, but he isn't that nice' is not a discourse par ticle, as apparent also from its positional movability (Nok er John en flink fyr, men ...). As for dog, it may be pronounced with stress only in examples like (17) and (32) where it means 'nevertheless', and where it should probably not be analysed as a discourse particle. When used for the expression of exclama-
DISCOURSE PARTICLES IN DANISH
299
tory separation, on the other hand, it is consistently unstressed, as illustrated by (15), (16), (33), (34) and (37). According to Hansen & Lund (1983:39) there are in addition to da, jo, nok, nu, sgu, skam, vel and vist only a handful of adverbs which are obligatorily unstressed in the central field of the sentence, namely altså 'really', 'І wonder', nemlig 'you see', sikkert 'undoubtedly', snart 'practically' and sådan 'so', cf. an example like Du må altså hjælpe mig 'You must help me, really'. The paradigmatically light word mon differs from the nine words investigated in this paper in being purely interrogative. Besides occurring in the central field of the sentence it may occur initially, compare examples like Er pakken mon til mig ? (with interrogative word order) and Mon pakken er til mig ? (with out interrogative word order) 'Is the parcel for me, I wonder?'. In specific questions it can also occur postinitially, as illustrated by Hvem mon pakken er til? 'Who(m) is the parcel for, I wonder?' With respect to syntagmatic variabi lity it is thus weakly grammaticalized. The only remaining monosyllabic snart differs from the other monosyllablcs in being less desemanticized. In an exam ple like Jeg ved snart ikke hvad jeg skal tro 'I hardly know what to believe' it is not only a marker of degree but also retains some of the temporal meaning found in examples of the type Det vil snart være forbi 'It will soon be over'. Like reduction of paradigmatic weight, loss of syntagmatic variability, termed "fixation" (Lehmann 1985:308), is considered a grammaticalization process. All the discourse words examined in this paper are positionally re stricted to the central field of the sentence. More precisely, they occur in posi tion 4 of the following simplified sentence frame, in which Ρ 1 refers to a fronting position which is available for constituents of various types requiring a certain degree of prominence, and which is occupied by the subject if there is no fronting of adverbials, objects or complements. The other symbols refer to finite verb (Vf), subject (S), particle or central adverb (a), nonfinite verb (Vi), object (O), complement (C) and final adverbial (A) (see e.g. Hansen 1980:43ff.) (see Fig. 2 below). Though discourse words like åbenbart 'evidently', muligvis 'possibly', for modentlig 'probably', rigtignok 'to be sure' and heldigvis 'fortunately' occur in position 4 as well, they may also occupy Ρ 1. This appears from a compari son of examples like Det er åbenbart gjort i bedste mening and Åbenbart er det gjort i bedste mening 'Evidently it has been done with the best of intentions'. As pointed out by Lehmann, grammaticalization asserts itself in all domains of grammar: adpositions turn into case affixes, full verbs into auxiliaries and eventually tense/aspect/mood affixes, etc. The rise of particles specifically has been investigated in a paper by Tim van Baar (no year). According to van Baar,
300
NIELS DAVIDSEN-NIELSEN
(Central field
Initial field
Final field
Ρ1
Vf
S
a
vi
O/C
A
John
er
(-)
da
(-)
(-)
i London
John
er
(-)
skam
(-)
en flink fyr
(-)
Det
plejer
hekse
nu ikke
at have
(-)
(-)
Du
er
(-)
nok
hievet
fodsportsmand
«
begyndeisen
var
det
nu
(-)
ingen sag
(-)
Nu (now)
gider (feels like)
ingen (no body)
vel (I sup pose)
besøge (visit)
ham (him)
længere (longer)
'Now nobody feels like visiting him any longer, I suppose'. Figure 2: Fixation of particles in position 4
particles are words or clitics which are highly grammaticalized, which have been derived from other word classes, but which have lost the essential prop erties/meanings of these word classes. They function as intermediators, i.e. they stand outside the referential core of a sentence and function as a bridge between this referential unit and the feelings, beliefs, and knowledge of the speaker and hearer. This peripheral status in relation to referential units is called "non-centralization". Non-centralization is used as the basis of a series of formal criteria, one of which is phonology. Particles tend to be monosyllabic and unstressed, and they are usually not singled out for focus treatment. None of the words investigated in this paper can be focused on in cleft sentences the way many adverbs can, cf. an example like Det er strah du skal gøre det 'It is this moment I want you to do it'. The second criterion is "isolation": owing to their peripheral sta tus, particles do not have the same positional possibilities as adverbs, for ex ample. This criterion covers three tests: the one word test, the theme/tail test and the P 1 test. According to all of these the Danish words under investiga tion qualify as particles. They cannot on their own make up well-formed utter ances the way adverbs such as unœgtelig 'undeniably', åbenbart 'evidently', muligvis 'possibly' and heldigvis 'fortunately' can, for example in reply to a
DISCOURSE PARTICLES IN DANISH
301
question like Har jeg ret? 'Am I right?' Nor can they perform the pragmatic functions of theme or tail (see Dik 1989), and in this respect as well they differ from many Danish adverbs, cf. examples like Uformelt, hvad synes du om rap porten? 'Informally, what do you think of the report?' and Hun er omgængelig, arbejdsmœssigt 'She is easy to get on with, workwise'. Finally, they are ruled out in Ρ 1, once again in contradistinction to adverbs. For example, words likt måske 'perhaps', åbenbart 'evidently', muligvis 'possibly', formod entlig 'probably' and heldigvis 'fortunately' occur freely in the initial field of Danish sentences. Van Baar's third criterion is that particles, being intermediators rather than building-blocks of the proposition, cannot function as "head of a construction". In Danish, some adverbs may have this function, as illustrated by an example like helt utroligt doven 'quite incredibly lazy', in which utroligt is head of a premodifying adverb group. The fourth and final criterion pertaining to noncentralization is "word formation": particles cannot readily participate in the formation of new words and expressions. In this respect as well the unstressed, positionally fixed and semantically bleached Danish words examined here qual ify as particles. On the other hand, da, nu and vel as non-particles are exten sively involved in word formation. By way of illustration one can mention dagœldende 'then in force', dalevende 'then living', datid 'the past tense', da værende 'then' (adj.) / nugældende 'now in force', nulevende 'now living', nutid 'the present tense', nuværende 'present' / velbevandret 'well versed', vel egnet 'well fitted', velfortjent 'well-earned', velgerning 'good deed', velkendt 'well-known' and many other words in which vel- functions as dependent. As pointed out, grammaticalization is more appropriately discussed in terms of more or less than of either-or. At some stage, however, a decision has to be made on what to account for in the grammar and what to account for in the lexicon of a language, that is, a cut-off point needs to be proposed. On the basis of the criteria mentioned above I suggest that the nine words under inves tigation are sufficiently removed from the lexical end of the grammaticalization scale in order for them to be analysed as particles. In their degree of gramma ticalization they are similar to Danish support verbs such as have 'have', være 'be', blive 'become' and purely temporal ville 'will'. In my book on tense and mood in English and Danish (1990:chapter 2) these verbs are interpreted as auxiliaries, i.e. as grammatical formatives, on the basis of criteria which are partly similar to those used here. For example, purely temporal ville — found in an example like Det vil blive betragtet som fejhed 'It will be regarded as cowardice' — is semantically bleached, cannot be singled out for focus treat ment and cannot be head of a construction. On the other hand, volitional ville,
302
NIELS DAVIDSEN-NIELSEN
which is not analysed as an auxiliary, is less desemanticized, can be singled out for focus treatment and can be head of a construction. This can be illus trated by an example like Hvad han absolut vil er at byde hende en drink 'What he absolutely wants to is to offer her a drink' (see Fig. 3). From the tree diagram in Fig. 3, in which function labels are placed above form labels, and in which the analytical system used is the one proposed by Bache et al. (1991), it appears that volitional vil — unlike the Danish auxiliaries and par ticles — can function as head of a construction.
Figure 3: Focalization of volitional vil
DISCOURSE PARTICLES IN DANISH
303
5. Modality The view of modality taken in this paper is the one proposed in my book on tense and mood in English and Danish (1990:43ff.). By modality I understand a qualification of an utterance whereby the speaker operates with alternatives to the current actual world. In Danish examples like Måske er hun gået hjem 'Perhaps she's gone home' and Hun kan være gået hjem 'She may have gone home' the speaker indicates by means of maske and kan that he considers it possible that the propositional content 'She (has) go(ne) home' is true. And in an example like Der må ryges 'You may smoke' he uses må to express that the action described by Der ryges is permitted. In the absence of such a quali fication utterances are considered categorical (non-modal): Hun er gået hjem 'She has gone home', Der ryges 'People are smoking'. Some linguists take the view that modality has to do with the speaker's attitude to the hearer. Accord ing to such a pragmatic conception of modality any utterance is modal. Here, however, modality is approached semantically as having to do with the speak er's commitment to the content of an utterance. Accordingly, a fundamental distinction is drawn between modal and categorical utterances. In the former type of utterances modality may be expressed in a number of different ways, for example by adverbs, adjectives, lexical verbs, auxiliaries, inflections, particles, clitics and prosody. If modality is expressed grammatically — wheth er morphologically by means of inflections or syntactically by means of auxil iaries — it is termed mood. In the literature on modality two main types of modality are normally re cognized: epistemic and deontic. If a qualification has to do with permitted, compulsory or desirable actions, i.e. if it concerns the so-called socio-physical domain (see Sweetser 1990:74), the modality it expresses is considered deon tic. Deontic modality is also called root modality because it is historically prior to epistemic modality, and studies in child language demonstrate that children acquire the deontic senses of modal verbs first. Modality is classified as epis temic if the speaker's view of the state of affairs referred to has to do with his rational evaluation of the correctness of the propositional content (possibility, probability, confident assumption, etc.). Epistemic modality thus pertains to the domain of reasoning and has to do with knowledge (Greek episteme). None of the Danish particles investigated in this paper express deontic mo dality. As illustrated by the following examples, on the other hand, nok, vel and vist perform the function of indicating epistemic modality:
304
NIELS DAVIDSEN-NIELSEN
(39)
Og jeg lægger nok noget andet i de ord end du gør. 'And I probably put another interpretation on those words than you do'. (DNT 40)
(40)
Der kommer vi vel til en anden side af sagen. There we get to another side of the question, I take it'. (BUI 121)
(41)
Det gik vist meget godt. 'It went quite well, I think*. (BUI 135)
While nok., vel and vist are clearly epistemic, the remaining Danish particles cannot be analysed as epistemic under the interpretation of modality adopted here. The only possible other candiate is da. As pointed out above, da differs from nu in being connected with some uncertainty, a difference reflected by the fact that tag questions can readily be added to sentences with da even if the verbal complement is objectively descriptive (as in (29)). Nevertheless, da differs from nok, vel and vist in that the state of affairs referred to in utter ances in which it occurs is presented by the speaker not as conceivably real but as factual. This difference comes across clearly from a comparison of e.g. John er da і London and John er nok/vel/vist i London. The truth of the state of affairs referred to is still guaranteed by the speaker — at least provisionally — if da is added to an utterance, i.e. utterances with da are categorical. According to Palmer, the German particles are essentially comments on the proposition and are "not very obviously modal" (1986:46). Within the analyti cal framework adopted here, the majority of Danish particles are non-modal, and only if modality is viewed pragmatically is it possible to operate with a larger number of modal particles. If the words investigated in this paper are divided into modal and non-modal discourse particles, their meanings can be represented diagrammatically as done in Fig. 4. Before closing this section, I should point out that mood in Danish is as sumed to comprise a morphological (synthetic) subsystem and a syntactic (ana lytical) subsystem (see Davidsen-Nielsen 1990:49ff.): synthetic
(subjunctive, imperative)
analytic
auxiliaries (epistemic: kunne 'can', måtte/behøve 'must/need', burde 'ought to', skulle 'be said to')
Mood
particles (nok, vel, vist)
DISCOURSE PARTICLES IN DANISH
305
While synthetic and analytic mood cannot cooccur, modal particles combine rather freely with modal auxiliaries in Danish. Such combinations will be illustrated in the next section.
Example: Det er 'That's
uheldigt. unfortunate'.
Figure 4: Revised classification of particles
306
NIELS DAVIDSEN-NIELSEN
6. Scope A question which cannot be ignored in an investigation of particles is the stretch of language affected by their meaning, i.e. their scope. In the paper by van Baar it is proposed that particles be analysed as "operators" but not stated on what specific level they should be placed. According to Hare (1971) there are three components in the logical structure of utterances: the neustic, the tropic and the phrastic (see also Lyons 1977:749ff.). While this distinction represents a valuable insight, it sheds little light on the problem under investi gation here. It is fairly clear that discourse particles do not belong to the phras tic, i.e. the propositional content of utterances. On the other hand, it is not clear whether they belong to the tropic, i.e. that part of an utterance which correlates with the speech act a sentence is typically used to perform (e.g. "It is so", "So be it"), or to the neustic, i.e. a subscription to an assertion or other speech act analysable as "I say so" and more often understood than ex pressed. Hare's analysis does not directly provide the tools for unambiguously assigning the discourse particles to either the neustic or the tropic. A higher degree of layering and complexity has been proposed in Function al Grammar, for example in the account of this theory given by Simon Dik (1989:46). Here four levels are recognized: predicates and terms (1), predica tion (2), proposition (3) and speech act (4). On each of these, furthermore, Functional Grammar employs operators, i.e. entities which are used to capture those modifications which are brought about by grammatical means (Dik 1989:50). Five different types are recognized: term operators, predicate opera tors, predication operators, proposition operators and illocutionary operators. "Illocution operators have wider scope than proposition operators, these have wider scope than predication operators, and these again wider scope than predi cate operators" (Dik 1989:138). The basic illocutionary operators are assumed to be DECL(arative), INT(errogative), IMP(erative) and EXCL(amatory), and examples such as You are careful, Are you careful? and Be careful are accordingly interpreted as DECL (you are careful), INT (you are careful) and IMP (you are careful). Proposition operators are the grammatical means through which the speaker specifies his attitude towards the propositional content of an utterance. For example, modal ities such as evidential, inferential, experiential and reportative are analysed as propositional operators if they are grammaticalized. In Danish, the auxiliary skulle 'shall' of report, found in an example like Hun skal være en habil pia nist 'She is said to be an able pianist', will thus be analysed as a propositional operator: DECL (reportative (Hun er en habil pianist)). Predication operators
DISCOURSE PARTICLES IN DANISH
307
locate the state of affairs designated by the core predication with respect to temporal, spatial and cognitive parameters (Dik 1989:202). Among this type of operators Dik mentions tense markers, polarity markers (positive/negative) and markers of (objective) epistemic and deontic mood. The English auxiliary may of epistemic possibility found in an example like John may be in London is thus a predication operator. Finally, predicate operators capture the gramma tical means through which additional features of the state of affairs described by the proposition are specified (Dik 1989:184). This class of operators in cludes markers of the perfect and the progressive, cf. English examples like John has cried and John is crying. Within this analytical framework an exam ple like Et dansk filmselskab skal have været interesseret i historien ' A Danish film company is said to have been interested in the story' will thus be analysed as DECL (reportative (present (perfect (Et dansk filmselskab være interesserei i historien)))). Now if the Danish discourse particles are considered against this analytical background, it seems fairly clear that they should be interpreted as proposition operators, i.e. as grammatical means through which the speaker specifies his attitude towards the propositional content. Recall in this connection (section 2) that the Danish particles reflect either the speaker's reaction to what he be lieves is the hearer's conception of the state of affairs described in the proposi tion (da, dog, jo, nu, skam) or the speaker's conception of his own knowledge of the state of affairs referred to (nok, sgu, vel, vist). In being proposition op erators the particles differ from the modal auxiliaries in Danish which — apart from reportative skulle — must be analysed as predication operators. For ex ample, utterances like John kan vel have været i London 'John may have been in London, I suppose' and John må nok have været i London 'John must have been in London, I gather' can be analysed as DECL (confirmation-seeking (possibility, present (perfect (John være i London)))) and DECL (assumptive (necessity, present (perfect (John være і London)))). That particles have wider scope than modal auxiliaries is not only intuitively plausible. It is also confirmed by the fact that from utterances in which they cooccur it is possible to extrapose particles but not modal auxiliaries in para phrases. For example, an utterance like John må nu være i London can be paraphrased as Det er nu tilfældet at John må være i London 'It is the case, as a matter of fact, that John must be in London' but not as *Det må være til fældet at John nu er і London. Similarly, an utterance like John kan vel være і London can be paraphrased as Det er vel rigtigt at John kan være i London 'It's correct, I suppose, that John may be in London' but not as *Det kan være rigtigt at John vel er i London.
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Before leaving scope it should be mentioned that lexical discourse markers such as altså 'really', ellers 'you know', også 'in fact', åbenbart 'evidently', formodentlig 'probably' and rigtignok 'to be sure' are in Functional Grammar analysed not as operators but as satellites. But they are similar to discourse particles in belonging to level 3, i.e. they modify the proposition (see Dik 1989:59). The scope of the satellite in an example like John er åbenbart i Lon don 'John is in London, evidently' is thus the same as that of the particle in an example like John er da i London.
7. Combinations of particles A full discussion of the combinability of discourse particles in Danish is be yond the scope of this paper and would indeed require treatment in a separate paper. As important insights are undoubtedly to be gained by studying particle combinations, however, I shall include a few observations and comments on this issue. As illustrated by the following examples, the first of which is re peated from section 2 (14, line 9), there are often more particles than one in the same Danish utterance: (42)
Det er sgu da і byeme, at der er noget ved at leve. 'It's in the cities, surely, that life is worth living'.
(43)
Vi ved jo da noget om det her i Sydslesvig... 'We do know something about it here in South Schleswig, as you know...'. (DI 481)
In the first of these the speaker uses da to signal potential disagreement with the hearer and sgu to accentuate his point of view. In (43) he expresses poten tial disagreement as well {da) while at the same time signalling that the hearer is assumed to be familiar with the state of affairs referred to (jo). The follow ing constructed examples provide further illustration of particle combinations: (44)
Det er da nok i byerne, at der er noget ved at leve.
(45)
Det er da vist і byerne, at der er noget ved at leve.
(46)
Det er jo nok i byerne, at der er noget ved at leve.
(47)
Det er nu da i byerne, at der er noget ved at leve.
(48)
Det er nu nok i byerne, at der er noget ved at leve.
(49)
Det er nu vist i byerne, at der er noget ved at leve.
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(50)
Det er sgu nok і byerne, at der er noget ved at leve.
(51)
Det er skam da і by erne, at der er noget ved at leve.
(52)
Det er velkі byerne, at der er noget ved at leve.
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In each of these the meanings of the two discourse particles are added to the propositional content: remonstrating + assumptive in (44), remonstrating + putative in (45), accepted + assumptive in (46), corrective + remonstrating in (47), corrective + assumptive in (48), corrective + putative in (49), accen tuating + assumptive in (50), resolving + remonstrating in (51) and confir mation-seeking + assumptive in (52). As appears, not only combinations of a speaker-orientated and a hearer-orientated particle occur (42, 44, 45, 46, 48, 49) but also combinations of hearer-orientated particles (43, 47, 51) and of speaker-orientated particles (50, 52). Unlike the other particles, dog hardly ever occurs in combinations, i.e. in this respect as well its distribution differs from that of the other words examined here. An example like Giv mig dog nu den bog! 'Do give me that book, for God's sake!' cannot be considered ungrammatical, however, so combinations with dog cannot be ruled out altogeth er. The combination vel k, it should be added, is used not only in the sense described above (confirmation-seeking + assumptive) but also in a fused idio matic sense of emphatic appreciation, as illustrated by Du er vel nok en stor dreng! 'What a big boy you are!'. Out of context an example like John er vel nok en dygtig student is thus ambiguous ('What a good student John is!'/'John is a good student, I dare say'.). Combinations of three and sometimes even four particles are also possible. These frequently begin with sgu (sgu da nok, sgu da nu vist), but combinations such as da nu vist and jo nu nok are possible as well. In order for Danish particles to cooccur their meanings should obviously be compatible, as in examples (42) through (52). As illustrated by an example like Det er sgu da і byerne, at der er noget ved at leve, the meanings accentu ating, remonstrating and assumptive are compatible and can jointly be added to the propositional content. Missing combinations such as *jo vel, *nu vel, *skam vel, *dog vel and *dog vist can be accounted for as being due to seman tic incompatibility. For example, a speaker cannot emphatically eliminate the doubts the hearer apparently has as to the truth of the proposition by means of skam and simultaneously superimpose an inquiring element by means of vel. A large number of missing combinations can be accounted for in terms of wrong ordering. If the orderings found in e.g. (42), (44), (46), (48), (50), (51) and (52) are reversed, the resulting combinations are ungrarnmatical: *da sgu,
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*nok da, *nok jo, *nok nu, *nok sgu, *da skam, *nok vel Other missing combinations, for example *sgu skam, appear to be at least partly due to re dundancy. While used to eliminate the hearer's doubts as to the truth of the proposition, skam is simultaneously an intensifier, and there is therefore no communicative point in adding sgu to it. The strong phonological similarity between these particles is probably another reason for their non-combinability; pronouncing them in immediate succession has a nearly stuttering effect. Though all the Danish discourse particles have the same scope, namely the proposition, their order in combinations is highly fixed. As illustrated by (44), (45), (46), (48), and (49), hearer-orientated particles precede speaker-orien tated ones. The only exception to this ordering rule involves sgu, which is speaker-orientated and nevertheless precedes the hearer-orientated particle da (42). In combinations sgu always occupies the first position: sgu da, sgu nok, sgu da vist. In those cases where hearer-orientated particles cooccur, the ac ceptable orderings are dog nu, jo da, nu da, skam da, and in combinations of speaker-orientated particles the permitted orderings are vel nok and vistnok. The combination vistnok, it should be added, differs from the other combina tions in that its meaning cannot be described as a product of its parts (putative + assumptive). As pointed out by Galberg Jacobsen (1992:19f.), it is virtually synonymous with vist, i.e. both are used in the putative sense to inform the hearer that there are others besides the speaker who believe the situation re ferred to to be true. The choice between Han var vistnok blevet gal på mig 'He had got angry with me, it seems' (DNT 182) and Han var vist hievet gal på mig thus appears to be primarily stylistic. According to Galberg Jacobsen, vistnok tends to be a little more informal than vist.
8. Conclusion One of the discourse particles examined in this paper would appear to be the odd man out, namely dog (see section 3). Semantically it deviates from the others in being disapprovingly exclamatory, and its distribution is noticeably different from that of most of the other particles. Unlike jo, nok, sgu, skam, vel and vist it occurs in interrogative sentences (Kan vi dog ikke diskutere ob jektivt?! 'Can't we have an objective discussion, for God's sake?!'), in imper ative sentences (Hør mig dog til ende! 'Do hear me out, for God's sake!') and in exclamatory sentences (Hvor er her dog koldt! 'How cold it is here!'). In declarative sentences it typically combines with the emotive past tense (see Davidsen-Nielsen 1990:116), as illustrated by an example like Det var dog for-
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fœrdelig uheldigt! 'How terribly unfortunate!' (DNT 55). What seems to be required for it to occur in declarative sentences in the present tense is the pres ence not only of a subjectively evaluating verbal complement but also of an emotive context, as in Det er dog forfœrdelig uheldigtl, Det er dog for galt! 'That's the limit!' and Foråret er dog den skønneste tidl 'Spring is the loveliest season, surely!'. In spite of these differences, dog has been included in the present investigation for a number of reasons. Like the other eight words it is sufficiently removed from the lexical end of the grammaticalization scale in order to be analysed as a particle. It resembles the other particles in being used interactively and da, nu and skam in particular in being a polyphonic, hearerorientated marker of separation. Like the other particles it is restricted to the central field of the sentence, and it is distributionally similar to da and nu, which also occur in interrogative, imperative and occasionally exclamatory sen tences (as illustrated in section 3). In utterances in the emotive past tense, fur thermore, not only dog but also da, nu and sgu occur, cf. an example like Det var da/dog/nu/sgu œrgerligt, at vi ikke kan nå at ses iriden jull 'It's really an noying that we won't have time to meet before Christmas!'. While dog has thus been considered sufficiently similar to da, jo, nok, nu, sgu, skam, vel and vist to be included in the present investigation, 'І won der' is so relatively dissimilar that I have decided to exclude it. To be sure, it resembles the words examined here in a number of ways, for example in being a paradigmatically light discourse marker which has the proposition as its scope. Though consistently interrogative, mon is not an illocutionary operator. In an utterance like Er John mon i London? 'Is John in London, I wonder?' it is the inverted word order which specifies the basic illocutionary force of the clause while mon is an additional expression of a questioning attitude. In a specific question like Hvem mon pakken er til? 'Who(m) is the parcel for, I wonder?', similarly, it is not mon but the interrogative pronoun which specifies the basic illocutionary force of the clause. In interrogative utterances without inversion or interrogative pronouns, for example Mon John er i London?, the best solution is probably to analyse mon as an illocutionary converter, i.e. as an element which changes the basic illocution of an expression into a derived illocutionary value (see Dik 1989:257). As pointed out in section 4, mon has several positional possibilities and is thus weakly grammaticalized with respect to syntagmatic variability. According to van Baar's criterion of isolation it is weakly grammaticalized as well, not only as far as the P 1 test is concerned but also with respect to the one word test. For example, a dialogue like A: John er і London. — : Mon? 'Is he, I wonder?' is perfectly acceptable. Though it would take me too far afield to discuss in any detail whether mon
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should be analysed as an element of grammar or of lexis, I therefore suggest that it be considered a proposition satellite rather than a proposition operator, This implies that the type of illocutionary conversion found in examples of the type Mon John er i London? is regarded as lexical and not as grammatical. Unlike the German particles, the Danish discourse particles have not at tracted a great deal of attention, and they haverightlybeen characterized as the stepchildren of Danish linguistics. As they are a very characteristic feature of the grammar of Danish and are extensively used in interactive language, not only spoken but also written, this is to be regretted. The fact that they consti tute a well-known stumbling block to foreign learners of Danish is an addition al reason why they deserve attention, and so is the fact that they are notorious ly difficult to translate. I therefore hope that the ideas put forward in this paper will be of some help and will inspire further research on the Danish discourse particles. Acknowledgment I would like to thank Carl Bache, Peter Harder, Michael Herslund and Henrik Galberg Jacob sen for critical comments and suggestions which have considerably improved this paper. The paper first appeared as Pre-publications of the English Department of Odense Univer sity, no. 69, August 1993.
Notes 1.
The reason why it is necessary to qualify the word disagreement with the premodifier potential appears from the following example (Carl Bache, personal communication): Jens er helt umulig, men John er da en flink fyr. 'John is quite impossible, but John is a nice guy'. Here the speaker attempts to persuade the hearer that it ought to be possible to arrive at an agreement about John, i.e. da is here consensus-seeking ('Don't you agree?'). At the same time, however, the speaker is prepared for the situation that the hearer may reject his evaluation and that disagreement may therefore be just around the corner.
2.
It should be added that nok is sometimes used concessively, as illustrated by the fol lowing example (Carl Bache, personal communication): John er nok en flink fyr, men så flink er han nu heller ikke. a nice guy, but he isn't that nice'. 'John is
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This use is restricted to compound sentences, however, and requires that nok be stressed. Furthermore, nok may here — without change of meaning — be moved to the initial position (Nok er John ...), a movement which is impossible in non-compound sentences like (11) and (12).
References Abraham, W. 1991. Modal particle research: The state of the art. Multilingua 10.9-15. Andersen, T. 1982. Modalpartikler og deres funktion i dansk. Danske Studier 1982, 86-95. Bache, C , M. Davenport, J. Dienhart & F. Larsen. 1991.AnIntroduction to English Sentence Analysis. Copenhagen: Munksgaard. Crystal, D. 1991. A Dictionary of Linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell. Davidsen-Nielsen, N. 1990. Tense and Mood in English: A comparison with Danish. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Dik, S.C. 1989. The Theory of Functional Grammar. Part 1: The structure of the clause. Dordrecht: Foris. Durst-Andersen, P. 1991. Om det indirekte i direkte sproghandlinger og det direkte i indirekte sproghandl inger. ARK 62.43-63. København: Handelshøjskolen i København. Hansen, E. 1980. Dæmonernes Port. København: Hans Reitzel. Hansen, E. & J. Lund 1983. Sæt Tryk På: Syntaktisk tryk i dansk (= DLH Forsk ningsserien, 6.). København: Lærerforeningens Materialeudvalg. Harder, P. 1975. Prædikatstruktur og kommunikativ funktion. Nydanske Studier og Almen Kommunikationsteori 8.103-112. Hare, R.M. 1971. Meaning and speech acts. Practical Inferences ed. by W.D. Hud son, 74-93. London: Macmillan. Jacobsen, H. Galberg. 1992. Vist og nok: Om et par formodningsbiord i dansk. Mål & Mæle 2.13-20. Lehmann, . 1985. Grammaticalization: Synchronic variation and diachronic change. Lingua e Stile 20.303-318. Lyons, J. 1977. Semantics. Vols. 1-2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nehls, D. 1989. German modal particles rendered by English auxiliary verbs. Sprech en mit Partikeln ed. by H. Weydt, 282-292. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Nølke, H. 1989. Polyfoni. En sprogteoretisk indføring (= ARK, 48.). København: Handelshøjskolen i København. Palmer, F.R. 1986. Mood and Modality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sweetser, E.E. 1990. From Etymology to Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer sity Press.
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Van Baar, T. [no year]. Particles. Manuscript. Department of General Linguistics/IFOTT, University of Amsterdam. 34 pp. Vinterberg, H. & C.A. Bodelsen. 1990. Dansk-engelsk Ordbog. 3rd edition by V. Hjørnager Pedersen. København: Gyldendal.
Sources BUI DI DNT
= Bodelsen, Anders. 1989. Byen uden Ildebrande. København: Gylden dals Paperbacks 1990. = Feldbæk, 0., red. 1992. Danmark og Europa 1945-1990 (= Dansk Identitetshistorie, 4.). København: C.A. Reitzels Forlag. = Skou-Hansen, Tage. 1957. De Nøgne Træer. København: Gyldendals Paperbacks 1991.
Eh bien: Marker of comparison and contrast Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen University of Copenhagen
1. Introduction In the present paper, I shall investigate the function of the discourse connective eh bien, as it is used in spoken French.1 My analysis is based on authentic examples drawn from taped verbal interactions of various kinds between native speakers only (in this case four debates and three spontaneous conversations), and it represents part of a larger-scale research project on the semantics of dis course markers in spoken French.2 Discourse markers of the type I am interested in (other examples include French bon, ben, alors, puis, hein etc.) differ from the phenomena studied in the rest of this volume inasmuch as they cannot be integrated into the layered structure of the clause — they are "extra-clausal" constituents (cf. Dik 1989: 45). Hence, the information conveyed by such morphemes is not part of the propositional content of their host utterances, but serves, in my opinion, rather to indicate how this propositional content is to be manipulated with respect to both co- and context. Thus, it is related to the type of information conveyed by modal particles (Davidsen-Nielsen, this volume) and sentence adverbials, but is less structured syntactically and semantically, as the latter both enter into the clause structure as described by Davidsen-Nielsen (op. cit.) and Dik (op. cit. :250-261). The fact that sentence adverbials and modal particles can be located within the layers of the individual clause implies that their scope is definable in terms of grammatically describable constituents. In contrast, dis course markers such as eh bien apply to whole utterances, sometimes even ex tending beyond the host utterance, and influence relations between two or more messages, without belonging in any intra-clausal structural slot. It is implicit in what I have said so far that discourse markers are perhaps those items which most clearly illustrate Givón's (1984:239) observations that "human communication is multi-propositional" and that "information structure
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in human language most commonly involves units larger than the proposition". In fact, it is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to adequately describe their function without going beyond the utterance as a self-contained unit. Their particular contribution to linguistic structure is to be found, not on the level of the sentence, but on that of the discourse. Now, some linguists (e.g. Gülich 1970; Auchlin 1981a, 1981b) have de scribed eh bien and other similar particles as constituting, in at least some of their uses, little more than what might be termed "oral punctuation marks". I reject this view as a working hypothesis for two reasons: first, although such markers may often seem to be interchangeable when analyzed as part of iso lated utterances, they may rarely be substituted for one another without a change of meaning when the utterances are considered in a wider context. This would seem to indicate that the markers are not without coded content. Indeed, I will argue that, similarly to semantically more "transparent" connectives such as English after all or so (cf. Blakemore 1987), one may conceive of these markers as a kind of instruction given by the speaker to the hearer on how to construct a coherent mental model of the discourse. As such, they must be as sumed to activate procedural rather than representational knowledge (cf. Blake more 1987; Wilson & Sperber 1993), which incidentally would explain why, in many cases, native speakers have vague intuitions at best about their mean ing and use. My second reason for rejecting the "punctuation mark" analysis is the fact that it has been common since Saussure (1916) to consider linguistic signs as the union of a particular expression and a corresponding content. Now, it seems to me that there is no a priori reason for understanding discourse mark ers as exceptions to this rule, but that is in fact precisely what the incriminated description does, inasmuch as it implies that these items have only an expres sion side, but no content. We may now go on to consider the specific case of eh bien. I will begin by taking a relatively brief look at previous descriptions of the marker in section 2, and subsequently propose my own analysis in section 3.
2. Previous descriptions To date, three in-depth analyses of eh bien have been published. Sirdar-Iskandar (1980), who is working within the theory of language-inher ent argumentation formulated by J-C. Anscombre and O.Ducrot (Ducrot et al. 1980; Anscombre & Ducrot 1983),3 and whose analysis is based partly on
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examples from one 19th-century vaudeville, partly on constructed examples, describes eh bien as an essentially argumentative marker of consecutive rela tions, such that prototypically this item would introduce an utterance Q into a (linguistically or non-linguistically) given situation S, while signalling to the hearer that a particular conclusion should be drawn from this fact. Q, which may be alternatively the propositional content of the utterance, its illocutionary force, or the very act of uttering it,4 is to be understood as an unexpected result of S, while the expected one is termed Q'. Sirdar-Iskandar represents this by the formula (S - Q) - > C, where "-" represents a factual, causal rela tion, and "- > " an argumentative one. The nature of and Q' must be infer red by the hearer. Moreover, S is interpreted as thematic, and Q as rhematic. There does exist a second argumentative use of eh bien, which may be rep resented as (non-(S - Q')) - > C. Here, the putative conclusion is to be drawn from the fact that S has not had the expected consequence Q'. In this config uration, it would seem that Q can no longer be analyzed as representing the propositional content of the utterance, but only its illocutionary force, or the act of utterance. In a third and final use, termed "phatic", eh bien marks the obligation of the hearer to continue the discourse, this obligation being then the intended "conclusion". In this use, the marker is found in interrogatives, and in answers to interrogatives. In the latter use it is claimed that eh bien manifests an under lying performative on the order of I hereby answer that... Quite apart from the fact that most of Sirdar-Iskandar's examples are some what outdated, and that none are representative of spontaneous oral discourse, a number of things lead me to question the validity of her analysis, at least where this latter type of discourse is concerned (not having worked with writ ten texts at all, I hesitate to deny that the argumentative analysis might be ade quate here). First of all, the qualification of Q as "unexpected" is unconvincing in the case of several examples, such as the following:5 (1)
A. moi je ferais trop confiance aux gens elle elle est peut-être trop méfiante mais elle A raison tu vois ce serait un peu le genre tu te rappelles quand on a été prendre le livre,, Isabelle B. quel livre A. on est entré à la fac et puis y avait des livres sur les étagères B. oui A. tu te souviens B. oui
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A.
et puis le gars il je lui ai dit mais je vous l'achèterai demain et il a dit mais non moi je vous fais pas confiance, tu te souviens B. oui A. eh ben c'est l'attitude de Nadia (CT, p. 11)
Secondly, even in cases where an unexpected element is introduced into the discourse, pointing to a particular conclusion, eh bien may not mark the un expected element Q, but rather the conclusion C, as in this example: (2)
A. [...] 'était pas un voyage simplement pour rester dans les piscin es des hôtels comme ça hein non non on a beaucoup visité hein B. 'était quel organisme A. c'était le Club Med B. c'était le Club Med A. comme Evelyne Buchillot B. eh ben comme quoi le Club Med euh,, fait des choses qui sont finalement pas si euh (VE, p. 15)
In any case, one may ask oneself whether there is any reason to posit a specifically argumentative value for eh bien, when, in those cases where the analysis does work, similar results would probably follow directly from a max im or principle of relevance (cf. Grice 1975; Sperber & Wilson 1986), that is to say that would represent an implication to be drawn from Q. As for the so-called "phatic" uses, it strikes me as redundant to signal the obligation to answer a question through the use of a discourse marker, since questions and answers are usually considered to form adjacency pairs, which is to say that questions "sequentially imply" answers, in and of themselves (Levinson 1983:303-308; Schegloff & Sacks 1974:238-239). Finally, the analy sis of eh bien in answers would seem to be heir to at least some of the prob lems that plague the "performative hypothesis" in general, and is therefore to be avoided (cf. Levinson 1983:251-263). Métrich (1987), who again uses only written or constructed examples, re jects the argumentative interpretation, and retains only the function of marking a caesura between two elements of the discourse, one functioning as theme, the other as rheme. Both of these may be more or less implicit. This, of course, raises the question of whether eh bien may meaningfully be said to mark a caesura, since it is difficult to interpret this as anything other than a strictly formal definition. Finally, in an extremely short article, Hwang (1993) describes eh bien as being used by the speaker to signal his responsibility for the following utter-
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ance, while attributing the one preceding the marker to someone else. Through eh bien, the speaker moreover thematizes the previous context and signals the introduction of new elements. She notes that eh bien often marks a break in consensus between interlocutors. In the following example, however, there seems to be no disagreement whatsoever, nor is any new information imparted: (3)
A. [... ] elle nous a montré dans un temple plus vers le Sud je sais plus si c'est à Esna ou après on a vu des hiéroglyphes qui ne sont pas comme les autres et au 'on & ne sait encore pas B. & oui A. actuellement & interpréter && B. & déchiffrer && A. ouais Β. du tout A. ah pas du tout B. oui A. avec une répétition d'animaux de têtes d'animaux alors je ne sais plus & lesquels && j'ai oublié Β. ά mais && on arrive à les dater un petit peu quand même A. oui parce que le temple c'est ça serait plus récent ά par rapport && à l'époque Β. & ah bon d'accord && A. ancienne & attends c'est pas Β.
ά
oui
A.
c'est peut-être c'est pas Dendéra c'est pas Esna, c'est l'autre après,, attends, c'est Edfou je crois B. oui A. eh bien il est assez récent (VE, pp. 53-54)
As the only one of the three authors mentioned, Hwang has apparently used authentic spoken examples as the basis for her investigation, although unfortu nately none are given in this article, which is a summary of her Ph.D.-disser tation.6 As the reader will have noticed, all three authors mention that part of the function of eh bien is to thematize a preceding discourse segment, while rhematizing the following one. Although there is certainly some truth to this (as I shall attempt to demonstrate), I do find that their description, if taken at facevalue, is not entirely adequate, for three related reasons. First, they all neglect to define exactly what is meant by the notions of theme and rheme,
whic
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Prague School, as well as of that of Halliday (cf. Hjulmand 1983), I prefer not to use the technical terms theme and rheme about relations above the level of the sentence. Finally, and most importantly, if by "thematization" of the pre vious discourse, one means that the latter is being used as a point of departure for what will be said next, it would seem that this is, to some extent, a defin ing feature of coherent discourse, and that it cannot therefore be attributed to the presence of eh bien. Something similar may be said of Hwang's contention that eh bien marks the introduction of new elements into the discourse: any bit of discourse that does not contain such elements will ordinarily be totally uninformative and thus infelicitous (there are, of course, exceptions, cf. (3)).
3. The function of eh bien in spoken discourse I shall now attempt to show that there are, in my opinion, essentially two si multaneous aspects to the use of eh bien in spontaneous oral discourse. Pri marily, it marks the introduction of a comparison or contrast (the latter being a particular form of comparison). This is compatible with Sirdar-Iskandar's analysis, to the extent that comparisons/contrasts may of course be more rhe torically effectful, and thus more likely to be used, if they are unexpected. As noted above, this postulated unexpectedness does, however, fail to generalize to all examples. It may also account for Hwang's notion of a consensus break, since her work seems to be based mainly on debates, where comparisons/con trasts are likely to be used in refuting the adversary's views.7 Secondarily, eh bien may work within the negotiation of common ground, either to signal that the following utterance is to be interpreted only in the light of something which has just been introduced into the discourse, and which must therefore be at least temporarily accepted in order for the following to be at all relevant, or else to question the validity (and thus, the relevance) of what was thus previously introduced. In both cases, speakers using eh bien are to some extent restricting the domain of their discourse by explicitly grounding it in the immediately preceding utterance(s), but rather than speaking of theme vs. rheme, I shall argue that the utterances preceding and following this con nective are marked as interdependent. The speaker may thus be seen to be constraining the hearer's manipulation of the propositional content of the utterance in two ways at once, thereby diminishing the cognitive effort needed to arrive at an interpretation of the utterance.
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3.1 Intra-sentential eh bien8 In my corpora, eh bien occurs intra-sententially in essentially three environ ments: between a preposed conditional clause and its main clause; between a preposed temporal clause and its main clause; and between a left-dislocated topic and the sentence "proper". The following are typical examples: (4)
[...] si on devait lui transmettre les heures du lever du coucher du soleil pendant les vingt dernières années eh bien il serait fa cile de trouver une courbe mathématique une fonction mathéma tique qui a qui est contenue dans un nombre de bits d'information qui est beaucoup plus faible (NN, my transcription)
(5)
[...] moi j'ai appris avec délice que quand une certain Jean-Paul Sartre lui a apporté Melancholia qu'il a trouvé un peu triste eh bien il a dit on va appeler ça La Nausée et puis ça a marché (MP, p. 20)
(6)
[...] dans notre débat avec le Parti Communiste, eh bien je crois que c'est aussi un débat extrèmement sérieux (VS1, p. 5)
Now there are a number of similarities between these constructions. First of all, neither conditional clauses, preposed temporal clauses, nor topics can meaningfully be said to be asserted, and they thus illustrate Hwang's (1993) claim that responsibility for the utterance preceding eh bien is attributed to someone other than the speaker. Contrary to what Hwang seems to imply, however, I am not claiming that this comes about as a result of the presence of eh bien. It is clear that the relation between the utterances would be the same even without the marker, but once such a relation exists, the speaker may choose to emphasize it through the use of eh bien. It is widely accepted, following Frege (1892/1993:36), that preposed tem poral clauses are presupposed (cf. also Levinson 1983:182). As for topics (in fact, themes, in the text quoted), they are, in the words of Nølke (1989): [...] presented as the thing that the utterance "is about", that is, as something which typically has some form of existence independently of the particular utter ance. Therefore, λ cannot be held responsible for the theme. (Nølke 1989:22, my translation)9 If this is the case for themes, it should a fortiori be true of topics, to the extent that a distinction is made between the two. Lambrecht (1981:67) like wise speaks of the "presuppositional status of topics".
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Conditionals, on the other hand, are obviously not presupposed in the tradi tional sense. However, Ducrot (1972) writes as follows: [Avec si p, q ] ľ auditeur est clarement sollicité de faire une hypothèse, présentée comme hypothèse, et dont l'annulation éventuelle est de ce fait envisagée au mo ment même où le si est prononcé. [...] L'hypothèse de la proposition condition nelle, bien qu'elle ne soit pas présentée à la manière des présuppositions [...] est traitée, une fois qu'elle est présentée, comme une présupposition ordinaire. (Ducrot 1972:168) Now, other scholars have already noted similarities between topics and condi tionals on the one hand (Haiman 1978), and between conditionals and temporal clauses on the other (Rijksbaron 1986),10 in that all three, in Haiman's words "constitute the frame of reference with respect to which the main clause is either true [...], or felicitous" (Haiman 1978:564). Inspired by Roberts (1989), who consider the consequent of a conditional to be semantically (her term is "modally") subordinate to the antecedent, because the truth of the consequent may only be evaluated relative to a world in which the antecedent is also true, I would like to claim that an analogous relationship holds between left-dislo cated topics and the sentence "proper", as well as between preposed temporal clauses and their main clause. In fact, Rijksbaron (1986), working within the framework of Functional Grammar, argues for essentially the same thing, when he proposes that conditional and temporal clauses be considered, not as satellites, but as themes: [Conditional and temporal clauses] do not additionally specify the nuclear predica tion. If anything, the nuclear predication rather gives additional information which is relevant for the state of affairs designed by the conditional or temporal clause. (Rijksbaron 1986:7) The important thing here is that in Functional Grammar, themes have an independent status, whereas satellites do not (Dik 1989:264-265). Similarly, Lambrecht (1981) notes that: [s]ince the non-topical part of the sentence [...] is "about" the topic, all informa tion presented in it, whether in main or in embedded clauses, is in some sense sub ordinate to the topic. (Lambrecht 1981:58-59) My claim is therefore that the two parts of the sentence types in question are, in fact, interdependent, to the extent that one is syntactically, and the other semantically, superordinate.11 Hence, it is impossible for eh bien to mark a syntactically subordinate clause. The following utterance is distinctly odd:
EH BIEN: MARKER OF COMPARISON AND CONTRAST
(4')
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*il
serait facile de trouver une courbe mathématique une fonction mathématique qui a qui est contenue dans un nombre de bits d'in formation qui est beaucoup plus faible eh bien si on devait lui transmettre les heures du lever du coucher du soleil pendant les vingt dernières années
This does not entail that eh bien is necessarily also infelicitous before a preposed subordinate clause, but in such an environment, it will, however, be un derstood as marking the entire complex sentence, rather than just the clause in question: (4")
eh bien si on devait lui transmettre les heures du lever du cou cher du soleil pendant les vingt dernières années il serait facile de trouver une courbe mathématique une fonction mathématique qui a qui est contenue dans un nombre de bits d'information qui est beaucoup plus faible
The utterance will, in this case, presuppose a preceding one, e.g. a ques tion, on which it may be seen as dependent (cf. section 3.3 on turn-initial eh bien). In what follows, I shall demonstrate that eh bien usually marks some sort of semantic or pragmatic interdependence between what precedes and fol lows it. In two examples, the structure seems a little different: (7)
[...] ce qu'a dit Rocard c'est que dans la mesure où aucun ac cord n'était intervenu à Athènes eh bien, il n'y avait pas d'ac cord au sein de la Communauté sur ce problème (VS2, p. 6)
Dans la mesure does not, of course, have a conditional meaning here, but the propositional content of the clause it introduces is presupposed, and this connective may in other contexts mark a hypothesis. Moreover, in the context of the discussion from which (7) is extracted, the evaluation of the truth of the main clause depends crucially on the frame posited by the subordinate clause. (8)
A. [...] mais en tous cas je t'ai dit elle voilà ce qu'elle m'a dit elle m'a dit, par rapport à toutes les filles que j'ai connues que tu connaissait, eh ben ENfin 'est pas trop tôt voilà B. eh ben c'est gentil (CT, p. 16)
The adverbial beginning par rapport à... does not constitute a normal extraposed topic, but as B's response shows, the reported utterance is, in fact, a compliment on her personality, she herself being a "subset" of all the girl-
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friends of A that A's sister (whose words are being reported) knows of. Thus, the anaphoric ce in the clause following eh bien would seem to point back to an implicit celle-là or B, requiring a "bridging inference" on the part of the addressee (cf. Haviland & Clark 1974). In order to show how eh bien may mark comparisons/contrasts, let us re turn to the examples above. (4')
[...] si par exemple on devait transmettre à quelqu 'un d'autre qui n 'est pas dans le pays par exemple tous les résultats des matchs de football qui ont eu lieu pendant les vingt dernières années bon il est clair que on ne trouverait aucun algorithme qui permette de simplifier le contenu d'information de cette suite alors que si on devait lui transmettre les heures du lever du coucher du soleil pendant les vingt dernières années eh bien il serait facile de trouver une courbe mathématique une fonction mathématique qui a qui est contenue dans un nombre de bits d'information qui est beaucoup plus faible et qui permet de résumer la quantité d'in formations contenue là-dedans en une quantité d'informations beaucoup plus faible (NN, my transcription)
Here, the speaker is comparing the outcomes of two possible scenarios. There is a clear contrast (further indicated by alors que ) between the first case, where no algorithm could possibly be found, and the second, where this could easily be done. (5)
[...] moi j'ai appris avec délice que quand un certain Jean-Paul Sartre lui a apporté Melancholia qu 'il a trouvé un peu triste eh bien il a dit on va appeler ça La Nausée et puis ça a marché (MP, p. 20)
In this example, there is a contrast between the original title of the novel, and that imposed by the publisher. Moreover, it may be inferred from the fact that the publisher thought the original title a bit sad or perhaps even boring, that the book might not have been a great succes, had this title not been changed, whereas thanks to the new title it managed to achieve its well-known state of fame. (6')
[...] le Parti Socialiste a un débat interne parce que c'est un parti démocratique l'issue de ce débat interne apparaîtra au der nier jour de notre congrès mais le débat est un débat clair qui porte sur un certain nombre de points précis et qui ont été déjà
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évoqués au cours de cette journée d'aujourd'hui mais le débat avec les autres c'est d'abord et je tiens à souligner cela c'est d'abord le débat avec la Droite car nous sommes ici pour définir une politique qui est une politique qui nous oppose à la Droite et non pas au Parti Communiste [...] dans notre débat avec le Parti Communiste, eh bien je crois que c'est aussi un débat extrème ment sérieux et qui ne doit pas sombrer dans les affabulations j'emploie le même mot que Roland Leroy parce que j'ai pris con naissance de cet article du Monde et je crois véritablement que ce n'est pas très sérieux de traiter les problèmes de l'apparte nance du Parti Communiste au gouvernement de cette façon-là (VSl,p. 5) Here, we see a three-way comparison between a debate that is internal to the Socialist Party, a debate between the Socialists and the right-wing political parties, and finally one between the two parties forming the government at the time. All three debates are being described by the speaker as equally serious ones, in contrast to what may be inferred from a newspaper article invoked at the beginning of the debate. It should be noted that, while in (5), a comparison is made between some thing mentioned in the bits of discourse immediately preceding and following eh bien, (4') and (6') show that this is not necessarily the case: the first part of the comparison may have occurred some time before, or may even be im plicit. A further example may serve to demonstrate this latter possibility: (9)
A. [...] il avait compris qu 'il fallit tout simplement voler les auteurs au voisin c'est lui qui a débauché Marcel Proust à Grasset d'ailleurs y a une scène qui est très cocasse puisque après avoir obtenu donc les droits de Marcel Proust qui avait été publié chez Grasset à compte & d'auteur && B. & débauchage quoi && C. & à compte άά d'auteur A. tout le monde le sait, eh bien on a vu un coursier de chez Gallimard aller prendre le restant des ouvrages de Proust chez Grasset avec une charette à bras [...] (MP, p. 19)12
Here, there is an implicit contrast between the character and actions of Gas ton Gallimard, and those of others publishers of his time. Note also that A, in his first turn, points out that Gallimard had understood the importance of a certain type of conduct, this having presumably escaped his competitors.
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3.2 Eh bien between two utterances by the same speaker When eh bien occurs between two semantically complete utterances within one turn at talk, it is typically used to introduce a statement which summarizes the point of an anecdote or a quote: (1)
A.
B. A. B. A. B. A. B. A. (10)
moi je ferais trop confiance aux gens elle elle est peut-être trop méfiante mais elle A raison tu vois ce serait un peu le genre tu te rappelles quand on a été prendre le livre,, Isabelle quel livre on est entré à la fac et puis y avait des livres sur les étagères oui tu te souviens oui et puis le gars il je lui ai dit mais je vous l'achèterai demain et il a dit mais non moi je vous fais pas confiance, tu te souviens oui eh ben c'est l'attitude de Nadia (CT, p. 11)13 [...] y avait une phrase que j'aimais beaucoup de Sanguinetti et dont je regrette vraiment qu 'il manque au débat politique et on pourrait la retourner contre Mitterrand il disait la grande réus site de Giscard d'Estaing c'est d'avoir été Président de la Répub lique en faisant croire qu'il venait d'arriver de sa campagne alors que ça faisait onze ans qu 'il était Ministre des Finances, eh bien c'est exactement ça Mitterrand il a été quatorze fois ministre et il est apparu comme un homme neuf en 1981 [...] (MP, p. 6-7)
Although the syntactic distinction between main and subordinate clauses is not relevant here, both examples show a semantic/pragmatic interdependency analogous to the one mentioned above. Neither of the utterances introduced by eh bien can be interpreted without knowledge of the immediately preceding bits of discourse, and are thus dependent on the latter. At the same time, neither the mini-narrative in (1), nor the quote in (10) would seem relevant to the cur rent topic without the evaluative statement following eh bien. As a matter of fact, it clearly transpires from B's hesitation at the beginning of (1) that she is somewhat unsure about what is going on. Both the story of the bookseller and the quote by Sanguinetti are related, not for their own sake, but in order to make a particular point which is relevant to a different topic currently under discussion.
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The element of comparison should be self-evident in both cases: in (1), the bookseller's distrustful attitude is compared to that of Nadia, and in (10), the quote about Giscard d'Estaing is claimed to be equally applicable to Mitter rand. Note in the latter example the exactement in c'est exactement ça. Ad verbs of this type (also précisément, justement...), which make the comparison explicit, are found in several of my examples. However, other types of structures may be found within this category of uses of eh bien. (11)
[...] ce qu'il ne faut quand même pas perdre de vue 'est qu 'une agression de ce genre contribue à aggraver les tensions interna tionales si on laisse faire l'agressivité de Reagan si les peuples laissaient faire l'agressivité par malheur laissaient faire l'agres sivité de Reagan cela nous conduirait au plus grand risque de guerre eh bien je le dis, la guerre n'est pas fatale, Georges Mar chais l'a déclaré en Afrique ce matin, il est possible de passer la camisole de force comme on dit à Reagan (VS1, p. 26)
The speaker utters a conditional in the potentiali s mode, only to refute the consequent of his own hypothesis. To the extent that natural language condi tionals are like material implication,14 a refutation of the antecedent may be inferred as well, since modus tollens allows us to infer ~ p whenever ρ - > q is asserted, followed by the assertion of ~ q. In this case, the speaker is there fore implying that "les peuples ne laisseront pas faire l'agressivité de Reagan", which is, of course, made explicit in what follows. Now, in order for this in ference to be derivable, the relationship expressed in the conditional preceding eh bien must be known to the hearer, and the utterance following eh bien is thus again dependent on the one preceding it. The inverse relationship holds, too, insofar as the speaker would have been conveying rather the wrong im pression, if he had not added the eh bien je le dis... The comparison being made is between a state of affairs where the aggressivity of Ronald Reagan is given free reign vs. one where it is held in check by the international community. (12) A. Françoise en attendant de lire le deuxième tome . eh ben toujours mes petites notes, puisque tout à l'heure c'était le crayon du Président, y a des par exemple ça ne m'étonne pas du tout mais je tombe dans le détail eh bien De Gaulle jeune savait par cœur L'Aiglon et Cyrano ce qui est toute une image (MP, p. 14)15
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This example needs some explanation in order to be understood: the oc casion of utterance is a weekly radio program featuring a number of literary critics, and the topic of the week is biographies. After having discussed a bio graphy of President Mitterrand, they have now moved on to one on General de Gaulle. Speaker has stated early on that she does not intend to give a general critique of any of the works discussed, but will rather single out re vealing anecdotes about the "biographees". This is what is meant by petites notes. Earlier she has mentioned an occurrence from the school days of Mitter rand, involving a pencil: this is referred to by "le crayon du Président". Now, the fact that the young De Gaulle knew the two plays mentioned by heart con tributes in her view as much to an understanding of the General's character as the anecdote about Mitterrand did to the understanding of his. This is where the element of comparison comes in. Moreover, the De Gaulle story has little meaning as it stands, unless seen in the context of the previous anecdote and an on-going discussion for or against "petites notes", as opposed to "vision d'ensemble". This dependency is explicitly marked by the speaker with puisque, which according to Groupe λ-1 (1975) presents what follows it as: [...] déjà admis par ľauditeur [...] le locuteur fait comme si cette admission était liée à la situation de discours où le dialogue prend place. Soit que ľauditeur ait implicitement ou explicitement reconnu q, soit que les conditions mêmes du dia logue rendent q évident. (Groupe λ-1 1975:276) These authors also feel that puisque is closer to being a coordinating con junction than a subordinator (ibid.), which, if correct, would fit my hypothesis that eh bien marks the interdependence of two utterances or utterance parts, although the clause introduced is always either syntactically independent, or the main clause of a complex construction. The following example seems at first sight to pose some problems for my analysis: (13) A. [...] elle nous a montré dans un temple plus vers le Sud je sais plus si c'est à Esna ou après on a vu des hiéroglyphes qui ne sont pas comme les autres et qu 'on & ne sait encore pas B. & oui A. actuellement & interpréter && B. & déchiffrer && A. ouais B. du tout
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A. ah pas du tout B. oui A. avec une répétition d'animaux de têtes d'animaux alors je ne sais plus & lesquels && j'ai oublié B. & mais && on arrive à les dater un petit peu quand même A. oui parce que le temple c'est ça serait plus récent & par rapport && à l'époque B. & ah bon d'accord άά A. ancienne & attends c'est pas B. & oui A. c'est peut-être c'est pas Dendéra c'est pas Esna, c'est l'autre après,, attends, 'est Edfou je crois B. oui A, eh bien il est assez récent (VE, pp. 53-54)16 The element of comparison is implicitly the contrast between relatively re cent temples whose construction may be dated with some degree of confidence, and more ancient ones, where this might be difficult. The use of eh bien may appear peculiar here, since A has already stated that the temple in question is a fairly recent one in Turn 11, but my feeling is that she may, with eh bien, wish to reactivate the idea of contrast because of the intervening digression. As for the interdependency of the utterances connected by eh bien, the above-mentioned digression does attempt to establish a more precise reference for the temple, and may be seen as akin to the constitution of a slightly differ ent topic: we are no longer talking about a temple, but about a particular, named temple. 3.3 Eh bien introducing a turn at talk In this group of examples, where the marker occurs at the very beginning of a turn, the connection must, of course, exist between utterances by two differ ent speakers. This structure is often found in cases of contradiction and/or dis agreement. According to Schiffrin (1987:234), "[d]isagreement is a particular mode of comparison because it juxtaposes what the speaker claims with what the hearer claims". I would add that, over and above this interactional fact, disagreement also juxtaposes and compares two possible worlds: one in which a state of affairs ρ obtains, and one in which it does not. (14)
[Voice-over] [...] débat animé par Bernard Valette réalisation Victor Avaria
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[Female reporter chairing the debate] eh bien bonsoir, au risque de décevoir les admirateurs et les supporters de Bernard Valette ce n'est pas lui qui anime l'émission ce soir (VS1, p. 1) The second speaker is here explicitly negating the assertion of the first. Now, according to Givón (1984:324), the discourse-pragmatic function of ne gation is "to deny Ρ against the background of the hearer's presumed inclina tion to believe in P, believe in the likelihood of Ρ or be familiar with P" (cf. also Ducrot 1973, and Moeschler 1982:30-31, who, as is common in the French tradition, make a distinction between "polemic" and "descriptive" ne gation, where only the former corresponds to Givón's analysis). The utterance introduced by eh bien may thus be said to presuppose the previous assertion, in a weak pragmatic (i.e. not a logico-semantic) sense (Givón 1984:328). As Moeschler (1982:71) puts it, "[l]a réfutation est [...] un acte réactif (vs. initiatif). [Elle] présuppose donc toujours un acte d'assertion préalable auquel elle s'oppose". It does not really matter that the first speaker is not the addressee in this example: evidently, the actual addressees, namely the people listening to the radio show, would be just as inclined to believe the proposition that is being negated. It is interesting that an explicit negation occurs not immediately fol lowing eh bien, but only after a neutral greeting, which in itself, being spoken by a female rather than a male voice, is bound to alert listeners to a contrast between what was expected and what is actually the case. (15) A. [...] sam mentir hein à huit heures et demie je savais que Kiki était la sœur de Patrick B. ouais mais ça 'est je te jure que ça influençait pas parce que Kiki je sais pas si t'as vu mais quand elle veut faire un truc & ça c'est Α. ά eh ben άά moi JUSTEMENT je me suis vachement étonnée parce que j'ai trouvé qu'elle avait PAS tellement de punch juste ment, sur certains angles (CV, p. 15) Both speakers have worked as summer camp counsellors in the same place. They are discussing the (de-)merits of another counsellor Kiki, who was, ac cording to B, held in great respect by the children. A's claim is that this re spect was due to Kiki's being the sister of the director of the camp, rather than to her forceful personality. As in the previous example, we have negation, but this time the contradic tion is more or less implicit, mainly because is not allowed to finish his
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utterance. A, however, has inferred what he was going to say, and takes that as the background presupposition of her own utterance. Not only does she em phatically contradict what she expects will be the content of B's turn, she also manages once again indirectly to convey her previous claim that Kiki was obeyed merely because of her brother, since it may be inferred from her obser vations that there is no other plausible explanation. We therefore, in fact, have a double contrast here. The fact that an utterance may connect to information that is merely implicit shows that discourse coherence is essentially not a linguistic matter, but de pends crucially on the nature of the mental models constructed on the basis of the component utterances (although it may of course be enhanced through the use of certain linguistic elements). According to Givón (1995:346), "text com prehension is synonymous with the construction of structured mental repre sentation of the text". Berrendonner (1983) speaks of a "discursive memory" containing not only information carried by the explicit co-text, but also infor mation that may be deduced from the former type. (I would add to this any information necessary to fully comprehend the co-text.) Connexion (and ana phoric reference) may be made to both types (op. cit.:235-236). Such a view of comprehension and coherence is also argued for within the framework of Relevance Theory by Blass (1990). (16) A. [...] du point de vue orthographique y a eu une période où Chéphren & ou enfin ou Chéops && Β. & oui mm Chéphren oui && A. c'était ç'a été h puis on a eu un & k B. & k oui A. et à nouveau on est revenu à c h B. eh ben nous on a eu droit au là-bas A. alors bon euh (VE, pp. 18-19) The two speakers are discussing B's recent journey to Egypt. It is probably relevant to add that A is a teacher of history. This may not seem like a clear example of (implicit) contradiction. I have chosen to include it in this section, because the intonation on A's following alors bon euh indicates that she interprets it as such, rather than as merely a comment. This analysis is further corroborated by the fact that immediately preceding this exchange, there is a bit of an argument about the proper way to pronounce the place name Giza in French. There is also a contrast between the general on (est revenu à c h) used by A, and B's personal nous, on (a eu droit
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au k). There is no explicit negation here, but the utterance introduced by eh bien is clearly dependent on, and thus in a loose sense presupposes, the pre ceding one for relevance. (17) A. B. A. B.
vous voulez persuader les gens que le socialisme ça marche non non non & pas du tout && & malheureusement && ça ne marche pas nous considérons et c'est une forme d'autocritique que nous fai sons que nous avons laissé un peu trop le terrain des idées à la Droite et nous voulons reprendre l'offensive sur le terrain des idées voilà ce que nous voulons dire ce n'est pas du tout la con statation d'un échec A. eh ben j'attends vos idées avec intérêt mais pour l'instant je vais m'en tenir aux faits (VS1, pp. 13-14)
This is another example of indirect contradiction. There is a contrast be tween idées and faits, and the speaker is implying that the latter contradict the former, which are moreover irrelevant to the present discussion. The anaphoric vos idées presupposes the previous utterance. It should be noted in this context that I would not speak of actual inter-de pendence between two utterances in these examples. There is, of course, no sense in which the "presupposed" assertion may be said to require the reactive act. On the other hand, there is explicit negotiation as to what should and should not be considered part of the common ground by the participants. Eh bien in turn-initial position does not always co-occur with disagreement. Some examples show the marker introducing the second part of an adjacency pair: (18) A. [...] tu sais il travaille il a un café B. ah il tient un café A. un café hôtel alors il y a les clients et tout ils doivent rester avec • eux et comme c'est lui qui doit fermer le café donc il ferme le café quand il y plus de clients tu comprends B. ouais A. voilà quand tout le monde doit aller se coucher et voilà B. et ça fait à peu près quelle heure A. eh ben ça dépend des jours des fois c'est une heure du matin des fois c'est huit heures et demie des fois c'est neuf heures moins le quart des fois 'est dix heures on sait jamais à quelle heure il rentre c'est marrant hein (CT, p. 17)
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Here we have a question-answer sequence. In this type of structure the two utterances are interdependent, as the first part of an adjacency pair is interactionally incomplete without the second, which if it does not occur is considered to be "officially absent" (cf. Schegloff 1972:364), while the latter is clearly what Moeschler (1982) calls a reactive act, and thus presupposes a first pair part. The comparison is explicitly marked in this example by the repeated des fois. Now, it seems entirely possible that A might equally well have given an an swer on the following lines: (18') B. et ça fait à peu près quelle heure A. eh ben une heure du matin à peu prè In this sequence, there is no explicit comparison, and, indeed one often seems to find eh bien introducing such answers to questions. The element of comparison/contrast is not, however, absent in such cases, insofar as the person asking a wh-question presupposes a paradigm of entities/concepts that might be substituted for the question word. Thus, the speaker who marks his answer with eh bien may be understood to emphasize that it is the completion by this particular entity or concept, rather than any other con ceivable one, that makes the proposition true (cf. also the definition of contrastiveness in Chafe 1976:33-34). Similarly, in the case of yes/no-questions, two possible states of affairs are always envisaged, and an answer introduced by eh bien would then emphasize either the truth or the falsity of the proposition by contrasting it with the possible alternative state of affairs. Earlier in the same conversation we find a compliment-response sequence: (8')
A. [...] c'est vrai qu'elle est très franche hein ça on peut pas lui retirer ça quand elle a envie de dire quelque chose elle le dit elle bon des fois elle se tait parce que si elle parlait ce serait pire tu vois mais 'est vrai qu 'elle est très franche et quand elle com mence à être franche avec quelqu 'un qu 'elle aime pas je te jure que ça fait mal hein B. il en voit de toutes les couleurs celui qui est en face A. elle lui dit deux mots elle dit jamais beaucoup de choses elle dit deux mots et puis ça suffit l'autre il comprend rien que d'abord par son attitude et en plus par les deux mots qu 'elle dit alors là et voilà c'est tout mais en tout cas je t'ai dit elle a voilà ce qu'elle m'a dit e, par rapport à toutes les filles que j'ai connues que tu connaissais eh ben ENfin 'est pas trop tôt voilà B. eh ben c'est pentii (CT, p. 16)
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A contrast may be inferred here between B's positive evaluation of the talked-about girl's friendly attitude with respect to herself, and how one might feel about her unfriendly attitude towards people in general. Apart from the adjacency pair structure, one may consider that there is some negotiation of common ground going on here. Conversation analysts usu ally speak of "preference organization" in connexion with certain types of adjacency pairs, whereby there are two possible second pair parts, one being preferred over the other. While such preferences must ultimately be based on face considerations (cf. Brown & Levinson 1987), they also have structural correlates, insofar as "preferred" responses are linguistically unmarked, where as "dispreferred" ones are normally marked in some way (cf. Levinson 1983:332ff.). Now, a compliment is a type of assessment. Generally speaking, the preferred reaction to an assessment is agreement, but compliment responses put the speaker in a bit of a bind, because there is at the same time a constraint on self-praise in conversation, which requires that the agreement be toned down (cf. Pomerantz 1978). According to de Fornel (1990), the prototypical structure of a compliment is this: A exprime une attitude favorable par rapport à (Do) au moyen de: D2: ľétat de choses X est bon; D1: est lié à l'état de choses X. (Fornel 1990:170) Now, the preferred response may take one of two forms: what de Fornel calls "acceptation à minima", which refers to D2 and changes the evaluation; or a "refus à minima", which refers to Dl and changes the referent (ibid.:175). B's response in this example is in my view a case of minimal acceptance. By an swering that the person paying the compliment is being "nice", she is impli citly saying that the state of affairs evoked in D2 (that "A has finally made friends with a worthwhile person", where Dl is "B is that person") is not in herently good, but is merely being interpreted as such. There is thus a slight element of contradiction, which might account for the fact that this otherwise "preferred" response is nevertheless delayed by a prefacing discourse marker. The following example shows an invitation (to speak) — acceptance pair: (12') A. il va avoir du mal pour écrire le deuxième tome qui sera le sou verain B. Françoise en attendant de lire le deuxième tome . eh ben toujours mes petites notes (MP, p. 14)
EH BIEN: MARKER OF COMPARISON AND CONTRAST
335
We find a high-rising intonation on the word notes here, which in my opin ion shows that the speaker is defending her style of criticism, as compared to that of speaker A. In support of this we find, on pp. 8-9 of the same transcript, the following exchange: C. et puis Jean-Didier en homme sérieux qu'il est a parlé du capital qui est dans ce livre 'est-à-dire le chemin politique de Mitter rand mais puisque tout à l'heure j'ai parlé des gambettes et que j'ai décidé que je serai comme ça toute la soirée B. ah bon C. oui comme ça y a des petites notes qui ne relèvent pas de l'im mortel mais qui sont importantes [...] B. on peut expliquer le dix mai par la plume et le crayon, enfin . non mais [...] and on p. 21: B. B. C. B.
bon vous l'avez lu & ľAssoulinene alors && & tout à fait ah oui && je l'ai luje me suis régalée petite note & non && & euh && des petites notes oui oui oui vision d'ensemble pour une fois, non petite note
Finally, in this last example, we find neither disagreement nor an adjacency pair structure: (2')
A. [...] c'était pas un voyage simplement pour rester dans les piscines des hôtels comme ça hein non non on a beaucoup visité hein B. c'était quel organisme A. c'était le Club Med B. c'était le Club Med A. comme Evelyne Buchillot B. eh ben comme quoi le Club Med euh,, fait des choses qui sont finalement pas si euh A. ah mais 'est la partie en fait ça s'appelle Club Med Découvertes & pour les voyages && B. & ah oui d'accord ah oui && A. donc et ils ont des guides vraiment on avait une Egyptienne mais vraiment spécialisée hein [...] (VE, pp. 15-16)
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MAJ-BRITT MOSEGAARD HANSEN
However, there is a clear sense in which le Club Med is being constituted as a topic in this exchange, a topic which is subsequently commented on by A. This is analogous then to the kind of utterance interdependence found with intra-sentential eh bien. Now, the Club Med has a reputation of organizing the kind of resolutely non-intellectual vacation where people relax and enjoy themselves, but where they stay among their compatriots, having little or no contact with the indige nous culture or population of the country they are visiting. In the utterance marked by eh bien, is thus contrasting her preconceived idea of a Club Med vacation with what A has told her about her trip to Egypt. Note that A is fully aware of the reputation of the Club, as evidenced by the fact that her identi fication in Turn 3 is pronounced in a rather low voice, and that immediately upon B's comment, she hastens to add that, in fact, her trip was organized by a special branch of the Club Med. 3.4 Eh bien itself constitutes a turn at talk In this last type of example (of which I unfortunately have only one), eh bien is used alone, as a reaction to an utterance or situation, on which it may then be seen to depend. (19) A. ce n'est pas parce que vous répétez chaque vendredi soir que la gauche a échoué que la réalité est celle-là ce n'est pas vrai B. s'il n'y avait que moi A. ce n'est pas vrai B. ça ne serait pas grave A. ce n'est pas vrai B. Estier mais Estier s'il n'y avait que moi ça n'aurait aucune importance mais il y a des millions de Français qui pensent comme moi & je le répète à chaque occasion && A. ά prenez prenez prenez άά les résultats de la politique menée depuis deux ans et demi comparez-là honnêtement et objectivement B. oui eh bien A. avec les résultats de la politique de Monsieur Giscard et de & Monsieur Barre && Β. ά eh bien eh bien άά A. Monsieur Barre 14% d'inflation & Monsieur && B. ά eh bien Estier &&
EH BIEN: MARKER OF COMPARISON AND CONTRAST
337
A. Giscard passant de 400.000 à 1.800.000 chômeurs en sept ans B. ouais A. bon comparez avec cela et dites-nous si la gauche a échoué (VSl,p. 10-11) Here, we find A introducing an explicit comparison between the perform ance of the Socialist government of the time with that of the previous rightwing government. seems to be using eh bien to enquire about the conclusion to be drawn from this comparison, which in this particular case amounts to implying that such a comparison is not relevant.
4. Conclusion I have argued, then, that in "X eh bien Y", eh bien should be seen as an in struction from the speaker to the hearer, directing him to do two things: 1) to understand Y as manifesting one element of a comparison or contrast, and to search his mental model of the discourse for a second element, which may or may not be manifested by X; and 2) to understand Y as being dependent on the understanding of X for relevance, and in most cases, vice versa. This, then, represents the coded content of the particle. A marker of this type may be seen as a kind of filter which, without ac tually creating content (to the extent that the same interpretation of the host utterance would, in principle, be available in the absence of the marker), nev ertheless helps to "weed out" unwanted alternative interpretations. Its basic function is thus one of enhancing discourse coherence and of easing cognitive effort on the part of the hearer. Gernsbacher (1990) has convincingly shown that comprehension consists in the construction of mental structures, and that information which is less than optimally coherent with what has preceded it will result in shifts to building new substructures, such shifts again making information which has preceded them subsequently harder to retrieve. Given the ephemeral, linear nature of (at least relatively) unplanned spoken discourse, such as that which is studied here, any element that works to ensure coherence takes on a great deal of importance. If it can be shown that discourse particles in general have this function (for some other examples see Hansen, forthcom ing), then they deserve to be studied far more carefully than has hitherto been the case.17
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MAJ-BRITT MOSEGAARD HANSEN
Notes 1.
In many cases, the marker is manifested rather as eh ben. I consider this a free variant of eh bien found only in (mimicked) speech.
2.
See also Hansen (forthcoming).
3.
This theory is a coherence-based theory of langue, as opposed to parole, in which se quencing problems assume a central role.
4.
In both of the latter cases, Sirdar-Iskandar speaks of "énonciation", thus conflating the categories of "acte illocutoire" and "acte d'énonciation", or in Searlean terms "illocutionary act" vs. "utterance act".
5.
I should like to thank Professor Mary-Annick Morel of the University of Paris III for allowing me acces to the corpora gathered by the Dept. of French Linguistics. I have taken the liberty of occasionally simplifying the transcriptions, in the sense of using ordinary, rather than phoneticized orthography, of writing proper names with capital letters, and of leaving out most hesitation phenomena, corrections, pauses and the like, except where these occur in the immediate environment of eh bien. This should make the examples easier to read and comprehend for the untrained reader. & and && mark the beginning and end of overlap; , and ,, mark short and somewhat longer pauses, respectively. Other than in proper names, capital letters designate intonational emphasis. As there will sometimes be more than one instance of eh bien in the same example, the one that is commented on will be the one that is emphasized.
6.
This dissertation, bearing the same title as the article, is unavailable for inter-library loan at the time of writing.
7.
In my corpora, eh bien is in fact used significantly more often in debates than in ordi nary conversation. It may be that comparisons are more likely to be emphasized when used in argumentative discourse.
8.
Note that I am well aware of the difficulties inherent in trying to give an operational de finition of a "sentence", when analyzing oral discourse (cf. Crystal 1980; Gülich 1970: 46-47). Thus, I do not consider the notion to have any privileged theoretical status, but use it here for lack of a better term.
9.
In Ducroťs theory of "polyphony", λ symbolizes the "sender of the utterance", as op posed to the "sender as an individual", the former having no existence outside the speci fic situation of utterance.
10.
Although it is not stated explicitly, it would appear from the examples used in Rijks baron's paper, that only preposed temporal clauses are being considered. Whatever the case may be, this is as far as I am prepared to go.
EH BIEN: MARKER OF COMPARISON AND CONTRAST
11.
339
Note that in spoken French, clauses that must be interpreted as having a temporal or, especially, a conditional meaning may occur without a subordinator, whereas this does not seem to be the case for clauses with other types of adverbial meanings: [...] et puis en plus on part à Assouan, c'est des il y a des rotations d'avions (VE, p. 31-32) Il ferait ça moi je piquerais une crise (overheard) In such cases, the resemblance between these types of clauses and left-dislocated topics is, of course, even more striking.
12.
I consider the clause marked by eh bien as the main clause of a complex sentence begin ning with après avoir..., since the parenthetical tout le monde le saií is fairly clearly in response to the overlapping comments by and C.
13.
I analyze the two last utterances by A as one turn at talk, since A's tu te souviens hardly constitutes more than a "within-turn signal" requesting a backchannel response from B, whose oui displays that she is following what A is saying (cf. Duncan & Fiske 1985: 146)
14.
For the view that they are not, see e.g. Stalnaker (1975), Johnson-Laird (1983:55-62). I do not believe, however, that their arguments substantially affect my interpretation of (11).
15.
I am somewhat in doubt as to whether this example ought perhaps to be placed among the examples of intra-sentential occurrences of eh bien, because the De Gaulle jeune... clearly seems related to the clause beginning with puisque. I have chosen to place it here, because the speáker does affect a reformulation of the utterance as originally planned. I consider the ça ne m'étonne pas du tout mais je tombe dans le détail as paren thetical.
16.
Parallel to example (1), I consider B's oui in the next-to-last utterance to be a simple backchannel response (cf. note to example 1).
17.
I would like to thank Hanne Korzen and Henning Nolke for helpful comments on an earlier version of this manuscript.
References Anscombre, Jean-Claude & Oswald Ducrot. 1983. L'Argumentation dans la langue. Bruxelles: Mardaga. Auchlin, Antoine. 1981a. Mais heu, pis bon, ben alors voilà, quoi! Marqueurs de structuration de la conversation et complétude. Cahiers de linguistique française 2.141-159.
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Auchlin, Antoine. 1981b. Réflexions sur les marqueurs de structuration de la conver sation. Etudes de linguistique appliquée 44.88-103. Berrendonner, Alain. 1983. "Connecteurs pragmatiques" et anaphore. Cahiers de linguistique française 5.215-246. Blakemore, Diane. 1987. Semantic Constraints on Relevance. Oxford: Blackwell. Blass, Regina. 1990. Relevance Relations in Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni versity Press. Brown, Penelope & Stephen C. Levinson. 1987. Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chafe, Wallace. 1976. Givenness, contrastiveness, definiteness, subjects, topics and point of view. Subject and Topic ed. by Charles N. Li, 25-55. New York: Acade mic Press. Crystal, David. 1980. Neglected grammatical factors in conversational English. Stud ies in English Linguistics for Randolph Quirk ed. by Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech & Jan Svartvik, 153-166. London: Longman. Davidsen-Nielsen, Niels. This volume. Discourse particles in Danish. Dik, Simon 1989. The Theory of Functional Grammar. Part 1: The structure of the clause. Dordrecht: Foris. Ducrot, Oswald. 1972. Dire et ne pas dire. 3rd ed. 1991. Paris: Hermann. Ducrot, Oswald. 1973. Le rôle de la négation dans le langage ordinaire. 0. Ducrot. 1973. La preuve et le dire, 117-131. Paris: Marne. Ducrot, Oswald, et al. 1980. Les mots du discours. Paris: Editions de Minuit. Duncan, jr., Stanley & Donald W. Fiske, 1985. Interaction Structure and Strategy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fornel, Michel de. 1990. Sémantique du prototype et analyse de conversation. Cahiers de linguistiquefrançaise11.159-178. Frege, Gottlob. 1892. On sense and reference. Meaning and Reference ed. by A.W. Moore, 1993, 23-42. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gernsbacher, Morton Ann. 1990. Language Comprehension as Structure Building. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum. Givón, Talmy. 1984. Syntax. Vol. Ι: Λ functional-typological introduction. Amster dam: John Benjamins. Givón, Talmy. 1995. Coming to terms with cognition: Coherence in text vs. coher ence in mind. T. Givón. 1995. Functionalism and Grammar, 341-392. Amster dam: John Benjamins. Grice, H. Paul. 1975. Logic and Conversation. Speech Acts (= Syntax and Semantics, 3.) ed. by Peter Cole & Jerry L. Morgan, 41-58. New York: Academic Press. Groupe λ-1. 1975. Car, parce que, puisque. Revue Romane Χ(2).248-280. Gülich, Elisabeth. 1970. Makrosyntax der Gliederungssignale im. gesprochenen Fran zösisch. München: Fink. Haiman, John. 1978. Conditionals are topics. Language 54.564-589.
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Hansen, Maj-Britt Mosegaard. Forthcoming. Marqueurs métadiscursifs en français parlé: ľexempie de bon et de ben. Le Français moderne. Haviland, Susan E. & Herbert H. Clark. 1974. What's new? Acquiring new informa tion as a process in comprehension. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behav ior 13.512-521. Hjulmand, Lise-Lotte. 1983. Tema/Rema-begrebeme med særligt henblik på Pragerskolen, "Den tyske Skole" og Halliday ( = ARK, 18.). København: Handelshøjskolen i København. Hwang, Young-ai. 1993. Eh bien, alors, enfin et disons en français parlé contempo rain. L'Information grammaticale 57.46-48. Johnson-Laird, Philip N. 1983. Mental Models. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univer sity Press. Lambrecht, Knud. 1981. Topic, Antitopi and Verb Agreement in Non-Standard French. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Levinson, Stephen 1983. Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Métricn, René. 1987. Petit dictionaire bilingue permanent des interjections, particules et autres "mots du discours": VII. Eh bien. Nouveaux cahiers d'allemand 2.181 . Moeschier, Jacques. 1982. Dire et contredire. Bern: Lang. Nølke, Henning. 1989. Polyfoni (= ARK, 48.). København: Handelshøjskolen i Køb enhavn. Pomerantz, Anita. 1978. Compliment Responses. Studies in the Organization of Con versational Interaction ed. by J. Schenkein, 79-112. New York: Academic Press. Rijksbaron, Albert. 1986. The Pragmatics and Semantics of Conditional and Temporal Clauses (= Working Papers in Functional Grammar, 13.). Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam. Roberts, Craige. 1989. Modal subordination and pronominal anaphora in discourse. Linguistics and Philosophy 12.683-721. Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1916. Cours de linguistique générale. Paris: Payot. Reprinted 1972. Schegloff, Emmanuel A. 1972. Sequencing in conversational openings. Directions in Sociolinguistics ed. by John J. Gumperz & Dell Hymes, 346-380. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Schegloff, Emmanuel A. & Harvey Sacks. 1974. Opening up closings. Ethnomethodology: Selected Readings ed. by R. Turner, 233-264. London: Penguin. Schiffrin, Deborah. 1987. Discourse Markers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Searle, John R. 1969. Speech Acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sirdar-Iskandar, Christine. 1980. Eh bien! Le Russe lui a donné cent francs. Ducrot et al. 1980.161-191. Sperber, Dan & Deirdre Wilson. 1986. Relevance: Communication and cognition. Oxford: Blackwell.
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Stalnaker, Robert C. 1975. A theory of conditionals. Causation and Conditionals ed. by Ernest Sosa, 165-179. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wilson, Deirdre & Dan Sperber. 1993. Linguistic form and relevance. Lingua 90.125.
Sources Berson, Mylène. 1985. Transcription d'un débat radiophonique: Le Masque et la plume. Université de Paris III, UER de Linguistique française = MP. Bichard, Michel. 1992. Transcription d'une conversation: Λ propos d'un voyage en Egypte. Université de Paris III, UER de Linguistique française = VE. Colovou, Catherine, s.d. La Colonie de vacances. Université de Paris III, UER de Linguistique française = CV. Ferreira, Isabelle. 1985. Conversation téléphonique. Université de Paris III, UER de Linguistique française = CT. Nalouti, Mongia. 1990. Nombres et neurones. Université de Paris III, UER de Lin guistique française; partial transcription only = NN. Thévenon, Emmanuel. 1984. Transcription de deux débats radiophoniqu.es: Vendredi soir. Université de Paris III, UER de Linguistique française = VS1&2.
The degrammaticalization of agentivity in Tlapanec Søren Wichmann University of Copenhagen
1. Introduction By degrammaticalization I mean the process whereby a category which used to interact with other categories falls out of such relationships. It may possibly then become a structural feature of the lexicon, and finally it may disappear, leaving only scattered, lexical traces. In the present article we shall look at an example of what I consider a possible case of degrammaticalization.1 The case in point is the Tlapanec category of agentivity. This is discussed from a typo logical perspective and in the light of the controversy about the origin of Tlapanec. Hopper and Traugott (1993:2) and Heine, Claudi & Hünnemeyer (1992: 258-259) claim that the existence of grammaticalization processes is a serious challenge to upholding a sharp distinction between synchrony and diachrony. My general point in this article is that the same challenge is posed by degram maticalization, the opposite of grammaticalization.
2. Tlapanec and the theory and typology of agentivity Tlapanec,2 which is spoken in Southern Mexico, is usually taken to be a lan guage of the Otomanguean stock (Rensch 1977, 1978; Suárez 1986; Kaufman 1983, 1987-88, 1990). Earlier it was identified as being Hokan (Sapir 1925). Although the evidence currently seems to weigh heavier in favor of Otoman guean, the question cannot be said to have been settled yet. The category to be treated here may be an important piece in the puzzle of resolving the question since it is apparently an old category, which today, as I shall show, has shrunk to almost total lexicalization.
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SØREN WICHMANN
Let us begin by giving a general overview of the Tlapanec verb. When some general statements concerning the productive parts of the morphology have been made we will be better equipped to understand in what sense it may be said that the category of agentivity stands apart from the major organiza tional principles of the verb. Tlapanec makes a basic distinction between intransitive and transitive verbs. The latter group may be subdivided into those verbs that take animate objects and those that take inanimate objects.3 Verbal inflection is basically organized according to an ergative pattern: the same array of suffixes that express the argument of intransitives recur as markers of animate objects on transitives. Intransitive verbs are distributed over three major inflectional classes. Two of these are much alike. They are parallel with respect to the tones that attach to the suffixes and differ only with respect to the vocalism of some of the suf fixes. There are five different subclasses of each of these intransitive para digms. The third major inflectional class in which intransitive verbs are found is somewhat peculiar in that the inflections are similar to those of possessed nouns. It is moreover a mixed class which also contains some transitives that take inanimate objects. Nine different subclasses have been recorded for this class. There is no need to go into detail concerning transitive verbs that take inanimate objects. They are distributed over five major inflectional classes whose subclasses number 65 or so. Needless to say, it is not easy to give a quick overview of the inflection of Tlapanec verbs. The point made above that the animate objects of transitive verbs are expressed by the same segmental suffixes as subjects of intransitives can, however, be illustrated relatively sim ply. Each of the three major inflectional classes of intransitives is mirrored by one major class of transitives taking animate objects. Below I present three groups of examples of the ergative morphological organization:4 (1)
a. na-ta-či2hp-uun?32 PROG-2AG-hug-l [tone pattern: 2 (second person) acting on 1 (first person)] 'you are hugging me' (2AG = Agentive 2nd person; PROG = progressive aspect) b. na-či2hp-a21 PROG-hug-3GT [tone pattern: 1 acting on 3GT] 'I am hugging her/him' (GT = Given Topic, a category relevant for third person ani mates, see Wichmann 1992a)
DEGRAMMATICALIZATION OF AGENTIVITY IN TLAPANEC
c.
(2)
345
na-ŋga2h-a1 PROG-fall-3GT [tone pattern = lexical tone + tone of suffix] 's/һӘ is falling'
a. na-ta-ku2dy-uun?32 PROG-2AG-clean-l [tone pattern: 2 acting on 1] 'you are cleaning me (as one cleans a baby)' b. na-ku2d-i21 (final root vowel deleted) PROG-clean-3GT [tone pattern: 1 acting on 3GT] 'I am cleaning her/him'
(3)
c.
na-ta2ŋg-i1 PROG-turn:over-3GT [tone pattern = lexical tone + tone of suf fix] 's/һӘ turns over'
a.
na-ta-ja2-un?3 PROG-2AG-hear-l [tone pattern: 2 acting on 1] 'you are hearing (obeying) me'
b. na-nja2-un32 PROG-hear-3GT [tone pattern: 1 acting on 3GT] 'I am hearing (obeying) her/him' c.
na-ŋgu?2-unl PROG-feel:at:home-3GT [tone pattern = lexical tone + tone of suffix] 's/һӘ feels at home'
Tlapanec verbal inflection is rather messy with its many classes and subclasses — not to mention widespread irregularity, suppletion, and variation among speakers. The basically ergative morphology is probably the single most per vasive organizational principle. The examples show that objects of transitive verbs are expressed like subjects of intransitive verbs (e.g. (2b) -i indicating 3GT object and (2c) -i indicating 3GT subject). Tones carry the major burden in expressing animate transitive subjects, but it is more difficult to make gener alizations in this area because a given subject-object combination often has a unique tone pattern. Besides the inflectional devices of tones and suffixes, there is a set of pre fixes that express the agent of most transitives and reflexives and of a minority of the intransitives. I have chosen the neutral label 'Set I' for these prefixes. Most intransitives and a minority of the transitives do not carry these prefixes.
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SØREN WICHMANN
We may argue that they carry another set, 'Set II', in which all markers are zero. The morphemes comprised by the two sets are the following: (4)
Set I
Set II
1SG 2SG 3SG
ta-, nda-, t-, nd-
Ø
PL
-
Ø
What do these prefixes mark? I shall argue below that Set I marks 'agentivity', while Set II marks 'non-agentivity'. However, before presenting the arguments and specifying precisely what I mean by 'agentivity' in this case, let us look at how the category is expressed. The binary-valued category of agentivity is simply not expressed for 1st and 3rd person singular. In the 2nd person singular there are four different prefixes whose shape is partly morphophonologically determined and partly represents lexicalized products of unknown diachronic developments. For all plural forms the category shows up as a vowel /u/ in aspectual prefixes that would other wise contain the vowel /a/. These are ma- 'affirmative future', na- 'affirmative progressive', ka- 'negative perfective', and ša- 'negative future'. In the affirm ative perfective and in the negative progressive, plurals cannot express the category. Affirmative perfective and negative progressive are expressed by means of the prefixes ni- and ci- respectively. Possibly the defectiveness in these two polarity-aspect categories can be explained by the morphophonological fact that /a/ is deleted before /u/, while /u/ is deleted after HI. As I elicited verbal paradigms I found that most reflexive and transitive verbs carry Set I prefixes, while most intransitives carry Set II (i.e. no) pre fixes.5 A few intransitives and transitives take both sets. Table 1 demonstrates the exact figures concerning what kinds of verbs are found with each set. We shall now look at some representative members of the six groups of verbs that emerge from the combinations of transitivity and Set I and II pre fixes (all verbs are cited in the 3rd person Given Topic form):6 Transitive verbs taking Set 1 prefixes comprise verbs of manipulative action: -?ban! 'move'; 2-?to* 'trim, peal'; 2-?ndr 'dig out'; communication, etc.: 2-?tun1 'say, tell'; 2-?jun1 'listen, hear'; 2-?nr a3hma2 'pray, study'; transac tions: -te?2yon1 'borrow'; -guri3gwi1 'receive'; -ŋgo2we1 'sell'; mental action: -ku2mu1 'remember, think, feel', and many more verbs, all characterized by a high degree of control and performativity on the part of the agent.
2
DEGRAMMATICALIZATION OF AGENTIVITY IN TLAPANEC
347
Table 1: Distribution of agentive (Set I) and non-agentive (Set 11) prefixes over kinds of verbs I
II
I or II
100%
613
100%
184
100%
24
Tr
71%
439
21%
36
46%
11
Intr
9%
53
79%
145
54%
13
Refl
20%
121
2%
3
0%
0
Total
Intransitive verbs taking Set 1 prefixes mainly comprise verbs decribing bodily motion such as 2-bo?! 'lie down, go to bed'; 2-?ke! 'come (to non-base)7'; 2 -?kaJ-li3 'come back (to base)'; 2-?gee32 'go'; -ni2yun?1 'leave'; 2-?sŋe1 'dance'; -pa3ši1 'rear, buck', and verbs describing bodily functions in a wide sense, e.g. 2-?gm1-nu?3 'sleep (sg./pl. agent)'; 2-sta1 'live, exist'; -rnbe2ye?1 'cry'; -rido2hte?1 'spit'; -ndo?2we1 'laugh'; -ŋgu3nda1 'dream'; -ra?2ci?1 'sneeze'; -mi2šu?1 'urinate'. In addition, there are verbs belonging to other semantic groups: 2-?te1 'speak'; -?tara?2e1 'make a (religious) promise, pray, make public'; -špi3bi1 'lighten'; -ru3mba?21 'work as a farm hand'; -ma2hko?1 'look, enjoy oneself'; -ndya2me1 'spy on'. Reflexives taking Set 1 prefixes. This class is almost identical with the class of reflexives as a whole. I shall cite but a few: 3-sto2-me2ne?1 'lick oneself'; 2-?ni3 dahta2ŋwiin2-me2ne?1 'make oneself smell good, put on perfume'; 2-?ni2 ce?1ska2-mi2na?1-ri3 'endulge in laziness again'; -?sŋga2-me2ne?1 'teach one self; -ra3hku2-mi2na1-li3 'come loose, be unfastened again', etc. Transitives taking Set 11 (i.e. no) prefixes. These verbs are few. What unites them is perhaps that the subject does something out of a need or desire: 3-?ku2?pii2 'chew, eat' (sg./pl. subject); -?kwa2yun?1 'eat supper'; -ku2špe1 'suck'; 2 -?ŋa1 'drink'; 2-si1-li3 'vomit'; 2-ndo1 'want'; -ci3yu1 'not want' (only found in the progressive aspect); ma2-ka1hkoo21 'not want' (in the perfective aspect on ly)'; ma2-ma2soo?32 'not want' (in the future aspect only); 3-yo?1 'have need for, use'; -hni2gu?1 'love'. Some of the verbs imply strong volition or effort under difficult circumstances; the subject is trying to seize control over the situation rather than actually being in control: -ŋga1nu32-ra?2a1 'reach'; 2-?ŋgo1
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'endure, bear'; 2-hmu?1 'use'; -ma1yun32 'not be able to, not learn'; -wanamu2hun?1 'make plans'. Intransitives taking Set II (i.e. no) prefixes. This large group consists of verbs that describe an event or state not controlled by the subject. Some state verbs are: -nda2i1 'stink'; -cu2wa?1 'have diarrhea'; 2-ju1 'be content, happy'; -ki?3na1 'be angry'; -kahnda2o?1 'be thirsty'; 2-sko1 'be lazy'; -ka2hma1 'be placed in contact with a vertical surface'. Some event verbs are: 2-?un1 'get drunk'; -mbi2si21 'roll'; 2-ti1 'cut oneself by accident'; -ndati1ga1 'get lost'; 2-ka1 'burn'; -21 'be ill (in the progressive aspect), die (in the perfective and the future)'; -kuga2si1 'drown'; -ŋgu2ši1 'slip'; -hpri1ga1 'fall unintentionally'; 2 -?wan2 'swell'. Finally, there are many verbs that imply entering into a state: -mbu2hpi1 'get blisters'; 3-?ču?1 'become full, decomposed'; 2-ga?1 'become tired'; -ŋgwa?2a1 'tremble, shake'; 2-sa?1-ri3 'cool off (as after work)'; -štirbi1 'become numb'; 2-hyu1 'wake up'. Reflexives taking Set 11 (i.e. no) prefixes. I have only recorded two. One is derived from the verb meaning 'eat', which also takes Set II prefixes: 2-?ku3m e 2 e ? 1 'eat oneself (a verb which is possibly not very acceptable outside of direct elicitation contexts). Another is -ŋgi?3mbi2-me2hne1 'come together in agreement' (pl.). The kinds of semantic distinctions we have witnessed at play here, i.e. control and volition, are reminiscent of the parameters involved in the way that socalled 'active' (or 'agentive',8 etc.) languages structure their arguments. An immediate difference between such languages and Tlapanec, however, is that in Tlapanec the category is a lexicalized feature which only serves to catego rize the verbs; it is not a feature of case marking. Nevertheless we must look towards active languages to find a typological parallel. I do not know of any other language where agentivity is attested as an overt category without having any case-marking function. Mithun (1991) provides a typological overview of the kinds of semantic dis tinctions that characterize active languages. She works out a method by means of which any active language may be classified according to its semantic type. Active languages have two distinct sets of markers for subjects. Mithun labels them Set I and Set II, respectively (a convention which I have adopted in this article). Set I subjects are more agent-like and Set II more patient-like semantically speaking. But languages differ as to exactly which parameters they are sensitive to. In Mithun's typology, four parameters are set up: ±event, ±P(er-
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formed)/E(ffected)/I(nstigated), ±control, and ±affected subject. The last pa rameter is only relevant for a few languages (e.g. Pomoan languages). Mithun generates all the possible combinations of values for the various parameters and then looks at how the two sets of markers are distributed in the various languages. Her result can be seen in Table 2. Table 2: Semantic typological parameters of agentive case marking (adapted from Mithun 1991:524)
+ event, +P/E/I, + control + event, + P/E/I, -control + event, -P/E/I, -control -event, + P/E/I, + control -event, -P/E/I, -control, -affect -event, -P/E/I, -control, + affect
Guaraní I I I II II II
Lakhota I I II I II II
Central Porno I II II I I II
This table shows that Guaraní is sensitive to eventhood, Lakhota to P/E/I, and Central Pomo to control. The first three rows alone are sufficient to distinguish the three language types. We should be able, then, to place Tlapanec within the typology on the basis of these three rows alone. When testing it for the minimal diagnostic features, Tlapanec immediately emerges as a Lakhota-type language: +P/E/I, +control verbs such as -?gee32 'go' and -ŋga2yu1 'run' take Set I; + P/E/I, -control verbs such as -ši?1 'vomit' and -ra?2ci?1 'sneeze' also take Set I; while -P/E/I, -control verbs such as -ka21 'die' and -ŋgu2ši1 'slip' take Set II. The assumption that Tlapanec is a Lakhota-type language sensitive to P/E/I may be upheld also when we look at -event verbs. However, the material for comparison with other languages is more scanty here since most -event verbs are statives, i.e. verbs that do not take aspectual prefixes, and the category we are looking at is only realized in conjunction with aspectual markers - it is simply not present with statives. Thus all -event, + P/E/I, + control verbs are statives. They include mindi3na1 'be incestuous', ci?2ya1 'be courageous', etc. Verbs that are -event, -P/E/I, -control, -affect are also all statives, e.g. ci3da?1 'be tall, elevated', gu3hki?1 'be strong', ca?2ca?1 'be bald', etc. The -event verbs which take aspectual markers are all -P/E/I, -control, + affect and take Set II markers (as in Lakhota). They include -ju1 'be happy', -ka2gun?1 'be mad', and many more (see above under intransitives taking Set II markers).
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So far the place of Tlapanec in the semantic typology has proven to be quite straight-forward; but a couple of caveats remain. First, we have to allow some latitude in our idea of what it means to perform/effect/instigate in order to ac comodate the fact that verbs meaning 'eat, chew', 'eat supper', 'drink', and 'suck' carry Set II marking. In Tlapanec this should presuppose a minus-value of P/E/I. As already noted, however, these verbs may be viewed as describing actions prompted by a strong need or desire. While the subject Performs and Effects the action s/he is not the ultimate Instigator. The Instigation is a uni versal need to take nourishment imposed on us by nature. Unfortunately, even this interpretation does not quite rescue the applicability of the framework since it may be argued that the meaning of verbs taking Set I such as 'vomit' and 'sneeze' also have to do with action instigated by some strong need or de sire. We then have to argue further that the subject is more of an Instigator when the body expelis something (out of some need) than when the body re ceives something (out of some need). Admittedly we are skating on thin ice here and have to accept that the verbs having to do with the taking of nutrition deviate from what we would expect. Another, more serious, caveat concerns a group of intransitive motion verbs that are perfect exemplars of + event, + P/E/I, and + control verbs. Yet they take Set II marking as if the subject did not perform, effect, and instigate the action. They are: -to?2o1 'enter', -ta?2a1-li3 're-enter', -kra?3an1 'climb' -kra?3d-li3 'climb to one's base', -sma2te2ga1-li3 'kneel again', -hŋgi2yu?1 'draw near', -ru2wan1-li3 'climb up again', -hŋga2o?1 'escape', -hndra?2in1 'disappear in all directions (as people fleeing from a military attack)'. While any explanation of these cases may be impossible to prove, we have somehow to come to terms with their existence. My argument would be that precisely in the area of motion verbs the system was corrupted because of the frequent use of such verbs. This would have resulted in the disappearance of the pre fixes, leaving these verbs with Set II marking (absence of prefixes). If the system is undergoing a change toward regularization along the distinction tran sitive vs. intransitive, the area of motion verbs would be first to suffer. I have yet to cite the rest of the motion verbs that take Set II markers. These are all suppletive, something which attests to their frequent use. They include -ŋga2nu1-li3 'arrive there at one's base'; -ka2ne1 'arrive here at non-base'; -ŋga2ne21 'arrive there at non-base'; 3-hnu1-li3 'go out for good, from base'; 2-?ke1 'come to non-base'; 2-?ka1-li3 'come back to base'; 2-hke1 'go'. I suspect that these very frequent verbs have paved the way for inconsistencies in the system. Al though the caveat is serious, odd exceptions are also known to exist in the semantically based case-marking systems that I have been comparing Tlapanec
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to. Thus Mithun (1991:540) mentions the cases of Mohawk and Caddo verbs meaning 'to smile' and 'to scream', which take patient pronouns contrary to all expectations. In this section I have been looking at a classificatory feature of Tlapanec verbs that permits a bipartitioning of all verbs along the same lines as in active languages — more specifically as in the Lakhota type. But Tlapanec is not, in fact, an active language. The system is a lexicalized one and quite elusive at first. Suárez (1983), who describes another variant of Tlapanec, did not in fact find any regular distribution in the Set II markers in spite of the fact that he had intimate prior experience with the active language Guaraní (Gregores & Suárez 1967). What we have, then, is something which may be a remnant of a once-pro ductive feature of the grammatical organization of the verb. However, we still need to explore whether the category has been completely lexicalized or wheth er it still interacts with other grammatical features or show other signs of pro ductivity. During my investigation of the Tlapanec verbs, I have found that there is some variation in the choice of one set of markers as opposed to the other for a given verb, and I have also discerned some interaction with the category of reflexivity. These possible signs of productivity are discussed in section 3.
3. Agentivity in Tlapanec as a grammatical feature 3.1 Ambivalent verbs My data-base contains 800 odd non-stative verbs, or, verbs for which Set I or Set II prefixes and the associated category of agentivity (i.e. ±P(erformed)/E(ffected) /I(nstigated)) is relevant. For about 3% of these verbs speakers were in doubt or differed as to the marking. If the marking were a productive, grammatical, and meaning-changing operation, we would expect that both sets of prefixes were possible with a higher number of verbs. Apart from statistics, there is the question of speakers' conscious opinions about the meaning of the category. Having spent about a thousand hours studying Tlapanec verbs with various speakers I can safely say that such an approach yields very little. To wit, one speaker (Antonio Zavaleta) did in fact once opine that the verb -no2hŋgo1 'cross over', when taking Set I markers, means 'cross over (as through difficult terrain with weeds and mud)', whereas the meaning with the Set II markers is 'pass (as one enters a doorway)'. This seems to indicate that one
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of the defining features is 'force-exertion'. Nevertheless, I did not find that this is a parameter which characterizes the category as a whole. For the verb -?ta3· gi3ŋa?1 'burp' another speaker (Pablo Vargas) indicated that the difference might have to do with 'burp noisily and repeatedly in the company of others' (with Set I) as against 'produce a normal burb' (with Set II). This points to something like 'volition' as a defining feature. Again this resembles P/E/I, but does not provide us with a precise definition of the difference between the two groups of verbs. In order to get speakers to state conscious opinions about the category, one could check through all the verbs and ask them if both of the markings were possible; one could then go on to ask them what the difference was. My opin ion based on experience with such a methodology is, however, largely nega tive. In their urge to be cooperative and in their near lack of any conscious clue as to the meaning of the category, speakers will often tell you that both values are possible, when in fact they normally seem to choose but one of them. Often they will try out one set of markers for the first half of a paradigm and then change their mind because it sounds strange after all. Or one may find that a second speaker will disagree with the first speaker's grammaticality judgments. Finally, simply asking what the difference is will in 99% of all cases yield no return. In this way one only succeeds in messing up one's data base by accepting wrong information. One piece of wrong information can be much more damaging to the final picture than many pieces of missing informa tion. We may conclude, then, that there are probably somewhat more than 3% of all verbs that may take both values, but it is doubtful whether even many more years of study will make it possible to know precisely how many. I fur ther doubt if we shall ever know precisely what the choice implies in the mind of the individual speaker - s/he will almost always say that there is no differ ence in meaning. This discussion must conclude, then, with a mere listing of verbs for which both values are possible. The significance of the list is that the members are very often verbs for which it is difficult to choose notionally between a plus or minus value of the P/E/I parameter. This indirectly confirms that P/E/I is indeed the semantic parameter which is active in shaping the category. The following are verbs that in the mind of at least one speaker indiscrimi nately may take Set I and Set II markers: -patu2ma1 'lean onself up against', -wa2din-li3 'be in again, have gone back to one's dwelling-place (as after a party)', -?ta3-gi3ŋa?1 'burp' (lit. 'speak wind'), -ku3ma1-li3 'think back, be nostalgic', -ŋgu?2un1 'feel at home', -ŋgu?2un1-li2 'feel at home again', -ŋgu2si1-li2 'slip, slide again', -hma2gwi?1 'be affected by lots of chili', 2-hma2'
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yo?1 'swim', -wa2din?32 'be inside' (pl.), -wa2hun32 'stand (many objects, e.g. trees, feet)', -wa?2wii3 'stick out', -ya?3gu?1 'move, twist as someone who is in love and tries to make an impression', 2-kwa1-hkyon32 'think, be worried', -ga2hŋgo?1 ' swallow', -ŋge ?2mee32/-ŋgu2hmii32 'place oneself in vertical contact with something' (sg./pl.), -hpra?2a1 'enter suddenly', -ro2mo?32 'eat soup', -némbo32 'believe in something', -no2hŋgo1 'cross over', -?ŋa2hŋgo?1 'swal low'. Finally, for the following verbs different speakers differed as to whether they selected one or the other set of markers: 2-kw-і?u3-ra2?1 'live off of', -(h)mbra?2a1 'entangle oneself (by accident)', -ku2mu1 'remember, think, feel', -ma2hko?1 'look, enjoy oneself'. 3.2 Agentivity and the reflexive An in-depth analysis of the reflexive as a whole would lead to setting up some simple parameters by which agentivity marking on reflexive verbs could be predicted. While this is not viable at the present state of research, it is still possible to indicate tentatively what kinds of conclusions we might arrive at. With most transitive verbs, the function of the reflexive is to indicate that the subject and the object have the same referent. In the plural both reflexive and reciprocal interpretations are possible, i.e. 'they hit themselves' and 'they hit one another' are both possible interpretations of the 3rd person plural of the reflexive of the verb meaning 'to hit'. In most cases of reflexive derivatives of transitives the agentivity marking remains the same, since Set I markers indicating +P(erform)/E(ffect)/I(nstigate) are equally appropriate for the re flexive and the non-reflexive. We shall not discuss these kinds of verbs any further. There are a few transitive verbs that do not allow for the interpretation that the subject and object share reference under reflexive derivation. I have regis tered one such verb, namely -kra?2ŋgo1 'carry something cross-wise over the top part of the body' vs. -kra?2ŋgo2-me2ne?1 'carry something cross-wise over the top part of the body oneself'.9 The resulting interpretation is that the sub ject is carrying out the action himself — or herself — as opposed to some other person doing it for him or her. Very loosely this may be described as an in crease of agentivity on the part of the subject. That some such analysis is pos sible is seen by the fact that verbs taking Set II markers often require Set I markers under reflexive derivation. This would seem to confirm once again that ±P(erform)/E(ffect)/I(nstigate) is really the decisive parameter and at the same time paves the way for an adequate analysis of the reflexive.
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The data indicating that agentivity marking interacts with the reflexive is scanty but significant. Here follows a list of the verbs recorded that take Set II marking (-P/E/I) as non-reflexives and Set I marking (+P/E/I) as reflexives (5a-j). The last three examples (5k-m) may indiscriminately take both sets of markers in the non-reflexive, but only Set I in the reflexive. (5)
a.
-ki2ši1 'fly' -ki2šŕ-me2ne?1 'leave ground'
b. -ka2hma1 'be placed in contact with a vertical surface' -ka2hma2-me2ne?1 'place onself in contact with a vertical surface' c. -kra?3an1 'ascend' -kra?3a2-me2ne?1 'ascend (oneself)' d. -kra?2ŋgo1 'carry something cross-wise over the top part of the body' -kra?2ŋgo2-me2ne?1 'carry something cross-wise over the top part of the body (oneself)' e. -špu2hpi1 'flap wings' -špu3hpi2-me2ne?1 'bathe oneself in earth by flapping the wings' f.
-hpri1ga2 'fall (non-intentionally)' -hpri2ga3-me2ne?1 'let oneself fall'
g. -hŋgu2ni?1 'become smoked or black' -hŋgu2ni2-me2ne?1 'let oneself become smoked or black' h. -hmi2du1 'be a miser' -hmi3du2-me2ne?1 'be a miser with respect to oneself' i.
-hwi1ga?1 'sweat' -hwi1ga2-me2ne?1 'make oneself sweat'
j.
-wa2pa1 'have time' -wa2pa2-me2ne?1 'allow time for oneself'
k. -?ta3-gi3ŋa?1 'burp' -?ta2-gi1ŋa2-me2ne?1 'burp oneself 1.
-hma2gwi?1 'be affected by lots of chili' -hma2gwi2-me2ne?1 'expose oneself to lots of chili'
m. -ne2mbo32 'believe in something' -ne2mba3-me2ne?1 'be preposterous'
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The difference between the two verbs in (5a) is the increased focus on the sub ject as Instigator in the reflexive. I think this focus on the Instigation of the action is in fact the most general semantic feature that distinguishes the above reflexives from their corresponding non-reflexives. In section 2 we also ap pealed to Instigation as an important component of the agentivity complex as far as Tlapanec is concerned.
4. The degrammaticalization of agentivity In the preceding sections we have discussed the meaning of a set of prefixes that have partly fused with the aspect-polarity prefixes. It appears that they classify verbs for whether or not the subject performs/effects/instigates the ac tion. In this complex Instigation was found to be of particular importance. By comparing it with languages of the active type as discussed in Mithun (1991) we have found that Tlapanec is reminiscent of such languages, in particular of the Lakhota type. The major difference, however, is that the Tlapanec system is not a case-marking system. It is appropriate, then, to inquire into the prehistory of Tlapanec to see whether perhaps some ancestral form of the language might possibly have ex hibited a case-marking system of the expected kind. Kaufman (1987-88), who looks at aspect markers in Otomanguean, reconstructs paradigms in which back rounded vowels and back unrounded vowels are said to alternate freely in the plural. In the absence of investigations such as the present one, this is only to be expected. But we now know that the alternation is motivated, although it does not appear so from Suárez (1983) or, indeed, from descriptions of other Otomanguean languages. It is noteworthy, for instance, that Ixcatec, which Kaufman classifies as an Eastern Otomanguean language, has two alternative sets of aspectual prefixes (or proclitics) that look very much like those of Tla panec, which is said to be a distant relative belonging to the other (i.e. West ern) main division of Otomanguean. In other words, the category could be a very old one — as old as Otomanguean itself (a language family of roughly the same time depth as Indoeuropean). The category may be more systematically employed in other Otomanguean languages than would appear from the avail able descriptions, but so far only two Otomanguean languages have been iden tified as being active.10 When looking north to languages traditionally known as Hokan, we find that active case marking is well attested, Pomoan being the perhaps best known example (McLendon 1978; Moshinsky 1974; O'Connor 1986).11 While it is
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tempting to think that Hokan languages such as the Pomoan ones could reflect a kind of system ancestral to the one attested in Tlapanec (perhaps even the system, provided that there is a genetic connection between Tlapanec and Hokan), such thoughts are only speculative. Even without looking at the prehistory of the matter, I think it is appropri ate to speak of degrammaticalization in the case of the Tlapanec agentivity markers. We have found that the system is lexicalized and unproductive and that it has broken down with some of the very frequent motion verbs. It repre sents an example of a structural feature which is seemingly unmotivated and which is crying out for a historical explanation. In a synchronic grammar its status would seem to be very marginal compared to the productive, inflectional system. Since traditional, structural thinking does not operate with degrees of grammaticality, we are at a loss as to how exactly we should fit the phenome non into our grammar. If, however, we allow ourselves to consider both the synchronic and the diachronic point of view, we may begin to understand the kinds of motivation that may lie behind the system, and various interesting perspectives — synchronic as well as diachronic ones — emerge.
5. Conclusion Studying Tlapanec is like reading a palimpsest. Behind a differently organized and fully productive verbal inflectional system a peculiar, lexicalized system with semantic parallels to active case marking emerges. The category exhibits very little interaction with other categories of the language, so we may argue from a synchronic point of view that its grammatical status is questionable. Instead we should appeal to diachronic explanations in trying to find a motiva tion behind the category. The study of phenomena such as the one we have been looking at is akin to the study of grammaticalization. Both lines of inquiry inevitably lead to questioning whether a sharp distinction between synchrony and diachrony is viable. They moreover sharpen our focus on the limits of grammar. Studies in grammaticalization raise the question as to where grammar begins; studies in degrammaticalization raise the same kind of question, only in its inverse form: "Where does grammar end?".
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Notes 1.
The example has been chosen among several similar phenomena in Tlapanec, cases which lack of space prevents me from considering. They include verbal prefixes with a highly limited occurrence that express causation, refer to instruments, or go with cer tain adjective-like stative verbs, etc. Another example from Tlapanec is a suffix -i2 that only occurs when nouns are possessed and serves to classify all nouns according to whether their referents possess 'force' or some similar quality. The category looks very much like a gender category. However, "[g]enders are classes of nouns reflected in the behavior of associated words" (Hockett 1958:231). The classificatory system of Tlapanec nouns does not interact with, say, verbal marking. It is a purely lexical — probably lexicalized — feature.
2.
The variety treated here is the one spoken in the town of Azoyú, Guerrero, Mexico. How the varieties of Tlapanec (or Tlapanecan) configurate and whether they may proper ly be termed "dialects" or "emergent languages" is not clear at present. Whatever the case may be, the varieties are probably similar enough to render the main points of the following discussion valid across the board.
3.
I am going to refer to the formal arguments of the verb as 'subjects' and 'objects', albeit with some reluctance. Since I have argued elsewhere (Wichmann 1992a) that subject and object assignment in the sense of Dik (1989) do not apply to Tlapanec a more neutral terminology (e.g. First, Second, and Third Argument or Formal Agent/Patient or S/A/O) might have been preferred; but the terms 'subject' and 'object' suffice, provided that they are understood in a theory-neutral sense. The term 'object', in my use, sub sumes both direct and indirect objects.
4.
Verb stems are inflected both by means of segmental and tonal devices. Every verb has associated with it a tonal melody that extends over the last two syllables. The melody may consist of two or three level tones. In the latter case the two last tones are asso ciated with the last syllable. I use the notation l for high, 2 for mid, and 3 for low tone. A further orthographical convention is that a final n signals nasalization of the last syl lable.
5.
The field work was carried out in Azoyú 1991-1994 during three stays, each of which lasted 7-9 weeks. Nearly all verbal paradigms were elicited in all details with two dif ferent speakers.
6.
As it is impossible to cite verb roots in isolation, I cite all verbs in the 3rd person New Topic realis form (for the topic category, see Wichmann 1992a, and for the realis/irrealis distinction, see Wichmann 1994). To arrive at fully inflected forms an aspectual prefix should be added. These prefixes are inherently toneless.
7.
For the distinction base/non-base in Tlapanec motion verbs, see Wichmann 1992b, 1993.
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8.
A great variety of labels have been used. Some that have been in use over the past quar ter of a century are 'active' (Klimov 1974), 'agentive' (e.g. Dahlstrom 1983), 'split S' (Dixon 1979), and 'split intransitive' (e.g. Van Valin 1990). Sapir's review of Uhlenbeck (Sapir 1917) is often said to have initiated the discussion of active languages.
9.
With all verbs the reflexive is derived by adding a suffix from a special paradigm which expresses both person and reflexivity (the 3rd person Given Topic form being -me2ne?1). The verb stem also undergoes a regularization of the tonal pattern. Whether the members of the paradigm of suffixes are in fact suffixes or clitics or free pronouns is difficult to decide. There are arguments both for and against the various possible analyses. These arguments are of little relevance in the present context, however.
10.
The only Otomanguean languages previously to have been described as being active are Amuzgo (Smith Stark 1986) and Chocho (Mock 1982). Both belong to the Eastern Oto manguean branch in the classification of Kaufman (1987-88).
11.
A lesser known case of an active Hokan language is that of the southern outlier Oaxaca Chontal (spoken in Oaxaca, Mexico). Some indication of the active nature of Oaxaca Chontal (or Tequistlatec as the language is also called) may be gleaned from Waterhouse (1962:26). Waterhouse, who describes the lowland dialect, does not, however, explicitly treat Oaxaca Chontal as an active language. For the highland dialect there is an extensive dictionary by Turner & Turner (1971). While the Turners are no more explicit concern ing the typology of Chontal case marking than was Waterhouse, their dictionary makes it quite clear that Chontal has some of the characteristics of an active language. The distinction between agentive and patientive case marking does not seem to be relevant for transitive subjects (they are all agentive), but for intransitive ones the distinction is pervasive (in the terminology of Turner & Turner (1971:323) agentive intransitives are simple called "intransitive" while patientive intransitives are called "semi-transitive"). I am indebted to Thorn Smith Stark (p.c.) for pointing out these facts to me.
References Dahlstrom, Amy. 1983. Agent-patient languages and split case marking. Proceedings of the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society ed. by A. Dahl strom et al., 37-46. Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Linguistics Society, University of California. Dik, Simon C. 1989. The Theory of Functional Grammar. Part I: The structure of the clause. Dordrecht: Foris. Dixon, Robert M.W. 1979. Ergativity. Language 55.37-138. Gregores, Emma & Jorge A. Suárez. 1967. A Description of Colloquial Guaraní. The Hague: Mouton. Heine, Bernd, Ulrike Claudi & Friederike Hünnemeyer. 1991. Grammaticalization: A conceptual framework. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
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Hockett, Charles F. 1958. A Course in Modem Linguistics. New York: Macmillan. Hopper, Paul & Elizabeth Closs Traugott. 1993. Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kaufman, Terrence S. 1983. New Perspectives on Comparative Otomanguean Phonol ogy. Manuscript. Kaufman, Terrence S. 1987-88. Otomanguean Tense/Aspect/Mood, Voice, and Nomi nalization Markers. Manuscript. Kaufman, Terrence S. 1990. Tlapaneko-Sutiaba, OtoMange, and Hoka: Where Greenberg went wrong. Manuscript prepared for Language and Prehistory in the Ameri cas: A Conference on the Greenberg Classification. Boulder, Colorado, March 22-25, 1990. Klimov, G.A. 1974. On the character of languages of the active typology. Linguistics 113.11-25. McLendon, Sally. 1978. Ergativity, case, and transitivity in Eastern Pomo. Interna tional Journal of American Linguistics 44.1-9. Mithun, Marianne. 1991. Active/agentive case marking and its motivations. Language 67.510-546. Mock, Carol 1982. Los casos mortosintácticos del chocho. Anales de antropología 19.345-378. Moshinsky, Julius. 1974. A Grammar of Southeastern Pomo (= University of Califor nia Publications in Linguistics, 72.). Berkeley: University of California Press. O'Connor, Mary Cathrine. 1986. Semantics and discourse pragmatics of active case marking in Northern Pomo. Proceedings of the First Annual Meeting of the Pacific Linguistics Conference ed. by S. DeLancey & R.R. Tomlin, 225-246. Eugene: University of Oregon. Rensch, Calvin R. 1977. Classification of the Otomanguean languages and the position of Tlapanec. Two Studies in Middle American Linguistics (= SIL Publications in Linguistics, 55.) by D. 01trogge& C.R. Rensch, 53-108. University of Texas: Ar lington Press. Rensch, Calvin R. 1978. Typological and genetic consideration in the classification of the Otomanguean languages. Actes du XLII' Congrès International des Américanistes, Paris 2-9 sept. 1976. Vol. 4., 623-633. Paris: Société des Américanistes. Sapir, Edward. 1917. Review of Uhlenbeck 1917. International journal of American Linguistics 1.82-86. Sapir, Edward. 1925. The Hokan affinity of Subtiaba in Nicaragua. American Anthro pologist 27.402-435, 491-527. Smith Stark, Thomas C. 1986. The active-static nature of Amuzgo (Otomanguean). Paper prepared for the 1986 Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America. Suárez, Jorge A. 1983. La lengua tlapaneca de Malinaltepec. Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
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Suárez, Jorge A. 1986. Elementos gramaticales otomangues en tlapaneco. Language in Global Perspective ed. by B.F. Elson, 267-284. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics. Turner, Paul & Shirley Turner. 1971. Chontal to Spanish-English dictionary. Spanish to Chontal. Tucson, Arizona: The University of Arizona Press. Van Valin, Robert D., Jr. 1990. Semantic parameters of split intransitivity. Language 66.221-260. Waterhouse, Viola Grace. 1962. The Grammatical Structure of Oaxaca Chontal (= Internationaljournal of American Linguistics, Vol. 28, No. 2, Part II). Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University. Wichmann, Søren. 1992a. Topic switch-reference in Azoyú Tlapanec and the localglobal parameter. Manuscript. [An earlier version of the paper was presented at the 5th International Conference on Functional Grammar, Antwerp, 1992.] Wichmann, Søren. 1992b. A semantic framework for the Azoyú Tlapanec Iterative. Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 25.125-145. Wichmann, Søren. 1993. Spatial deixis in Azoyú Tlapanec. Sprachtypologie und Uni versalienforschung 46.113-132. Wichmann, Søren. 1994. Verbal inflection: An overview of desinences and tones (= Azoyú Tlapanec Grammatical Research, Report 2.1.). Manuscript.
The functions of locative prepositions Ebbe Spang-Hanssen and Henrik Rue University of Copenhagen and CAP-Programmata
1. Introduction In recent studies of the linguistic expression of spatial relations, a functional interpretation of the meaning of locative prepositions has been strongly advocated (Herskovits 1986; Vandeloise 1986; Langacker 1991), in opposition to more traditional representations by means of geometrical figures. In this paper, we will examine different meanings of the word 'function' as applied to locative prepositions, concentrating on the way locative prepositions are used to constrain search space. Our main claim is that, in fact, simple geometrical relations play a very important role, especially in communicative functions. It is a general trend in modern linguistics that the meaning of words must be studied in relation to their use. It is a main theme in functional and cognitive linguistics. As regards locative prepositions, this means that their meaning cannot be reduced to some geometrical representation, as it often was in traditional linguistic literature. According to the traditional view, it seemed intuitively correct to describe the meaning of the preposition in as a position inside a circle or to describe the meaning of on as a position a bit higher up than but still in contact with some horizontal line. In opposition to this traditional approach, modern linguists have stressed the necessity of taking into account the ways speakers use the locative prepositions, but when we talk of the use of the prepositions, we may be thinking of rather different things. We may be thinking of use with respect to communicative needs, i.e. how prepositions best can be used to ensure that the right information gets through to the listener. This kind of function we might call the communicative function. It has mainly been treated in the literature in terms of the landmark theory. Or we may be thinking of use with respect to the way humans perceive space and act in space. In the literature, it is mainly the latter aspect of prepositional use that has been stressed. In a number of papers, linguists have shown that
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the relations expressed by prepositions do not correspond to simple geometrical configurations, but reflect directly the interest humans take in the positions of objects. We might call these functions conceptual functions. In cognitive linguistics it has generally been stressed that geometry has little to do with either of these functions, whether communicative or conceptual. We think, however, that the role of geometry merits a closer examination, with respect to both kinds of functions. Our main point is the role of geometry in the com municative function, but we will start with a short look at the conceptual function.
2. Conceptual functions A basic idea in modern cognitivist approaches to spatial relations is that humans perceive space, and all the objects contained in it, not only according to the geometrical properties of objects, but also according to the functional properties of space and objects (Miller & Johnson-Laird 1976; Langacker 1991). It has been widely recognized, for example, that the vertical dimension plays a more important role in our universe and in the way we see it than the horizontal dimen sions, because of the all-pervasive influence of gravity on life on Earth. In her now classical study, Herskovits (1986) gives the very convincing example of a potato placed under a bowl that has been turned upside down. The strange thing is that it is impossible to use in in this case and say: The potato is in the bowl, although the potato is placed within the contour of the bowl. The position of the potato seems to correspond to the geometrical meaning of the preposition in. But as a matter of fact, in requires that the reference object is perceived as a container, and the bowl does not function as a container when turned upside down. Vandeloise (1986, 1993) and Vieu (1991) have elaborated on this example, adding that a fly in the same position as the potato under the bowl could be said to be in the bowl, because the bowl in relation to the fly that wants to get out acts as a container, i.e. as an object that limits the movements of some other object. It is interesting to note that the example works equally well in English and in French, and also in Danish and in many other languages. Similarly it has been noted that on and its equivalents in other European languages does not only mean superposition, but expresses more generally the functional idea of support. A bee can be said to be sitting on the leaf, even if, geometrically speaking, it is sitting under the leaf. The important thing is that the leaf supports the bee (Aurnague 1991). So far, most linguists agree. Geometrical (topological) as well as functional ideas clearly play a role in the definition of the meaning of prepositions, but
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there seems to be less agreement about how these ideas are connected. Vandeloise, a leading researcher within the cognitivist paradigm, has taken a firm stand (Vandeloise 1993), declaring the functional aspect the dominating one. He has classified a considerable number of recent studies of the preposition in and its equivalents into three main types: (1) geometrical, basing the description on the dimensions concerned (in is claimed to be basically three-dimensional), (2) topological, the central concept being that of inclusion, and (3) functional, using the idea of containment. Vandeloise not only correctly claims, as is clear from the examples given above, that purely geometrical or topological descriptions are insufficient, he also claims that the functional description is superordinate to the others. His description of the containment relation includes among other features also the topological definition: 1. 2. 3.
The container controls the position of the content The content moves towards the container The content is included (at least partially) in the container or in the convex closure of its containing part (Vandeloise 1993:33, our translation)
He furthermore claims that, in relation to the human speaker or hearer, containment is a simple concept, even if it is difficult for theoreticians to formalize it. He refutes the counterexample given by Herweg (1989:121): (1)
Peter ist in Amerika.
saying that the frontiers of a state constrains movements in and out of the country, and that the idea of control works equally well for two or for three dimensions. In our opinion, it is difficult to find an idea of containment in all the locative uses of in. It suffices to replace Amerika by New York, which is not known to have any frontiers limiting movement in or out, so we might have an example here of the priority of topology. It is not easy to see which comes first, the position or the function. If we base the description totally on the functions, we risk losing the geometrical and topological relations between the prepositions. After all, many of the basic pre positions in all languages do describe different positions in space, and we suspect that they stand in relatively simple positional relations to one another. It still remains possible to see prepositions as having basically geometrical meanings (cf. Herweg 1989), and to consider their functional meanings as natural conse quences of their geometrical meanings, given the physical laws of our world:
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GEOMETRY
inclusion superposition position behind lower position
FUNCTION
→ .→ → →
containment support/domination invisibility/inaccessibility invisibility/inaccessibility/dominated position
In many cases, including some cases discussed by Vandeloise, it is easier to see how we get from geometry to function, than the other way round. It is quite understandable that the preposition that indicates a position that is lower than some other position (i.e. under), as well as the preposition that indicates the position behind, can be used to express invisibility: (2)
Der er et pengeskab under billedet på væggen. 'There is a safe under the picture on the wall'.
(3)
Der er et pengeskab bag billedet på væggen. 'There is a safe behind the picture on the wall'.
It is no wonder in our world that under is so frequently associated with invisibility that this preposition can be used to indicate an invisible position, even when that position is not lower than that of the reference object. Similarly, the law of gravity explains sufficiently that superposition is most frequently associated with the idea of 'weighing on' and its converse 'support'. The Danish preposition på, the closest equivalent to on, gives good evidence that the central feature of this preposition cannot be 'support', but must be super position with contact. From this central feature it follows rather naturally that the preposition på can express not only 'support', but also 'contact with a surface' and even 'part of a surface' or 'exterior part'. In Danish, på is very much used to indicate a part-of relationship, as a kind of genitive: (4)
Det var bagoverbøjet, over kanten på en stor lænestol. 'It was bent backwards, over the edge of a big armchair'. (Høeg, Fortællinger 19)
(5)
Solskinnet løb gennem kronerne på de store, løvrige træer. 'The sunshine was flowing through the crowns of the big, leafy trees'. (Martin A. Hansen, Høst 14)
This use of the preposition should not be confused with the cases where the noun phrase following på indicates the part of the object that supports the object, as is done in the Dictionary of the Danish Language, ODS, article paa:
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Bordet hviler kun på tre ben. 'The table only rests on three legs'.
The legs are so to speak the instrument of the support relation. This last use of on and its equivalents, a kind of metonymic use, is quite widespread in European languages (to rest on ones back, to stand on ones head, etc.), and may, in fact, be associated very directly with the idea of support — note also walking on one 's aching feet. In this case, the noun phrase following the preposition indicates the part that supports the central part of an object. But the Danish part-of relation ship is quite different. In the general metonymic part-of relationship we have: Object - preposition - Exterior part In the Danish genitive construction we have: Exterior part - preposition - Object What is interesting here is that the genitive relationship does not follow from the support relationship but from the idea of surface (exterior part), the exterior part being on any side of the central part. It seems that the part must be visible in this construction: (7)
Hun undrede sig over skallen på ægget. 'She wondered at the shell of the egg'.
(8)
*Hun undrede sig over blommen på ægget. 'She wondered at the yolk of the egg'.
The exterior part may coincide with the central part, provided it is visible: (9)
Hans retsind groede som stammen på et træ. 'His sense of justice was growing like the trunk of a tree'. (Martin A. Hansen, Høst 33)
It is true that there are similar constructions where this visibility restriction does not hold, constructions where på is used with verbs expressing actions that do harm to somebody, constructions that resemble the dative relation: (10)
Den gik lige ind i hjertet på drengen. 'It went right to the heart of the boy'.
We do not claim that all readings of prepositions can be derived in a simple way from some simple geometrical figure, but we think that in spite of the impor tance of the functional aspect, the geometrical or topological meaning of the locative prepositions still seems to be the core meaning from which the various
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readings of the prepositions best can be explained. In the following section, we will look at communicative functions, in which the role of simple geometrical relations are still more apparent.
3. Communicative functions 3.1 The landmark theory It is generally assumed in the literature that locative expressions containing a locative preposition normally serve to locate some object. As Herskovits (1986) puts it: Anyone asked as to the purpose of phrases like at the store or on the table will very likely give an explanation along the following lines: a sentence like The teapot is on the kitchen table most commonly answers the question Where is the teapot?, and its purpose is to give a spatial constraint on the place of the teapot sufficient for the hearer to easily find it, but not so precise as to be cumbersome. (Herskovits 1986:30) The locative meaning is connected with the question where, and this gives us the prototypical meaning of locative expressions, which is determined by a certain purpose. It is recognized by linguists that there are other uses of locative expres sions, but a sentence like a man in a red hat is considered exceptional. Continuing this line of thought, the basic idea of a locative expression is taken to be the linking of some target object to a reference object that is better known and often has a more permanent location or is more salient. There is a basic asymmetry which reveals itself in the fact that the two objects related by the preposition generally cannot change roles. One can say: (11)
The bicycle is in front of Mary's house.
but only in very special contexts: (12)
*Mary's house is behind the bicycle.
So we are led to the conclusion that locative expressions normally serve to relate a more mobile target object to a bigger, less mobile reference object, often called the landmark, not too far from the target object. But this conclusion seems to us to be a rather hasty generalisation. There is a great deal of truth in it, of course, but we run the risk of missing some important generalisations by con straining ourselves to one type of use. In the context:
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NP (Stative verb) LOCATIVE_PREPOSITION NP
it is not at all evident that the second NP should always serve as a landmark for the first NP. The intention need not be to locate the first NP with respect to the second; it is not in expressions like: (13)
Drengene havde en stor kasse på hjul. 'The boys had a big box on wheels'.
(14)
Vi mødte en pige і en rød frakke. 'We met a girl in a red jacket'.
(15)
Prinsessen på ærten. 'The princess on the pea'.
(16)
Man kunne ikke se ansigtet bag masken. 'You could not see the face behind the mask'.
The purpose of an utterance containing a locative preposition is not necessarily to answer the question where? The purposes of locative expressions are manyfold. It might, for example, be a matter of explaining a situation, 'How did the princess sleep?'. The locative expression explains why she did not close an eye, but of course the pea cannot serve as a landmark for identifying the place where she slept. Also, the purpose of a locative expression is not necessarily to locate, i.e. to situate some object in space. We may be interested only in the spatial relationship between two objects, none of which should help us to find the other in space. The very words 'locative', 'localize' and 'locate' may be misleading. It seems that 'locative' just means 'indicating a spatial relationship', but in fact it says something more, namely that one of the objects can be used to situate the two things in space. Since we cannot change a well established terminology which allows us to describe all kinds of spatial uses of prepositions as locational, we propose to keep in mind that this is an improper use of 'locational' and to say 'locational use proper' about expressions answering the question 'where?'. Sen tences like: (17)
He was sitting on a drawing pin.
(18)
1 found him in front of an empty bottle.
are typical cases where the locative expression explains or comments on some particular behaviour, but cannot be used for localizing purposes. Such cases are
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not uncommon. Let us illustrate this use by some examples from recent Danish novels: (19)
I dette øjeblik bragte en sort tjener en flaske champagne i en stor sølvkøler ind på bordet. 'At that moment a black waiter brought a bottle of champagne in a big silver cooler and put it on the table'. (Høeg, Fortællinger 20)
(20)
Alla [...] lover, at vi alle skal sidde på bløde puder under træernes skygge. 'Allah promises that we shall all sit on soft cushions under the shad ow of the trees'. (Høeg, Fortællinger 49)
(21)
Foran os står et stativ på hjul. 'In front of us there is a stand on wheels'. (Høeg, Frøken Smilia 134)
In none of these examples is the second object a landmark for the first. So the landmark hypothesis is too strong. The statement is true about locational uses proper, but we must formulate some weaker hypothesis about asymmetry for spatial uses in general. In the landmark theory it is also generally assumed that the landmark is chosen owing to its proximity. It seems natural that when we want to locate some object, we choose a landmark nearby, and proximity quite evidently plays an enormous role in the use of prepositions. If, however, the regimen of the locative preposition does not necessarily play the role of a landmark, we must also question the proximity hypothesis. 3.2 The idea of proximity Not only in the cognitivist school, but also in the formalist tradition represented for example by Bierwisch (1988) and Lang (1991), proximity or neighbourhood is the one dominating concept in the definition of locative prepositions. Lang (1991) writes: Leaving out controversial details of competing proposals [...], the general format to represent the lexical meaning of spatial prepositions is supposed to be this: (4) ^y^x(LOC(x,REG*(y))...) In this schema, 'x' and 'y' are variables to be replaced with appropriate representations of (object-)individuals; 'LOC(x,R)' is a localization relation to be read as "the place
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of x is locally included in some region R"; 'R' in turn is determined by a set of functions REG*, the elements of which assign a preposition-specific region to the object represented by 'y'. '...' marks the place for the possible addition of further constraining conditions. (Lang 1991:129) Thus the whole basic formula says that some object is included in the region of some other object, and it is further indicated that 'region' involves the topo logical concept of neighbourhood (Lang 1991:135). If this schema is taken to be what all students of spatial expressions can agree about, it becomes even more important to ask what proximity really means. As a matter of fact, the locative preposition may indicate a considerable distance: (22)
Himlen over os. 'The sky above us'.
(23)
Baden skød fremad [...] under en dyb stjernehimmel. The boat made good headway [...] under a deep starry sky'. (Høeg, Fortællinger 174)
In many cases the locative preposition combines with adverbs expressing dis tance: langt ('far'): den er langt bagved/til venstre for/til højre for/over/under/ monumentet ('it is far behind/to the left of/to the right of/above/below/ the monu ment'), or adverbs like højt ('high'): højt over trætoppene ('high above the treetops') and dybt ('deep'): dybt nede i søen ('deep down in the lake'). The expression langt ('far') is often used as a kind of negation: if the speaker thinks that the hearer erroneously believes two objects to be close to one another, he may use langt in order to say that there is no proximity in the direction indicated by the preposition: X er langt bag Y ('X is far behind Y'). So we cannot maintain that locative prepositions in general express proximity, although it is obvious that a reasonable person often will choose a landmark near the object she or he tries to locate. If someone utters: (24)
The book is behind the radio.
the hearer will take as default value that the two objects are close to one another, but proximity cannot, as we have seen, be the fundamental condition for the choice of the landmark. We think that the fundamental condition is this: Our locating hypothesis: The position of the trajector typically only differs from that of the landmark in one dimension. That is why we can say things like:
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(25)
Månen står over kirken. 'The moon is over the church'.
(26)
Baren er over for indgangsdøren. 'The bar is opposite the entrance'.
In (25) there is no distance between the two objects in the lateral dimension, and we are allowed to abstract from the frontal dimension, when looking at distant objects. But of course there is a considerable distance in the vertical dimension. Language typically admits distance in the dimension explicitly mentioned, which we will call the foreground dimension, with the implicature that there is no relevant distance in the other dimensions, the background dimensions. Sentence (25) thus corresponds to the situation in Figure A, but not to that in Figure B:
In Figure there is a difference in position between the two objects not only in the foreground dimension, which is clearly the vertical one in the case of over, but also in the lateral background dimension. The frontal dimension is simply ignored in this case. In the same way, a sentence like (26) may be a good localization, not because the entrance is the nearest landmark, but because the two objects have the same coordinates in two dimensions (the vertical and the lateral) and differ only with respect to the situation on the frontal axis, as seen from the entrance. Using the words foreground dimension and background dimension, we can reformulate our hypothesis in the following way: The position of the trajector typically only differs from that of the landmark in the foreground dimension, not in the relevant background dimensions.
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By 'relevant' we allude to the fact that speakers are allowed to abstract from the frontal dimension when speaking of distant objects, as in example (25). In some sense, one might say that our hypothesis saves proximity. When people talk about the real world, in ordinary language, 'proximity' means that two things are separated only by a short distance in all three dimensions. Without proximity in all three dimensions there is no contact. But a locative preposition only implies that there is a short distance in at least one dimension, more often in two, i.e. in the relevant background dimensions. Locative prepositions like over, under, foran, bagved, til venstre for, til højre for ('above, below, in front of, behind, to the left of, to the right of ), the so-called projective prepositions, all refer to a unique coordinate system that always has the same root, even if it may turn in the horizontal plane. A caveat is necessary. It is well known from the literature that locative prepositional phrases may locate objects with respect to two different systems: We call the linguistic system for talking about space relative to a speaker's egocentric origin and coordinate axes the deictic system. We will contrast the deictic system with the intrinsic system, where spatial terms are interpreted relative to coordinate axes derived from intrinsic parts of the referent itself. (Miller & Johnson-Laird 1976:396) Their example is: (27) a. Put it in front of the chair. b. Put it in front of the rock. Since the chair has an intrinsic front, the prepositional phrase will denote an axis whose orientation is defined by the front and the backside of the chair. This is the intrinsic use. (27b), on the other hand, where there is no intrinsic front, illustrates the deictic use, in which the preposition will be taken to indicate an axis going from the observer to the rock. In both cases there will be a lateral axis perpendicular to the frontal axis and a vertical axis. It is important to note, however, that, with respect to locative prepositional phrases, the axes meet in the reference object in both systems. Even if we may talk of an egocentric, deictic use in (27b), the lateral axis is not the one going from one shoulder of the observer to the other. Sentences like: (28)
Look at the palm to the left of the rock.
(29)
Look at the eagle over the rock.
make it clear that the lateral and the vertical axes are perpendicular on the frontal
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axis of the reference object. In any case, we prefer to locate an object exactly on one of the axes of some reference object, and this is the same thing as saying that the two objects will have the same coordinates in the two background dimen sions, or that there will be no distance in two dimensions. It is particularly striking that even when we use right and left as seen from the observer and not as seen from the reference object, we talk about a lateral axis going through the reference object. If there is not a short distance in all three dimensions between two objects, they cannot be said to be close to one another, but when we try to locate objects, we are not interested in real proximity. We are interested in our representation, which we can choose to make two-dimensional. What matters is some simple relation in the picture we have of the 'stage'. And the relation between the two objects will be simple if there is a merging such that the coordinates are (nearly) the same in two dimensions. The important thing is the simplicity of the localizing function, which has something to do with proximity in some dimensions, but not necessarily with proximity in three dimensions. Linguistic descriptions should carefully note whether the word proximity is used in its everyday meaning applying to three dimensions or to some other meaning of the word. In order to make the necessary distinctions, we will call distance in the back ground dimensions 'deviation', the ideal being of course no deviation, and we will reserve 'proximity' for short distance in the foreground dimension. The so-called topological prepositions (in, at, on) indicate proximity also in this restricted sense of the word, while the projective prepositions (i.e. those that situate some objects on an axis: over, under, in front of, behind, to the left of, to the right of etc.) may or may not express proximity, although the default value certainly is short distance. In this respect, a certain number of pragmatic factors must be considered. When the locative prepositions are used in normal colloquial style, it is an implicature that there is only little deviation. The pragmatic rules for proximity in the foreground dimension and for deviation in the background dimensions are probably not quite identical. The description of the foreground dimension, which is explicit, can rather easily be modified: (30)
Skænken står langt/to meter/et godt stykke/ bag spisebordet. 'The cupboard is far/two meters/quite a bit/behind the dining table'.
On the other hand, if there is an important deviation, the speaker will often have to add quite a new locative expression:
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(31)
373
Skænken står til venstre for spisebordet og lidt bagud. The cupboard is to the left of the dining table and a bit behind'.
It is true that the speaker may express, by means of lige ('just') and skråt ('oblique ly'), that there is little or much deviation respectively, but it is not easy to add any precision. The implicature that the two objects are on the same axis clearly appears from the fact that the speaker in examples like (31) often will use but when invalidating the implicature: (31')
Skænken står til venstre for spisebordet men lidt bagud. The cupboard is to the left of the dining table but a bit behind'.
It is in the very nature of implicatures that they can be ignored. As already mentioned, the speaker may want to correct an erroneous belief, or if, for some other reason, only the truth value matters, a sentence like (32): (32)
Ja, stolen står til højre for spisebordet. 'Yes, the chair is to the right of the dining table'.
may be taken to be true about every position to the right of the frontal axis ex tending from the dining table to the speaker's eye. But this is not the normal use of locative prepositions, unless we talk about very distant objects and therefore disregard the frontal dimension. We hope to have shown in this section that the locative function has a clearer geometrical meaning than is generally assumed in the landmark/neigbourhood theory and, consequently, that the geometrical meaning of the prepositions can hardly be treated separately from this locative, communicative function. We will now take a closer look at the factors that may influence our feeling of 'short distance', both in the foreground dimension and in the background dimen sions. 3.3 Other pragmatic factors Herskovits (1986:73) considers salience, relevance, tolerance/idealization and typicality when looking for pragmatic principles of selection between prepositions. She further notices that what she offers is "near principles", predictive principles having to await in-depth study. This statement also holds for the present section which, however, views the question from a slightly different angle, focussing on the selection of prepositional rather than adverbial constructions. Although locative prepositions need not indicate proximity in the foreground dimension, as discussed in the foregoing section, the choice between locative
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prepositions and locative adverbials largely depends on the proximity in one dimension and near coincidence in the other dimensions of the objects so localized. Note that proximity is a mental concept, depending perhaps on the effort used by the human observer to cover the two objects as one picture, for example on the angle which the eye or the mind's eye has to travel in order to move from one object to the other. This also means that proximity must be understood in connection with the notion of acceptable deviation (cf. below). Objects which are not perceived as being easily covered by the mind's eye will in colloquial speech rarely be related to each other, at least not by means of locative prepositions. When moving away from colloquial speech in the direction of precision, prepositional phrases become possible for less easily covered or more distant objects. Proximity and the choice between prepositions and adverbials In the following we shall be talking of a "real or mental stage". By this we mean that most or all rooms that we view, e.g. a real room, a corridor, the inside of a box or a sphere, a square in a town, a valley, a desert, or maps and pictures of these, can be seen as a kind of stage — as indeed Shakespeare wrote — with contours, side and end walls, and a set of axes dividing this room into eight near-cubes. We thus square any circle or curvature and eliminate "superfluous" angles, when we reduce the description of the picture before our eyes to a scene, just like one in a theatre. We can find some degree of justification for this simplifi cation in the fact that in Danish one will not be accused of punning if one says to somebody whose mayonnaise is curdling: (33)
Tag risene over i et hjørne af skålen og pisk som en besat. 'Take the whisks to a corner of the bowl and whisk madly'.
On this stage we may localize things either relating their positions to the contours, or to the set of axes. It would seem that we choose prepositional expressions for relating objects to each other and adverbials for locating objects on the mental or real stage. If, for instance, one object is located in the middle of the stage, and another is placed between that one and one of the side walls of the stage, further apart than half the distance to the wall, the two objects will not be related by a localizing prepositional phrase. Consider the difference between the following two sentences: (34)
Midt på gulvet et bord, til højre for det en stol. 'In the middle of the floor a table, to the right of it a chair'.
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Midt på gulvet et bord, til højre en stol. 'In the middle of the floor a table, on the right a chair'.
In (35) the chair is localized by means of one of the axes, but not directly related to the table. The use of the adverbial phrase in (35), as opposed to the prepositional phrase in (34), may be due not only to an inacceptable deviation in the frontal dimension, but also to an inacceptable distance in the foreground dimension be tween the table and the chair. If we take the left wall instead, we get: (36)
Mod vœggen til venstre et bord, til højre for det en stol. 'Against the left wall a table, to the right of it a chair'.
(37)
Mod vœggen til venstre et bord, til højre en stol. 'Against the left wall a table, on the right a chair'.
where on the right will normally be taken to mean 'in the right hand half of the stage'. If the stage is a landscape, whether seen as a picture or as a map, the compara ble expressions would be something like: (38)
Midt i denne ørken ligger X-by, og øst herfor Y-by. 'In the middle of this desert is X-town, and east of it Y-town'.
(39)
Midt i denne ørken ligger X-by, og østpå Y-by. 'In the middle of this desert is X-town, and eastwards Y-town'.
In general, adverbials contain less information than the corresponding prepositions. They only give information about one coordinate, with respect to the stage, while locative preposions typically inform about three coordinates. Proximity and typicality Proximity between two objects also depends on typicality, e.g. kind, size or colour of the objects. Thus two countries, but not a country and a city, may be localized by a prepositional expression: (40)
Øst for Frankrig ligger Tyskland. 'East of France lies Germany'.
(41)
*Øst for Frankrig ligger Freiburg im Breisgau. 'East of France lies Freiburg im Breisgau'.
and a glass may be to the right of a dish when standing, say, 30 cm away: (42)
Glasset står til højre for fadet. 'The glass stands to the right of the dish'.
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A stamp, however, lying on the same table at the same distance and in the same direction from the dish, will not necessarily be said to lie to the right of the dish. Considering, again, the difference between normal language use and more precise usage, note that when adding precision to the expression it will be felt acceptable to say: (43)
Frimærket ligger 30 cm til højre for fadet. 'The stamp lies 30 cm to the right of the dish'.
Accuracy, or precision, is then something we add to a sentence when necessary, which actually is what Herskovits (1986:80) also states: "[...] tolerance depends on what the speaker deems to matter, on relevance". The prepositional expression, overfor, 'opposite', which certainly contradicts physical proximity, may be taken to mean maximal possible distance, which is actually the distance we can use for calculations when we make inferences from it on our mental stage. On the other hand, it can also be conceived as setting the two side walls of the stage, in which case it may be taken to have no distance relation at all: this seeming contradiction dissolves when one considers that the stage may be conceived as being very small, i.e. narrow like two palaces opposite one another in a street in the old quarters of Rome. Only if the speaker wants to place several objects between the side walls on this kind of stage will the distance between them be conceived as great. Facts like these underpin the idea that proxim ity is not a purely physical notion, but also a general relation of objects to each other, where the fact of relating them to each other brings them into a mental proximity. In this way proximity does not always play a role as a truth condition, but in some cases rather as a kind of type coercion, i.e. the hearer supposes that there must be a close relationship between objects situated with respect to one another. Proximity and non-separation In order for two objects to be directly related by means of a localizing prepositional phrase, there will normally be no 'salient' third object barring the way for the mind's eye travelling from one object to the other. Imagine a still-life of a bowl, a book and a vase arranged in harmonious distances one from another from right to left: (44)
Bogen ligger til højre for skålen. 'The book is to the right of the bowl'.
(45)
?Vasen står til højre for skålen. 'The vase is to the right of the bowl'.
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This rule is not very strict; it does not apply if the two objects are of identical type, or are being explicitly grouped, for instance: (46)
Gqflen ligger til højrefor tallerkenen, det gør kniven også. 'The fork is to the right of the dish, and so is the knife'.
(47)
Bogen og vasen befinde r sig til højre for skålen. The book and the vase are to the right of the bowl'.
and, again, when adding precision to the expression: (48)
Bogen er 30 cm til højre for skålen og vasen 40 cm. The book is 30 cm to the right of the bowl, the vase 40 cm'.
Proximity in the vertical dimension We have seen in the example himlen over os 'the sky above us', that proximity can be a non-player as a selection criterion. In this section we shall ask whether proximity does play a role in the vertical dimension. We would expect in this dimension to find a parallel to the preposition-adverbial distinction regarding the axis of the stage in the horizontal dimension, but this is not so. The first thing to note is that there is not the same rich granularity in available expressions of vertical relations that we have in the horizontal dimension, which is, of course, actually two dimensions: the frontal and the lateral. We will consider only the upwards direction: Horizontal ved 'at' ved siden af 'by' til højre for 'to the right of langt fra 'far away from' over for 'opposite'
Vertical lige over 'just over' over 'over' over 'over' højt over 'high above' (i loftet) lige over '(on the ceiling) right over'
The asymmetry is apparent: the vertical elements are to a large part the same. This lower granularity in the vertical dimension may depend on there not being as many objects/landmarks in that dimension as there normally are in the horizon tal. But it is an even more striking fact that we do not divide the stage into an upper half and a lower half in the same way as we divide it into a left half and in a right half, in foreground and background. We may say:
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Til venstre ser man ... 'To the left you will see ...'
or: (50)
Foran ser man ... 'In the foreground you will sec ...' But we do not use the adverbs oppe 'up' and nede 'down' in the same way. If something is up or down, it is in relation to some particular object or situation, not in relation to the axes of the stage. Even when we say: (51)
Månen er oppe. The moon has risen (= is up)'.
the moon need not be in the upper half of the stage. We only use these adverbs related to the stage in connection with other adverbs: (52)
Flyveren er højt oppe. The plane is at a high altitude'.
The adverbs foroven 'above', 'at the top' and forneden 'at the bottom' do not relate to the axes of the stage, but only to some particular object. Deviation Herskovits (1986:71, inter alia) treats cases like: (53)
The North Star is to the left of the mountain peak.
as a kind of projection, by metonomy, on a distant plane. In our view, this way of describing the phenomenon may be misleading by taking the real three dimen sional world as the starting point. We think that, in communication, it is quite normal to talk of what people see as a two dimensional picture, and would rather describe the phenomenon by saying that in the frontal dimension deviation is always acceptable: (54)
Flyveren er lige ved siden af storstenen. Månen erligepå den anden side. The plane is close to the chimney. The moon is right on the other side of it'.
Here the distance between the airplane and the chimney will, hopefully, be great, if the plane is airborne, and the distance to the moon is obvious. Lateral and vertical deviation from the viewing axis is tolerable up to a point.
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Imagine another still-life of a table, a chair and a palm arranged in an oblique line towards the side wall: (55)
Stolen står ved siden af bordet, og palmen til højre for stolen. The chair stands close to the table, and the palm tree to the right of the chair'.
and the same arrangement stretched out towards the background: (56)
Stolen står til højrefor bordet, og palmen til højre i baggrunden. The chair stands to the right of the table, and the palm to the right in the background'.
We shall not attempt to specify the boundary for the deviations, but we expect that mid-way between the middle axis and the „side-wall" is a tentative limit, and the size of the acceptable deviation depends on the distance implicit in the chosen prepositional expression.
4. A simple formalization The idea that an essential part of the meaning of a locative preposition may be expressed as three distances on the axes rooted in the reference object, can be formalized in a simple and, we think, expressive way. A description of på ('on'), in its most common local sense, can be formalized in this way, in PROLOG style: på(VIEWPOINT,El,E2):basic_distance(VIEWPOINT, E1,E2, [verticals, +],[lateral,0,_], [frontal, 0 , ] ) . El and E2 stand for the two objects related to one another. VIEWPOINT may be instantiated with the observer's viewpoint or a viewpoint taken from El or E2. Finally, there are three lists each of which expresses the distance on some axis. The formula then says that the relation på holds, seen from a certain view point, between two objects El and E2, if there is a distance 2 in the vertical dimension and a distance 0 in the lateral and the frontal dimensions. After the name of the axis comes a value indicating the distance or degree of proximity: 0 = inclusion (same place) 1 = overlapping (partially the same place) 2 = contact
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3 = no contact, but no explicit distance 4 = explicit distance The axes are oriented, indicated by + or -. We use the symbols in the following way: El E2 vertical + El E2 lateral + El E2 frontal +
= El is higher up than E2 = El is to the right of E2 = El is further away than E2 in the perspective
The symbol '-' has the opposite meaning. If the distance is 0, then there is no orientation, which is marked by an underscore. The preposition і ('in') expresses basically that there is no distance in any dimension: i(VIEWPOINT,El,E2):basic_distance(VIEWPOINT, E1,E2, [vertical,0,+],[lateral,0,_], [frontal, 0, ]). while foran ('in front of) says that there is some distance in the frontal direction: foran(VIEWPOINT,El,E2):basic_distance(VIEWPOINT, E1,E2, [vertical,0,+],[lateral,0,_],[frontal,3,-]). Of course, this is nothing but a very coarse first approximation, and this article is not the right place to discuss formalization problems in detail. But we think that, with this approach, it is possible to set up a program that is able to make reasonable inferences on the basis of a description of a room. In fact, we are currently implementing a pilot program that does this, taking as input the stage description in one of Ibsen's plays, and giving as output inferences in terms of locative expressions other than those used by the original text.1 The advantage of a common format for the description of the meanings of locative prepositions is that it makes possible the setting up of general inference rules. Without a common format, we would have to set up particular rules like "If on(El,E2) and on(E2,E3), then over(El,E3)". Given just twenty prepositions, the number of possible rules to consider would be enormous, and, moreover, such rules would not give much insight. Now, using variables over the dimension name and over the operator + or -, we can get by with a very small number of general rules of the type:
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Rule 1 (Different reference objects) relation(E1,E2,[DIMENSION,DISTANCEl,OPERATOR]) and relation(E2,E3,[DIMENSION,DISTANCE2,OPERATOR]) entails
relation(El,E3,[DIMENSION,DISTANCE3, OPERATOR]) where DISTANCEI < DISTANCE2 and DISTANCE3 = DISTANCEI + DISTANCE2
intended to cover cases like The pencil is on the book The book is behind the lamp entails or
The pencil is behind the lamp The dish is in the cupboard The cupboard is to the lefi of the door
entails
The dish is to the left of the door
The last example illustrates the purely geometrical meaning, without pragmatic restrictions. Some of these are also easy to formalize, introducing a variable that keeps track of the deviation. If we ask if it is true that behind(X,Y) holds between some two objects, the inference rules will examine any chain of objects related by prepositions starting in X and ending in Y and such that the distance in the frontal dimension will increase in the right direction, because the representation of every (or nearly every) preposition will contain information about the distance in the frontal dimen sion (possibly zero). The individual preposition will be marked as to whether it allows recursive application of the different rules. There are, obviously, many aspects of locative prepositions that a system of this kind cannot account for. On the other hand, it seems to us that it demon strates some systematic relations between the functions of locative prepositions and their geometrical properties.
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5. Conclusion Modern linguistics and cognitive psychology have amply demonstrated that human perception of spatial relations is strongly influenced by the roles objects play. Relations like containment, support, pressure, domination and accessibility mark the way people see the world. However, the role of geometry should not be under estimated. People certainly need a coherent system for indicating positions on the stage of the world, and that is exactly what the geometrical relations offer. It is particularly clear that people prefer to use the most simple geometrical statements in their communicative acts, and the most simple general interpretation rule for locative prepositions is precisely that they express a difference between two positions in the dimension explicitly mentioned while there is no, or only little, difference in the other dimensions. Different locative prepositions explicitly express different degrees of distance in the foreground dimension, but they all implicate proximity in the background dimensions. This alignment constraint has sometimes been discussed in the literature in relation to the interpretation of particular prepositions and their way of representing the world, but not, to our knowledge, as a general interpretation rule, in terms of communicative needs.
Notes 1.
Henrik Ibsen did not write in Danish, but in a kind of Norwegian very similar to Danish, and his stage indications are models of concise room descriptions.
References Aurnague, Michel. 1991. Contribution à ľ étude de la sémantique formelle de l'espace et du raisonnement spatial: la localisations interne en français, sémantique et structures inférentielles. Institut de Recherches en Informatique de Toulouse, Université Paul Sabatier. Aurnague, Michel, Laure Vieu, Andrée Boriilo & Mario Boriilo. 1993. Some elements for a formal semantics of space in language. Sprache - Kommunikation - Informatik (= Linguistische Arbeiten: Akten des 26. Linguistischen Kolloquiums, Poznán 1991, Band 1.) ed. by J. Darski & Z. Vetulani, 121-130. Bierwisch, Manfred. 1988. On the grammar of local prepositions. Syntax, Semantik und Lexikon ed. by M. Bierwisch, W. Motsch & I. Zimmermann, 1-65. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag.
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Herskovits, Annette. 1986. Language and Spatial Cognition: An interdisciplinary study of the prepositions in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Herweg, Michael. 1989. Ansätze zu einer semantischen Beschreibung topologischer Präpositionen. Raumkonzepte in Verstehensprozessen ed. by CľHabel, M. Herweg & K. Rehkämper, 99-127. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. Lang, Ewald. 1991. A two-level approach to projective prepositions. Approaches to Prepositions ed. by G. Rauh, 127-168. Tübingen: Günter Narr Verlag. Langacker, Ronald W. 1991. Concept, Image, and Symbol: The cognitive basis ofgram mar. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Miller, George A. & P.N. Johnson-Laird. 1976. Language and Perception. Massachu setts: Harvard University Press. Spang-Hanssen, Ebbe. 1993. De la structure des syntagmes à celle de l'espace. Langages 110.12-26. Vandeloise, Claude. 1986. L'Espace enfrançais. Sémantique des prépositions spatiales. Paris: Editions du Seuil. Vandeloise, Claude. 1993. Les analyses de la préposition dans: faits linguistiques et effets méthodologiques. Les prépositions: méthodes d'analyse ed by. A. -M. Berthonneau & P. Cadiot, 15-40. Lille: Presses Universitaires de Lille. Vieu, Laure. 1991. Sémantique des relations spatiales et inférences spatio-temporelles. Institut de Recherches en Informatique de Toulouse, Université Paul Sabatier.
Communicative function and language-specific structure in second language acquisition A discussion of natural sequences of acquisition Karen Lund University of Copenhagen
1. Formalism and functionalism in second language acquisition In this article I shall discuss some dominant developmental theories of second language acquisition within a functional perspective. I shall address the devel opment of two syntactic areas, inversion and negation, areas in which the most substantial results of universal second language acquisition (SLA) development have been presented. My main purpose is to give evidence that without a func tional approach one cannot describe data adequately. Consequently one cannot present reliable psycholinguistic explanations. If we disregard semantic, prag matic and even grammatical functions in our analysis of interlanguage, we may not discover important systematic patterns in the acquisitional process. Amongst the theories of developmental sequences of SLA, functional ap proaches have played a minor role. A common feature of most SLA research — from Behaviorism via Universal Grammar to the theories of natural se quences of acquisition — has been a linguistic approach based on grammatical form only. Many SLA theorists may have lost interest in the natural sequences precisely because of the lack of functional perspectives. Theorists working with developmental sequences consider the sequences established for word order to be indisputable and 'rock solid' (e.g. Pienemann 1993:13), and many SLA the orists working with other areas of SLA within a functional framework, while accepting them as universal, do not discuss them, but focus on other aspects such as the interplay between interaction and acquisition, and often they are more sociolinguistically than psycholinguistically oriented. I nevertheless believe there are important issues to analyse and discuss con cerning the natural sequences proposed for word order, in studies mainly from
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the end of the 1970s and from the 1980s, before the suggested sequences can be claimed to be rock solid. The possiblity of universal stages will have impor tant implications for the development of SLA theories as well as for educa tional approaches. From a functionalist angle, however, I hypothesize language acquisition to be driven not only by an autonomous formal linguistic system, but also by semantic and pragmatic factors. Consequently, I see the learner as playing an active part in the process of acquiring means of communication, not as a mere spectator of evolving grammatical structures. Therefore I find it hard to believe that we can rely on developmental sequences emerging from data descriptions which disregard semantic and pragmatic functions of the language. Most theorists in the area of SLA agree that the learner meets his second language (L2) with an already existing pragmatic knowledge that plays an ac tive role in SLA (among others Kasper 1992). Everybody seems to agree that prosodic and phonological features from the learner's first language (L1) play an important role in SLA. Even when considering balanced bilinguals there is evidence that one of the languages has some prosodic and phonological prima cy over the other, for instance in segmentation and phoneme detection (Cutler 1993). But when it comes to syntax and word order, the theorists of the natural sequences seem to agree that what the learner already knows about syntax and morphosyntax from his L1 or from other foreign languages plays a minor role in SLA. Those are the conclusions we find in the surveys of SLA by Ellis (1986) as well as those by Larsen-Freeman & Long (1991). According to these dominant SLA theories all learners pass through the same developmental sequences independently of their background — such as age, educational background — and independently of their mother tongue. There may be differences as to how fast learners pass through the sequences, and some learners may add a stage or two. But none of the stages are left out, and the overall order of acquisition is the same for all learners. In connection with a strong hypothesis like this, however, it is crucial to consider whether there are supplementary possibilities parallel to the sequences claimed to be universal. It is worth considering whether the inclusion of resid ual data diverging from the sequences proposed may represent alternative acquisitional patterns — patterns not only based on formal grammatical analyses but derived from a functional description and thus with functional implications. Such patterns may suggest ways of finding more convincing psycholinguistic explanations than we have seen up until now. Very often, there is an apparent lack of convincing psycholinguistic explanations of the natural sequences. A universal pre-verbal position of negation for all learners at the initial stages of SLA is, for example, explained by its correlation with the most frequent posi-
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tion of the negation in the languages of the world, and hence predicted for all learners (Hyltenstam's markedness hypothesis, 1984 and 1987). The question is, however, what the psychological reality of this correlation is for the indi vidual learner — unless of course the theory relies on some genetically based hypothesis like an inbuilt linguistic disposition for a certain word order. As emphasized by Tomiin, "SLA is a problem of individuals" (1990:157) and "the language learner has no access to such generalizations" (1990:164). Alterna tively, the universality of pre-verbal negation is explained as being due to "'naturalness' factors" (for example Ellis 1986:36). Such an explanation is based on a similar idea of an inbuilt, genetic grammar. Sometimes the universality of a certain feature is explained by its structural complexity (for example Wode 1984:173). It is not always obvious, however, why one structural order is claimed to be more complex than another. Why is a pre-negating structure less complex than a structure with final negation, espe cially if that is what you are used to from your L1? And how can we then ex plain that learners seem to acquire negation in the more complex auxiliary verb context before they acquire negation in the main verb context? Such questions may be answered if we look at our data from other angles and attempt to trace the development of different interacting systems further. In sum, I shall try to demonstrate that without an approach based on func tional semantic and pragmatic categories, one cannot describe SLA data ade quately, and cannot give adequate psycholinguistic explanations or present reliable hypotheses and predictions. If we restrict our study to the development of pure form, there will be linguistic features for which we give wrong expla nations or which we cannot explain. There will be developmental features which seem to be paradoxical, or there may be developmental phenomena that we do not discover at all. By means of a functional approach, I shall demon strate that the acquisition of inversion and negation develops differently and by means of other processes than predicted by the theorists of the natural se quences. Partly by means of my own data, partly by reconsidering well-known studies and surveys from a functional point of view, I shall give evidence that the natural sequences described by, among others, Ellis (1986) and LarsenFreeman & Long (1991) for English L2, seem to be more natural to some learners than to others. I shall try to show that learners must be considered far more active in their processing of the input and in the use they make of their already existing knowledge to analyse the input, than predicted by the theorists of the natural sequences. As a last and perhaps a somewhat controversial point, I shall try to show that the well-known natural sequences for English negation have very little — if anything at all — to do with the acquisition of negation.
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My overall hypothesis is that learners, in their effort to break the L2 code with the objective of being able to communicate meaningfully, first and fore most will search for communicatively loaded parts of L2. Owing to processing load and the restricted capacities of working memory, the new learners will not be able to process all the input they are exposed to. Consequently their interlanguage will be characterized by reductions and simplifications of the less communicatively important parts of the new language. Reduction strategies as well as creative generalisations will lead to an interlanguage which is governed by the learner's search for isomorphism between form and function. With the point of departure in communicative efficiency interacting with restricted processing capacities, the learner's hypothesis formation will be driven by a search for adequate functional means of expression, representing a one-to-one relationship between form and function. In the analysis of the developmental profile for inversion, I shall compare Danish L2 with German L2, for one reason because both German and Danish are so-called verb second (V2) languages. V2 target languages present a parti cularly instructive possibility for observing the ways in which different seman tic-pragmatic functions may influence the acquisition of one and the same grammatical structure, as V2 ordering occurs, for instance, in both declaratives and questions.
2. The acquisition of inversion 2.1 The developmental sequences of the Zisa group1 One of the most influenciai studies within developmental research was carried out by the so-called Zisa group: Harald Clahsen, Jürgen Meisel and Manfred Pienemann (e.g. 1983). Their results correspond more or less to the sequences claimed for the acquisition of English, but their predictions are of special in terest as they involve hypotheses about specific cognitive constraints governing acquisition. Thus their hypotheses are generalizable to other L1 and L2 lan guages. The learners of the Zisa group were all Romance-speaking workers from Italy, Spain and Portugal. The sequences have been demonstrated for learners receiving natural input (Clahsen, Meisel & Pienemann 1983) as well as for learners in formal instructional contexts (e.g. Pienemann 1987). After an initial phase using isolated words and unanalysed chunks, the learner is predicted to pass through the following five stages:
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1. Stage χ = Canonical Word Order (SVO) die kinder spielen mim ball 'the children play with the balľ 2. Stage x + 1 = Adverb Preposing (ADV) da kinder spielen 'there children play' 3. Stage x+2 = Verb Separation (SEP) alle kinder muss die pause machen 'all children must the break have' 4. Stage x + 3 = Inversion (INV) dann hat sie wieder die knoch gebringt 'then has she again the bone bringed' 5. Stage x+4 = Verb Final (V-END) er sagt, dass er nach hause kommt 'he said (sic!) that he home come' (Pienemann 1993:7) According to the theories of cognitive constraints, the learner has to pass through all the stages, as the acquisition of one stage is the prerequisite of ac quiring the following one. At stage x the learner cannot change the string at all, and they use a canonical word order both for declaratives and for ques tions. At x + 1 the learners are only able to manipulate the external parts of the string, that is to move elements from final to initial position and vice versa, or to add elements in those positions. This implies uninverted wh-questions and unin verted topicalized declaratives: Warum du nicht deutsche sprechen? 'Why you not German speak?' = Why don't you speak German? (Pienemann 1985:59) Da kinder spielen 'There children play' (Pienemann 1993:7) At x+2 learners are able to move an element from internal to external posi tion. This has no implications for inversion according to the Zisa group. One might expect, however, that if learners can move elements from internal to external position at x+2, then they would be able to make inverted yes/noquestions already at this stage. Nevertheless, stage x+3 is considered the stage of inversion where learners can manipulate the internal parts of the string. Yes/no-questions are hypothesized to be acquired before wh-questions:
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- Inversion in yes/no-questions: gehst du noch in der schule ? 'go you still to the school?' = Do you still go to school? - Wh-questions:
warum hast du auch eine nase? 'why have you also a nose?' = Why do you have a nose, too? (Pienemann 1985:59)
- Inversion in declaratives:
dann hat sie wieder die knoch gebringt һӘ has she again the bone bringed' = Then she brought the bone again. (Pienemann 1993:7)
Finally, at x+4 the learners can organize specific word order rules in subor dinate clauses, for example subordinate interrogative clauses with uninverted word order. None of the stages can be left out, and formal intervention cannot alter a sequence of acquisition since the learners have to build up all processing pre requisites in a lockstep fashion (Pienemann 1985). The processing devices for a given stage of development are built on the processing strategies developed at the immediately preceding stage. In Figure 1 we see how three different pro cessing strategies constrain the development.
GSL Word Order Stage
Permissible Permutations
Controlling Strategies
X
(SVO)
canonical order
[ + COS,+SCS]
X +1
(ADV)
initialization/finalization
[ + COS,+IFS,+SCS]
X + 2 (SEP)
disruption and movement into salient position
[-COS,+IFS, + SCS]
X + 3 (INV)
internal movement
[-COS,-IFS,+SCS]
X+4
sub-categorization
[-COS,-IFS,-SCS]
(V-END)
Figure 1: Processing strategies underlying the GSL (German Second Language) word order stages (Larsen-Freeman & Long 1991:273)
NATURAL SEQUENCES OF ACQUISITION
391
Canonical Order Strategy (COS) indicates that no permutations of S,V and are possible, and that movements into or out of the fixed meaning-bearing sequence are blocked. The Initialization-Finalization Strategy (IFS) makes it possible for the learner to make permutations to and from initial and final posi tions, whereas movements of elements to or within internal positions are block ed. Movements from internal to external positions are blocked as long as the COS strategy rules (x +1) apply. The Subordinate Clause Strategy (SCS) means that permutations of elements in subordinate clauses are avoided. This process ing theory is developed by Clahsen (1984) who draws on research findings on L1 processing and memory by Bever (1970) among others. Stages χ and x +1 are so-called presyntactic levels which demand the lowest degree of processing capacity. Learners are hypothesized not to have analysed the grammatical functions of S,V and at these stages. Stages x+2 to x+4 are syntactic as they require that learners have analysed the grammatical func tions of the units in the string. The permutations at stage x+1 and x+2 are based on perceptual saliency, which is considered to be a general cognitive prerequisite available to the learner as a processing device. Initial and final positions can be identified more easily and remembered better than middle position because of their saliency (see for instance, Clahsen 1984; Pienemann 1993; Murdock 1962). Clahsen (1984) uses perceptual saliency as an explanation of the learner's ability to move external elements, and Pienemann (1993) considers this processing strat egy as causing the external elements to be more easily annotated for gramma tical information (Bresnan 1982). The reason why learners are not able to make inversion until x + 3 , is that only then have they acquired sufficient grammatical information to analyse the structure at all levels (Pienemann 1993). Clahsen (1984) explains the development as being due to processing con straints which impede and prevent the learner from using the categories and phrase structures considered to be present in the learner's competence. The development is explained as being a gradual 'constraint shedding' (see Figure 1). According to Pienemann (1993), however, the syntactic indexation has to be accomplished during the acquisition process. He considers processing to be incremental (Levelt 1989). 2.2 The acquisition of inversion in questions and declaratives in Danish L2 Comparing my data for inversion in declaratives and inversion in questions with the stages established by the Zisa group, I get a somewhat less clear pic-
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ture than theirs.2 Since one of my main hypotheses is that semantic-pragmatic differences are essential to language acquisition, I analyse the development of inversion in questions and in declaratives separately, as questions and declara tives represent two distinct semantic-pragmatic categories. This approach dif fers from the analyses made by the Zisa group, who treat inversion as one structural category, regardless of functional differences. Inversion in questions Like in German, the Danish verb precedes the subject in yes/no-questions, wh-questions, and in declaratives whenever an adverb or an object take initial position. In subordinate interrogative clauses Danish has uninverted SV word order like English. In question formation four of the five learners use nothing but inverted whquestions in the question elicitations, in the oral interviews and in the picture descriptions: Manette and Willi from Holland, Eric from The United States and Christina from Portugal.3 Inversion in wh- and yes/no-questions:4 Manette, 1 st rec. : (rec. = recording)
Willi,
Hvad skal jeg sige ? What shall I say?
2nd rec.:
Hvad laver man і ferie? What makes one in holiday? 'What do you do during your holidays?'
2nd r e c :
Kan du godt lide at undervise udlœndinge? Can you well like to teach foreigners? 'Do you like to teach foreigners?'
3rd rec:
Har du været i andre lande? Have you been in other countries? 'Have you been to other countries?'
2nd rec : Arbejder du kun her på det projekt? Work you only here on this project? 'Do you only work on this project?' 3rd rec.:
Hvor lange har du arbejdet her? 'Hvor længe har du arbejdet her?' (L2 norm) 'How long have you worked here?'
NATURAL SEQUENCES OF ACQUISITION
Eric,
Christina,
393
2nd rec. : Hvad ligger det henne ? 'Hvor ligger det henne?' (L2 norm) 'Where is it situated?' 3rd rec.:
Hvor længe har du været gift? How long have you been married?
2nd rec.:
Hvorfor skal vi lave den her? 'Hvorfor skal vi lave det her?' (L2 norm) 'Why must we make this?'
3rd rec.:
Har du købt nogen gave? 'Har du købt nogen gaver?' (L2 norm) 'Have you bought any presents?'
The learners use inversion in varied verbal contexts and with different wh-pronouns. All except Christina use a few uninverted intonation-marked yes/no-ques tions. This cannot be considered a sign of lacking inversion competence, how ever, as all their wh-questions have inversion. Furthermore, intonation ques tions without inversion are quite frequent in oral Danish. In the oral interview and picture descriptions, Manette, Willi and Christina even demonstrate a few examples of uninverted questions in subordinate interrogative clauses, in ac cordance with the target language norm: Mariette,
1st rec.:
Jeg ved ikke hvad det hedder på dansk. I know not what it is called in Danish. 'I don't know what it is called in Danish'.
Willi, 2nd. rec.: Interviewer: Hvad har du fået lavet ved dine studier? What have you had made with your studies. 'What have you accomplished in your studies?'. Willi:
Hvor jeg har lavet. 'hvad jeg har lavet' (L2 norm) Where I have done. 'What I have done'.
This is an interesting example as it shows that Willi is capable of handling the interrogative subordinate SV word order despite the interviewer's preceding question with inversion.
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Christina,
3rd rec.:
Han ringer til dem og siger hvordan han har det og hvor meget han vil gerne have fest slut. He phones to them and says how he has it and how much he would like have party end. 'He calls them and tells them how he is and how badly he wants them to finish the party'.
Manette,
3rd rec.:
De snakker med venner og spørger dem om hvis5 de ikke kan komme fordi de skal holde fest. They talk with friends and ask them if - if they not can come because they will make a party. They talk with their friends and ask them if they can come over because they want to have a party'.
Willi,
2nd r e c :
Han skal - kigge - og de - om. de ikke slår hinanden. He shall - look - and they - if they not hit each other. 'He shall watch that they do not hit each other'.
As we can see, the two learners are able not only to make uninverted subordi nate clauses, but also to place the negation in the correct L2 position in the subordinate clause, i.e. before the finite verb — a position which differs from that of the main clause, where the negation is placed after the finite verb. These results indicate that Manette and Willi, according to the Zisa stages, are at stage x + 3 , possibly x+4, in question formation. Christina is also at x + 3 , and perhaps developing towards x+4 in the third recording; it is difficult to say anything conclusive, however, as there are only two obligatory contexts in her data. Eric is also at x + 3 , but in his data we have clearer evidence of a development from x+3 to x+4. During the 2nd recording he produces the fol lowing inverted subordinate clause: Eric,
2nd rec.:
Vi snakkede om hvad lavede jeg og hvor bor where hvor bor jeg og hvad laver jeg i fritid. We talked about what made I and where live where [English word] where live I and what make I in spare time. 'We talked about what my work was and where I lived and what I did in my spare time'.
NATURAL SEQUENCES OF ACQUISITION
395
In the third recording there is clear evidence of SV order in accordance with the target language: Eric,
3rd rec.:
Jeg har ikke set [= jeg kan ikke se] hvorfor jeg skal giftes. I have not seen [= I can not see] why I shall be married.
Apart from showing that Eric masters question inversion, this overgeneralization is a clear example of a learner's search for a one-to-one relationship be tween form and function — questions thus being hypothesized as having VS word order whether they are subordinate or not. Thus all four learners are at stage x+3 at the time of the first recording, the two Dutch learners possibly even at x+4. Eric shows clear evidence of development from x + 3 to x+4. The development of the fifth learner, Rosa from Peru, is quite different. In the elicitation tasks, she has only one question with inversion, apart from three ellipses: Rosa,
2nd rec.:
Hvor hvor hvor er hu han hvor er han henne? Where where where is sh he where is he?
And despite all her trouble, this was in fact not at all what Rosa wanted to ask. What she wanted to know was: 'where does he come from'. If we include also one of the few questions Rosa makes in the 'free' oral elicitations, we may hypothesize that Rosa is beginning to acquire inversion in hvor er ('where is') contexts. In many questions she drops the pronominal subject, which means that in these examples we cannot determine her inversion capacity. Rosa is thus at stage x o r x + 1 according to the Zisa stages. Can any explanations be found of the fact that only one of the learners is at a beginner level, whereas the others are at either x + 3 or x+4 just four weeks after they have started learning Danish? From the point of view of communicative efficiency, a plausible hypothesis may be that the communicative importance of questions could be a driving force. It is without a doubt a basic communicative need for an adult to be able to understand and to ask questions, which may imply that learners focus on means of expressing questions. For the two Dutch learners an explanation may also be found in the rela tively close linguistic relationship between Dutch and Danish, Dutch also being a V2 language. One obvious hypothesis could be that they use already interna lized word order knowledge from their L1, thus not having to relearn every thing anew. Furthermore, this close linguistic relationship may release cog-
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nitive energy to cope with the more complicated parts of the input, such as complex word order rules in subordinate clauses. For the American, Eric, an explanation might be that he comes from a structurally more complex system to an easier one. In Danish he can stick to the hypothesis that questions are expressed by one and the same word order rule in main clauses, without having to search for rules distributing periphrastic claims like in English. This may ease the cognitive load. Christina's developmental profile is very different from Rosa's and the Zisa learners', despite the fact that they all come from Romance L1s. An explana tion may be that she is more input-oriented than Rosa. I suppose this would be an explanation in accordance with the theories of the Zisa group. From the background knowledge I have about the two, there is reason to believe that the rather different social and psychological conditions of Rosa and Christina may to some extent explain the enormous difference in their general L2 develop ment. Christina develops very fast in various linguistic areas, whereas Rosa hardly shows any development at all within the three elicitations. In addition to that, Christina comes from Europe, and Rosa from Latin America, so cul tural distance or perceived cultural distance may add to the cognitive load and thus explain Rosa's much slower development. Of course one should be cau tious with explanations based on the interplay between socio-cultural and psy chological factors and their influence on SLA, as they are difficult to verify. It is difficult to make predictions upon them and consequently they may be considered post hoc. Besides, socio-cultural and motivational explanations can never stand on their own, as they do not give any explanation of the language acquisition processes as such or of the fact that certain areas of the input are acquired whereas other areas are ignored. Inversion in declaratives Danish being a V2 language means that whenever an adverb or an object is in initial position, inverted word order is used: VS. The pattern of the development of inversion in declaratives is quite different from the preceding results (see Figure 2). The two Dutch learners seem to fol low the predictions of the Zisa group in a rather regular manner: at the first recording, they have relatively few obligatory contexts, that is to say they don't use the preposing strategies of x + 1 very much, and they are not con vincingly capable of making inversions. So they are at stage x, perhaps head ing towards x + 1 . In the second and third recording, especially Willi shows a remarkable increase in his use of the adverb/topic preposing strategy (x + 1).
397
NATURAL SEQUENCES OF ACQUISITION
Mariette
Willi
Eric
Christina
Rosa
1st rec:
1/2
0/2
0/2
0/2
0/3
2nd rec:
4/6
15/19
0/4
2/6
0/2
3rd rec:
10/10
20/23
0/15
3/21
0/5
Figure 2: Inversion in declaratives: number of inversions in relation to obligatory contexts He also demonstrates a relatively stable inversion capacity (x+3). In the last recording Mariette produces ten inversions in the ten obligatory contexts (x+3). According to a distributional analysis, they both use inversion with different verb types and in various adverbial contexts — an important sign of the inversion not being an unanalysed chunk, but produced creatively by the learners. For Eric, Christina and Rosa there is hardly any development at all, as we can see. In all three recordings they are at x + 1 , using few inversions in oblig atory contexts, if any at all. Christina perhaps shows some signs of develop ment, but even at the third recording, she only makes three inversions in 21 obligatory contexts. As with Willi, we see a significant increase in the use of the preposing strategy (x + 1) with Eric and Christina, but no improvement in the inversion structure. Comparison of the results from inversion in questions and in declaratives Figure 3 presents a comparison of the results from the separate analyses of questions and declaratives within the paradigm of the Zisa group. A common developmental feature for the four learners is that they use inversion earlier in questions than in declaratives. Hammarberg (1985) has found the same devel opmental feature for Swedish L2 in various studies. Another common feature is a clear developmental profile in the learners' use of the preposing strategy: at the first recording they hardly use any adverbs in initial position; at the third recording Mariette, Willi, Eric and Christina have 10, 23, 15 and 21 examples respectively with adverbs in initial position (see Figure 2). A third remarkable feature is that especially the Portuguese learner and the English learner show a surprising stability, different from the one predicted by the Zisa hypothesis. In questions they produce no unin verted examples (stage x+3); in declaratives they produce almost exclusively uninverted examples (stage x + 1). That is a clear violation of the Zisa stages and the predictions of the cognitive con-
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straints. Not only the sentence-external inversion in yes/no-questions, but also the sentence-internal inversion in wh-questions, which is predicted to demand as great a processing capacity as inversion in declaratives, are acquired before the declarative inversion. Questions
Declaratives
Mariette
No development: x + 3/4
Development: x/x+1→X + 3 Increasing use of obligatory contexts (i.e. preposed adverbs)
Willi
No development: x + 3/4
Development: x/x + 1→X + 3 Increasing use of obligatory contexts
Eric
No development: x+3
No development: x/x+1 Increasing use of obligatory contexts
Christina
No development x+3
No development: x/x+1 Increasing use of obligatory contexts
Rosa
No development: x → x+1
No development: x/x+1 Few obligatory contexts
Inversion in:
Figure 3: A comparison of the development of question formation and declarative formation Can we find any plausible explanation? Why is inversion in questions and declaratives not acquired at the same time, or at least within the same period of time, with a gradual acquisition of inversion? And why is inversion in ques tions acquired before inversion in declaratives? Let us look at inversion in the two types of utterances from a functional point of view. Inversion is the only marker of difference between yes/no-questions and declaratives. That is, from a communicative point of view inversion is quite important. If you ask some thing, you don't want it to be taken as a statement, and vice versa. In wh-ques tions both the inversion and the wh-pronoun signal the interrogative function.
NATURAL SEQUENCES OF ACQUISITION
399
It might be claimed that the redundancy could lead to later acquisition of in version in these questions as the presence of a wh-word implies that there is no risk of interpreting the utterance as a declarative. On the other hand, the learner may hypothesize that interrogativity is indicated by inversion. In declaratives inversion has no semantic or pragmatic function. There is no semantic or pragmatic difference between: I går kom han hjem klokken seks. Yesterday came he home at six. and I går han kom hjem klokken seks. Yesterday he came home at six. As Danish is a V2 language, the uninverted declarative differs from the target norm, but there is no risk of Danish native speakers taking the utterance for anything but a declarative, the inversion in declaratives having no semanticpragmatic implications. Only in rather infrequent contexts where the same word has different gram matical and semantic-pragmatic functions, does the inversion become crucial to the interpretation. For example: Så kom han ind i stuen. Then came he into the living room. ... så han kom ind i stuen. ... so he came into the living room. Så ('so'/'then') can be used as a temporal adverb followed by inversion ('then'), or as a causal conjunction with no inversion ('so'). From the results of the study of Christina and Eric, two conclusions may be drawn: 1) There is a remarkable discrepancy between the development of the two learners and the predictions of the Zisa group. 2) Inversion is first acquired in contexts where it has semantic-pragmatic weight. That is, semantic and pragmatic functions play a crucial role in the develop ment of SLA. When a particular grammatical form (i.e. inversion) is function ally redundant in one context (i.e. declarative) and is the major expression of a semantic-pragmatic function in another context (i.e. interrogative), the learn er will experience more difficulty with the acquisition of the grammatical form in the former context (cf. also Hammarberg 1985:159). Another explanation may, however, compete with the functional one, name ly the influence of L1. Neither Eric nor Christina come from V2 languages. In their L1, inversion may be used in declaratives for specific focal and stylis-
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tic purposes, but the general and most frequent structure of declaratives is (X)SV order. The difficulty of analysing a grammatically motivated declarative inversion combined with lack of knowledge of such constructions from their L1 may delay acquisition. The possible influence of the learners' L1 may be said to go counter to any strong functional claim. The development of the two Dutch learners, however, can support the functional hypothesis, as Dutch is also a V2 language: 1) In version in questions is acquired before inversion in declaratives. Functional explanation: inversion has a different functional load in the two types of sen tences. 2) Even though the learners are familiar with inversion in questions as well as in declaratives from their L1, they only use one of them in Danish L2 at the initial stages. Functional explanation: the lack of functional load means that the identical structural organisation in L1 and L2 does not override the functional difference at the initial stages of acquisition. In sum, I hypothesize: Independently of the L1, grammatical features that are functionally redun dant are more difficult to acquire than features with a clear-cut semantic and pragmatic function. Of course, this is not a new discovery as such. The point of view has not had much impact on research into the sequential acquisition of morphology and word order, however. We find semantically based conclusions for different structural categories in studies by among others Andersen (1984); Adiv (1984); Hulstijn (1984); Berman (1984, 1993); and Holmen (1993); and in some of Slobin's working principles (1973) accounting for child language acquisition. Two important developmental features still remain to be discussed: 1) Why do learners acquire the preposing strategy before they acquire inversion in de claratives? Here a cognitive and a functional explanation seem to point in the same direction. As described above, the Zisa group base their explanations of the preposing strategy on the theory that string-external elements are more perceptually salient than for instance the string-internal V. Preposing other elements than the subject also has communicative implications, however — whether as a means of focalization or in order to achieve text and discourse cohesion. Thus there is reason to believe that the interplay between general cognitive prerequisites and functional conditions may lead to a relatively early discovery of the preposing possibility. 2) A last question I want to approach is: why is it a general interlanguage phenomenon that learners acquiring an L2 with interrogative inversion produce inversions in interrogative subordinate clauses, like the one we saw from the American Eric.
NATURAL SEQUENCES OF ACQUISITION
Eric,
2nd rec.:
401
Vi snakkede om hvad lavede jeg og hvor bor where hvor bor jeg og hvad laver jeg i fritid. 'vi snakkede om hvad jeg lavede og hvor jeg bor ...' (L2 norm) We talked about what made I and where live where live I and what make I in spare time.
This may be seen as a result of the learner overgeneralizing the inversion rule, but that raises another question: why do learners overextend the structure which is claimed to be more complex (VS: Zisa's stage x+3), instead of the one claimed to be less complex (SV)? And in addition: why do they overextend it into subordinate clauses which they are hypothesized not to be able to ma nipulate until they have reached a relatively late stage (Zisa's stage x+4)? My point is that here we have evidence that the inferential processes made by the learner for questions and those made for declaratives may have nothing or very little to do with each other — despite the identical structural organization (XVS/WH-VS). The fact that the learner uses inversion in interrogative subordi nate clauses instead of the less complex uninverted structure implies that the driving force of acquisition is communicative function (question formation versus declarative formation) and to a lesser extent structural organization (in version versus non-inversion). The learner makes one set of hypotheses for questions, another for declaratives. Accordingly, the hypothesis made for ques tions is one of VS word order — one form to one function — and the form chosen for declaratives is a generalization of the SV word order. The learner thus follows a hypothesis about isomorphism. With approaches based on semantic-pragmatic function, research on relative difficulty will no longer have to engage in discussing whether syntactic cate gories or morphological categories are the more difficult to acquire. A research project comparing the acquisition order of the declarative and plural markers on nouns would most likely show syntax to be more difficult, whereas a study investigating the acquisition order of question inversion compared to that of adjective or verb agreement would probably give the opposite result, depending on the functional load. To conclude, it is no doubt important to consider the existence of cognitive constraints when we analyse acquisition data, as for instance some of the con straints we have seen in the theories of the Zisa group. As human beings we are limited by the capacity of our working memory. Our working memory can only process a certain amount of new information at a time, and, considering the amount of new information we get at all levels of input when we acquire
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a new language, we are likely to filter the input during comprehension, and during production our performance is likely to be characterized by different kinds of simplifications. Here, perceptual saliency as well as structural com plexity is likely to play an important role in SLA, as predicted by the Zisa group. My results for the acquisition of inversion in questions, however, indi cate that semantic-pragmatic functionality plays a more important role than structural complexity and lack of perceptual saliency.
3. The acquisition of negation 3.1 The natural sequence for negation According to the surveys made by Ellis (1986) and Larsen-Freeman & Long (1991), there is strong evidence of a universal developmental sequence for the acquisition of English L2 negation (as seen in Figures 4 and 5). According to various analyses, all learners start with pre-verbal negation independently of their L1 and L2, and the first correct positioning of negation is found in auxil iary contexts at the third stage — a development very similar to the L1 devel opment found for children (Brown 1973 among others). These results are also confirmed for Swedish L2 by Hyltenstam (1977, 1978) in his study of adults with various L1-backgrounds. His study is based on a written cloze test with the possible options of placing the negation either in front of or immediately after the finite verb. 1. External negation (no) No + x/ + s + vb/no + vb
No very good/No you playing here
2. Internal pre-verbal negation No/not/unanalysed don't+ vb
I no can swim/Marina not coming today/I don't see nothing mop
3. Post-negation of modal verbs Aux + neg
I can't play this one/I won't go
4. Target language norm Not/Analysed do + negt Elimination of 'no + V' Tense and number marking
He doesn't know anything/I didn't said it She didn't believe me
Figure 4: The natural sequence of English negation (an extract from Ellis 1986:59-60)
NATURAL SEQUENCES OF ACQUISITION
403
As can be seen in Figure 5 the sequence summarized by Larsen-Freeman & Long is very similar to the one presented in Figure 4. Stage
Sample utterance
1. External 2. Internal, pre-verbal 3. Aux+neg 4. Analysed don't
No this one/No you playing here Juana no/don't have job I can't play the guitar She doesn't drink alcohol
Figure 5: Developmental sequences for ESL (English as a Second Language) negation (Larsen-Freeman & Long 1991:94) Based on the fact that pre-verbal negation is the most frequent in all languages using uninflected negative particles, Hyltenstam (1984, 1987) predicts a markedness hierarchy according to which any learner, independently of his mother tongue, will have an initial pre-verbal phase (see Figure 6). Row 1 2 3 4
Native language NEG-V NEG-V V-NEG V-NEG
Target language NEG-V V-NEG NEG-V V-NEG
Initial stages of interlanguage NEG-V NEG-V NEG-V NEG-V
Figure 6: A hypothesis about the placement of negation in initial stages of interlanguage under different L1/L2 conditions (Hyltenstam. 1984:40) 3.2 The acquisition of negation in Danish L2 The hypothesis of the natural sequence for the acquisition of negation com bined with the markedness theory implies the predictions for learners in my study presented in Figure 7. All the learners are predicted to use pre-verbal negation for longer or shorter periods depending on the interplay between L1 and L2, despite the fact that Danish is a post-negating language and the four of the learners come to this L2 with an already internalized post-negating L1 (Dutch and English).
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L1
L2, Danish
Interlanguage
Mariette/Willi Dutch
post-vb.neg.
post-vb.neg.
pre-vb.neg. (short phase)
Christina/Rosa Portug./Spanish
pre-vb. neg.
post-vb.neg.
pre-vb.neg. (long phase)
Eric/Diddy English
post-vb.neg.
post-vb.neg.
pre-vb.neg (short phase)
Figure 7: Predictions for Danish L2 negation according to the hypotheses of natural sequence and markedness Danish uses an uninflected lexical particle ikke 'not' in auxiliary contexts, as well as with finite main verbs. In main clauses, the negation is always placed after the finite verb whether it is an auxiliary or a main verb. As some thing typologically very peculiar within some of the Nordic languages, the negation has a different position in subordinate clauses, namely in front of the finite verb. Whenever an adverb occurs in a string-internal position, it follows the same rules as the negation: in main clauses it is placed after the finite verb, in subordinate clauses in front of the finite verb. This structural identity sug gests looking for developmental similarities and differences between the acqui sition of negation and adverbs respectively. Results Despite the predictions of the natural sequence hypothesis and the markedness hypothesis, my data include very few instances of pre-verbal negation — and with four of the six learners, I find no examples at all. Neither do these four learners use pre-verbal adverbs in the three elicitations. Manette,
1st rec.:
Jeg ved ikke hvad det hedder på dansk. I know not what it is called in Danish.
2nd rec.: De laver ikke hvad jeg siger. 'de gør ikke hvad jeg siger' (L2 norm) They make not what I say. 'They don't do what I tell them to do'. 2nd rec.:
og så sidder han og spiser og mor laver måske nogle pandekager - jeg er ikke sikkert (L2 norm)
NATURAL SEQUENCES OF ACQUISITION
405
and then sits he and eats and mum makes maybe some pancakes - I am not sure 'and then he is eating and mum is maybe making some pancakes - I am not sure' Willi,
1st rec.:
Hun har også en børn. 'hun har også et barn' (L2 norm) She has also a children. 'She also has a child'.
2nd rec.:
Så når vi skal spise så taler vi altid dansk. (L2 norm) So when we shall eat then talk we always Dan ish. 'So when we are going to eat we always speak Danish'.
Note that even in an inverted context, Willi uses the correct position of the ad verb (2nd rec.). Surprisingly, the American Eric who is predicted to have a relatively short pre-verbal phase compared to the two Romance learners, has examples of preverbal negation even in the third recording: Eric,
3rd rec:
Jeg ikke forstår barndom. 'jeg forstår ikke barndom' (L2 norm) I not understand childhood.
A distributional analysis shows that Eric uses post-verbal negation from the second recording on in all auxiliary and modal contexts and with copulas, in accordance with the target norm as well as the L1 norm. In the first recording he produces no aux-contexts at all. In all three recordings he only produces one correct example of post-verbal placement of the adverb in main verb contexts: Eric,
3rd rec.:
Hans kone arbejder også. His wife works too.
This position of the adverb, however, may be due to L1 influence and may thus be a correct output for the wrong reasons. Another problem is that the adverb is in final position. I have no string-internal examples where Eric dem onstrates a capability of integrating the negation and the adverbs in postposition after a finite main verb. I shall return to these observations later. The following are two examples of a negation and an adverb in pre-verbal positions:
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Eric,
1st rec:
Jeg lide arbejde -jeg ikke lide vejret. 'jeg kan lide at arbejde - jeg kan ikke lide vejret' (L2 norm) I like work - 1 not like the weather. 'I like to work - I don't like the weather'.
Apparently Eric takes lide to be a finite verb like in English. Eric,
2nd rec.:
Vi sidst snakkede ... 'vi snakkede sidst om/sidst snakkede vi om ...' (L2 norm) We last talked about ... 'Last time we talked about ...'.
The results place Eric at the third stage of the natural sequence. Rosa from Peru with Spanish L1 is the other learner using pre-verbal nega tion. According to an analysis of other features in her data, her developmental profile in general is rather atypical compared to the others' as she seems to develop backwards, or, at best, her general Danish L2 competence does not change very much from recording to recording. It is interesting to notice, how ever, that not even Rosa uses pre-verbal negation in auxiliary and modal con texts: Rosa,
1st rec.:
Jeg er ikke pronunciacion. (Spanish) 'jeg kan ikke udtale' (L2 norm) I am not pronunciacion. 'I can not pronounce'.
3rd r e c :
Jeg jeg er ikke arbejder. 'jeg arbejder ikke' (L2 norm) 'I am not work. 'I do not work'.
She only produces these two examples of post-verbal negation in aux/modalcontexts in all three recordings, however, and in both examples, she uses the wrong auxiliary verb. But it is remarkable that not even in the performance of such a relatively weak learner, we find pre-verbal negation in auxiliary or mo dal verb contexts. The other three learners produce nothing but post-verbal negation from the first recording on. The two Dutch informants both use post-verbal negations and adverbs in varied verbal contexts, with auxiliaries, copulas, finite main verbs and in subject-verb inverted contexts. It might be claimed that they have
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already passed the pre-verbal stage within the four weeks before the first re cording, as they are predicted only to have a short pre-negating phase. But it does not seem likely that within four weeks they should have reached a devel opmental stage which for other learners "can take longer than two years" (Ellis 1986:60). If so, however, we must seriously investigate the nature of the cog nitive processes leading to such discrepancies of time. Is it plausible to con sider them to be identical? A likely conclusion is that Dutch learners use an already internalized linear organization from their L1 when they are exposed to Danish L2. They may not have to reconceptualize the structure at all. As soon as the learners have discovered the grammatical relationship between the different elements of the string, the work is so to say done. Willi uses three adverbs which are placed differently from the target lan guage norm: Willi,
1st rec.:
Hun laver mad og lave [inf.] kaffe også. 'hun laver mad og hun laver også kaffe' (L2 norm) She makes food and make coffee also.
3rd rec.:
De skal være stadigvæk hjemme. 'de skal stadigvæk være hjemme' (L2 norm) They must be still home.
This position, however, is not considered a possibility in the theory of the nat ural sequences nor in Hyltenstam's cloze test for Swedish L2 (1977, 1978). Of course, it might be argued that the position of the adverbs has nothing to do with the theory of natural sequences, as they only focus on the acquistion of negation. Bolander (1987,1988), however, has found many examples not only of postposed adverbials, but also of negation following the verbal chain in her data. This shows that not only position in front of the verb should be carefully examined before we can draw any conclusions about the acquisition of nega tion, but also position after the verb. A way of explaining the final position of the adverb may be that the learner is unwilling to split the auxiliary or modal from its main verb and the object or a PP from the verb (according to Slobin's operating principles, Slobin 1973). This explanation is also used by the Zisa group in connection with both postposed adverbs (Pienemann 1987), and to explain the late topicalisation of objects (Clahsen 1984). Bolander (1987, 1988) who has found many examples of negations after the verb chain, as indicated in the titles of her work, sees this position as a result of automatizised verb chunk learning.
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Christina from Portugal with a pre-negating L1 is predicted to have a long pre-verbal phase. But from the first recording on she produces nothing but post-verbal negation in varied verbal contexts. For example: Christina,
1st rec.:
Vi bor i і ikke і en by. We live in in not in a town. Det er ikke mit venner. It is not my [sg.] friends. Han kan ikke tale portugisisk - ikke endnu. He can not speak Portuguese - not yet. Nej det tror jeg ikke. No it think I not. 'No I don't think so'.
In the first example it is hard to conclude whether Christina is in fact using post main verb negation, or if she is negating the PP lacking the word landet һӘ country side'. In general, Christina's examples indicate that the input from L2 may have an important influence on her development. In spite of her L1, she uses the L2 norm in contradiction to the predictions made by the theory of the natural acquisition sequences and the markedness hypothesis. To sum up, I find no conclusive evidence of the natural sequence for nega tion in my data. There is weak evidence that Eric follows the sequence. It is remarkable, however, that neither Eric nor Rosa use pre-verbal negation in auxiliary and modal contexts. The development of the two Dutch learners and Christina from Portugal shows no evidence of the sequence at all. A much more predominant pattern in their interlanguage development is a considerable increase in adverbial variation from recording to recording.6 Taken together with the development of topicalisation in the inversion analysis, this area seems to be a good candidate for a pragmatic analysis. The discrepancies between my results and the predictions of the natural se quence and the markedness hypothesis, made me decide to look in more detail at different negation studies and surveys of negation studies. 3.3 Schumann 's survey for English L2 From Schumann's survey (1979) of several negation studies including different L1s, it appears that, for instance, German L1 plays a significant role in the
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development of English L2. Schumann refers to the following developmental sequence from Wode (1978): I-Ia IIb IIIa
IIIb IIIc
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
No. No, you. No play baseball (= let's not play baseball). That's no good. Lunch is no ready. I got nothing shoe. John go not to the school. I can no play with Kenny. I cannot hit the ball. I didn't see. I didn't can close it. (Schumann 1979:21-22, from Wode 1978)
According to the target language norm there is no genuine pre-verbal negation here, not even at the first stages, as the negation in the example no play base ball is placed in front of a verb which, according to Wode's own gloss, has an infinite and not a finite grammatical function. This position is not wrong ac cording to the target norm, as we can see from the gloss. Consequently the position could be due to input factors in combination with a simplified learner output. Besides we have an extra stage with post-verbal negation of the main verb which is a position we do not find in English L2, but which has clear connections to German L1: John go not to the school = John geht nicht in der Schule (German L1 norm) Schumann concludes: In general then, from the data that Wode gives, it would appear that German speakers are much more likely to use some kind of post-verbal rather than preverbal negation when acquiring English. With Spanish speakers it is just the other way around. Thus, both language groups seem to favour their L1 pattern when forming English negatives. (Schumann 1979:22)7 Another important result from Schumann's survey (1979) is that the negation no seems to be used primarily by learners coming from pre-negating L1s, while no hardly ever occurs with post-negating learners. Accordingly we find two developmental features which go counter to the natural sequence: 1) The absence of no (i.e. the possibility that some learners skip the first stage of the natural sequence). 2) An additional stage with post-verbal negation of the main
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verb. It is worth noticing that both these exceptions come from learners with post-negating L1s. This leads to the following question: Would the "natural" sequence for negation have been different if the point of departure had been other than English children's first language acquisition (Brown 1973) and Span ish learners' acquisition of English (Schumann 1979)? 3.4 The acquisition of negation for German L2 Also as an L2, German seems to play an active role in development. Accord ing to Clahsen (1984) and Meisel (1983) from the Zisa group, their learners, all coming from pre-negating L1s (Italian, Spanish and Portuguese learners), use not only pre-verbal negation, but also post-verbal negation at the first de velopmental stage: 1st stage: NEG + VB or VB+NEG Ich kenne nicht die Welt (L2 norm) I know not the world ('I don't know the world') (Clahsen 1984:233-234) The individual learner is most likely to use only one of the two possibilities. It is worth noticing that even Romance learners with unmarked pre-verbal negations in their L1s may start with post-verbal negations, contrary to the predictions about a relatively long pre-verbal negation phase.8 These results are comparable with the development of Christina from Portugal. The results from Schumann and the Zisa data thus support my results and the hypothesis that already existing knowledge from Ll as well as input from L2 have an impact on the development — an impact that not only influences the rate of acquisition, but so significant that it interferes with the order of the natural sequence as well as with the markedness hypothesis. In a later article this is to some extent supported by Hyltenstam (1984:40) who states that he had difficulty finding conclusive evidence of pre-verbal negation from learners with post-negating L1s. In sum, these results emphasize the importance of comparing learners' interlanguage with the specific L1s and L2s involved, in order to see the way in which specific structural organizations in L1/L2 could influence development, and in order to realize whether certain developmental features may be better explained on the basis of input or Ll influence or as an interplay between Ll and L2. If we look immediately for universalities without taking the specific languages involved seriously, we may miss important cues in the analysis of language acquisition.
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3.5 Typical examples of the first stages of acquisition Going through the data used by Ellis (1986) and Larsen-Freeman & Long (1991) as typical of the 1st stage (negation+verb), an interesting pattern emerges: Ellis (1986): No (= don't) look my card (p. 84) Marina not coming today (p. 59) No (= I won't) come here (p. 155) No (I don't) like beer (p. 172) No ( " ) speak Portuguese (p. 286) No ( " ) finish book (p. 286) Larsen-Freeman & Long (1991): They not working (p. 94) No (= I don't) like hamburger (p. 308) From a formal grammatical point of view most of these examples seem, prima facie, to confirm the preference for pre-verbal negation; but from the gloss given by the analysts, it appears that the grammatical function of the verbs in all the examples is infinite. Accordingly, there is no confirmation given of the learners' capability of placing the negation, as the finite auxiliary or modal is absent in all examples. In fact you might describe the position of the negation as correct, that is: in front of the infinite verb, according to the target language norm. Consequently, the explanation of the data may be found in input factors instead of in unexplained, inbuilt universality; the position of the negation that learners meet in the input is not different from the position we see in the sim plified learner output. These examples from Ellis and Larsen-Freeman & Long indicate how im portant it is not only to look at forms, but also to analyse the function of these forms (e.g. finiteness). The examples point to the necessity of checking not only what is present in the data, but also to analyse what is missing. It is sur prising that progressive examples like Marina not coming today and They not working are included as typical of a pre-negating stage, given that the verb is explicitly morphologically marked as infinite. 3.6 The acquisition of negations or auxiliaries? There seems to be an overall agreement in negation studies that the first cor rect post-verbal position of negation appears in auxiliary and modal contexts
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at the 3rd stage of the natural sequence. Comparing these facts with the infinite verb examples from the 1st stage, a plausible hypothesis might be that the problems facing the learners at the 1st stage have little to do with the position of negation and a lot to do with how to cope with auxiliaries and the modal system. The position of the negation does not change from the 1st to the 3rd stage. What changes is that the learner introduces modals and auxiliaries. The semantic and pragmatic complexity of the modals makes this a plausible hy pothesis. Whether we are here approaching a universal simplification feature in SLA or not can only be answered by a closer investigation. However, there are two important methodological points to emphasize: 1) If we study the de velopment of a certain phenomenon in isolation (in casu, negation) without taking into consideration the development of the linguistic context (in casu, the modal system and auxiliaries), we risk jumping to conclusions. 2) If we ex clusively study forms — in this case taking any pre-negated verb as evidence of neg + finite vb — without checking whether the function of these forms is finite or infinite, we run the risk of reaching the wrong conclusions. We can not study form without studying function. Without making functional differentiations we cannot describe data ade quately. Consequently we cannot present reliable psycholinguistic conclusions. Accordingly, the linguistic instrument with which we analyse our data can play an unintendedly active role in shaping our conclusions. 3.7 Neg+awe/modal+vb data The absence of auxiliaries at the 1st stage raises another problem: Do we find any empirical evidence of neg+aux/modal+vb in learner data (e.g. I not can swim)? There seem to be very few examples. In ltenstam's study (1977), all learners with post-verbal negation in L1 are claimed to have passed the neg+ aux/modal+vb stage within the three weeks of formal instruction preceding the first test (Hyltenstam 1984:40). In my data I found no examples of neg+aux/modal+vb. The learners could be claimed to have passed that stage in the four weeks before the first recording. But even the Peruvian Rosa who has many examples of pre-verbal negation, uses post-verbal negation in connection with auxiliaries. In Bolander's data for Swedish L2 (Bolander 1987:Appendix) I have found only one example of neg+aux/modal: Men han inte ville just den tidningen But he not would exactly that newspaper
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However, here the modal has the function of a full verb. Furthermore, the example comes from a Polish learner with pre-verbal negation in his L1. There are no examples of preposed negation in connection with verbal chains (i.e. aux/modal+vb). In these contexts the negation is either correctly placed after the auxiliary or after the verbal chain. The rare occurrence of neg+aux+vb is supported by Meisel (1983:133) who explicitly states that in the Zisa data there is only one case of a neg+mo dal+vb sequence. Here again, we must bear in mind that all learners were speakers of Romance languages with preposed negation. What Meisel found in the Zisa data were numerous examples of negation after the modals like in: Ich kann nicht schwimmen 'can not swim', even with learners who always place the negation in front of the main verb like in: Ich nicht schwimme 'I not swim', and very often a long time before post-negation of the main verb shows up. This is in accordance with Hyltenstam's implicational scales (1977:392). 3.8 A functional learner hypothesis based on semantics It seems that the finite auxiliaries and modals constitute a more favourable con text for the correct placement of negation than the finite main verb. As we have seen, that accounts for English, German, Swedish and Danish L2. Can we find any psycholinguistic logic behind this observation? It is hard to find any convincing explanation, especially if we take into account that the aux/modal+vb chain is far more complex structurally than the finite main verb. Hyltenstam (1977:408) suggests input frequency, but in this case that only ac counts for some of the frequent modal verbs, whereas the frequency of a finite main verb like kommer 'come' doesn't contribute to a correct postposition of the negation. Moreover, the frequency hypothesis cannot explain why negation is acquired in the reverse order in subordinate clauses, where negation is first acquired in finite main verb contexts (Hyltenstam 1977:390). The question is: have we chosen the right point of departure if we base our negation analysis on the relationship between the negation and the finite verb (be it a modal or a main verb)? Most of the sample data we have analysed until now point in another direction. From the observation made by Meisel (1983) that examples like I can not swim and I not swim can co-exist for a long time in the learner's interlanguage, I would like to suggest an economical and simple learner hypothesis based on semantics for the first stages of the development:
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The negation is always placed in front of the semantically salient verb — whether this verb is finite or infinite. Knowing that learners always use preposed negation with other constituents such as NPs, PPs, adjectives, adverbs (according to, among others, Clahsen 1984:232 and my own data), we end up with a semantically based learner hy pothesis of one function to one form. A similar conclusion was made for the acquisition of question formation and declaratives respectively. A one-to-one hypothesis is most likely what any learner is looking for, especially at the early stages of SLA where the load on the limited processing capacities of working memory is immense. The search for economical and generalizable hypotheses is probably a general cognitive learning principle we use in our effort to organ ize the world. With the semantically based hypothesis the apparent developmental para doxes are eliminated. It is no longer a mystery why the finite auxiliary or mo dal is a more attractive context for a correct postposition of the negation than the finite main verb. And it is no longer difficult to explain why learners of Swedish L2 acquire correct negation with finite auxiliaries and modals in main clauses, but in subordinate clauses they acquire correct placement of the nega tion in finite main verb contexts (i.e. before the main verb) first. Learners are not concerned at all with the finiteness of the verb. This also explains the premain verb position in the sample utterances for the first stages used by Ellis (1986), Larsen-Freeman & Long (1991), and by Wode (1984). The position of the negation does not change whether the main verb is finite or infinite, and whether it is a main clause or a subordinate clause: Main cl. Sub. cl. Main cl. Sub. cl.
Jeg kan ikke svømme I can Hvis jeg kan ikke svømme If I can Jeg ikke svømmer I Hvis jeg ikke svømmer IfI
not not not not
swim swim swim swim
- L2 norm - Interlanguage - Interlanguage - L2 norm
The two correct positions are, so to say, correct for the wrong reasons. For as long as learners place the negation after finite auxiliaries and modals and si multaneously place the negation in front of the finite main verb, they cannot be said to have acquired the syntactic rules for the position of the negation. A plausible psycholinguistic explanation is that learners cannot differentiate be tween the two clause types at this stage of their development, since they may have difficulty in discovering the relevant complicated linguistic cues. A last question to be answered is this: why do some learners of German, Swedish and Danish L2 choose to place the negation before the semantically
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most salient verb? Why not after the verb? The former position cannot be claimed to be structurally simpler than the latter, and these learners are ex posed to postpositions in the input. Is it after all because the pre-verbal posi tion is more natural, innate or unmarked than post-verbal negation? Hardly. To a considerable degree learners are exposed to negations which occur in front of the constituents which they negate: NPs, PPs, adjectives, adverbs, not to mention infinite main verbs. Also the position of the negation in subordinate clauses in front of the finite main verb may be influential and may be a factor which makes learners stick to their semantic hypothesis. Another influential factor for Danish L2 is the perceptual saliency of the elements: Negation and infinite main verbs are stressed, whereas auxiliaries and modals are unstressed in pragmatically unmarked contexts. In fact placement of negation after the semantically salient constituent is exceptional; only in structural contexts with finite main verbs is the learner exposed to a negation which is postposed after the semantically salient verb. Furthermore, this position of negation after the finite main verb is the only position which, from the learner's point of view, can be said not to be semantically motivated. In contexts with objects or PPs the postposition may even conflict with the learner's semantic hypothesis, as the learner may interpret the postposition as indicating negation of the object or PP. It would be particularly interesting to find analyses of learners coming from an L1 with the negation placed after the semantically salient constituent and being exposed to an L2 with the same organisation. We may conclude that the interplay between semantic saliency of the main verb on the one hand and high input frequency of pre-main verb negation com bined with the perceptual saliency of the negation and the infinite main verb, makes a semantically based one-to-one hypothesis the most obvious choice for the learner to go for at the initial stages of acquisition. 3.9 The developmental stages of negation for English L2 Let us now reconsider on the basis of the former analyses and conclusions the developmental stages of negation for English L2. As mentioned above, English is very often involved as L1 or L2 in conclusions drawn about pre-verbal ne gation (mainly for Spanish learners, but also for Japanese learners with final negation (Stauble 1984) and to some extent in my own data). English is claim ed to be a post-verbal negating language, and the syntax of the negation is claimed to be acquired step by step, the learner going through four develop mental stages (see Figures 4 and 5).
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My claim, however, is that these acquisitional stages have very little if any thing to do with the acquisition of negation. From the beginning learners place the negation in front of the semantically salient verb according to a semantic hypothesis. Essentially this does not conflict with the target language norm, and apart from having to acquire some exceptions to this semantically based rule, learners can stick to this hypothesis for English. I suggest that what learn ers acquire when going through these stages is the following: 1. how to use the auxiliary system 2. how to use the correct form of negation (no/not/don't) 3. how to conjugate verbs. A simple and to a large extent sufficient learner hypothesis for English L2 is to place the negation in front of the semantically salient verb.
4. The need for a functional approach in SLA Can we do without a functional approach? I hope the preceding analyses and arguments have shown that the answer is no. I have pointed out the insufficien cy of data analyses based on a purely formal grammatical approach. Descrip tions of the expression structure of the learner's interlanguage are a necessary part of the analysis of second language acquisition, but if our aim is not only to describe the data but also to find explanations which can lead to predictions, we cannot do without functional categories. If we restrict ourselves to the ex pression structure, we will not find psycholinguistically convincing patterns, we will overlook patterns, and we will find patterns in conflict. Some develop mental patterns will seem unexplainable, such as the acquisition of the correct placement of negation in a context with a modal or auxiliary before the acquisi tion of the correct placement of negation with a main finite verb, even though constructions with modals and auxiliaries are structurally more complex. Nor can we explain why the acquisition of inversion in declaratives takes place later than the acquisition of inversion in questions. Or why inversion in questions appears so early in the learner data. I have shown how dangerous it can be if we only look at forms without even differentiating grammatical functions — taking infinite forms to be finite for example. Furthermore, we cannot study the development of isolated phenomena without carefully analysing the devel opment of phenomena in context. We saw how the developmental sequence for English negation seems to have much more to do with the development of the aux/modal system and verb inflection than with the development of negation.
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I have furthermore shown that the degree to which a grammatical feature is the sole or major expression of semantic-pragmatic content strongly influ ences the order of acquisition. In V2 languages, for example, inversion is ac quired earlier in questions than in declaratives with topicalized adverbs, inver sion being the most conspicuous expression of interrogativity. Grammatical features which are highly redundant are acquired later, and here the interplay between L1 and L2 seems to be less influential. This seems to me to provide support for a strong functional SLA hypothesis based on semantics and prag matics.
Notes 1.
Zisa: Zweitspracherwerb Italienischer und Spanischer Arbeiter.
2.
The data for my study come from early Danish SLA of six adult learners with English, Dutch and Romance L1s, two of each origin. One of the Romance learners comes from Portugal, the other from Peru. The study is longitudinal. Each learner has been recorded three times with six weeks' intervals. They all follow a formal Danish programme based on communicative principles with the same teacher for the same number of lessons. Apart from the Peruvian, Rosa, who knows a few single words of Danish, the learners do not know any Danish at the beginning of the programme. The first recording takes place four weeks after they have started learning Danish. There are 3-4 different elicitation tasks at each recording: a so-called 'free' oral conversation with a Danish inter viewer, oral as well as written picture descriptions, and oral learner questions to the interviewer. Despite the short interval between each recording, five of the six informants demonstrate considerable development in their interlanguage at each elici tation, which may be due both to their Ll background and to the formal input. Furthermore, at the initial stages of SLA, the progression can be expected to be rapid.
3.
One of the English speaking informants (the sixth learner) didn't participate in the ques tion elicitation task, and unfortunately I lost contact with her before the 3rd recording.
4.
The first line below each example presents glosses of the example. If these are immedi ately intelligible in English, there is no further translation.
5.
'if = interrogative conjunction; hvis 'if = conditional conjunction.
6.
For a more detailed distributional analysis of my data I refer to my ongoing Ph.Dproject.
7.
This conclusion is neither mentioned by Ellis (1986) nor by Larsen-Freeman & Long (1991), who summarize Schumann's survey in the following way:
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Although speakers of L1s with pre-verbal negation tend to spend longer at Stages 1 [external negation - KL] and 2 [internal pre-verbal negation - KL], while learners whose L1s have post-verbal negation may traverse these stages quite quickly [...] pre-verbal negation [...] has been documented as the first ESL [English as a second language - KL] stage for learners from a wide variety of L1s (Schumann 1979) and also for other SLs. (Larsen-Freeman & Long 1991:95; emphasis added - KL) They do not mention the important exceptions from the natural sequence, found in Wode's data, nor do they include Schumann's own conclusion for the German learners. 8.
It is also interesting to notice that the cognitive constraints of the Zisa group, predicting the post-verbal position of the adverb to be acquired later (Pienemann 1987), do not prevent an early post-verbal negation to split the verb from an object or an adverb.
References Adiv, Ellen. 1984. Language learning strategies: The relationship between L1 opera tion principles and language transfer in L2 development. Andersen 1984.125-142. Andersen, Roger W., ed. 1984. Second Languages: A cross-linguistic perspective. Rowley, Mass.: Newbury House. Andersen, Roger W. 1984. What's gender good for anyway? Andersen 1984.77-99. Berman, Ruth A. 1984. Cross-linguistic first language perspectives on second lan guage acquisition research. Andersen 1984.13-36. Berman, Ruth A. 1993. Crosslinguistic perspectives on native language acquisition. Hyltenstam & Viberg 1993.245-266. Bever, Thomas. 1970. The cognitive basis for linguistic structures. Cognition and the Growth of Language ed. by J. Hayes, 279-352. New York: John Wiley. Bolander, Maria. 1987. "Man kan studera inte så mycke". Om placeringen av nega tion och adverb i vuxna invandrares svenska (= SUM-rapport, 5.). Stockholm: Institutionen för lingvistik. Stockholms Universitet. Bolander, Maria. 1988. Nu ja hoppas inte så mycke. Om inversion och placering av negation och adverb i svenska som andraspråk. Första Symposiet om Svenska som Andraspråk ed. by K. Hyltenstam & E. Lindberg, 203-214. Stockholm: Stock holms Universitet. Bresnan, Joan, ed. 1982. The Mental Representation of Grammatical Relations. Cam bridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Brown, Roger. 1973. A First Language: The early stages. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Clansen, Harald. 1984. The acquisition of German word order: A test case for cogni tive approaches to L2 development. Andersen 1984.219-242.
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Clahsen, Harald, Jürgen Meisel & Manfred Pienemann. 1983. Deutsch als Zweit sprache: Der Spracherwerb Ausländischer Arbeiter. Tübingen: Narr. Cutler, Ann. 1993. Language specific listening? Keynote presented at AILA, 10th World Congress of Applied Linguistics, Amsterdam 1993. Ellis, Rod. 1986. Understanding Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Oxford Uni versity Press. Hammarberg, Björn. 1985. Learnablility and learner strategies in second language syntax and phonology. Hyltenstam & Pienemann 1985.153-175. Holmen, Anne. 1993. Syntactic development in Danish L2. Hyltenstam & Viberg 1993.267-288. Hulstijn, Jan H. 1984. Difficulties in the acquisition of two word order rules by adult learners of Dutch. Andersen 1984.61-73. Hyltenstam, Kenneth. 1977. Implicational patterns in interlanguage syntax variation. Language Learning 27.383-411. Hyltenstam, Kenneth. 1978. Progress in Immigrant Swedish Syntax. Lund: Department of General Linguistics, University of Lund. Hyltenstam, Kenneth. 1984. The use of typological markedness conditions as predic tors in second language acquisition: The case of pronominal copies in relative clauses. Andersen 1984.39-58. Hyltenstam, Kenneth. 1987. Markedness, language universais, language typology and second language acquisition. Pfaff 1987.55-78. Hyltenstam, Kenneth & Manfred Pienemann, eds. 1985. Modelling and Assessing Second Language Acquisition (= Multilingual Matters, 18.). Clevedon: Multilin gual Matters Ltd. Hyltenstam, Kenneth, & Åke Viberg, eds. 1993. Progression and Regression in Lan guage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kasper, Gabrielle. 1992. Pragmatic transfer. Second Language Research 8.203-231. Larsen-Freeman, Diane & Michael Long. 1991. An Introduction to Second Language Acquisition Research. London: Longman. Levelt, W.J.M. 1989. Speaking: From intention to articulation. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.. Lund, Karen. 1993a. Do all learners follow the same sequences? A negation study. Paper presented at the AILA World Congress of Applied Linguistics. Amsterdam, 1993. Lund, Karen. 1993b. Hvor naturlige er de naturlige udviklingssekvenser? En negationsundersøgelse. Nordens Språk som Andrespråk ed. by A. Golden & Α. Hvenekilde, 83-97. Oslo: Oslos Universitet. Meisel, Jürgen. 1983. Strategies of second language acquisition: More than one kind of simplification. Pidginization and Creolization as Language Acquisition ed. by R.W. Andersen, 120-157. Rowley, Mass: Newbury House. Murdock, B.B. Jr. 1962. The serial position effect in free recall. Journal of Experi mental Psychology 62.618-625.
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Pfaff, Carol. 1987. First and Second Language Acquisition Processes. Rowley, Mass.: Newbury House. Pienemann, Manfred. 1985. Learnability and syllabus construction. Hyltenstam & Pienemann 1985.23-75. Pienemann, Manfred. 1987. Psychological constraints on the teachability of languages. Pfaff 1987.143-168. Pienemann, Manfred. 1993. Psycholinguistic Mechanisms in Second Language Ac quisition. Manuscript. Sydney University. Schumann, John. 1979. The acquisition of English negation by speakers of Spanish: A review of the literature. The Acquisition and Use of Spanish and English as First and Second Languages ed. by R.W. Andersen, 3-32. Rowley, Mass: Newbury House. Slobin, Dan I. 1973. Cognitive prerequisites for the development of grammar. Stud ies of Child Language Development ed. by C.A. Ferguson & D.I. Slobin, 175-208. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Stauble, Ann-Marie. 1984. A comparison of a Spanish-English and a Japanese-Eng lish continuum: Negation and verb morphology. Andersen 1984.323-353. Tomiin, Russell S. 1990. Functionalism in second language acquisition. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 12.155-177. Wode, Henning. 1978. Developmental sequences in naturalistic L2 acquisition. Second Language Acquisition ed. by E.M. Hatch, 101-117. Rowley, Mass.: Newbury House. Wode, Henning. 1984. Some theoretical implications of L2 acquisition research and grammar of interlanguages. Interlanguage: Proceedings of the seminar in honour of Pit Corder ed. by A. Davis, Criper & A. Howatt, 162-184. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Theoretical considerations
Linguistic structure in a functional grammar Peter Harder University of Copenhagen
1. Structure and the ontological hierarchy A functionally oriented attempt to relate function to structure can take neither of these two terms for granted: there is no generally accepted answer to the two ontological questions about the nature of structure and function. In intro ducing our brand of linguistic functionalism, we shall try to provide an outline of our answers to both these foundational questions — not as a megalomaniac attempt to clear up the issue once and for all, but for two more or less strategic reasons. First of all, we feel we owe the reader an explanation for why we want to reaffirm the value of certain aspects of the Saussurean foundations of structural linguistics, as opposed to structuralism in the generative version. Secondly, we want to present our credentials with respect to scientific legitima cy. In rejecting a 'formalist' approach to language structure, we do not see ourselves as taking a mushy 'soft option'; on the contrary, we believe that a non-functional approach to linguistic structure underestimates the complexity of language as an object of description. What follows, therefore, should be un derstood as expressing our ontological commitments: this is the way we under stand the nature of the world and of language as part of the world. The most serious problem in relation to the concept of structure has to do with the association between structure and autonomy. This association was part of the Saussurean revolution in which the discipline of linguistics was born ('language is form, not substance') and was reaffirmed as part of Chomsky's generative reconstitution of structural linguistics. We suggest that the autonomy claim is a misunderstanding of the nature of structure, and that linguistic struc ture must be understood as resting on a functional basis. The ontological significance of structure follows from the fact that combina tions of elements may have properties not shared by the components them selves or by other ways of combining them. The notion of 'ontological levels'
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is familiar from the division of labour in science between e.g. physics, chemis try' and biology: we see the world as organized on different levels of complexi ty, with a directionality from 'lower' to 'higher' levels. As we move upwards, the objects become more and more structurally complex; beginning with parti cles, one can proceed up the ladder via atoms and molecules to biological or ganisms and societies. This is fairly uncontroversial on the strictly observational level. There is a question with respect to how 'deep' the division into levels is: is it just because of our ignorance that we seem to find different sets of properties at different levels, or is it because such is the nature of the world? Køppe (1990) argues in great detail in relation to physics, biology and neuropsychology that the di vision is deep and irreducible. This means that there are two opposed basic views about the nature of the world that are both wrong. One is reductionism, a position associated with 'classical' natural science; and the opposed point of view is holism, an approach associated with the 'new age' opposition to sci ence. Reductionism is a strategy that seeks to explain laws applying at higher lev els by reference to lower levels, so that ultimately one would be able to say that everything can be explained by reference to the lowest level: only particles 'really' exist. The key argument against reductionism is its inability to account for the 'jumps' in the type of laws that apply as we move from subatomic (quantum) to macro-physical phenomena, from dead to living entities, or from pre-mental to mental phenomena. Reductionists may claim that this is just a matter of time, and the successes achieved in reducing chemical to physical processes, and biological to chemical processes, point the way for future ad vance in the same direction. However, even if we grant that this possibility cannot be definitively ruled out, the important thing is to be aware that there is nothing intrinsically more 'scientific' in reductionism: it is simply an em pirical issue to what extent we can successfully make the programme work. Holism, conversely, claims that phenomena at all levels hang together irreducibly in one overarching whole, so that we cannot describe a phenomenon at any lower level without simultaneously invoking all the higher domains: only cos mos really exists. The key argument against holism is the impossibility of de velopment: if it is misguided to conceive of e.g. particles in abstraction from biology, how can there have been a time before life arrived on the scene? Since there are objections to both reductionism and holism, a provisional agreement with Køppe would seem to be the most cautious attitude to take. This means accepting that ontological levels are part of the world as we know
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it: neither what we know about particles, nor what we know about cosmos, is at present enough to explain what goes on in between the two extreme levels. If we base ourselves on the directionality from lower and previous to higher and later levels of complexity, there is one fairly clear role for structure to play: to create new things at higher levels by combining lower-level elements in a way that confers properties on them that did not exist before they were brought into this structural relationship. Particles behave differently when or ganized into atoms; atoms behave differently when organized into molecules, and so on. Structure increasingly affects the properties of the whole as we move upwards; if we focus on a given level, e.g. the atomic level, we can un derstand less and less of the totality as it gets structurally more and more com plex. A basic bottom-up directionality is thus fully compatible with the existence of top-down causation: once a higher-level entity is there, it co-determines the ways in which lower-level elements behave. An assembly of carbon atoms ac quire different properties when it forms a crystal structure (as in diamonds) than they have in e.g. graphite. Structural properties, therefore, are naturally described from a top-down perspective. We describe the order imposed on the components by structure: presupposing the structure (crystal) and viewing the individual atom from the 'higher' point of view. This approach can be describ ed in terms of the distinction between 'slot' and 'filler': the crystal structure creates 'slots' for the individual atom to fill. To some extent, one can preserve structural integrity irrespective of how precisely the slots are filled; often one can e.g. insert potassium instead of sodium in the same structural slots and get roughly the same result. Looking at a complex entity from that perspective, and going down from one structural level to the next, coming across nothing except structural configurations, it is natural to see the world as being structure all the way down: substance disappears from view. In the guise of computational functionalism this thesis has been discredited by its chief inventor (cf. Putnam 1988). As a general thesis in relation to the structure of the world it rests on an optical trick: in describing each level struc turally, it overlooks the fact that at its own separate level any structure is de pendent on precisely those lower-level components that provide its constituents. The relationship between higher-level and lower-level elements is not arbitrary: if we combine two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom into a water mole cule, we have properties that were non-existent before the combination — but these properties are not created out of the blue. Outside thought experiments, there is no other way to create water than by combining hydrogen and oxygen; if we try to use e.g. helium and nitrogen instead, we won't succeed.
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This entails that structure is not autonomous in relation to the components that it structures. Rather, at each level structure and substance mutually con strain each other's potential: just as structure restricts the 'behavioural options' of lower-level elements in the new higher-level object, so does the substance constrain the possible range of structures that can be created. Between levels, there is a one-directional dependence relation where substance has the upper hand: at each upward step, structure presupposes component-substance, but not the other way round. We can have particles occurring without atoms, atoms without molecules, and molecules without living organisms — but not the other way round. Extreme structuralism therefore will not do: substance matters, and struc ture presupposes substance. We cannot reduce away higher-level objects with out a loss of properties also for lower-level elements: reality will be different also from the point of view of the lower-level elements, as it were; but the lower-level elements as such would persist. An example of how higher-level properties can disappear while leaving lower-level properties intact is the death of an animal: the components persist, but the biological level of organization disappears. The converse example of higher-level properties persisting while the lower-level substance disappears has yet to be proved scientifically; and that is not for lack of interest in this possibility.
2. What is 'function'? The computational definition of functionalism depended on a notion of function defined in terms of a presupposed structure. Within that picture, 'function' equals 'place in the structure' ; computational functionalism is therefore an ex treme form of structuralism. We find the same notion in linguistics, e.g. with the definition of the 'subject function' in terms of a presupposed hierarchical clause structure. However, the sense on which linguistic functionalism depends involves a reference to the context in which linguistic expressions are used, outside any presupposed formal structure. The characteristic property of func tion in this sense is traditionally understood in teleological terms, as dependent on a presupposed purpose. This is unproblematic in connection with objects de fined within a world of intentional actions: the function of a lamp is to provide light by which human inhabitants can see. However, if we apply it outside a world maintained by intentional actions of human beings, its ontological foun dation is less clear. The model for linguistics in this sense of functionality has usually been biology, where (as pointed out by Givón, e.g. 1993) the interplay
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between function (e.g. as described in physiology) and structure (e.g. as de scribed in anatomy) have been taken for granted since Aristotle. However, Searle (1992) strikes a note of caution on this point, emphasizing that in all those cases where post-Darwinian biology speaks of function, this can be paraphrased as covering an unambiguously causal relationship. When a plant turns towards the sun, and we (carelessly) say that this has the function of giving the plant maximal exposure to sunlight, this is a shorthand for saying that there is a chemical process going on whereby sunlight triggers a move ment. This may promote the plant's survival chances, but when we call that its 'function', it is just because we as human beings think survival is important. Yet it is possible to remain within a non-teleological scientific universe and still talk meaningfully about function as having a special status. This is because of the causal role of survival in the biological world and other systems depend ing on a form of reproduction. To put it simply, unless the members of a spe cies survive until reproduction, the species will not be around for the next generation. Thus survival is not just important for the human observer, it is ontologically important as part of the causal background in terms of which we must understand an actual living species. The way in which a certain feature of the organism contributes to survival is therefore part of the explanation of why we find animals with just that feature. Such features may have other caus al powers, but as long as they have no impact on survival, this has less explan atory interest. Because of this mechanism, types of things that need to be reproduced in order to persist have a special type of causality attached to them. Hence, we can define a concept of function that recognizes this special feature without going back to a pre-Darwinian notion of teleology: function is the contribution, selected among the causal powers of an object, towards the reproduction of tokens and hence persistence of the type itself. This view is extendable from organisms to other types of things (cf. also Millikan 1984) which are depend ent on reproduction. They occur only at or above the biological level of organ ization (excluding physical phenomena such as weather, earthquakes and moun tain ranges); we cannot ask what is the function of the Alps or lightning. The phenomena that arise and persist within functionally organized systems include among other things concepts (as part of the mental equipment of organ isms, irrespective of their relation to human language), as well as linguistic expressions. As described by Edelman (cf. the title Neural Darwinism), the persistence of certain patterns of neural organization to the exclusion of others depend on selection mechanisms similar to those that apply to species. This mechanism applies to conceptual development in the individual, and similar
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mechanisms have more or less generally been assumed to hold för linguistic expressions across historical changes. An example is the standard explanation for why genuine synonyms do not exist: words persist because they have a dis tinctive function which constitute their 'survival value'. Looking at something from a functional point of view is a purely top-down affair: we look at the context that determines its continued existence and try to ascertain what properties have the special role of furthering 'survival'. This definition supplies a criterion which makes it possible to give elements in func tional systems a definition which is more radically independent of componentsubstance. Whatever can play the same role in an animal's struggle for survival is functionally the same thing. Birds may build their nests of a variety of dif ferent material, depending on what is available; from a functional point of view it is simply nesting material — and the category 'nesting material' cannot be defined 'from below' in terms of what sort of components together create 'nesting material'. Functional descriptions are thus clearly distinct from de scriptions in terms of component-substance and structure as defined above, where lower-level properties always co-determined higher-level status. The ecological context creates a criterion of sameness that can override consid erations of component-substance; and this is only possible in function-based phenomena.
3. Function-based structure This definition of function raises the possibility of an entirely different type of structure than the one that was defined above. This type of structure occurs when functionally defined objects are structurally complex. We can take a knife as an example. It can be functionally defined as an instrument for cut ting; and in order to have that function it needs to support two sub-functions: there must be a part you can get a grip on and a part that can do the cutting. A knife is thus structurally complex in needing a handle as well as a blade. This type of structure is different from the 'bottom-up' structure of mole cules in relation to atoms, where the component-substance sets the enabling conditions for higher-level entities. The type of structure that we can find in functionally defined entities depend on functional needs defined from above. The difference between the two types of structure is a difference in ontological anchoring: in one case, structure moves 'upward' by organizing components into a new level of complexity; in the other case, structuring moves 'down ward' by operating on a higher-level input in the shape of one overall function
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that is differentiated into sub-roles: the sub-roles added together must serve the overall role. What is 'structured' is thus a higher-level 'input' that is differen tiated into smaller lower-level objects. The 'upward' structuring will be called 'composition', while the 'downward' structuring will be called 'differentiation'. Complex functionally based entities will evince both types of structuring, as exemplified in most human relationships. A business relationship between two people is characterized by some properties due to the function that each performs in relation to the shared business: a differentiation of some higherorder function that is served by these people in combination. Yet the way in which the relationship functions also depends on what happens when you bring just these people together: relations come into being depending on who they are rather than what they do (fittingly, in this context, called the 'chemistry'). In such cases, there are really two kinds of substance involved. Thus, in constructing a knife, one is working both with a component-substance and a less tangible 'functional substance': a class of processes that the knife is de vised to serve. In the case of a knife, the functional 'substance' has to do with the class of functions associated with 'tooth and claw' in the pre-human world: not being very impressively equipped by nature in the domain of tooth-andclaw functions, we rely on our tool-making skills to provide us with something that will help us to do what we cannot do on our own. The range of functions that human beings would like to achieve constitutes the 'substance' for the toolmaking activity: in devising a tool one is carving out a domain of possible ac tions that this particular tool will enable the user to perform. In talking about component-based structure it was emphasized that 'sub stance matters': structure was not autonomous. The same thing applies perhaps even more obviously to function-based structure: it is impossible to describe the structural relation between a blade and a handle without understanding the function that blade + handle (= knife) is designed to serve. If we describe the relation without knowing what a knife is for, we describe it exactly as we would describe a pre-functional object such as a rock or a river, disregarding all higher-level properties, and 'functional substance' would then disappear en tirely. So neither function-based nor component-based structure is ontologically autonomous. Structures are rooted in substance and cannot be understood apart from it. Put differently, structuring is a transitive verb: there must be some thing that is structured, whether it is attached above or below the structure it self. In the case of language, the 'functional substance' is the domain of com municative functions that language is designed to serve, of which the central areas include those that recur as headlines in typologically oriented linguistics:
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topicalization, predication, cross-reference, modal qualification, temporal an choring etc. Investigation of such cross-linguistic areas constitute the home ground of linguistic functionalism. In seeing ourselves as functionalists, we claim that to understand linguistic phenomena is to understand them in a func tional context. To describe languages we therefore need to understand the range of functions that languages code. But where structuralism has achieved its results by abstracting away from the jobs done by linguistic utterances and suggesting abstract relation types, functionalism has to some extent abstracted away from structural differences in order to bring out the similarities with re spect to functions served by linguistic devices. Where our approach differs from the type of functionalism that sees structuralism as antithetical is by want ing to subsume the structural properties of language under a functional descrip tion. On this view, functionalist methodologies such as investigation of functional domains and the investigation of the use of linguistic devices in actual dis course contexts are not antithetical to structural descriptions — properly speak ing, they are prerequisites to adequate accounts of linguistic structure. Good descriptions of the 'functional substance' of language are necessary in order to be able to approach the way in which it is structured by language. Just as you cannot begin to describe social structure before you understand what goes on in a society, you cannot begin to describe linguistic structure before you under stand the types of options language offers to the speaker. An adequate descrip tion of the structure of a language therefore presupposes an adequate descrip tion of the functions served by utterances articulated in that language. This emphasis on the priority of function is open to a misunderstanding based on the traditional distinction between the meaning of a linguistic expres sion and its function — the sense in which all linguistic expressions can be used for a multiplicity of different 'functions'. A standard example of this is the way in which a statement like it's cold can have a number of different functions (= speech act values). If this sense of the word 'function' is presup posed, we may appear to take a position where we eliminate ordinary descrip tive meaning in order to look instead at pragmatic effects in actual contexts. What we try to say is something quite different, however. The point is that all linguistic meaning, including ordinary descriptive meaning, is functional in nature. The expression horse means 'horse' only because members of the speech community recognize that it has the canonical function of mobilizing the concept 'horse' in the mind of the addressee. Membership of a speech com munity is constituted by attunement to the structured set of conventional func tions which together make up a whole language. Ordinary descriptive meaning
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is therefore just as surely dependent on 'pragmatic' facts about actual speakers in an actual community as those more elusive and situation-dependent aspects of utterance meaning which are associated with the word 'function' when it is understood in contrast to 'meaning'. What we claim is that the traditional way of thinking is dead wrong in positing a domain of meaning that is 'above' or 'prior to' functional considerations. Linguistic meanings, seen as the canonical functions of linguistic expres sions — those functions that cause expressions to survive, i.e. remain in use — can be divided into different functional domains. Traditional lexical seman tics is one such domain, where the function is that of invoking conceptual in formation. Syntactic devices roughly speaking have the function of linking up conceptual information in alternative ways; because of the influence from logic, the concept of propositional structure has played the major role in de scriptions of that area. At the top of the sentence hierarchy we find coded dis tinctions with links to speech act value, such as the distinction between declar ative and interrogative sentence types, as well as particles and adverbs that express various types of situational links, including links between clauses con stituting coherent texts. All of this is linguistic meaning (in the sense of being coded); and all of this is pragmatic and communicative (in the sense of existing in virtue of interactive patterns shared by members of the speech community). In addition to linguistic meanings, speakers depend on a number of other factors in communicating, such as cultural background, shared personal experi ence, inferential skills etc; functions in the sense of perlocutionary acts per formed in context are therefore necessarily distinct from those coded functions that constitute linguistic meanings. Linguistic functions contribute to such pro cesses, but they never exhaust them. To take a concept that has been given a great deal of attention in functional linguistics: the notion of 'topic' must be understood in relation to the interactive practices of human beings in dealing with objects. Unless there were cases in which a given object was the focus of shared attention, the question of coding 'topic' status could not arise. But even if there is a well-defined practice of focussing attention on objects, it does not follow that there must be a privileged linguistic device that has the function of bringing this situation about — it may be achievable as a side effect of other linguistic functions, or it may be left purely to inferential mechanisms. Lin guistic function is only understandable in relation to what goes on as a whole, but it is both more and less than 'what goes on': more, because linguistic de vices have functions that exist in abstraction from any concrete utterance event; less, because what happens is not brought about by language alone. To sum up: just as potential purposes achievable by enhancing physical ac-
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cessories constitute a domain which we can divide into subdomains each of which are handled by a specific tool (knife, spear, bow-and-arrows, canoes, horseriding), so does the range of communicative purposes constitute a domain that is structured and organized by our main tool of communication, human language. As in language, tools do not work on their own, but by contributing to the human activity in which they are embedded, In both cases, a functional description must begin with the larger context to which a tool contributes, and then describe the role of each element within the context in which it is an chored. This top-down directionality also has consequences for the understanding of linguistic structure. The anchoring of a linguistic element is its role in whole utterance meanings: smaller structural fragments exist only as possible contri butions to whole utterances. In nature, lower-level objects such as molecules existed before higher-level objects such as cells; but it is in principle impos sible to imagine phonemes lying around for a couple of million years before getting organized into words. As in other function-based structures, the com ponents presuppose the totality to which they contribute. That structure does not exist apart from substance is actually a fairly ob vious fact. What may cause us to forget it is the fact that we can generalize about structural properties: we can abstract structural similarities out of objects with differences in substance. Thus it is possible, for descriptive purposes, to forget about the substantive anchoring of structures — just as it is possible to focus on other properties in abstraction from the objects that have them. Hence, the autonomous view of structure has a natural affinity to a Platonic mode of existence: pure structure, being invisible for lack of parts, exists out side time and space and only intermittently becomes clothed in flesh. 'Autono mous' structuralism thus represents an ontological inversion of the same type as Platonism: the structure assumes the role of the disembodied idea that mani fests itself 'arbitrarily' in a given substance. The position argued here implies that, as with other Platonic ideas, the obvious Aristotelian alternative is to say that structures exist only as manifested in concrete instances of structured en tities.
4. Saussurean structuralism: a revised proposal It might be thought that depriving structure of its autonomy is necessarily an tithetical to structuralism. But this we think is a fallacy; not only can all the central insights of Saussurean structuralism be preserved without it — on closer
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inspection, it will be apparent that they cannot be preserved if autonomy is re tained. The centrepiece of structuralism is the claim that language is a system where everything hangs together, and where you cannot understand the nature of an element except in virtue of its relation to all the other elements; and this can be understood in two ways. One is the autonomous view, which we have just rejected, where the parts and the anchoring disappear from view to be re placed by the purely formal, disembodied relational structure. The other way of understanding it says that language is not reducible either to non-linguistic phenomena or to its component parts — we cannot describe language except by including relations in our description; but including the relations does not entail excluding parts and anchoring from the description. This view can be called the 'integrative' view of structure. The essential point, in relation to which all other Saussurean views must be understood, is the conception of langue as an object that is irreducible to any pre-linguistic mental construct as well as to any actually occurring process of language use. Where classical thinking saw linguistic expressions as a reflex of mental or metaphysical categories, and the grammars of the nineteenth cen turies were oriented towards historical variation, Saussure's revolution consist ed in establishing the notion of language as a coherent, self-contained object to be investigated on its own terms, rather than by going from linguistic ex pression to metaphysical correlates or by looking at variations across time. The most striking image with which Saussure illustrates this pattern of thinking is with the amphibious formlessness of the process of thinking and the universe of sounds taken separately — as contrasted with the precise and complex struc ture imposed on sounds and concepts alike when the two domains are linked by the sign relation. To express this, Saussure said that language was form, not substance; what he ought to have said was that language is formed (rather than amorphous) substance. Structure organizes substance, but it cannot replace it. One of the factors that supported the insistence on autonomy of structure was the emphasis, when it came to practical illustrations, on the side of expres sion rather than content: it is indeed 'immaterial' whether one speech sound is replaced by another, as long as the 'system' survives. In terms of the account of structure given above, however, this is an illustration of the non-criterial status of component-substance in a function-based structure: anything will serve, as long as it fulfils the functional role in question. In the case of speech sounds, it is, also from a strictly functional point of view, true to say that they exist only in virtue of their relations to other linguistic elements: the sound [f] would not be a speech sound if it did not enter into relations with other speech
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sounds in conveying linguistic meanings, and from the point of view of lan guage it would not matter if any other sound took its place. Hence, the struc ture is really ontologically grounded in function, rather than autonomous; it is only (to some extent) autonomous in relation to component-substance on the expression side; and this independence is limited. In language, as elsewhere, function-based structure is intermingled with component-based structure. In language description, the distribution of distinctive (i.e. function-based) pho nemes or features must be described in relation to their component-based prop erties (processes of assimilation etc). In the case of the semantic side of language, the non-autonomy of structure is even more obvious. The property of having meaning is the defining charac teristic of language; expression elements which are themselves meaningless only become linguistic in virtue of their role in carrying meaning. Hence, even the limited autonomy of expression structure cannot be found on the semantic side. Expression elements, as mere instruments, can be made of any material (e.g. graphic or phonic), as long as the relation to the content side is preserved — but the meanings which constitute the functions of the expressions cannot be replaced by anything else. The functional view of meaning makes it absurd to see linguistic meaning in terms of relations only: it is only because expressions have a certain canoni cal function associated with them that they are linguistic, and therefore these coded functions in themselves (whether semantic or pragmatic, in the standard terminology) are the defining elements of language, on which all other linguis tic definitions must be based. This is also evident if one begins to look more closely at Saussure's attempt to reduce meanings to relations. To describe the semantic property of words as reflecting only a word's place in the structure, Saussure invented the term vakur. An example is the case of French mouton as opposed to English sheep and mutton: he claims that only the 'valeur' of the word, the difference in relation to other meanings, is part of the description of language-as-such. But a moment's reflection makes clear that unless we start with the meanings 'in themselves', in this case the relation between the two words and the animal 'sheep' in different states, there is no way to describe the differences that constitute the structural relations between meanings. Similarly, it is impossible to imagine a diagram comparing the way different languages structure the colour spectrum if we eliminate the colours themselves and try to preserve only the relations between them. The famous 'boxes' where the borderlines differ in different languages embody an element of cheating, if used to demonstrate autonomy of structure: if structure was all that mattered, there would be no tertium comparationis between the two languages at all —
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there would be only two different structures, not 'the same meaning cut out in different portions'. Not only does Saussure's example not prove that substance in itself is dispensable: the point he makes evaporates unless we change the autonomous view of structure into an integrative view. In pointing out the necessity of an integrative conception of structure we therefore are not trying to present traditional European structuralism as dead wrong; an integrative conception is actually implicit in most of the central po sitions of Saussure as well as Hjelmslev. The thrust of the argument is against the most radical formulations; and the reason why it is justified to single out these is because they have acquired the status of programmatic statements of official doctrine. Particularly in relation to Hjelmslev, it is necessary to be aware of the tension between the programmatic orientation towards 'pure form' and a descriptive practice that often presupposes an integrative perspective. As is natural if structure is viewed as autonomous, Hjelmslev saw substance as presupposing form. Part of the reason for this position is that Hjelmslev operated with a three-term opposition: form-substance-'purport': 'purport' de signated the pre-linguistic stuff, and substance the stuff as formed by language. In that sense, substance does indeed presuppose form; but on that picture, sub stance also presupposes 'purport', since substance consists in formed (structur ed) 'purport' — and this is against Hjelmslev's thinking. In Hjelmslev (1943), substans ( = substance) and mening ( = purport) is sometimes used (sloppily) as interchangeable terms, cf. e.g. the self-correction p. 70, 1.14 — reflecting the basically formalist orientation of the whole pattern of thought. The glossematic project foundered for very good reasons (cf. Gregersen 1991). There were two central flaws. The first has to do with the autonomous view of structure itself. The second has to do with the type of relations on which Hjelmslev wanted to build his theory, namely dependence relations, of which he basically recognized three: mutual dependence, unilateral depend ence, plus the 'zero' alternative: mutual independence. From the integrative point of view such relations are interesting enough: they are proof that there is indeed a structure rather than just a random combination. But the relations have to be understood together with the parts they relate — and one of the ways in which the relations may be understood is as functionally motivated. This does not mean that we cannot occasionally find cases where dependence relations acquire a life of their own; when Hjelmslev's dependence-based de scription of syllabic accent turned out to apply to vowel harmony (which does not co-occur with 'ordinary' accent distinctions) it seemed to confirm the valid ity of this view. But dependence relations are obviously incapable of exhaust ing the nature of content elements. For instance, defining aspect and tense on
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the basis of dependence relations (e.g. between verb form and conjunction and between matrix and subordinate verb form in 'consecutio temporum', cf. Hjelmslev 1938:159) fairly obviously means putting the cart before the horse. Tense has properties which give rise to dependence relations — but the depend ence relations are not ontologically primary. The functional reconstruction of Saussurean structuralism preserves the classical arguments for structure while making explicit the way these structural notions depend on a wider functional understanding.
5. Langue and parole as a theory of institutions According to the picture outlined here, structure depends on something to be structured — and that something may be a higher-level function, or it may be lower-level component-substance, thus eliminating the supposed conflict be tween structure and function. Once the social, interactive mode of being of language is recognized, the central structural abstraction of 'langue' as distinct from 'parole' is not only fully compatible with a functional, communicationoriented perspective — it is necessary for reasons which have to do with the nature of all social institutions. All institutions, from small, informal types like families and playgroups to large, formalized cases like banks, hospitals and systems of government, are structured in this fashion: just as families and gov ernments always exist, even when the members are asleep, so does language exist even when everybody is silent. What exists in this situation is relations between members, regularities that apply generically to patterns of activity, structural distinctions (parents vs. children, divisions into executive, legislative and judicial functions, etc); the institution exists as a 'pattern' that imposes a structure on certain types of events. During 'business hours', these institutions manifest themselves as 'flow', as a subsection of the social life of the commu nity. Hence, there is no conflict between the 'langue' approach (where the ob ject is static and pre-structured) and the 'parole' approach (where the object is dynamic and unpredictable). Both aspects must exist in order for an institution to exist. If there were no constraints, only features of a continuous 'flow', there would be no institution, just individual idiosyncratic events; if there were no events that flowed through the channels set up by the institution, the system would be a fiction, or defunct (in which case one would have to go back in time to get at the full reality). In this perspective, the speech community emerges as a special kind of in stitution (cf. also Cours p. 110). The 'langue' that a functional linguist is look-
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ing for must be seen as the pattern that must exist if we are not to understand linguistic communication as totally random and spontaneous activity. Part of this project is to ascertain the precise relationships between relative invariance and relative variability that is the natural mode of existence of linguistic facts. From this point of view, it will become obvious why Saussure's conceptu alization of language as a structured whole langue is preferable to Chomskyan competence. Saussurean langue is a social construct, shared by the members of a speech community whereas Chomskyan competence is supposedly a biol ogical property of the human brain, hence of an individual speaker. In order to understand language as a system, while also understanding it as basically in teractive, we therefore need to build on the notion of langue. Individual 'com petences' must be understood as part of a larger social whole: a single compe tence may become defective and drop out of a given speech community, which does not inherently depend on any individual member. The last remaining speaker of a language — which, alas, is far from being a theoretical possibility — must be understood as a remaining fragment, not as an autonomous whole. In sum: the traditional opposition between a pragmatic, interactive approach to language and a structural approach is quite unnecessary: all social activities which are constrained by a recurrent pattern can only be described revealingly if one looks for structures. Only the fact that structures are assumed to be auto nomous or formal, rather than integrative, creates a problem — and that was simply a mistake.
6. The basic relations: expression vs. content, form vs. substance and syntagmatic vs. paradigmatic relations When we look for the structure of the resources at the language user's dispos al, the basic dichotomy is the distinction between expression and content. This is the locus of the functional embedding of linguistic structure: the relation between a linguistic expression and the corresponding linguistic content is sim ply the relation between an object and its canonical function. Expressions only get their linguistic status because they enter into such a functional relation with a linguistic content, and vice versa. The difference between this account and traditional structuralist notions of signs is not in the kind of structural relations it makes possible — it is only in underlining the fact that the whole structure of language exists in virtue of its functional relation with the pattern of human interaction that exists in the speech community. As often pointed out, the functionalist position does not involve any denial
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of the fact that language is used for other purposes than communication; it in volves, however, that the meaningfulness of linguistic expressions is learned as part of the acquisition of social, interactive skills, and use of expressions in non-interactive contexts thus depends on a basic, previously acquired functional relationship between content and expression. From a functionalist point of view the importance of this relation can hardly be exaggerated. In describing the nature of the link between expression and content, it is reasonably clear that neither a purely structural nor a purely con ceptual account can do the job of a functional account. The relation between content and expression can be described both as a purely structural relation (one relation among others in the structural network) and a conceptual relation (a complex of sounds conceptually linked to a semantic complex). Both de scriptions, true as far as they go, are less informative than the account in terms of function. Both conceptual and structural links are ubiquitous in language — but the basic attachment of meaning to sound can only be understood in terms of what sounds will do for you in the speech community. An account that leaves out this aspect cannot tell us what accounts for and supports the (struc tural as well as conceptual) relation in question. The problem of the linguist in factoring out the langue contribution from situational factors manifests itself in the problem of finding out what is the conventional meaning associated with an expression — the type of effect that makes the expression 'survive', i.e. continue to be used — as opposed to the situational effect of using the expression. This is not easy in practice; but if there are compelling arguments for why it should be done, difficulty is not an argument against the attempt. The problem is intractable for very good rea sons: the relation between content and expression is always only one in a chain of functional, means-ends relationships; as in all other actions, there are often many of them, chained together in a series that ends up in the subject's overall goals. Using an expression to invoke a content can be regarded as the initial step in such a series: by using the expression water the speaker invokes the concept 'water'; and by invoking the concept he gets the addressee to go and fetch some water ('perlocutionary acts/effects'), and thereby he may get some thing to drink, thus slaking his thirst, thus saving his life, etc., etc. With function as the ontological embedding of linguistic structure, and with the integrative view of structure, we can introduce a reconstructed version of the Hjelmslevian notions of form vs. substance. Because of the multiple ambi guity of the word form we shall use structure instead: since form in this sense denotes relational properties, properties as part of the system, the loss in the reformulation is hopefully minimal. Since 'structure' is less suggestive when
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it comes to the carving out of linguistic content elements from the pre-linguistic substance, the term 'content-form' will sometimes be added. The functional anchoring of the relationship between expression and content provides a rationale for Hjelmslev's 'commutation principle' (cf. 1943:68), according to which the status of both expression and content elements in lan guage depends on their relationship to the other 'plane' or 'side' of language: If two sounds give different meanings when inserted in the same context, they are linguistically different; if two meanings require different expressions, when inserted in the same context, they are linguistically different. This follows from the fact that the identity of an expression is functionally defined: if we change an expression in a way that also changes its functional potential, then it is no longer the same object — but if the change does not affect the functional poten tial, it remains (in that sense) the same object. This reasoning would not hold in a purely component-based structure. The functional view of meaning involves a priority of content over expres sion; but the commutation principle accounts for why this priority does not mean that we can talk about linguistic content in isolation from expression. The functional view of meaning is fully compatible with the idea of the simultane ous structuring of the content and expression domain. On both sides, there is a pre-existing domain of 'structurable' entities, but only by the structuring op eration does a content or expression 'area' become linguistic: content becomes linguistic by being associated with expression, and expression by being associ ated with content. Functionalism does not commit us to talking about functions irrespective of how they are structured in a given language — what it means is just that the domain that is structured is functional in nature. The commutation principle, serving as a criterion for the distinction be tween substance and structure, is a linguistic variant of Ockham's razor: in postulating elements either on the content or expression side, we need always to demonstrate that the element is associated with something on the other side of the coin. The content-expression relation that is central in commutationbased description is therefore clearly different in orientation from the underlying-to-surface pattern of generative grammar (cf. below); underlying con structs do not have to be validated in terms of this dual relation, and thus has no built-in guarantee against proliferation of underlying entities. In relation to anti-structural functionalism the commutation principle restrains the wholesale attribution of functional distinctions to the description of language. Saussure recognized two main classes of relations, the 'syntagmatic' and the 'associative' relations, the latter being renamed 'paradigmatic' by Hjelmslev. As generally known, syntagmatic relations are those that enable linguistic ex-
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pressions to occur together in larger wholes. Associative or paradigmatic rela tions are those that define the place of linguistic expressions in relation to each other in the system; sheep as related and opposed to mutton, cow as related and opposed to bull, etc. These notions of paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations can be unproblematically reconstructed in functional terms, as manifestations in language of more general relationships between elements of social action. Any complex action is composed out of sub-actions. If you intend to build a house, a lot of subactions are necessary to take you to your intended goal (laying foundations, erecting the walls, insulating, etc); and the relationship between these is basi cally a syntagmatic relationship: a chain leading to a stage of completion. Sim ilarly, most such sub-actions will represent the choice of one among several options: wood or bricks? red or yellow paint? — etc. Each such set of options will constitute a 'paradigm'. Some sets of complex actions get integrated into fixed and formalized chains linking sets of options, as in a semi-automated industrial assembly line: a number of buttons need to be pressed in order to make the choices along the line, but only a limited number of options are open, and the process moves along automatically, once it is set in motion by an initial command. And one can hardly hope to understand the principles that determine the structure of such a system without knowing what it is designed to produce. Similarly, a language description based on an integrative conception of structure will be oriented towards the description of how linguistic choices are organized into such an assembly line, where structural relations channel func tional options. The structural organization of language, far from contradicting the functional aspect of language, can only be understood as structuring the functions themselves.
7, Content in syntax: why an architecture based on content and expression should replace the tripartition into phonology, syntax and semantics Linguistic description is standardly assumed to be divided into phonology, (morpho)syntax and semantics, with pragmatics as an ambiguous fourth muske teer. This division we think is misleading. The reason why it is wrong has to do with the fundamental role of the distinction between expression and content, as functionally described above. The crucial element that distinguishes a commutation-based notion of structure from purely formal or distributional syntactic structures is that the output of the commutation procedure is always
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in terms of a relationship between an expression element and a content ele ment, rather than just in terms of a distributional form class. Whenever two morphemes are structurally related, the description needs to take account of both what happens on the content plane and what happens on the expression plane. This two-sidedness is lost in the ordinary tripartition; and the result is a lack of coherent thinking about the content side of language. The division into phonology on the one hand and semantics on the other, with 'syntax' or 'gram mar' in the middle, as the mediating element, is therefore a continuing source of confusion with respect to the structural organization of language. The cri ticism can be seen as applying both to the level of familiar, traditional linguis tic thinking, and to a more sophisticated scientifically oriented version in terms of a hierarchy of levels. We take the traditional level first. To begin with phonology: Segmental phonology deals with one sub-com partment of the expression side, namely the structure of expressions below the level of meaningful expressions. But phonology is usually also taken to include suprasegmental phenomena such as intonation — and this is a completely dif ferent area from a structural point of view, including also a semantic side. Further, it is unclear how much of morphology should be included in pho nology; allomorphic variation is not always clearly phonological, but it is not part of the content side either, since it represents variant expressions with in variant content. Grammar, including syntax and the non-phonological parts of morphology, also deals with expression phenomena such as word order and morphological marking of constituents — but like intonation, it has a content side: the semantic relations that are signalled by the expression relations, cf. e.g fake Japanese paintings vs. Japanese fake paintings; nice written statement vs. nicely written statement. Semantics, of course, deals with the content side of language, but since in tonation, morphology and syntax also have to do with content, the only part of semantics that has not been dealt with elsewhere is purely lexical meaning. So either semantics overlaps with all the other disciplines, or it deals only with lexical meaning, in isolation from the structural context in which it belongs. This traditional interpretation of the domain of semantics means that there is no place in the traditional picture for a coherent theory of linguistic content. Superimposed upon the traditional confusions in linguistics we have the additional confusion caused by the influence of logical semantics: logical se mantics only deals with meaning in terms of truth-conditions, and the distinc tion between semantics (as the discipline dealing with linguistic meaning) and pragmatics (as dealing with phenomena outside language structure 'proper') is
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therefore widely assumed to coincide with the distinction between truth-condi tional and interactive meaning —■ a distinction which persists in spite of the fact that everybody knows some central cases which disprove it (e.g. the contrast interrogative/declarative). Here again, important areas of the content side of language are marginalized. One reason for setting up 'grammar' as an autonomous level within the tra ditional tripartition is the long tradition in linguistics for what Otto Jespersen called "squinting grammar", i.e. the analysis of one language by means of categories found to be relevant in the description of another language, in parti cular Latin and Greek. Over centuries, linguistics as a discipline has developed an inventory of terms that are used for describing very diverse languages. The practice of squinting grammar facilitates the search for universais and compa rative analyses such as studies of word order in terms of the relative order of S, V and O. But it also entails the risk of molding all languages in a particular form that they may not all fit equally well. When the fit is not so good, lin guists are easily led to seeing the categories as "purely structural", i.e. as having little or nothing to do with content. The result is that there is a third linguistic level, grammar or syntax, independent of semantics. But the tripartition has also been defended outside the grammatical tradition, in a more scientifically oriented manner. The division into phonology, syntax and semantics is then understood in terms of the general notion of ontological levels that was discussed above, so that these linguistic levels are understood as analogous to levels of analysis that can be applied to a physical object (cf. e.g. Winograd 1976; Leech 1981; Køppe 1990). The discussion of the distinc tion between function-based and component-based properties shows why this analogy is misconceived: meaning can only be understood as a function-based property, not as arising out of the combination of components into more struc turally complex entities.
8. Two-sided syntax vs. underlying-to-surface description The discussion of linguistic levels above showed why a clear picture of how language is structured cannot be built on this foundation. The dichotomy into content vs. expression, as the centrepiece of European structuralism, is neces sary to keep structures from cutting their ontological moorings in the functions that language is designed to serve. This principle applies to language structure generally, but its implications for syntax are perhaps the least familiar. No-one would dream of setting up a lexicon without a clear-cut relation between lin-
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guistic expressions and their meanings at the centre of the description. Mor phology is also traditionally discussed in terms of affixes signalling semantic oppositions organized into grammatical categories; but as has been seen, syntax is traditionally set apart. However, according to the general principle, syntax as an autonomous level must be replaced by a picture where syntax, like the lexicon, operates on both the expression and content plane: on the expression side, syntax describes how morpheme expressions interact in combinations, and on the content side, syntax describes how morpheme contents interact. On both sides, there is an inventory plus a set of combination possibilities. On this picture, the question which a linguistic theory of syntax must answer, is: how do content elements get or ganized into full clause meanings — and how do the expression elements that signal these content elements get organized into full clause expressions — and how, finally, are the two planes mapped onto each other? Syntax, too, involves a mapping between content and means of expression. The reason for adopting this perspective in syntax can best be seen by con trasting it with the dominant pattern of thinking, where syntax is a structure that 'underlies' the 'surface morphosyntactic form' of a clause. This pattern of thinking, which was introduced by Chomsky, has gained widespread currency in the linguistic community generally. In particular, it has been adopted in Dikian Functional Grammar. There are two related basic problems with the depth-surface metaphor and the generative procedure associated with it. First, it is oriented towards a de scriptive procedure where the initial level is invented by the linguist and cannot be directly tested: it introduces a Platonic distinction between 'Sein' and 'Schein' where the accessible facts are demoted to 'surface' status. Second, the empirical control in the shape of the grammaticality test takes place at the out put end: the testing procedure is whether the device generates 'all and only the grammatical sentences'? This means that the descriptive procedure that is based on the grammaticality test as practiced in generative grammar is biassed to wards the expression side. The linguist is free to suggest what he wants at the underlying level, provided he can show that it makes the right predictions at the expression end of the procedure. These two characteristics mean that semantic properties of sentences are put in an unclear position in the description of the sentence. They are not part of the output that is subject to empirical control. They are among the 'invisible' properties that the linguist chooses to assign as the initial representation of the sentence — but they are not the only properties that have underlying status. The basic pattern of description that Chomsky took over from Bloomfield was
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an account in terms of distributional regularities. Since both semantic similar ities and distributional patterns can motivate underlying constructs, semantic properties are indistinguishible from distributional regularities in the depth-tosurface pattern. As an example, in languages with lexical, semantically opaque gender, nouns must presumably figure in the underlying representation with e.g. a [M], [F] or [N] etc. attached, which adds nothing semantic to the sen tence; this feature will stand among other features which are clearly semantic. From the point of view of the descriptive procedure, they have the same role — which leads to the pseudo-issue of the 'borderline between syntax and se mantics'. This issue has been on the agenda ever since 'Syntactic Structures'. This question arises naturally because of the role of underlying constructs as ammu nition for predicting the right 'surface' output, cf. the example with lexical gender above. However, it is a meaningless question according to the pattern of thinking adopted here. Syntax deals with combinations at and above mor pheme level, and thus half of syntax deals with meaning, the other half with expression elements. It is like talking about the borderline between the content of a novel and the chapters of the same novel. The distinction we are trying to make will no doubt appear far-fetched to many. One reason for this is that much of the difference between the expres sion side and the content side in syntax is typically handled precisely by the distinction we want to abolish, namely the distinction between the surface (where we find the pure expression phenomena) and the underlying level (where we find the semantic content). These terms have spread beyond genera tive grammar and are widely used among functionalists (cf. e.g. Haiman 1978; Bates & McWhinney 1987; Givón 1993). The way in which the two notions can be identified can be illustrated by a quotation from Haiman (1978): Similarity in the superficial form of grammatical categories usually reflects an underlying similarity of their meanings. (Haiman 1978:565) The problem of seeing content as 'underlying' and expression as 'surface' can be illustrated if we compare it with the relationship between a 'phonological form' and a 'surface-phonetic form'. The 'underlying' phonological represen tation stands in the same relation to the surface-phonetic realization as under lying syntax stands to surface syntax; but clearly there can be nothing semantic about phonological form, however deep it is; it only contains the distributional regularities that are not directly visible in the 'surface' phonetic form. Analyz ing content as 'underlying' thus conflates two essentially different relationships:
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one between an expression and its semantic function, and the other between different 'allomorphic' variants of the same expression type. In relation to the expression bias, the problem can be described by saying that the grammaticality test is a half-truth parading as the whole truth. Instead of having an empirical test only at the expression side, we should understand the description of a sentence as being validated simultaneously on both sides. The description should specify the permissible sentence expressions as one half of a procedure that simultaneously specifies the sentence meanings in relation to which they are permissible. A grammaticality test for permissible clause ex pressions can only apply in tandem with a 'semanticality' test for permissible semantic structures corresponding with them. In practice, this is recognized by all people with any experience of working with the grammaticality test; to say that a sentence is grammatical only tells us something if it means 'grammatical under the required reading'. The conclusion is that the generative practice of operating with levels of description of greater or lesser underlyingness, the most basic of which is as sumed to be genetically coded, fundamentally obscures the most basic property of language: its division into a content and an expression side. To the extent that the motivation for 'underlying' structures is semantic, a much simpler way of expressing this is made available by the commutation procedure: simply to talk about semantic relations in the clause instead of underlying clause struc ture. It may be asked whether 'semantic' is then really very different from what everybody understands by 'underlying'. But in addition to avoiding the confla tion of 'distributional regularity' and 'meaning', there is another fundamental empirical advantage in rejecting the metaphor of underlying-vs.-surface de scription: semantic relations are not hidden below the 'surface'- they are just as accessible as the expression elements. In fact, they are accessible as part of the very same feat performed by the language user: as discussed above, you can only recognize a slice of sound as 'grammatical' by simultaneously recog nizing is as 'semantical', i.e. as conveying a particular meaning. Even when we are looking at a case like colourless green ideas sleep furiously, we recog nize it as 'grammatical' only by finding a way to assign meaning both to the lexical items and the syntactic relations (head-modifier, subject-verb, verbmanner adverb, etc). Unless we can do that, we have to reject the sentence as ungrammatical. Thus in this case, too, we simultaneously recognize the sen tence as grammatical and as having a specific content — but as one in which it is difficult to get the content elements to co-operate in the content-syntactic structure that is imposed on it by the expression-syntactic devices of English.
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To repeat: syntactic competence consists not in knowing what is and what is not 'syntactically correct' — it consists in knowing how to combine content elements into full sentence contents by combining expression elements into full sentence expressions. In talking about 'content' vs. 'expression' syntax, it needs to be stressed that they are two aspects of one phenomenon. What the distinction points up is that there are two things happening at the same time: when two-sided items are combined, it results in two necessarily different operations happening si multaneously. The native speaker must handle two simultaneous tasks: expres sion elements need to be combined into a complex expression, and content elements need to be combined into a complex content: it would be of little use to be able to combine expressions fluently without being able to work out the combined meaning, or to be able to combine meanings without stitching togeth er the appropriate combined expression. In talking about simultaneity, we are rejecting the overall directionality that is built into the underlying-to-surface description: content and expression are necessarily present at the same time and should be described together. This does not preclude 'local' directionality for descriptive convenience. When de scribing portmanteau morphs, it is natural to begin with the content elements and go on to the fused expression. When describing multi-purpose expression devices, such as the initial P1 position, it is natural to take the expression side as point of departure. It is also natural to see the content side as having a builtin priority over expression side in that the expression side is merely the instru ment. But all these forms of directionality are compatible with a descriptive procedure that never loses sight of one side while describing the other. The two-sided nature of syntax is fully analogous to the other main linguis tic compartment, the lexicon: as pointed out by Nedergaard Thomsen (1992: 221) there is a phonological sublexicon (the list of meaningful word expres sions) and a semantic sublexicon (the list of coded word meanings); a lexical description of a language (= a dictionary) consists in a pairing of the two lists. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that a syntactic description of a lan guage must also consist in a pairing of the mechanisms of 'expression syntax' and the corresponding semantic functions of using those expression devices. The notion of 'content syntax' is therefore clearly different from a purely semantic level such as Jackendoff's 'conceptual structure'. Content syntax is based on coded meanings, and the only abstraction procedure involved is the commutation test whereby the content elements are established. Jackendoff's semantic level constitutes an autonomous structure (cf. Jackendoff 1990:14), postulated on the basis of distributional abstractions of the familiar generative
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kind, with no inherent limitations to the level of abstraction, while content syn tax describes one half of a content-expression relationship and is thus directly constrained by the actual linguistic coding. The notions of content vs. expression syntax forces us to confront the issue of precisely how much of clause structure is semantic in nature: we can no longer call it 'syntax' without worrying about how much of it is purely expres sion regularities, and how much is a matter of content. It may be very difficult to figure out precisely what the semantic elements involved in the combinatori al potential of the language is. It is by no means always clear what the seman tics of e.g. case affixes and word order options is, and there may be very complex relations between sets of expression parameters, various forms of idiomaticity, and the productive semantic choices that are involved. But this is precisely the sort of difficulties that linguists are supposed to clear up. Setting up syntactic notions like 'subject', without making it clear what sort of expression-content relationship is at stake, is simply a way of leaving a job half done, generating confusion whenever the notion is employed outside the con text in which it was invented.
9. Function and cognition in language Linguists who use the words 'functional' and 'cognitive' about the work they are doing generally see each other as allies, and have the same opponents. But there is a difference of emphasis in that the word 'functional' is oriented to wards processes going on outside the head, in the realm of communicative interaction, whereas 'cognitive' involves an orientation towards mental struc tures and processes. In particular, there is an orientation towards those aspects of language that are covered by the word 'conceptual'. We think that in the relationship between functional and cognitive linguis tics, the superordinate term must be 'function'. Cognition belongs within the domain of phenomena that must be investigated in functional terms. All aspects of language and human behaviour in general must be understood in functional terms, whereas not all aspects are conceptual in the core sense of the term; some are more situational-pragmatic than conceptual. To understand what this implies we need to be precise about what cognition is. There are basically two senses in which the word 'cognitive' is used at present, reflecting a broad and a narrow definition. Under the narrow defini tion, cognitive processes are only those which are associated with the ability to solve problems independently of stimuli from the immediate environment.
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Cognition is therefore associated with mental content and with an intentional relation between mental content and external world states; it requires an inner, situation-independent environment (cf. Gärdenfors 1991, 1992). A cognitive animal is thus one which has the ability to envisage a state of the world and let it affect its actions independently of environmental stimuli. The narrow defini tion remains close to the process that everybody understands as the prototype, namely the reasoning process. The broad definition can best be understood against the background of the cognitive revolt against behaviorism in the late 1950s and early 60s. The great step forward was the realization that there were things going on between input and output in human beings: instead of resulting from direct, mechanical causeeffect chains, human responses were dictated by inner states which must be described before human reactions could be accounted for. On this understanding of cognition, however, any mechanism mediating between input and output counts as cognitive. Rumelhart et al. (1986) used the ability to reach out and turn a knob under difficult conditions as their presen tation example of the cognitive skills that connectionist modelling could aim at modelling. This sort of ability, however, occurs at a fairly lowly evolution ary level: in order to eat, an animal must be able to exercise sufficient motor skill to get at its food. It may be stimulus-controlled, and it may not even be accessible to consciousness; insects can do some of those things much better than human beings. If we base our definition of cognition on that type of mod elling and describe human cognition on that basis, it will therefore include all complex neurally based skills. Salivation at the sound of the dinner gong, sex ual intercourse, and digestion would only be arbitrarily excluded from the do main of cognitive events. Worse than the terminological problem, however, is the risk of confusion between conceptual and pre-conceptual skills. This confusion occurs if we per mit ourselves to conclude from a certain skill (i.e. the ability to distinguish a particular type of food) that the animal possesses the corresponding concept. If we do that, all animals possess the concept 'food'. There is a serious risk that dicussion on human conceptualization will be muddled up by such a broad use. Categorial perception is of course a distant relative of conceptualization proper, but the central theoretical basis of a semantic theory should not encom pass both on an equal footing. The risk of confusion is discernible in Johnson's philosophical manifesto (1992) on behalf of cognitive semantics. The aim of the discussion is to argue that meaning is based in human experience, and this is a very important point to make against disembodied formal or objective theories of meaning — but the
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continuity from bodily skills to meaning can be over-emphasized. On p. 348349, quoting Paul Churchland in support of his views, Johnson gives a picture whereby the primary bodily experience of physical pressure is simply 'drawn up' into the structuring of propositions, using the word 'meaning' about bodily experience as well as propositional content. The central concept of image sche mas organize meaning at both levels. Let us grant that understanding of linguistic meaning is based on bodily ex perience, and that the force of reason must be understood as an extension of physical force. Nevertheless, if linguistic meaning is to be adequately describ ed, we need at least two distinctions: One between primary experience of com pulsion and the ability to conceptualize it (in preventing cruelty also to lower animals, we assume that it is possible to be a sentient victim of violent compul sion without conceptualizing it); another between conceptualization and linguis tic meaning; and the linguistic meaning arises when the conceptual content acquires the functional link to a linguistic expression which turns it into a sign content.
10. Arbitrariness and iconicity in language The chief reason why it has been possible to talk about syntax without recog nizing its essential two-sidedness is the pervasive 'diagrammatic' iconicity be tween content and expression in the area of syntax. Where the relation between content and expression in minimal signs has a high degree of arbitrariness, the syntactic organization of expression typically reflects aspects of the syntactic organization of semantic content. This high degree of iconicity is a crucial fact about syntax; and in order to capture it we need to be explicit about both sides, cf. below; we cannot describe iconic relations between A and without first describing A and B. More obviously, we need two structures in those cases where content and expression structure diverge. Sometimes we have expression patterns which do not directly reflect the organization of content ("excess structure", in Givón's terms, where we would prefer 'excess expression structure'). Such cases are occasionally used as arguments for the overall autonomy of syntax from se mantics. In doing so, one describes such phenomena as prototypical of ' syntaxas-such'. By such a description one misunderstands both ordinary syntactic phenomena (where expression is used as a vehicle for content) and these spe cial cases — which are special and interesting because they instantiate cases where expression patterns have acquired a life of their own. Again, this only
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becomes visible if one has a clear-cut distinction between expression and con tent. A case in point is periphrastic do in English. Although the auxiliary do can be described as marginally meaningful (cf. Langacker 1991:239), it cannot be understood simply as a semantic alternative to e.g. the modal verbs with which it stands in a paradigmatic relation. The traditional grammatical description, whereby the choice of not or 'interrogative' in the absence of other auxiliaries forces the choice of do-periphrases is a necessary part of the picture. When we compare English with e.g. German or Danish, do-periphrasis can hardly be understood without an element of excess expression structure: the combination of semantic choices that trigger do-periphrasis is signalled both by the means employed in other languages and by the periphrastic expression. The chief difference between the approach we are advocating and standard descriptive practices is in focussing upon the Saussurean operation whereby lin guistic structure imposes a pattern upon the expression and content substances that are linked in creating linguistic signs. This operation is equally opposed to assuming either that linguistic structure is totally autonomous or that it is totally motivated. It cannot be autonomous, because it only exists as a way of organizing the two substances in question; and it cannot be completely motivat ed because in a function-based structure there is necessarily a choice involved: the input is a certain function to be achieved, and the output is an organized way of achieving it. If there was a one-to-one relation between functional task and solutions in the biological world, it would be a simpler world to live in. As often pointed out by Givón (cf. e.g. 1991, 1993), diachronic development frequently causes linguistic expressions to lose the motivation which they had at an earlier point; and as in the case of vestigial organs in animals, compo nents may hang on for a long time even after they are no longer functionally motivated. Instead of being polar opposites, arbitrariness and motivation are therefore siamese twins born together with function-based structure. On the standard scientific world picture, neither notion makes sense outside a functional con text: we do not ask whether e.g. the Atlantic Ocean is arbitrary or motivated. But whenever there is a function involved, there are always some options that are equally good (to which extent the choice is arbitrary) and some options that are better than others (to which extent the choice is motivated). The discussion of autonomy vs. iconicity sometimes presupposes that every element of arbi trariness is one down for functionalism and one up for generative grammar. In a structure that rests on functional foundations, however, the task is always to find out precisely how they co-exist.
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References Bates, Elizabeth & Brian McWhinney. 1987. A functionalist approach to the acquisi tion of grammar. Functionalism in Linguistics ed. by René Dirven & Vilém Fried, 209-264. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Edelman, Gerald M. 1992. Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: On the matter of the mind. New York: Basic Books. Gärdenfors, Peter. 1991. The Emergence of Meaning (= Lund University Cognitive Studies, 5.). Lund: Lunds Universitet. Gärdenfors, Peter. 1992. Blotta tanken. Nora: Nya Doxa. Givón, Talmy. 1991. Isomorphism in the grammatical code: Cognitive and biological considerations. Studies in Language 15.85-114 Givón, Talmy. 1993. English Grammar: A function-based introduction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Givón, Talmy. 1995. Functionalism. and Grammar. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Gregersen, Frans. 1991. Sociolingvistikkens (u)mulighed I-II. København: Tiderne Skifter. Haiman, John. 1978. Conditionals are topics. Language 54.564-589, Harder, Peter. Forthcoming. Functional Semantics: A theory of meaning, structure and tense in English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Hjelmslev, Louis. 1938. Essai d'une théorie des morphèmes. Louis Hjelmslev. 1959. Essais linguistiques (= Travaux du cercle linguistiques de Copenhague, XII), 152164. København: Nordisk Sprog- og Kulturforlag. Hjelmslev, Louis. 1943. Omkring sprogteoriens grundlæggelse. København: Køben havns Universitet. (= Louis Hjelmslev. 1953. Prolegomena to a Theory of Lan guage. Bloomington: Indiana University.) Jackendoff, Ray S. 1990. Semantic Structures. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Johnson, Mark. 1992. Philosophical implications of cognitive semantics. Cognitive Linguistics 3-4.345-366. Køppe, Simo. 1990. Virkelighedens niveauer. De nye videnskaber og deres historie. København: Gyldendal. Langacker, Ronald W. 1991. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar. Vol. 2: Descriptive applications. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Leech, Geoffrey N. 1981. Semantics. Second edition. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Millikan, Ruth. 1984. Language, Thought and Other Biological Categories: New foundations for realism. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Nedergaard Thomsen, Ole. 1992. Unit accentuation as an expression device for predi cate formation: The case of syntactic noun incorporation in Danish. Layered Struc ture and Reference in a Functional Perspective ed. by Michael Fortescue, Peter Harder & Lars Kristoffersen, 173-229. Putnam, Hilary. 1988. Representation and Reality. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
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Rumelhart, David E., James L. McClelland & the PDP Research Group. 1986. Paral lel Distributed Processing: Explorations in the microstructure of cognition. Cam bridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1916. Cours de linguistique générale. 1968 edition. Paris: Payot. (= Ferdinand de Saussure. 1959. Course in General Linguistics. New York: McGraw-Hill.) Searle, John R. 1992. The Rediscovery of the Mind. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Winograd, Terry. 1976. Toward a procedural understanding of semantics. Revue In ternationale de philosophie 3:117-118.260-303.
Iconicity and arbitrariness Elisabeth Engberg-Pedersen University of Copenhagen
1. Saussure on arbitrariness and motivation In the last two decades or so iconicity is often referred to as an explanation of empirical results. The term is often seen as self-explanatory, but has also been subjected to special treatment (by among others, Jakobson 1971 ; Haiman 1980, 1983, 1985b; articles in Haiman 1985a; Croft 1990:Chapter 7; Givón 1991; Newmeyer 1992; Itkonen 1994; Andersen forthcoming). References to iconici ty invoke in particular Saussure, albeit in a negative way, since one of the points Saussure is particularly remembered for is his emphasis on the arbitrari ness of the linguistic sign. That is, however, not all there is to iconicity in Cours (Saussure 1916). Saussure defines the linguistic sign as the union of a concept and an acous tic image, i.e. as the union of a content (or signatum) and an expression (or signans). The two prime characteristics of the sign understood in this way are that it is arbitrary and linear. What is arbitrary, however, is rather the signans in the sense that it is unmotivated — immotivé — in relation to the signatum. This means that the signans does not have any natural attachment to the signa tum in reality ("aucune attache naturelle dans la réalité" (1916:101)). Saussure contrasts arbitrary signs with onomatopoetic words and exclamations, both of which he relegates to a minor role as they are never what he calls organic ele ments of a linguistic system (1916:100-102). Saussure does not contrast arbi trary with iconic in this characterization of the linguistic sign. Instead, he talks about motivation or rather lack of motivation. Not all linguistic signs, however, are totally arbitrary. Later in Cours, Saus sure talks about degrees of arbitrariness and degrees of motivation. As an example of an unmotivated sign he mentions French vingt 'twenty' and con trasts it with French dix-neuf 'nineteen' which he finds is more motivated as it invokes the terms that it consists of, dix 'ten' and neuf 'nine', as well as
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terms that it is 'associated' with (i.e. stands in paradigmatic contrast with), e.g. dix 'ten', neuf 'nine', vingt-neuf 'twenty-nine', soixante-dix 'seventy', and dix-huit 'eighteen' (1916:181). The more motivated the signs, the easier the syntagmatic analysis and the more conspicuous the meaning of the elements. The signans of the elements dix and neuf themselves is, however, arbitrary. In this last sense of motivation, what reduces the arbitrariness of the lin guistic sign is the extent to which its syntagmatic parts reveal its paradigmatic contrasts. Dix-neuf is in paradigmatic contrast with ("est solidaire associativement de") dix-huit, soixante-dix, etc., and consists syntagmatically of ("est solidaire ... syntagmatiquement de") dix and neuf The language system (i.e. the syntagmatic and paradigmatic oppositions) limits arbitrariness, which is the essentiel feature of the linguistic sign ("la condition essentielle du signe lin guistique"), but would result in excessive complication ("la complication su preme") if it were not restricted by a principle of order and regularity. It is the principle of order and regularity that Saussure describes as relative motivation (1916:182-184). What we see here are two different concepts of motivation. By contrasting the arbitrary linguistic sign with onomatopoetic words and exclamations, Saus sure points out that the expression of a linguistic sign, its acoustic (graphic, or, in signed languages, gestural) expression, does not reflect the sign's meaning. By pointing out that paradigmatic contrast and restrictions on syntagmatic combinability restrict total arbitrariness, Saussure introduces a different concept of motivation. To the extent that a linguistic sign can be analysed into smaller parts following the rules of grammar (paradigmatic contrasts and syntagmatic combinability), the sign is motivated to some degree. The grammarian's task is to study the limitations on arbitrariness imposed by the human mind ("l'es prit") on a by nature chaotic system (1916:182-183). This concept of motiva tion, which equates motivation and grammar (1916:183; see also Haiman 1980: 534, 536-537), may at first sight seem of little interest to functional grammar ians since the rules of grammar are what is to be explained. The functional grammarian must look further for explanations of the rules of grammar, ex planations that may be ontological, cognitive, or social (i.e. based on human interaction; cf. Itkonen 1994:38).
2. Peirce on iconicity By contrast to Saussure, Peirce uses the word icon. As pointed out by Ander sen (forthcoming), Peirce's definition of sign differs from that of Saussure
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First, Peirce uses sign not only about linguistic signs. Second, to Peirce a sign is something that stands to somebody for an object, i.e. a sign in Peirce's sense is not a union of signatum and signans but is, in relation to language, equiva lent to the signans alone. In his characterization of signs as icons, indexes, and symbols, Peirce focuses on what makes a sign represent an object. What is characteristic of an iconic sign is its similarity to the object. An icon is: a sign which refers to the Object that it denotes merely by virtue of characters [sic] of its own, and which it possesses, just the same, whether any such Object actually exists or not. It is true that unless there really is such an Object, the Icon does not act as a sign; but this has nothing to do with its character as a sign. (Peirce 1932:2.247) That is, an icon is an icon by virtue of its physical character. An index is: a sign, or representation, which refers to its object not so much because of any similarity or analogy with it, nor because it is associated with general characters which that object happens to possess, as because it is in dynamical (including spa tial) connection both with the individual object, on the one hand, and with the senses or memory of the person for whom it serves as a sign, on the other hand. (Peirce 1932:2.305) An index makes an organic pair with its object; it "would, at once, lose the character which makes it a sign if its object were removed, but would not lose that character if there were no interpretant" (1932:2.304). Finally, a symbol is "a sign which refers to the Object it denotes by virtue of a law" (1932:2.249); a symbol loses "the character which renders it a sign if there were no interpretant" (1932:2.304). That is, a symbol stands for the object by virtue of a more or less explicit convention. Icon, index, and symbol are not mutually exclusive categories, but charac terizations of the ways a sign may stand for an object. A sign may stand for an object in more than one way; it may, for instance, be both an icon and a symbol as is the case of an onomatopoetic word which resembles its object but is also a conventional word of a language. Personal pronouns and other shifters are both indexes and symbols (Jakobson 1971): the English first person pro noun I is a symbol in the sense that the sequence of phonemes stands for the sender by convention (compare Danish jeg and Swahili mimi), but it is an in dex in the sense that we can only know to whom it is used to refer in a par ticular situation by seeing who uses it, i.e. with whom it forms "an organic pair". Thus personal pronouns are indexicai symbols.
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In Peirce's definition, icons are objects that can be perceived and are iconic by virtue of characteristics they possess even if they were not interpreted as signs. That is, if a sign in the Saussurean sense of the term is iconic, its ex pression as an object that can be perceived reflects its content. Thus the proto typical linguistic icon is an onomatopoetic word or an iconic sign of a signed language whose signan s mirrors its signatum by virtue of its acoustic or ges tural substance. Only this part of the word or gestural sign, its substance, can be said to be a characteristic the word or gestural sign possesses even if it were not interpreted as a sign. Peirce, however, subdivides icons into images, diagrams, and metaphors. An image partakes of "simple qualities" of its object; examples of images are onomatopoetic words and ideophones. Diagrams "represent the relations, main ly dyadic, or so regarded, of the parts of one thing by analogous relations in their own parts" (1932:2.277). Finally, metaphors are signs "which represent the representative character of a representamen by representing a parellelism in something else" (1932:2.277). As with the division into icon, index, and symbol, the three subtypes of icons - image, diagram, and metaphor — are not mutually exclusive catego ries. For instance, ideophones are primarily images, the sign reflecting some sound impression. But ideophones may denote visual phenomena rather than sound, and such ideophones can be described as metaphoric images (Andersen forthcoming:44): their imaginai character is figurative. A person disappearing fast does not (necessarily) make any sound, but the sight of a person disappear ing fast is compared to the sound of a twig moving fast through the air when the ideophone svisj (used of someone disappearing fast) resembles the soundimitating ideophone svirp (used of a twig moving fast).
3. Linguistic diagrams and structure The two types of motivation described by Saussure can now be seen to corre spond to two types of iconicity in Peirce's sense, namely images and diagrams. Onomatopoetic words are images in that their expression partakes of simple qualitites of their objects, while the French dix-neuf 'nineteen' is a diagram as it represents the relation on the content plane between the content elements 'ten' and 'nine' by the syntagmatic relation between its two constituents, dix and neuf. By contrast, vingt 'twenty' is a symbol only. Since diagrams are a subtype of icons, dix-neuf'is an icon even though, as pointed out by Saussure, its motivated character depends totally on it being interpreted as a sign in a
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particular system of paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations. That is, there is a significant difference between linguistic and nonlinguistic diagrams. A line-drawing representing streets in a city is a nonlinguistic dia gram where the lines represent the streets "by analogous relations in their own parts". Such a diagram is a sign, but does not depend on a convention as a symbol does, neither does it depend on proximity to the streets as an index. Instead, it is an icon because it "refers to the Object that it denotes merely by virtue of characters of its own, and which it possesses, just the same, whether any such Object actually exists or not". The French dix-neuf is also a diagram, but a linguistic diagram: the word represents its meaning, 'nineteen', by anal ogous relations in its own parts, dix and neuf. However, as pointed out by Saussure, the diagrammatic — or motivated — character of dix-neuf is not in dependent of its position in a paradigm of contrasting signs: vingt, dix, vingtneuf etc. Nor is the diagrammatic nature of dix-neuf independent of the rules of syntagmatic combination for French. That is, as soon as we talk about lin guistic diagrams, we necessarily also talk about linguistic structuring. Linguis tic diagrams are thus less typical icons than the prototype based on similarity in substance between the representation and the represented object. The prototypical iconic image is a wood carving of an object, e.g. a face, where there is similarity in substance between the representation and the object represented. The linguistic image is thus the onomatopoetic word or, in sign ing, a gesture imitating a real life gesture where we also find similarity in substance between linguistic expression and meaning. But already the onomato poetic word and the iconic gesture of a signed language depend on linguistic structure, namely on the inventory of phonemes (or the equivalent in signed languages) and the phonotactic rules of the particular language.1 A diagram such as a line drawing of a face is still an icon, but already somewhat abstract ed form the prototypical icon as lines on a two-dimensional surface must be interpreted as representing a three-dimensional object. When we turn to lan guage, diagrams are even more abstracted because they depend on the morpho logical or syntactic structure of the individual language, i.e. its expression structure. The focus in linguistic discussions of iconicity is generally on diagrams, as images such as onomatopoetic words are of more marginal interest. Linguistic diagrams always depend on the structure of the individual language, but some diagrams are closer to the prototypical icon than others, namely imaginai dia grams. In what follows, a distinction is made between imaginai diagrams and diagrams based on analogy. In all cases, the expression elements that enter into the diagrammatic relation are structural elements. The difference between
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imaginai diagrams and diagrams based on analogy depends on a difference be tween the content elements of the diagrammatic relation.
4. Imaginai diagrams and diagrams based on analogy An example of an imaginai diagram is the following principle of linear order: The order of clauses in coherent discourse will tend to correspond to the temporal order of the occurrence of the depicted events. (Givón 1991:92) The classical example of the principle is Veni, vidi, vici ('I came, I saw, I con quered'). The principle is also demonstrated by a tendency to place a clause expressing a cause before the clause expressing its effect as in He shot and killed her rather than He killed and shot her.2 Here we see that a temporal order on the content plane is expressed by temporal order on the expression plane. Such similarity is possible because the linguistic expression permits — or requires — temporal ordering of elements. That is, a feature of the expres sion substance, namely linearity, is reflected in temporal order in the expres sion structure, and this order in turn reflects a temporal order on the content plane. When there is such similarity in substance structured by the particular language, we have a diagram of the image-type, or an imaginai diagram. Givón (1991) categorizes examples of iconic coding under three headings: the quantity principle, the proximity principle, and the sequential order prin ciple. Quantity, proximity, and sequential order are all characteristics of lan guage that are forced onto it by the physical character of the expression plane, i.e. by expression substance. When these features of the expression substance are reflected in the expression structure and used to express semantic quantity, proximity, or sequential order, we may talk about imaginai diagrams. Many cases of iconicity are not, however, such straightforward matches of expression substance with expression structure and content. As further exam ples of the sequential order principle, Givón mentions some pragmatic prin ciples of linear order, namely: (a) (b)
Pragmatic principle of linear order: "More important or more urgent information tends to be placed first in the string". "Less accessible or less predictable information tends to be placed first in the string". (Givón 1991:93 — emphasis in the original)
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Examples of these principles are tendencies to place contrastive, focussed, and questioned constituents clause-initially.3 The match is here between "firstness" on the expression plane and impor tance, urgence, unaccessibility, and unpredictability on the content plane. This match is much less straightforward than the match in temporal order. Rather there is a relation of analogy on the content plane between importance/unaccessibility/unpredictability on the one hand, and "firstness" on the other, an analogy that needs to be explained before the diagrammatic relation between first on the expression plane and semantic "firstness" becomes clear. What is the cognitive or communicative rationale behind the analogy between importance/unaccessibility/unpredictability and "firstness" on the content plane? Let us next take a look at Givón's examples of iconicity with respect to proximity. The proximity principle has two parts, the first of which is Behagheľs law: (a) (b)
The proximity principle: "Entities that are closer together functionally, conceptually, or cognitively will be placed closer together at the code level, i.e. temporally or spatially". "Functional operators will be placed closest, temporally or spatially at the code level, to the conceptual unit to which they are most relevant". (Givón 1991:89)
Even though linguistic proximity is a consequence of linearity imposed on the linguistic expression by the nature of its expression substance, temporal or spatial distance on the expression plane is rarely a question of milliseconds or millimetres,4 but is measured in structural terms as the number of morpheme or word boundaries between two structural items, with word boundaries being "stronger", i.e. creating greater distance, than morpheme boundaries (Haiman 1983:781-782, 1985b:105ff.). The difference between words and morphemes is not imposed on the expression structure by features of the expression sub stance, but is an aspect of the linguistic structure of each individual language. That is, the diagrammatic nature of the proximity principle depends on expres sion structure understood as the difference between words and morphemes. The content elements that enter into the diagrammatic relation between con tent and expression are said to be functionally, conceptually, or cognitively close. But what does it mean for two elements to be functionally, conceptually, or cognitively close? Haiman (1985b: 106-107; see also Croft 1990:174) de scribes conceptual closeness as "intuitively a plausible notion", but also gives a more precise definition. Two ideas are conceptually close to the extent that they a) share semantic features, properties, or parts; b) affect each other; c)
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are factually inseparable; d) are perceived as a unit, whether factually insepa rable or not. Haiman further exemplifies the definition by languages that have different types of causative constructions that can be described in terms of structural distance, e.g. the difference between lexical and analytic causative constructions in English (kill vs. cause to die) and the difference between an inflectional causative (Verb+ipa/ma) and a periphrastic causative ( 'cause'...Verb) in the Australian language Diyari (1985b: 108-111). He finds that in many languages the less analytic causative construction is used to denote direct causation, the more analytic causative construction to denote indirect causation with the possibility that cause and effect occurred at different times and at different places. Where the causee is inanimate or unconscious, the more analytic causative often implies that the causer has magical powers as demonstrated by the contrast between I caused the tree to fall by using witch craft and 1 felled the tree with an axe. Haiman interprets the difference as evidence that the periphrastic causative denotes indirect causation and the lexical causative direct causation. His conclusion with respect to iconicity is that the structural distance between the expressions of cause and effect diagrammatically reflects the conceptual distance between cause and effect in direct vs. indirect causation. It is an empirical fact that we find a correlation between more analytic con structions and indirect causation, on the one hand, and less analytic construc tions and direct causation, on the other. This correlation could, however, also be explained in terms of prototypes and lexicalization or fusion: direct causa tion represents the prototype perceptually and in terms of frequency and is thus given the more economic expression. Moreover, the more analytic construc tions could be said to lack iconicity in that they impose a clearer causative structure on a perceptually less clearly causative event, i.e. there is a lack of isomorphism (see below). They spell out so to speak the causative relation where it is perceptually less clear that there is one. Thus the correlation found in many languages between two types of causative constructions and direct vs. indirect causation is open to interpretation. Haiman's definition of conceptual distance goes a long way towards making explicit the assumptions concerning the content side behind many claims of diagrammatic proximity, but it also makes it clear how open such diagrams are to interpretation. Givón's last principle is the quantity principle:
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(a) (b) (c)
The quantity principle: "A larger chunk of information will be given a larger chunk of code". "Less predictable information will be given more coding materiar'. "More important information will be given more coding material". (Givón 1991:87)
Again, we see a relation of analogy on the content plane: less predictable infor mation and more important information is understood as analogous to a large quantity. The diagrammatic similarity between content and expression only arises after we have established a relation of analogy between predictability and importance on the one hand, and semantic quantity (whatever that is) on the other. Put differently, calling the relationship between the semantic-pragmatic phenomenon of importance/predictability and the way it is expressed iconic, is a way of labelling a relationship without any explanatory value in itself. If we can define something as more important or less predictable independently of the size of its expression, and we then find that what is more important or less predictable is usually (always?) expressed by more coding material in the world's languages, we have made an important generalization about the relationship between expression and content in language, but we have not explained it. On the expression plane, we need to define in precise structural terms what we mean by 'a larger chunk of code' and 'more coding material'. There is no shortcut ignoring structure to a direct linking of content and ex pression in language. The first part of the quantity principle, (a), can be demonstrated by plurals of nouns formed by affixation (Andersen forthcoming). The difference between the contents 'unspecified quantity' vs. 'more than one', as defined by Ander sen, is reflected in the number of morphemes as 'n morphemes' (singulars) vs. 'n + 1 morphemes' (plurals), that is, 'the relative extent of the referent is dia grammed by the relative extent of its morphemic expression' (forthcomings:21). We may depict this relation as in (1). (1)
content unspecified quantity more than one
expression ~
n morphemes n + 1 morphemes
Andersen analyses the diagrammatic relation in plural formation as being for mal in the Hjelmslevian sense, i.e. structural, in essence. Plurals, he says, can be considered structurally more complex in content than singulars by virtue of their more specific meaning. The diagrammatic relation is then a relation be tween greater or lesser complexity on the expression plane representing greater
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or lesser specificity — interpreted as complexity — on the content plane. This relation can be depicted as in (2) (where → stands for 'interpreted as'). (2)
content
expression
less specific → less complex more specific → more complex
~
n morphemes n + 1 morphemes
Andersen further claims that the relation between the two expression elements diagrammatically reflects the relation between the two content elements: "the difference between the pairs of expression entities diagrams the opposition be tween the two members of the content category number" (forthcoming:21; em phasis as in the original). Opposition between the two members of the content category number is a purely structural phenomenon, as is a mere difference between pairs of expression. Equation (3) represents this purely structural dia gram where substance is not involved. (3)
content a b
expression ~
x y
Equations (1)-(3) differ considerably. On the expression plane, (1) and (2) involve the number of morphemes, while (3) only involves a difference in ex pression. On the content plane, (1) involves the content substance, while (3) again involves a mere difference between two elements. (2) requires interpret ing beyond just the registration of similarity: more/less specific has to be inter preted as 'more/less complex' in order for the similarity to become apparent. None of the diagrams is imaginai. In (1), n morphemes does not correlate with 'one'. (2) requires an interpretation of specificity in terms of complexity for the similarity to become apparent. Finally, (3) is a case of a merely structural similiarity — substance is not involved at all.
5. Paradigmatic isomorphism Diagrams such as (3) that are diagrammatic with respect to structure display paradigmatic isomorphism in the sense that there is a coding relation where each expression element expresses its own meaning or each meaning is ex pressed by a separate expression element. This type of coding relation is some times described as iconicity par excellence, namely in terms of the slogan "One form, one meaning" (Bolinger 1977:x). Isomorphism excludes both
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homonymy and synonymy, also in the form of allomorphs. Thus the hypothesis of general paradigmatic isomorphism in language is easily rejected as allomorphy is abundant. On the other hand, the hypothesis that languages tend to demonstrate paradigmatic isomorphism is a self-fulfilling prophesy to the extent that we do not have access to the content plane independent of language (Croft 1990:172). If the elements on the content plane result from an analysis of lin guistic signs, each content element is necessarily expressed by a separate sign. Moreover, it can be claimed that consistent paradigmatic isomorphism repre sents the excessive complication described by Saussure; in a system where every single concept was coded differently, all signs would be of the vingt 'twenty' type with no reflection of their paradigmatic contrasts in their compo sition. This would be true not only of "words", but also of "sentences", except that the distinction between word and sentence would not exist as it depends on the order and regularity of syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations. As soon as vingt enters into some sort of syntagmatic relation (as, for instance, in vingtun 'twenty-one' or vingt fleurs 'twenty flowers'), there is (syntagmatic) dia grammatic iconicity in the sense that the combination of different content ele ments is reflected in the syntagmatic relation of their expressions. The dif ference between dix-neuf and vingt in terms of iconicity is, however, only a matter of degree. We might, for instance, claim that the meaning of dix-neuf does not consist of two but rather nineteen content elements. Then the syntagm constituted by dix-neuf would not display diagrammatic iconicity. Finally, the theory of paradigmatic isomorphism presupposes a stability of the content of linguistic signs that is highly questionable. The hypothesis of paradigmatic isomorphism is mainly interesting in so far as it urges the linguist to look for similarity in meaning when there is indeed systematic grammatical homonymy (Haiman 1980:517, 527-528).5 That is, when there is no isomorphism insofar as two apparently different meanings are systematically given the same expression or type of expression (in a single lan guage or cross-linguistically), the linguist should look for semantic or prag matic similarity between the signs. Or, vice versa, if two expressions apparent ly have the same content, the linguist should look for differences in meaning.
6. Conclusion In sum, we have found three types of diagrammatic iconicity (see also Fig. 1): - imaginai diagrams: a feature of the expression substance is reflected in the expression structure which in turn reflects a similar feature of the content plane
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(paradigmatic examples: onomatopetic words, iconic signs of signed languages; syntagmatic example: semantic temporal priority reflected in temporal priority on the expression plane); - diagrams based on analogy: the diagrammatic relation between content and expression elements is only realized when a relation of analogy is first estab lished between content elements (paradigmatic example: the sign meaning 'eth ics' in Danish Sign Language based on a semantic analogy between physical posture and mental attitude, the expression reflecting physical posture; syn tagmatic example: importance interpreted as temporal priority and expressed temporally first); - paradigmatic isomorphism, i.e. diagrams of structure only (may as well be described as total arbitrariness).
A diagram + image
content temporally
expression first
temporally later diagram based on analogy
temporally first temporally later
importance temporally first
temporally first
paradigmatic isomorphism
Figure 1 : Types of iconicity A vertical arrow means 'interpreted as analogous to'. Temporally first pre supposes structure in that the element that appears first is a structurally defined element, e.g. a nominal, and the entity in which it appears first is itself a structurally defined entity, e.g. a sentence. What we want to emphasize in relation to Figure 1 is, on the content plane, the need to look for linguistically independent, cognitive or communicative
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evidence for the analogy in cases such as B, and, on the expression plane, the need to precisely define the structural elements of the expression and the fea tures of the expression as substance that enter into the diagrammatic relations. In the description of iconicity based on analogy in particular, we explicitly avoid using the term metaphor. The reason is that we find that the term is used much too often without closer examination of the type of relationship in ques tion.6 It is usually claimed that metaphor involves an understanding of a phe nomenon from one domain in terms of a phenomenon from another domain (Johnson 1987; Sweetser 1990), but then the concept of domain is left unde fined. Children are known to over- and underextend words. Is there a domain shift when a child extends the word doggie from poodles to alsatians? What about the extension of doggie from poodles to cows? Or the extension of leg from the human leg to a stick supporting a tabletop or the extension of leg to a flower's stem? Cognitive semanticists would probably only talk about a shift in domain in the latter two cases, but it is difficult to see the cognitive differ ence between the four extensions. From the child's point of view, the differ ence is mainly that some of the extensions are sanctioned by the speech com munity, others are not. This brings us back to the notion of convention in relation to iconicity. Saussure pointed out that in order for an arbitrary sign to function as a sign, it has to be conventional. We cannot infer from this that nonarbitrary signs are not conventional. Signed languages of the deaf abound in signs of the imagetype that nevertheless differ from one signed language to another. Even signs based on the same image-relation between content and expression may have different conventional expressions. What we can say, however, is that there is an increasing dependence on conventionality when we go from images to im aginai diagrams to diagrams based on analogy. Even though many so-called metaphorical extensions such as the use of the vocabulary of perception for cognition and emotion may be universal (Sweetser 1990:Chapter 2), languages differ to the.extent that extensions have been conventionalized. English does permit a "metaphorical projection of the human body" onto mountains so that it is possible to talk about the foot of the mountain (Lakoff 1987:19), but not onto flowers: the leg of the flower is not conventional, but is understandable since it follows the pattern. The traditional way of looking at iconicity and arbitrariness is as a relation going from content to expression: does the content motivate the expression or not? As pointed out earlier, the classical examples of iconicity are the ones that involve features of the expression that are forced onto language by the expres sion as substance, i.e. linearity, proximity, and quantity. The examples show
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that we may also look at the iconicity relation as a relation going from the ex pression to the content: to what extent is the content structure brought about, or at least made possible by the linguistic expression as substance? The point of asking this question becomes particularly clear if we turn to languages that make use of an "unusual" expression substance such as signed languages. In signed languages of the deaf, it is possible, simultaneously, to refer to two different referents, one backgrounded, the other foregrounded, simply because the signer has two hands (Engberg-Pedersen 1993:283-286). How, one may ask, does this affect the type of primacy that goes with firstness in linear ex pression systems? At the end of 'Linguistic structure in a functional grammar' (Harder, this volume) it was emphasized that language has two structures, a content structure and an expression structure. Neither is autonomous as they depend on each other. Moreover, neither is totally motivated by the other, as the discrepancy between the content structure and the expression structure in the use of dummy subjects such as it in It's raining demonstrates. Some coding relations are, however, more transparent than others insofar as one type of expression re flects the content better than another. The fact that the relationship between expression and content is sometimes arbitrary should not prevent us from look ing for cases where that is not the case. But in looking at such cases, we should be precise about what type of iconicity is involved, and especially, we should avoid labelling specific coding relations iconic without looking for independent evidence for classifying a content element as indicating, for in stance, temporal priority. Otherwise, there is a serious risk of circularity. A particular interpretation such as 'semantically first' is often motivated by linguistic evidence, especially cross-linguistic evidence ("this semantic feature is expressed first in an overwhelming number of languages") or evidence from language acquisition ("children usually start by expressing this feature first in the sentence"). Such evidence is in itself significant for a description of coding relations in language, but it is not evidence for classifying a particular coding relation as iconic. In order to do that, we need independent functional evidence as to the extent to which the content element can be understood as determined by some cognitive structure or as fulfilling some communicative need.
Notes 1.
Even though onomatopoetic words often transgress the inventory of phonemes and the rules for the combination of the non-iconic subset of words in a language, onomatopoetic
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words differ from language to language: they share language-specific phonological fea tures with the non-iconic words of the individual language. 2.
See, however, Itkonen's (1994:38-39) distinction between ontological and cognitive ex planation.
3.
Incidentally, there is a mismatch between the two pragmatic principles mentioned by Givón and the principle that what is given — and thus more accessible and more pre dictable — is mentioned first.
4.
See, however, Haiman (1985b: 102-105) for examples of how pauses can have the iconic function of marking conceptual distance.
5.
Isomorphism also excludes empty morphemes (expression, but no content) and zero mor phemes (content, but no expression) (see Haiman 1985b:21), which will be left out of consideration here.
6.
The term analogy is not more precise. The notion of similarity that lies behind analogy as well as behind iconicity (similarity between content and expression) is extremely prob lematic. We do, however, find that metaphor involves an additional ill-defined notion, i.e. domain.
References Andersen, Henning. Forthcoming. Iconicity. Manuscript. Bol inger, Dwight. 1977. The Form of Language. London: Longmans. Croft, William. 1990. Typology and Universals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Engberg-Pedersen, Elisabeth. 1993. Space in Danish Sign Language: The semantics and morphosyntax of the use of space in a visual language. Hamburg: Signum Press. Givón, T. 1991. Isomorphism in the grammatical code: Cognitive and biological con siderations. Studies in Language 15.85-114. Haiman, John. 1980. The iconicity of grammar: Isomorphism and motivation. Lan guage 56.515-540. Haiman, John. 1983. Iconic and economic motivation. Language 59.781-819. Haiman, John, ed. 1985a. Iconicity in Syntax. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Haiman, John. 1985b. Natural Syntax: Iconicity and erosion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Harder, Peter. This volume. Linguistic structure in a functional grammar. Itkonen, Esa. 1994. Iconicity, analogy, and universal grammar. Journal of Pragmatics 22.37-53.
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Jakobson, Roman. 1971. Quest for the essence of language. R. Jakobson. 1971. Se lected Writings. Vol. II, 345-359. The Hague: Mouton. Johnson, Mark. 1987. The Body in the Mind: The bodily basis of meaning, imagina tion, and reason. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, George. 1987. Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What categories reveal about the mind. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Newmeyer, Frederick J. 1992. Iconicity and generative grammar. Language 68.756796. Peirce, Charles Sanders. 1932. Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. Vol. I-II. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1916. Cours de linguistique générale. Paris: Payot. Reprinted 1972. Sweetser, Eve E. 1990. From Etymology to Pragmatics: Metaphorical and cultural aspects of semantic structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Paradigmatic structure, word order and grammaticalization Lars Heltoft University of Roskilde
1. Overview This article1 is characterized by the same general interest as Engberg-Pedersen (this volume) and Harder (this volume), that of suggesting the need for a re vised notion of structure in functionally oriented linguistics. However, the subject in focus, as indicated in the title, raises the question of the relation between synchrony and diachrony. Thus the article is in line with the general upsurge of interest in the diachronic perspective and in grammaticalization in particular (cf. Bybee, Perkins & Pagliuca 1994; Hopper & Traugott 1993; Christian Lehmann 1985, 1993). Where grammaticalization is concerned, the notion of paradigm occupies a focal position. The traditional insight that grammatical structure involves organization of limited numbers of elements in closed paradigms is still of central value. Any analysis of grammaticalization processes presupposes the analysis of their structural inputs and outputs, the analysis of which again pre supposes both the synchronic and the diachronic perspective. As I shall try to show, however, the concept of paradigm itself is in need of refinement. Func tional orientation calls for new types of paradigms in addition to the traditional ones. Tradition speaks of paradigms as expression-based. The classical notion is the morphological paradigm: a set of expressions ('endings') that fit into the same syntagmatic context: a word stem. Essentially the same notion was gener alized to contexts of larger chains than stems: clauses and phrases, the outcome of which is syntactic paradigms (e.g. determiners in a language like English). Approaches and theories have varied with respect to the roles they have ascribed to content in both types of paradigm, but the general trend is to define the notion from the expression perspective. The classical European structuralist
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notions of paradigm point explicitly to content (Saussurean associative rela tions), but are nevertheless built on substitution in a syntagmatically defined context. The point at issue is not to replace older notions by new ones, but to em phasize the need for a content-based notion alongside the traditional, still useful ones. There are two senses in which a paradigm can be content-based and thus there are two steps in this line of thought. First, there is no a priori reason why substitution experiments should be exclusively arranged and defined from the expression perspective. Just as we can isolate stable syntagmatic expression contexts for the purpose of isolating paradigms, we can isolate stable content elements for the same purpose. Such a content element does the same job as the syntagmatic context in the expres sion-based notion. One obvious advantage of this approach is its applicability to problems of word order. The example I shall give below takes the propositional content as the contextual frame and the assertivity vs. non-assertivity option as the paradigm — a question of word order in a number of well-known Western European languages. Content elements are of course not linearly segmentable to the same degree as expression elements — but in this property of the content-based approach lies also its strength: it allows us to reformulate the criteria for grammaticality and grammaticalization to include word order phe nomena. The second step will lead us to the more radical view that we need a sup plementary notion of paradigm defined solely in terms of the semantic contrasts involved, without any syntagmatically defined expression frame. Such a para digm will allow us to scrutinize and revise the internal content structure of traditional expression-based paradigms; this will be exemplified below for the traditional category of case. Moreover, it will allow us to formulate similarities where others have emphasized differences. Content paradigms can straddle the most heterogeneous expression systems. As to terminology, I shall simply speak of content-based paradigms as 'paradigms' without further qualification. Where reference is needed to older notions, I shall explicitly hedge these notions and speak of expression-based paradigms, and of morphological and syntactic paradigms. Two general warnings must be issued already at this stage of the presenta tion. First, and most importantly, the absence of an expression frame does not imply that expression differences are not relevant; the programmatical content orientation of the approach does not imply loss of empirical foundation. On the contrary, only those content contrasts qualify that have corresponding, lan guage-specific expression differences found through application of the commu-
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tation test. In this way, content-defined paradigms remain empirically anchored within the language they are set up for. What one may have to renounce — depending on the actual case — is only the ability to tie down content options to specific expression slots. It is still possible to relate content options to ex pression differences in general. Secondly, the level of content we are operating at must not be thought of as content substance. Many authors have pointed to tense systems and time adverbials as different manifestations of time. They are indeed, but from our vantage point, this common content remains a matter of content substance. In a content-based paradigm, content substance is structurally organized, and it is this language-specific structure (content form, in the Hjelmslevian vein) im posed on content substance, that constitutes the paradigm. What this allows is the recognition of identical content paradigms with widely different expression systems. A detailed example relating inflectional voice to word order rules can be found in Heltoft & Falster Jakobsen (this volume, and compare the discus sion later in this article); the choice of (un)specifiability in Nahuatl discussed in Canger (this volume) is another example. Finally, when the concept of paradigm is adjusted, so are the central dy namic concepts of generalisation and reanalysis. Basing the notion of grammaticalization on language-specific content structure will entail a wider range of application for these concepts, and, hopefully, increased insight into the relationship between language systems and processes of language change.
2. A wider concept of grammaticalization In recent literature on grammaticalization word order systems are normally not considered to have grammatical status, nor is their development considered as instances of grammaticalization. Hopper & Traugott (1993) emphasize the differences between word order change and grammaticalization in the narrow sense, namely the process from lexical item to affix. Yet the content functions of word order resemble those of indisputably grammatical categories: word order can express syntactic relations, illocutionary frame and subjectivity, and textual structure (discourse referent management, topicalization). Thus, word order can take on grammatical content normally ascribed to case, mood, and definiteness. Word order change can consist in changes from syntagmatic free dom to heavily restricted positional rules with a traditionally grammatical con tent.
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The concepts of diachronic grammaticalization of today (Hopper Sc Traugott 1993; Traugott & Heine 1991; Lehmann 1985, 1993; and others, all ultimately building on Meiliet 1912) converge in viewing grammaticalìzation as a process of historical change, changing material from lexical status to bound morphemic status. By undergoing this process, lexical material loses "in semantic prag matic significance, syntactic freedom, and phonetic substance" (Heine & Reh 1984:15); in the wording of Christian Lehmann 1985, "grammaticalìzation is a process which turns lexemes into grammatical formatives and makes gram matical formatives still more grammatical" (Lehmann 1985:303). Other authors view the starting point of the process as being farther away, i.e. in discourse categories (Li & Thompson 1976; Givón 1979; Bybee 1985). Where the endpoint of the bleaching and binding process is concerned, however, there is gen eral agreement: bound morpheme status is the most tightly grammaticalized status a sign can have. I shall discuss and question this view. Modern typologists pay due homage to Meillet as the inventor of the concept and the founder of grammaticalìzation as a diachronic discipline (Meillet 1912), but strikingly, Hopper Sc Traugott, for instance, do not agree with Meillet when it comes to the limitation of the phenomena recognized as undergoing or resulting from grammaticalìzation. Meillet insists that word order change and prosodic change must be recognized as grammaticalìzation processes. The reluctance of Hopper Sc Traugott (1993: 50-56) seems to stem from the view that unidirectionality is a central feature of grammaticalìzation, although they do acknowledge the possibility of a wider concept of grammaticalìzation that would encompass word order change. Grammaticalìzation processes need not begin from lexemes and their endpoint is not necessarily bound morpheme status, in fact they need not concern the level of lexemes at all. For instance, a discourse category such as 'topic' can attain grammatical status in so-called topic-prominent languages, and these again may develop into subject-prominent languages (W.P. Lehmann 1976; Li Sc Thompson 1976). Vedic Sanskrit, according to W.P, Lehmann, presents a stage of this development. It has a grammatical subject, but almost never iden tifies subject and topic, whereas in Classical Sanskrit subject and topic are gen erally identified. Notably, this process does not involve any lexeme category. My second example is the rise of Germanic V2 out of former SOV-order. The starting point of this process is believed to be enclitic preposing of abstract 'auxiliary' verbs losing stress in V2-position. The following example is from late Runic Norse (Faarlund 1990:60; Hock 1991:330, note that neither of these authors, however, recognize the concept of grammaticalìzation):
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ni s solu sot not is sun:DAT sought 'neither is (it) sought by the sun'
And from Old English (Hock 1991:330): (2)
Beowulfe wearð guðhreð gyfeþe Beowulf:DAT become:PAST battle:glory:NOM give:PAST:PTC 4o Beowulf was battle-glory given'
This preposing is first attested for the copula: compare the runic example's cliticized s from is/es (3p. sg.) in what is probably an instance of the Germanic periphrastic passive. (For the predicative nature of that construction, see Dyvik 1980). Because of the sparse material it remains unclear whether the start of this process was actually pure clitization, or whether it affected first a lexicogrammatical class of auxiliaries — but this concerns only the question of the starting point. The process in all Germanic V2-anguages is analogic extension of V2-position to all finite verbs in main clauses, the endpoint being a new positional structure, not an inflectional system. We shall not discuss the content functions of older Germanic in details here, but the reader is reminded that the present day outcome of this process in for example German and the Scandi navian languages is a strictly regulated and — I shall claim — grammaticalized system where V2-order indicates a declarative illocutionary frame and V1-order a non-declarative frame (question, condition, imperative). So far I have adopted the view that the concept of grammaticalization must apply not only to inflectional systems, but to word order systems as well. I shall further insist that grammaticalization as a historical process cannot be analyzed in isolation from synchronic analysis and vice versa, a view that I share with a number of authors (though my view is closest to C. Lehmann's 1985, 1993). And finally, under both perspectives (synchrony and diachrony) a common background is presupposed, namely a universal definition of what 'grammatical status' means. This enables us to orient and anchor empirical questions such as whether a language has a given grammatical category and if so how it arose (Dyvik 1980, 1986). The presupposed notion behind the dis cussion of the endpoint of grammaticalization processes is that of the gramma tical status of a paradigm, i.e. what it takes for a paradigm to acquire gram matical status. The obvious and apposite term for having grammatical status (i.e. being grammaticalized in a language) is grammaticality. Of course, this term has been used in other senses already. As my interpretation of grammati cality is developed, it will become clear that it is merely a descriptive elabo-
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ration of the traditional sense of the word 'grammatical', i.e. constructed in accordance with the grammatical rules of a language, correct for the given language. I side with Meillet in adopting a wider view of grammaticalization. Granted that inflectional morphemes form prototypical grammatical paradigms, it still remains to be seen what the properties of such paradigms are, and to what extent they share these properties with other types of paradigm.
3. The concept of a paradigm The notion of a paradigm and its specification into subtypes is crucial to our understanding of grammaticalization. Expression-based paradigms are found through substitution in an identifiable syntagmatic context, isolated for the purpose of the test and in this sense ab stract. Content-based paradigms, by contrast, are found through substitution against the background of a stable content element isolated by the linguist doing the test. Such a content element does the same job as the syntagmatic context in the expression-based view, namely to define the stable frame of the test, and, eventually, of the paradigm, but content elements are not linearly segmentable to the same degree as expression elements. Content elements can be complex and find their expression only through complex expression systems, with no simple or isomorphic relations between content and expression. Let us take Danish V2 word order options as an example, as described in the follow ing notational system: P1 (cf. Dik 1989) is the initial position, in Danish open to material of all kinds, often — but not necessarily — filled by the given top ic; V2 is verb second; S stands for subject. Danish contrasts declarative P1 V2 (S) order with Zero V S order, the word order for questions and conditionals, as in: (3)
a. hun kommer she comes 'she comes' b. Ø kommer hun comes she 'does she come' or 'if she comes'
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One obvious stable content element that may constitute the frame of the test is the common propositional content 'her coming'; another candidate is 'assertivity' or 'reality', the values of which are specified in the paradigm as assertive vs. non-assertive. Assertivity is thus also the semantic domain of the paradigm. The output of the option (3a-b) does not distinguish at the expression level between questions and conditionals: in both cases we find Zero V. We may speak of the common denominator for questions and conditionals as non-assertivity. Notice that it is still a precondition for an alternation to count as an option that there should also be a contrast of expression. Thus, taking the next step in this linking of options calls for recognizing the relevant expression differ ences between questions and conditionals: questions are non-dependent (nonsubordinate), whereas conditionals are dependent (subordinate). (4)
a. Kommer hun? comes she 'Does she come?'. b. Kommer hun, går jeg. comes she leave I 'If she comes, I shall leave'.
There is an obviously Hallidayan tenor behind this view (Halliday 1985). In Halliday, however, the criteria for relating systemic networks to language-spe cific structure are not clearly spelled out (cf. the discussion in Butler 1988). In contrast, I shall emphasize the need for paradigm formation to be empirical ly anchored and non-arbitrary. In the present approach, there is no vicious circle hidden beneath and no contradiction lurking behind the concepts 'expli cation of content' and 'empirical', and the methodological tool assuring empiri cal status is again the commutation test. As opposed to the classical expression-based paradigm approach, I allow approaches from both sides, the goal being precisely the same, namely the formulation* of systematic expression-content correlations. Alternation, then, is substitutability in a stable context, but it is not essential that this context should be a string of syntagmatically ordered morphemes. The conditions de fining the paradigm may very well be a content element common to the ele ments in alternation. The overall view of language as a sign system forces us to recognize syntagmatic differences as alternating expressions of content op positions, meaning that from the content perspective paradigms stand out as hierarchically ordered content options while of course still being systems of
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full-bodied signs, whose linkages are found through careful applications of the commutation test. The double-sidedness of paradigms, and of the procedures involved in con structing them, is crucial in several of the articles found in this book. Both in Heltoft & Falster Jakobsen (this volume) and in Harder, Heltoft & Nedergaard Thomsen (this volume), a dialectic between the expression-based and the con tent-based approach is employed.
4. Defining grammaticalization All instances of grammaticalization concern closed paradigms — a view more in accordance with tradition. Prototypical grammatical status is ascribed to paradigms where the number of members in the paradigm is de facto determi nable and limited. Less prototypical instances of grammaticalization will still be determinable and limited in principle, but they will have larger paradigms and thus consist of more specific content options. Thus the criteria for delim iting grammaticalization from full lexicalization are clear in principle, although actual instances may be difficult to assess. The core notion behind grammati calization is that of a closed paradigm in a linked system of limited options, where linkage between A and — to sum up whar I have said about para digms — means that selecting one or more members from paradigm A calls for selection from another paradigm B. Paradigm A may be a closed one, but must be closed. Grammar is the mechanism that handles all non-lexical rela tions between content form and expression form, and it does so by virtue of its status as a set of linked options. Take the personal endings of the verb in Standard English as an example. Paradigm is represented by the well-known closed zero vs. -s option, the content of which is non-. sg. vs. 3p. sg., respectively. A consists of the option between two types of grammatical subjects, one triggering the non-3p. sg. zero morpheme, the other one triggering the 3p. sg. s morpheme. This is the well-known phenomenon normally called agreement. Grammatical status pertains to productive rules. If A is a lexical category whose members trigger the grammatical paradigm B, the full grammatical stat us of will depend on the openness of the option towards new members of A. In a fully productive system, any new member of A will also trigger the option B.
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This concept of grammaticality will ascribe grammaticalized status to all linked and productive options in closed paradigms. I shall say — from a syn chronic point of view — that such paradigms are grammaticalized in a lan guage, and similarly — from a diachronic point of view — I shall refer to any process resulting in such relationships as grammaticalization. Let me mention briefly a phenomenon from Danish, which will be dealt with in more detail in one of the other contributions to this book (Harder, Heltoft & Nedergaard Thomsen), namely unit accentuation. Unit accentuation is the most important expression signal for Danish com plex predicate formation. The finite verb is unstressed while the second part of the complex predicate carries full stress, e.g. in copula + subject comple ment han oer ' sød 'he is cute'. The unitary stress reflects a very important dif ference between two types of Danish directional expressions, namely complex predicate formation on the one hand with proper locatives, as in: (5)
de pakken til Køben ' havn oendte they send:PAST the:parcel to Copenhagen 'they sent the parcel to Copenhagen'
Here there is unitary stress and a complex predicate osendte til Køben| havn. On the other hand expressions where human goals are involved, as in: (6)
de ' sendte pakken til |Lone they send:PAST the:parcel to Lone 'they sent the parcel to Lone'
Here there is full verbal stress and two objects: direct object pakken and oblique object til Lone. Thus the directional preposition til 'to' is neutral in this respect, but choosing it always entails the further option between complex pre dicate formation giving the locational reading, and a simple verbal predicate giving the human reading. What we see here is a closed paradigm that resem bles aliative vs. dative oppositions in case languages. Once we have moved from the expressional distinctions to this content op position, we can apply the content perspective and search for alternative reali zations borne by word-order. There are two more realizations of the human reading, namely indirect object constructions: (7)
de | sendte |Lone | pakken they send:PAST Lone the:parcel 'they sent Lone the parcel'
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and the få 'become' passives upgrading the indirect object to subject status: (8)
Lone fik pakken sendt Lone get:PAST the:parcel send:PAST:PTC 'Lone got the parcel sent' (i.e. received it)
So the issue is reasonably clear: not only are the meanings attached to word order and unitary stress 'grammatical', but the sign options involved comply with our standards of grammaticality. Under this view, unidirectionality is not an inherent feature of grammaticalization processes, since inflectional systems are often replaced by word order systems. A spiral model of grammaticaliza tion processes would be more consistent with the view of grammar and gram matical status proposed here.
5. Parameters of grammaticalization and the concept of a paradigm I have deliberately avoided the classical version of the distinction between paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations, between paradigms and syntagms. My position is of course in need of further clarification, and the best possible spar ring partner to match this position against is Christian Lehmann in his works on grammaticalization (1985, 1993), Lehmann's background being also a ver sion of classical European structuralism. In Lehmann's theoretically elaborated works, the parameters of grammati calization are described along both the paradigmatic and the syntagmatic axes. As paradigmatic features of strong grammaticalization he counts: few semantic features, a small, tightly integrated set of content options, systematically con strained choice, and largely obligatory use. Amongst the syntagmatic features of strong grammaticalization is what he calls fixation, the loss of syntagmatic variability, a concept formulated according to the delexicalization view of grammaticalization. In a slightly modified sense, this is also relevant for word order, since tighter positional demands means more strongly grammaticalized word order rules. (What he calls scope and bondedness are parameters inti mately connected with the delexicalization view, and these parameters cannot be related to the discussion of word order). I cannot go into any detail, but must refer the reader to Lehmann's works (1985, 1992, 1993). What I find particularly difficult to understand is Lehmann's distinction between the functions of word order and of inflectional morphology. He states that even in cases like subject and object placement in English, it is:
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not word order alone which signals the grammatical relation; with most verbs, selection restrictions bear the main burden in the assignment of actant functions. The conclusion to be based on this argument is that word order does not have a positive expressive function, but much more a negative, oppositive function. It does not, like a grammatical affix, signify a particular grammatical relation; in stead it functions rather like a phoneme by admitting or excluding a given gramma tical relation. (Lehmann 1992:399) I do not see anything in this characterization that would not apply to quite normal, well-attested situations with inflectional morphology, e.g. case. The content of the Latin ablative is certainly a negatively defined semantic frame, inside which the actual shade of meaning is selected by the verb in question. More importantly, it is hard to see the point in stressing word order as syntagmatic variability: Word order is not an expression device on a par with inflectional morphology. Instead, it is an instance of the syntagmatic variability, and thus, a structural aspect of the autonomy of the language sign. Its freedom or fixation depends on which grammatical levels are particularly strongly developed in the language. (Lehmann 1992:414) Of course — and this is tautological — word order is an instance of syntagmatic variability, but in word order languages this variability is systematically restricted. True, word order is bound up with other levels of syntactic organi zation. Word order languages, for instance, must have group structure, to use a term adapted from Meillet (1937:360), i.e. contiguous phrase structure, and only allow discontinuous constituents under grammatically restricted condi tions. But Lehmann does not show, as his formulations would seem to imply, that free and fixed word order are consequences of such organization principles at other grammatical levels. What matters here is not the syntagmatic differ ences, but the paradigmatic similarities. Lehmann's concept of a paradigm is the classical, syntagmatically framed and restricted one. Paradigms are only found with sets of signs that share a syntagmatic context. I, on the contrary, would claim that on the one hand word order conforms largely to his paradig matic parameters and criteria of grammaticalization, while, on the other hand, the classical syntagmatically framed concept of a paradigm is the stumbling block that prevents one from straightforwardly viewing word order options as tightly grammaticalized phenomena. Word order differences are sign differences that comply with all of Leh mann's paradigmatic features of strong grammaticalization, namely: few se-
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mantic features, a small, tightly integrated set of content options, systematical ly constrained choice, and largely obligatory use. Of the syntagmatic features, fixation would be relevant, if taken to mean restricted syntagmatic variability. For word order, more grammatical means fewer word order options and tighter positional demands. The point is that Lehmann's paradigmatic parameters apply to word order as well, while the syntagmatic parameters must of course be reformulated. The obstacle in Lehmann's version that prevents inclusion of word order among grammaticalization phenomena is the preconception that paradigms presuppose syntagmatic contexts in a narrow sense, namely linearly ordered chains.
6. The need for content analysis of paradigms I wish to stress the need for commutation-based scrutiny of both expression and content elements in what is traditionally recognized as paradigms. 'Squint ing grammar' is far more widespread than it is normally thought. Let us take case in Danish as an example, but note that the point applies to English as well. Tradition speaks of two cases in Danish nouns, the uninfected form vs. the genitive, and of three cases in a handful of Danish personal pro nouns, the nominative, the accusative, and the genitive, as in: (9)
nom. hun 'she' acc. hende 'her' gen. hendes 'her'/'hers'
It treats this inventory list as a paradigm without explicitly stating the criteria. Such inventory lists are useful as a first step in organizing the material, but they do not per se offer an exhaustive analysis of a paradigm. As Hawkins (1986) and also Bybee & Dahl (1989) have noticed, the content of an expression-based paradigm may very well be heterogeneous. In such cases, one should look for the common denominators of content, not only for distributional similarities at the expression level. However, what could be the common denominator of content for this purported paradigm? The nominative marks subject function, the accusative occurs in all non-subject functions.2 The genitive, however, does not define the function of noun phrases, but it converts them from NPs to predicatives and determiners. (Note that English has further differentiated the results of these two conversion processes: hers (predicative) vs. her (determiner)). So the Danish genitive is in opposition to non-genitive, thus forming a distinct paradigm, inflectional and syntactic at the same time.
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Instead of the above list, the output of this analysis is two distinct para digms. A shallow traditional case paradigm, distinguishing only nominative and accusative: (10)
nom. hun acc. hende
'she' 'her'
And another paradigm concerning the category-shifting of arguments into de terminers/predicatives : (11) Argument: non-gen.
hun/hende
Determiner/predicative: gen. hendes
'she/her' 'her/hers'
Notice that grammatical meaning is also content and that the genitive vs. nongenitive option is also a content option. What the genitive does is to instruct the receiver to interpret the noun/pronoun as a determiner. The portmanteau structure of richer case systems in languages like Latin and Old Scandinavian is not at variance with this view. In the classical lan guages and in Old Nordic as well, genitives had portmanteau structure. Geni tives could be governed, as in Old Danish: (12) a.
b.
bitha hans wait he:GEN 'wait for him' mista thæs lose this:GEN 'lose this'
I shall assume that the case paradigm in such languages is constituted at the content level through its function of marking nominals for semantic roles and grammatical relations, and — incidentally — that a universal definition of case would involve these very same content notions. From this perspective, port manteau structure consists in gluing additional, non-constitutive content func tions onto core members of the case paradigm. The predicative and possessive uses of the genitive is one example, the final dative in Latin is another: (13) a.
auxilio esse help:DAT be 'be of help'
482
LARS HELTOFT
b. usui
esse
use:DAT be
'be of use' This sketch of the content functions of universal case may very well be ques tionable. My point, however, is to draw out the consequences of my concept of the paradigm. Since there is no longer a semantic common denominator for nominative, accusative and genitive in Danish pronouns, these three traditional case forms no longer constitute one paradigm, but fall into two distinct para digms. For Danish (and English) I would prefer to speak of case only in the nominative vs. accusative-contrast, since this expresses grammatical relations and thus is closer to the universal definition. As a consequence, non-pronomi nal NPs in Danish do not inflect for case at all, but only for the non-genitive vs. genitive opposition, as in: (14)
non-gen. gen.
Peter Peter-s
'Peter' 'Peter's'
kvinde kvinde-s
'woman' 'woman's'
Thus neither in Danish nor in English is the genitive a member of the category of case. This line of thought is simple, but I have not come across it else where. Hawkins (1986) sees the heterogeneity of the traditional case paradigm for English pronouns, but he does not draw the same conclusion as I do: that we are dealing with two distinct paradigms.3 Thus my focus of attention is on the language-specific content structure of paradigms: their content form. The implications of this view for the under standing of grammaticalization will be dealt with in section 9. First, I shall briefly discuss two examples of the confusion that may arise in approaches that do not distinguish language-specific content form from content substance.
7. Functional explanations and content form The point I wish to make has to do with the status of functional categories ap pealed to in a functional explanation. Faarlund (1990) presents a particularly interesting example of a functional explanation. The change in Proto-Nordic from SOV to SVO is related to cognitive assumptions about information struc ture. SVO structure (object last) assumed to be isomorphic to cognitively plau sible information flows where the rightmost part is the cognitively most salient part, SOV structure goes counter to the cognitive organization of messages and
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483
is therefore the vulnerable part, once rule competition between SVO and SOV begins. Explanations along this line, however, are dubious. For one thing, of course, cognitive organization might just as well be claimed (as it is in fact by Givón) to run in the other direction: salient part first. But, more importantly, the issue of conventional semantic structure is not raised, and Faarlund never reflects on the possible distinction between message structure as a cognitive phenomenon and as a linguistic phenomenon. Grammaticalized information structure may very well be at variance with cognitive information structure as regards content, and most probably always is, to some degree. In Heltoft & Falster Jakobsen (this volume) it is argued that Danish SVO word order cannot be regarded as a simple expression of growing cognitive salience from left to right. An intermediate layer of linguistic content structure (content form) is indispensable. Where Runic Norse is concerned, Faarlund's hypothesis rests on the assumption that there is no such coding on the content level. Suppose, however, that Runic Norse had SOV order and that in such examples the gram maticalized information structure mechanisms allowed bracketing of the finite verb as non-focus, signalling that the focus falls on one or more of the preced ing noun phrases. This hypothesis fits in neatly with a number of well-known data showing that the subject or subject appositions can constitute the focus (Moltke 1986): (15)
ek LNOM
hlewagastiz lægæst:NOM
holtijaz holt:suFF:NOM
horna Һ:
tawido make: PAST:1SG 'I Lægæst son of Holt made (this) horn' (Gallehus golden horn) (16)
hagiradaz tamde hagrad:NOM make:PAST:3sG 'Hagradr made (this box)' (Stenmagle wooden box)
Here the objects are certainly non-focus, in Stenmagle even omitted, the verbs are probably non-focus, and the subjects certainly focus. It is hard to see why such a system should be more difficult to process than SVO structure. At any rate, the burden of proof lies on those who raise such claims; not that they could not turn out to be right, but any attempt at such a proof must account for the relationships between linguistically analyzable content structure (content form) and extralinguistically substantiated cognitive message structure.
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The structuring of cognitive salience in human languages is not a straight forward, isomorphic matter, but one that calls for language-specific analyses of content and expression structure.
9. Synchronic and diachronic confusions in content analysis Some theories of meaning view semantic change as expression change and grammatical reshuffling of content. In such theories, meaning lies solely on a level of cognitive and/or functional universais. This basic assumption underlies both logically inspired theories of meaning and functional theories based on assumptions of isomorphic relationships between linguistic expression and cog nitive content (Givon 1990:893). Within a functional theory, any grammar encompasses the relationship be tween language-specific semantic structure (content form) and expression form. From the present vantage point, then, purely universalist theories of meaning lead to possible confusions both in content analysis and in the identification of synchronic and diachronic facts. Let us take localism in grammar as a theory (or rather, set of theories) which is often unclear with respect to its status between abstract cognitive structure and language-specific structure ('form' in the continental European sense of that term). There are two basic versions of localism. One is a universalist theory of cognitive organization, as in Lakoff & Johnson 1980 (Lakoff 1987 has strong elements of such a theory, and also John Lyons 1977:718-724 seems to sub scribe to a version of it). The other version is a theory of language-specific semantic linguistic structure, containing for example the idea that Indo-Euro pean was a so-called active language based on the animate vs. inanimate dis tinction and had no transitive verbs, thus no verb 'have' and no genitive, but instead of these locative constructions or their equivalents. Compare the wellknown Russian example: (17)
menja kraga with I:GEN book:NOM 'I have a book'
And the originally locative Latin dative in: (18)
mihi est liber I:DAT is book:NOM 'I have a book'
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485
More specifically, it has been argued by many linguists that Latin and the Ro mance languages are to a large extent localistic (e.g. Benveniste 1960; Lyons 1967; Herslund 1988). This is not the place to contest any particular analysis or theory of the localistic nature of language in general or of particular lan guages. What should be underlined, however, is the consequence of these as sumptions for what counts as valid arguments. Historical comparison does not in itself substantiate synchronic claims. The knowledge that in English the continuous tenses were in their origin locative prepositional phrase like (19), adapted from John Lyons (1977:719), is of course no argument for the conclusion that present day English progressives are local. (19)
he was at courting Mary Jane > he was α-courting Mary Jane > he was courting Mary Jane
A localistic theory, based on the principles advocated here, would make it clear whether it is a theory of synchronic reality, i.e. of sets of rules produc tive in the grammar of particular languages, or, alternatively, a theory of his torical development, i.e. of extension of prototypically locative patterns to oth er semantic fields. Secondly, it would specify — for a synchronic theory — in what respects localism refers to substance (i.e. the cognitively or philosophically necessary basis for a linguistic semantics), or to content form (i.e. language-specific se mantic organization). At the expression level it would specify whether locative expressions are in fact expressions of locative content, or, alternatively, gen eralizations at the expression level concerning constructions with no recogniza ble locative content. A synchronic localistic theory must be substantiated on synchronic grounds. Either — at the content level — through applications of the commutation test or other relevant semantic tests, or, at the syntactic and lexical expression level, through the demonstration of feature clusters that are synchronically or diachronically relatable to locative meaning. And thirdly, it would systematically apply the distinction between produc tive and non-productive rules and thus identify historical sediments still recog nizable in the grammars of particular languages but no longer productive.
10. Grammaticalization — synchrony and diachrony We cannot expect to understand a grammaticalization process unless we know both the system it took off from and the new system it was incorporated into.
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Any synchronic state of a language shows extensive sediments of non-produc tive rules and categories, and consequently, any grammar must treat them as such and distinguish them from productive· components of the grammar. Such non-productive rules and categories are often the result of processes that con vert and regrammaticalize part of a former category, leaving so to speak the remnants for petrification. This view is parallel to Lehmann's (1993): At the structural level, a grammatical change can only be understood if seen both in terms of the input conditions (the system from which it departed) and the output (the system resulting). Both leave their mark on the result of the pro cess. A particularly interesting and intricate example is the fate in the modern Scandinavian languages (Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish, represented here mainly by Danish alone except where differences between them are at stake) of the so-called mediopassives in Old Norse (represented here by Old Iceland ic/Old Norwegian). This category ending in -mk/sk (later in -st, Danish and Swedish -s) derives from enclitic reflexive pronouns still morphologically re cognizable in Old Icelandic. It had four semantic subcategories: a.
reflexives: e.g. geymask 'guard oneself', 'hide', leggjask 'lie down', setjask 'sit down', etc.
b.
reciprocal forms: berjask 'fight one another', hittask 'find one anoth er, meet', mœtask 'meet', etc.
intransitives: andask 'die', kennask 'seem, appear', lúkask 'be shut, end', takask 'begin', týnask 'perish', etc.
d.
passives: búask 'be equipped', synjask 'be denied', etc. (note that this passive coexisted with the periphrastic passive of Proto-Germanic origin).
Dyvik (1980) suggests that the common content of the mediopassive is argu ment reduction from two semantic roles to one, but whatever the exact formu lation of this core meaning, the point remains that they are one category with four contextually determined senses. In modern Danish the mediopassive is no longer a single category: the re flexives have been restored to V + reflexive pronouns, a productive category now distinct from the rest of the former paradigm. In contrast to the old lan guage, Modern Danish has gemme sig 'hide (oneself)', vaske sig 'wash oneself, wash' lægge sig 'lie down, go to bed', sætte sig 'sit down', etc., but not the
PARADIGMS, WORD ORDER AND GRAMMATICALIZATION
487
morphological successor of the reflexive *gemmes, *vaskes, *lœgges, *sœttes in the reflexive sense. Reflexives are now two-argument predicates. The passive sense has been semantically reanalyzed with respect to their relationship to the periphrastic passive. Where Danish is concerned, the pas sives have established a 'new' category of mood within the passive system, retaining, however, the old expression system. We shall return to this shortly. The two remaining senses of the original paradigm are now unproductive in modern Danish. The historical impact of these changes has resulted in large — though shrinking — classes of verba deponentia, with no active counter parts, semantically distinct from real passives but inflectionally identical. Dan ish has reciprocals such as enes 'agree', mødes 'meet (each other)', skœndes 'quarrel', slås 'fight', and intransitives such as dages 'break (of the day), grønnes 'turn green', slukkes 'die out (of fire, light)', celdes 'grow old', and cendres 'change'. Modern loan words, however, are never allowed with this morphology and content. (Hopper & Traugott (1993:153) refer to parts of the regrammaticalization of the mediopassive, but miss the point that intransitive and reciprocal s-forms are unproductive: "In Danish [this -s] has occasional passive uses [...], but its more usual function is to express middle [intransitive verb of consciousness quoted] and reciprocal [reciprocal example quoted]". Kemmer (1993) gets the distinction between productive and unproductive pat terns right). Nowhere in the literature have the productive patterns been described ade quately. For an attempt to improve this situation, see Heltoft & Falster Jakobsen (this volume).
11. Grammaticalization: generalization, reanalysis and content form We have seen how inflectional reflexivization is lost in modern Danish as a productive pattern. This does not mean, however, that no productive parts re main from the original paradigm. The passive sense has been detached and reinterpreted in modern Danish as part of an opposition of mood between the periphrastic passive and the s-passive. In simple declarative sentences the choice of the periphrastic passive results in speaker-oriented utterances in the sense that the propositional content of the utterance is regarded as part of the speaker's experience alone, often resulting in factual descriptions of simple facts, while the ¿-passive indicates the involvement of some consciousness other than the speaker's.
488
LARS HELTOFT
(20) a. FIOLTEATRET LUKKES the:fiol:theatre close:PRES:s.MOOD 'tһӘ Fiol Theatre is to be closed' b. FIOLTEATRET BLIVER LUKKET the:fiol:theatre become:PRES close:PAST:PTC 'the Fiol Theatre will be closed' (20a) is a newspaper headline in the s-mood of the passive paradigm, meaning that the utterance involves an intention outside the speaker: the closing of the theatre is somebody else's plan or reported from somebody else. (20b) places the intention solely with the speaker, meaning that the product is a simple de clarative prediction, the future sense being the normal output of dynamic verbs of change in the present tense. The point here is that this opposition has to do with the question of whether the consciousness of other persons is involved or not. In this sense Falster Jakobsen and I speak of the involvement of particular intentions, speaker and non-speaker. Another frequent use of the s-mood of the passive is the generic or norma tive sense: (21) a. tales der dansk i speak:PRES:S.MOOD there Danish in 'is Danish spoken in Scania?'
Skåne? Scania
b. bliver der talt dansk i Skåne? become:PRES there speak:PAST:PTC Danish in Scania 'is Danish spoken in Scania?' Here (21a) is the normative reading, asking whether Danish is the linguistic norm in Scania, whereas (21b) is the simple descriptive reading, asking wheth er it occurs that Danish is spoken there. Most significantly, the s-mood cannot be used in describing simple factual events, since such simple constatives are only related to the speaker. To determine just how old this reinterpretation of the s-passive is remains a problem for extensive empirical investigation, but the structural analysis as hinted at here sets the scene for a hypothesis about the chains of grammaticalization involved in the transition from a voice system to a kind of mood sys tem. The probable outset is a reading of the passive with a general and there fore very often deleted agent. Such general readings are readily interpreted as normative. Normative readings involve generally accepted knowledge, and therefore speaker-external consciousness; the speaker-external consciousness
PARADIGMS, WORD ORDER AND GRAMMATICALZATION
489
of normative readings is again generalizable to consciousness and intentions in general, including that of particular non-speakers. PASSIVE > GENERAL PASSIVE > NORMATIVE > PARTICULAR NON-SPEAKER CONSCIOUSNESS
This process, as stated here, involves only generalization. Arriving at the mod ern Danish state involves reanalysis as well, including everything that can be regarded as norm and intention and excluding the simple passive reading, which is then left with the periphrastic form alone. GENERAL PASSIVE > NORMATIVE > PARTICULAR NON-SPEAKER CONSCIOUSNESS
Strikingly, generalization alone accounts for the situation in modern Swedish where the s-passive retains its purely descriptive function, while generalizing also to the normative and intentional uses. Danish, however, adds a reanalysis to the non-descriptive modal senses alone. Thus, Swedish allows simple de scriptives as in: (22)
Hampus Broberg och Helena Hansson häktades Hampus Broberg and Helena Hansson arrest:PAST:S.PASSIVE [...] fem minuter över tio nästa morgon. five minutes past ten the next morning 'Hampus Broberg and Helena Hansson were arrested [...] five minutes past ten the next morning'.
A Danish translation would by contrast have to use the periphrastic passive: (23)
Hampus Broberg og Helena Hansson blev Hampus Broberg og Helena Hansson become:PAST anholdt [...]fem[...] arrest: PAST: PTC five
Similarly, in (24) Swedish can use the s-passive to describe a single factual event, while the Danish translation must be in the periphrastic mood: Swedish: (24) Ryska ubåten hittades på ett skär Russian the:submarine find:PAST:S.PASSIVE on a rock utan för Karlskrona. off Karlskrona The Russian submarine was found on a rock off Karlskrona'.
490 Danish: (25)
LARS HELTOFT
Den the skœr rock 'The
russiske ubåd blev fundet på et Russian submarine become:PAST find:PAST:PTC on a ud for Karlskrona. off Karlskrona Russian submarine was found on a rock off Karlskrona'.
In technical terms, the Swedish s-passive is a zero category in Hjelmslev's sense (Hjelmslev 1935:100). In this sense I shall speak of the zero category as the unmarked term of the opposition, the periphrastic passive as the marked term. The zero term can have all the functions of the marked term, but not vice versa. In Danish, however, the general pattern is one of mutually exclusive terms, contrasting a Hjelmslevian -Kerm and a -term. It should be stressed again that these oppositions in Danish and Swedish represent the fully productive parts of the system, not non-productive rem nants. What is particularly interesting about the Danish development is that the reanalysis as sketched can only be understood as a systematic reanalysis. It cuts off from the s-passive exactly the reading that does not fit with non-speaker consciousness, and the motivation for this reanalysis lies in the fact that what was cut off from the s-passive was readily expressible in the periphrastic pas sive. The reanalysis leads to a system with clear boundaries, marked at the expression level by inflection and periphrasis, and at the content level by an exclusive opposition between elements of content structure (content form) spe cifying the consciousness involved as either solely with the speaker (subjecti vity) or as involving other, non-speaker consciousness (non-subjectivity).
12. Conclusion We have followed the history of the original mediopassive at some length. This example illustrates my view of the structure-boundness of grammaticalization processes and furthermore, of the dynamic character of any so-called synchron ic state of a language (cf. Traugott & Heine 1991). My view of the content structure of paradigms and the importance ascribed to that level of analysis has led to a structural, content-based view of grammaticality and of grammati calization processes. On the basis of a revised concept of the paradigm, I have explicitly included semantically significant word order phenomena into gram mar in the narrow sense, hence many types of word order change have also
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been viewed as grammaticalization processes. From this it followed that a spi ral model of grammaticalization should replace the unidirectional model. Grammaticalization processes are thus reorganizations of the expressioncontent relationship in specific languages. As far as the subcomponents of grammaticalization processes are concerned, generalization leads of course to relatively unmarked (polysemous) morphemes or constructions, but reanalysis establishes new, marked and less polysemous systems.
Notes 1.
I am grateful to Elisabeth Engberg-Pedersen, Peter Harder and Lisbeth Falster Jakobsen for extensive constructive criticism on earlier versions of this text. I have followed a large number of their suggestions. Also thanks to Erik Hansen (Copenhagen) and Carol Henriksen (Roskilde) for their comments.
2.
The accusative can even occur as the case of the subject in complex subject nominals, especially in the spoken or informal language: (1)
Hende og Peter er enige i she:ACC and Peter agree in 'Her and Peter agree on this issue'.
denne this
sag. issue
But at any rate the opposition nom. vs. acc. has to do with the identification of the sub ject vs. the non-subject. 3.
The present author — who recognizes zero-options at the expression level — would see no difficulty in pressing the point one step further by disentangling these two paradigms also at the expression level: -s vs. zero for the genitive vs. non-genitive, and han vs. ham for the nominative vs. accusative. Postulation of zeros would be allowed only in cases where the content paradigm had already been established. This would turn the strategy into a sort of paradigm-cracker, i.e. a tool for the reanalysis of traditional para digms. The line of argument pursued in the rest of this article does not, however, pre suppose this view.
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Butler, Christopher S. 1988. Pragmatics and systemic linguistics. Journal of Pragma tics 12.83-102. Bybee, Joan L. 1985. Morphology: A study of the relation between meaning and form (= Typological Studies in Language, 9.). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Bybee, Joan L. & Östen Dahl. 1989. The creation of tense and aspect systems in the languages of the world. Studies in Language 13.51-103. Bybee, Joan L. & William Pagliuca. 1985. Cross-linguistic comparison and the devel opment of grammatical meaning. Historical Semantics and Historical Word Forma tion ed. by Jacek Fisiak, 59-83. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Bybee, Joan L., Revere Perkins & William Pagliuca. 1994. The Evolution of Gram mar: Tense, aspect, and modality in the languages of the world. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Canger, Una. This volume. Is there a passive in Nahuatl? Dik, Simon . 1989. The Theory of Functional Grammar. Part I: The structure of the clause. Dordrecht: Foris. Dyvik, Helge. 1980. Har gammelnorsk passiv? The Nordic Languages and Modem Linguistics. Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference of Nordic and General Linguistics in Oslo 1980ed.by Even Hovdhaugen, 81-107. Oslo: Univer sitetsforlaget. Dyvik, Helge. 1986. Grammatik og empiri: En syntaktisk modell og dens forutset ninger. Bind 1-2. (= Skriftserie fra Institutt for fonetikk og lingvistikk, Universi tetet i Bergen, Serie B, nr. 25.). Bergen: Universitetet i Bergen. Engberg-Pedersen, Elisabeth. This volume. Iconicity and arbitrariness. Faarlund, Jan Terje. 1990. Syntactic Change: Toward a theory of historical syntax (= Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs, 50.). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Givón, Talmy. 1979. On Understanding Grammar. New York: Academic Press. Givón, Talmy. 1984. Syntax: A functional-typological introduction. Vol. 1. Amster dam: John Benjamins Givón, Talmy. 1990. Syntax: A functional-typological introduction. Vol. 2. Amster dam: John Benjamins Haberland, Hartmut & Lars Heltoft. 1992. Universais, explanations and pragmatics. Grammar and Meaning: Cross-linguistic perspectives ed. by Michel Kefer & Johan van der Auwera, 17-26. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Halliday, M.A.K. 1985. An Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Edward Arnold. Harder, Peter. This volume. Linguistic structure in a functional grammar. Harder, Peter, Lars Heltoft & Ole Nedergaard Thomsen. This volume. Danish direc tional adverbs: Content syntax and complex predicates - a case for host and copredicates. Hawkins, John L. 1986. A Comparative Typology of English and German: Unifying the contrasts. London: Croom Helm.
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Heine, Bernd, Ulrike Claudi & Friederike Hünnemeyer. 1991. Grammaticalization: A conceptual framework. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Heine, Bernd & Mechthild Reh. 1984. Grammaticalization and Reanalysis in African Languages. Hamburg: Helmut Buske. Heltoft, Lars. 1992. The topology of verb second and SVO-languages: A study in the sign functions of word order. Copenhagen Studies in Language 15.13-64, ed. by Michael Herslund. København: Munksgaard. Heltoft, Lars. 1994. S-modus og perifrastisk modus i dansk. Språkbruk, grammatik och språkförandring. En festskrift till Ulf Teleman 13.1.1994, 155-165. Lund: Institutionen för Nordiska Språk, Lunds Universitet. Heltoft, Lars & Lisbeth Falster Jakobsen. This volume. Danish passives and subject positions as a mood system. Herslund, Michael. 1988. Le datif en français (= Bibliothèque de l'Information grammaticale, 14.). Louvain-Paris: Éditions Peeters. Hjelmslev, Louis. 1935. La catégorie des cas I: Étude de grammaire générale (= Acta Jutlandica, VII, 1.). Århus: Universitetsforlaget i Aarhus. Hock, Hans Henrik. 1991. Principles of Historical Linguistics. Second revised and updated edition. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Hopper, Paul J. & Elizabeth Closs Traugott. 1993. Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kemmer, Suzanne. 1993. The Middle Voice (= Typological Studies in Language, 23.). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Lakoff, George. 1987. Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What categories reveal about the mind. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors we live by. Chicago: The Univer sity of Chicago Press. Lehmann, Christian. 1985. Grammaticalization: Synchronic variation and diachronic change. Lingua e Stile 20.303-18. Lehmann, Christian. 1992. Word order change by grammaticalization. Internal and External Factors in Syntactic Change (= Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Mono graphs, 61.) ed. by Marinel Gerritsen & Dieter Stein, 395-416. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Lehmann, Christian. 1993. Theoretical implications of grammaticalization phenomena. The Role of Theory in Language Description (= Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs, 69.) ed. by William A. Foley, 315-340. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Lehmann, W.P. 1976. From topic to subject in Indo-European. Li 1976.446-456. Li, Charles N., ed. 1976. Subject and Topic. New York: Academic Press. Li, Charles N. & Sandra A. Thompson. 1976. Subject and topic: A new typology of language. Li 1976.457-490. Lyons, John. 1967. A note on possessive, existential and locative sentences. Founda tions of Language 3.390-396. Lyons, John. 1977. Semantics. Vols. 1-2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Meillet, A. 1912. L'évolution des formes grammaticales. A. Meillet. 1921. Linguis tique historique et linguistique générale, 130-148. Paris: Edouard Champion. (First printed in Scientia (Rivista di Scienza), vol. XII, No. XXVI, 6., 1912). Meillet, Α. 1937. Introduction à ľétude comparative des langues indo-européennes. Paris: Hachette. Moltke, Erik. 1986. The Runes and their Origin: Denmark and elsewhere. Copen hagen: The National Museum of Denmark. Traugott, Elizabeth & Bernd Heine. 1991. Introduction. Approaches to Grammaticalization. Vols. 1-2. (= Typological Studies in Language, 19.) ed. by E.C. Traugott & . Heine, 1-14. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Subject index
accentuation 143, 151, 160, 194, 477 (see also prosody, unit ac centuation, stress) accusative language 79 actant 105-148, 479 actant pattern 106, 115-116, 146147 action schema 107-111, 120-122, 129 action verb 66-95, 160, 244, 350 active language 78, 348-351, 355, 356, 358, 484 activity verb 66-95, 160 adjacency pair 318,332-335 adverb 78, 84, 94, 159-196, 283312, 378, 389, 392, 396-399, 404-407, 414, 417, 418 {see also directional adverb, spatial adverb) adverbial 114, 123-126, 131-132, 137, 141-144, 171-179, 189192, 374-375 {see also satellite) affected object 82-83, 92-93 agent 2, 9, 104, 108, 109, 126, 134, 357, 488 {see also agentivity, instigator, optional agent) agent deletion 8-9, 104, 127-128 agent demotion 2, 12,54, 131-132 agentivity 52-61, 343-356, 358 agreement 42-44, 48-58, 60, 224, 268-269, 278, 476 Aktionsart 94, 106, 160, 162, 193-
195,201, 205, 213-215,229 Amuzgo 358 analogy 455-465, 467 {see also diagram based on analogy) anaphoric object 245-247 anaphoric subject 240 antipassive 73, 78-84, 85, 87-88, 93 applicative 90-93 Arabic 96 arbitrariness 33, 228, 425, 449451, 453-454, 463-466 argument 43, 48-60, 103-148, 166, 178-179, 190-191 {see also ac tant, cofigure) argumentation 287, 316-318 autonomy 423, 451, 466 auxiliary 70-71, 80, 96, 194, 195, 301-305, 307, 402-416, 472 background 81, 147, 370-373, 382, 466 Behagheľs law 459 {see also prox imity of linguistic elements) Behaviorism 385 Biblical Hebrew 96 bottom-up 425-429 Caddo 351 categorical (non-modal) 303-305 causative 73, 85, 86, 96, 185, 460 {see also force dynamic)
496
SUBJECT INDEX
Central Pomo 349 Chocho 358 circumstance (semantic field) 107, 129, 135 closed paradigm 476-482 coding 104, 105, 165-169, 176, 202, 215, 228, 263, 267-269, 431, 446-447, 458, 461, 462, 466, 483 cofiguration 105, 111, 115-121, 146-148 cofigure 105-126, 146-147 {see also lexicalized cofigure) cognition viii, ix, x, 362, 391, 395-396, 400, 414, 447-449, 454, 459, 465, 466, 467, 482484 Cognitive Grammar viii, 185, 191, 197, 450 cognitive constraint 388, 389, 397398, 401-402, 414, 418 coherence 204, 261-278, 331-340 Columbia School viii Communicative Dynamism 23-24, 27, 28, 30 communicative function x, 361362, 366-379, 398, 401, 429, 459, 465, 466 communicative load 388 {see also functional load) commutation principle 439, 480 commutation test 201-202, 475476 comparison 315, 325-337 complement 65, 75, 78, 84, 89, 91, 92, 123-125, 172, 235-236, 244, 253, 256, 286, 293, 294, 295, 304, 311 completive focus 18, 20, 21, 22,
28, 30, 34 complex predicate 159-196, 477 complexity of content or expression 226, 237, 255, 387, 401, 402, 413, 416, 461-462 component substance 426-434 conceptual distance 459-460, 467 {see also Behagheľs law, prox imity of linguistic elements) conceptual function 361-366, 447451 condition (semantic field) 107, 129, 135 conditional 321-323, 327, 475 conflation 129, 135, 145, 165, 168, 198 connective 315-337 content form x, 34, 201-202, 228, 469-491 {see also content struc ture) content plane vii, 39, 40, 60, 105, 441, 443, 458-465 content structure viii, 39, 40, 104, 165-168, 181, 192, 201-202, 228, 432, 466, 469-491 content substance viii, x, 34, 140, 165-168, 201, 208, 428-432, 462, 471, 482 content syntax 120, 159, 166, 179, 189, 446-447 content valency 114, 103-125 content-based paradigm 201, 223, 469-491 context 23, 315, 428-432 contrast 44, 159, 241-242, 247, 256, 262, 315, 324-337, 459 contrastive focus 20, 21, 22, 35, 241-242, 247, 256 control (agentivity) 347-350
SUBJECT INDEX
convention ix, 455, 465 Conversation Analysis 332-335 cooccurrence 112, 113, 117 cross-linguistic description 1-15, 165-168, 430 Danish 69-95, 96, 103-148, 159198, 199-228, 235-256, 261278, 283-312, 362, 364-365, 367-380, 388, 391-415, 455, 469-491 Danish Sign Language 40-61,464 declarative 205, 208, 212, 216218, 286, 291, 295, 310, 311, 389-392, 396-402, 414, 416, 417, 431, 442, 473-474, 487488 definiteness 197, 217, 223-226, 238, 246, 251-252, 253, 471 degrammaticalization 343,355-356 deixis 41, 44-60, 371 deontic modality 209, 303 dependency 108, 112, 113, 117, 171-176, 180-181, 187-190, 435-436 der-construction (Danish) 200, 217226 derivation 70, 72-93, 254, 300 diachrony 33, 48-58, 298, 343, 356, 469-491 diagram (iconicity) 456-458, 463 (see also imaginai diagram) diagram based on analogy 40, 42, 60-61, 457-465 direct verb form 59 directional adverb 84, 86, 143, 144, 159-198 discourse 18, 22, 26, 29, 31-34, 212-213, 218-222, 226-228,
497
251, 262-269, 283-312, 315-337, 471 discourse function ix, 229, 286 discourse marker/particle 283-312, 315-337 Diyari 460 Dutch 95, 395, 396, 400, 403, 404, 406, 407, 408, 417 dynamic 75, 106-144, 160-162, 169-171, 175-176, 185-187, 192195 effected object 82-83, 92 egocentrism 59, 371 ernic function/category ix, 22, 26, 29, 30, 31, 33, 34 (see also con tent form) emphasis 22, 29, 44, 169, 195, 242, 286, 291, 294-297, 309 emphatic focus 23, 26-31, 36, 44 English 10, 14, 22, 23, 30, 33, 36, 39, 60, 66, 68, 69, 70, 72, 74, 86, 94, 95, 96, 116, 119, 142, 164, 169, 176, 180, 191192, 236, 251, 286-287, 301, 303, 307, 362, 365, 366, 367, 369, 371-372, 378, 381, 387, 388, 396, 397, 402-403, 404, 409, 410, 413, 415-416, 417, 455, 460, 465, 469, 476, 485 epistemic modality 303-304, 307 ergative 21, 30, 344-345 ergative language 78-79, 83 etic function/category 22, 26, 27, 29-34 event 66-69, 71, 77, 78, 94, 95, 348-350 existential sentence - see der-construction
498
SUBJECT INDEX
expression plane vii, 39, 40, 431, 458-462, 464-465 expression structure viii, 40, 60, 104, 109, 119, 129, 132, 224, 227, 228, 416, 434, 449-450, 457, 458-466, 484 expression substance 40, 60, 61, 434, 455-457, 458-466 expression valency 103-121 expression-based paradigm 201, 224, 469-480 figure (vs. ground) 107-110, 146, 150 {see also trajector) focus 17-38, 215-217, 226-227, 256, 300-302, 459, 482-483 {see also contrastive focus, emphatic focus, object focus, subject fo cus, verb focus) focus indicated by morphology 1720, 23, 30, 31, 32 focus indicated by word order 17, 23-26, 30, 32 force dynamic 105-148 foreground 21, 29, 370-373, 382, 466 form (= structure) xv, 199-229, 433-439, 482-483 French 69, 70-72, 94, 298, 315337, 362, 453 function-based structure 428-432 Functional Grammar 17, 20, 2629, 30, 32, 103, 152, 159, 173, 180, 196-198, 201, 306-308, 315, 322, 423, 443, 474 functional load 23, 400, 401 (see also communicative load) functional substance 429-430, 441442
functionalism 423-451 fundamental field (Danish sentence structure) 280 generalization 487-491 generic 163, 208-214, 220-226, 240, 251, 253, 488 genitive 235-257, 364-365, 480491 {see also objective genitive, subjective genitive) geometry (location) 361-373, 381, 382 German 71, 112, 119, 148, 160, 165, 166, 169, 194, 283, 297, 304, 312, 363, 388, 390, 392, 408, 409, 410, 413, 414, 418, 473 Germanic languages 297 given 20, 23-25, 27-28, 30, 32, 33, 36, 217, 226-227, 237-239, 245, 247, 252, 262-272, 467, 482-483 gradable features 32 grammaticality 352, 356, 443-445, 469-491 grammaticalization ix, 17, 26, 2934, 226, 297-302, 311-312, 343, 356, 469-491 ground (vs. figure) 107-110, 146, 150 {see also landmark) Guaraní 349, 351, 358 hearer 369 {see also receiver) hearer-orientation 285-297, 309311 Hokan languages 343, 355-356, 358 horizontal dimension (location) 161, 164, 352, 377
SUBJECT INDEX
Hua 39 Hungarian 36
Italian 298, 410 Ixcatec 355
icon 454-456, 457 iconicity 39-61, 72, 226-229, 449451, 453-466, 467 ideophone 456 image (iconicity) 52-54, 456, 465 imaginai diagram 40, 60-61, 457465 impersonal 2, 6, 251, 253 importance (pragmatic) 27, 29, 30, 32,59, 249,269, 461, 464 incorporation 34, 81-82, 95, 127, 143, 167-169, 179, 182-184 indefinite subject 199-228, 238 index (iconicity) 45-46, 60-61, 455-456, 457 indirect object 48-49, 115-116, 122-125, 129, 136-137, 141 information structure 215, 226227, 235-256, 261-278, 482-483 instigation (agentivity) 349-355 instigator 103-148 intensive 73, 84, 85, 92, 95, 96 interaction 283-312, 329, 385, 438, 442, 454 interdependency 112, 113 interlanguage 385-417 interrogative 21, 216, 291, 295, 299, 310, 311, 431, 474 (see also question) inverse verb form 59 inversion 311, 388-402, 405, 406, 416, 417 isomorphism 40, 60-61, 74, 94, 105, 120, 227-229, 388, 395, 401, 414, 415, 460-467 (see also paradigmatic isomorphism)
Japanese 415
499
Lakhota 349, 351, 353, 355 landmark 366-373, 377 landmark theory 361, 366-368, 373 language comparison χ (see also cross-linguistic description) language-specific structure viii, ix, 13, 22, 27, 29, 30, 34, 36, 6061, 165-168, 188, 199-228,410, 457, 459, 466, 469-485 layered structure 28-29, 185-189, 225, 306-308, 315 left dislocation 263,321,339 levels of description vii, 423-426, 442-445 lexicalization 130, 348-356, 357, 460, 476 lexicalized cofigure 109 linearity 39, 218, 226, 453, 458460, 465-466, 467 linguistic levels - see levels of description linguistic relativism viii LIPOC principle 237 localism 484-485 location 41-42, 48, 56, 57, 58, 68, 72, 106, 107, 123, 143, 191, 192, 361-382 locative 85, 88, 91-92, 96, 174176, 187-189, 191-192 locative adverb - see directional ad verb markedness 27, 33, 116, 152, 174,
500
SUBJECT INDEX
207, 211-213, 228-229, 387, 403-404, 408, 410, 490-491 mediopassive 486-490 medium, linguistic 40, 61 (see also expression substance) Menomini 59, 61 metaphor 456, 465, 467 middle voice - see mediopassive modal factor 209 modal particle 283-312 modal verb 209, 211, 286, 303, 405-415 modality 21, 28, 283, 303-308 modifier 124, 130-131, 150 Mohawk 351 mood 199-230, 303-305, 307, 487490 morphological focus system - see focus indicated by morphology motivated relation between content and expression 165-168, 193, 356, 453-454, 466 (see also iconicity, isomorphism) motivation 449-451 Nahuatl 1-15, 58-59 natural sequences of acquisition 385-417 negation 21, 330, 386-387, 394, 402-416, 418 new 18, 20, 23-26, 29, 30-33, 35, 36, 217, 219-220, 226-227, 237-239, 246-247 Ngiyamba 297 Nordic languages 199, 404, 481491 Norwegian 96, 199, 382, 486 noun phrase 178, 235-256
Oaxaca Chontal 358 object 4-12, 74-84, 91-93, 115144, 150, 152, 153, 221-224, 235-257, 357, 391, 392, 396 (see also affected object, anapho ric object, effected object, prepo sitional object object complement 78, 84, 89, 123, 172 object demotion 79, 81-82, 132, 215 object focus 18, 19, 20, 24, 25, 34, 246-248 object promotion 10, 12, 131, 199 objective description 286, 293, 294, 304 objective genitive 243, 251-252, 254, 256, 257 objective mood 208-211,218-222, 294 objectivity 208 obligatoriness 33, 124, 160, 169, 189, 478-480 Old English 473 Old Icelandic 486 Old Norwegian 486 onomatopoetic word 453, 454, 456, 457, 464, 466-467 ontology 67-69, 423-425, 454, 467 operator 28, 187, 195, 306-308, 311, 312 optional agent 2, 13 Otomanguean languages 343, 355, 358 paradigm 103-148, 164, 223-226, 298, 311, 437-440, 454, 456457, 463, 464, 469-491 (see also closed paradigm, content-based
SUBJECT INDEX
paradigm, expression-based par adigm, productive paradigm) paradigmatic isomorphism 40, 462-464 particle 73, 78, 84-90, 93, 160, 199-230, 297-312, 486-490 passive 1-15, 104, 111, 115, 245246 perceptual saliency 391, 400, 402, 415 person 45-46, 51-61 personal pronoun 45-46, 455 phrasal verb 86, 88, 99 point of view 48,56-61, 110, 162, 208-209, 220, 225, 287, 289, 308 Polish 413 polyphony 289-297, 311, 338 poly synthetic 184, 185 Pomoan languages 349, 355-356 Portuguese 397, 404, 408, 410 possession 10-11, 68, 107, 108, 123, 131-137, 149, 151 postposing 22-26, 28, 235-256, 257, 390-391, 405-415, 418 Prague School 23, 30 pragmatic constraint 237-250, 255 pragmatic function 2, 17-38, 236237, 248-249, 255-256, 301, 385-417, 430 pragmatic presupposition 294 predicate 159-194, 250 predicate formation 106, 184, 185, 477 predicative 85, 171-179 predicativity 187-189 predictability 264, 278, 461 prefix 84, 88-89, 90-93, 130, 136 preposing 25-26, 28, 235-256,
501
299, 300-301, 313, 390-391, 396-398, 400, 404-416, 418, 472-473 preposition 73-92, 155, 251, 361382 prepositional object 74-84, 92, 93, 99, 152, 154, 162, 256 prepositional phrase 73, 84, 89, 162, 187-189, 235-256 presupposition 291,294,296-297, 331-332 (see also pragmatic pre supposition) process 66-67 productive paradigm 485-491 prominence of argument 105,107, 109, 111, 116, 299 propositional content 208, 285, 297, 301-312, 315, 317, 320, 323, 475 prosody 256, 261-278, 303, 386 prototype ix, 2, 27, 106, 366, 457, 460 proximity (location) 368-380, 382 proximity of linguistic elements 459-460, 465-466 (see also Behaghel's law, conceptual dis tance) psycholinguistics 381, 391, 414, 416 quantity of linguistic elements 458, 460, 465-466 question 389-396, 414, 416, 417, 459, 474 (see also interrogative) reanalysis 487-491 receiver 45, 46, 289-297 (see also hearer) reductionism 424
502
SUBJECT INDEX
redundancy 399, 400, 417 reference 41-61, 261-278, 466 referential distance 268-269, 278 reflexive 5, 8, 9, 10, 12, 114, 144, 346-348, 353-355, 358, 486-487 reflexivization 82, 100, 487 Relevance Theory 318, 331 relevance 318-320 reported speech 21, 45-48 rheme 20, 23, 30, 33, 237-249, 256, 318-320 Romance languages 388,396,410, 413, 417 Runic Norse 472-483 Russian 66, 69, 70-72, 74, 94, 484 satellite 25,28,29, 111, 113, 117, 137-143, 177-179, 189-193, 308, 312 satellite, privileged 125-126 satellite-framed language 160 Saussurean structuralism 470 scope 29, 30, 31, 106, 126, 148, 189, 306-308, 310, 311, 315 second language acquisition 312, 385-417 semantic field 67-69, 103-148 (see also circumstance, condition) semantic role 43, 48-58 semantic saliency 111, 414-415, 416 Semitic languages 84 sender 42, 46-48, 51-59, 60, 61, 289-297, 305, 455 (see also speaker) sentence pattern 115, 116, 117, 134, 137, 143-147
shifter (deixis) 45-46, 455 sign vii, viii, 103, 120, 166, 298, 316, 433, 449, 453-466, 475, 478-479 signed languages 41-42, 454, 456, 457, 464, 465, 466 Slavic languages 36 social institutions 436-437 Spanish 298, 404, 406, 410, 415 spatial adverb 159-194 (see also directional adverb) spatial relation 361-382 speaker 369 (see also sender)speaker-orientation 285-297, 303, 306-310 spoken discourse 262, 287, 315337 squinting grammar 442, 480 starting point 262 state verb 66-95, 106, 250 static 106, 159-160, 174-176, 187, 191-194 stress 22, 81-82, 166-171, 179, 182-184, 256, 261-278, 284, 291, 298-300, 313, 415 (see also accentuation, prosody, unit ac centuation) structural complexity 425, 428 (see also complexity of content or ex pression) structure 39, 103-148, 165-169, 187, 315-316, 423-451, 457-462, 463, 467, 469-491 (see also form (= structure)) structure, function-based - see func tion-based structure structure, integrative view of 433440 subcategorization 103, 181
SUBJECT INDEX
subject 115-137, 152, 172-176, 199-200, 217-226, 235-256, 357, 391, 392, 447, 472-475 (see also anaphoric subject, in definite subject) subject, two in a single clause 9-10 subject, unspecifiable 2, 8-13 subject deletion 10 subject demotion 10, 199 subject focus 18, 19, 20, 34, 81, 241-243 subjective evaluation 286, 293, 294, 311 subjective genitive 239, 250, 253, 256 subjective mood 208-211, 215222, 291, 294 subjectivity 23, 162, 190-191, 227-228 substance 103-105, 165-169, 180, 181, 187, 194, 201, 208, 227228, 423-451, 471-472, 482-485 (see also component substance, content substance, expression substance, functional substance) suffixation 79-81, 84-90 surface viii, 442-447 surface structure 442-447 Swahili 455 Swedish 86, 95, 96, 199, 200, 257, 397, 402, 407, 412, 413, 414, 486, 489-490 switch-reference 264-278 symbol (iconicity) 45-46, 455-456, 457 synchrony 33, 343, 356, 485-491 syntagm viii, 109, 118, 298-300, 311, 453-454, 456-457, 463, 464
503
syntax and semantics vi-x, 103, 442-447 (see also content struc ture) tag question 286, 294, 304 temporal order 40, 458, 464, 466, 467 terminal point 106-107, 119-130, 150-151 textual topic - see topic, textual Tequistlatec 358 theme (vs. rheme) 27, 237-249, 256, 262, 264, 300-301, 317-321 Tlahuitoltepec Mixe 59 Tlapanec 37, 343-356, 357 top-down 165, 425-432 topic 20, 23-37, 43, 240, 245, 264-271, 321-323, 389, 396, 408, 417, 431, 472 topic, textual 239, 243-244, 247248 topic continuity 18, 22, 261-278 topology (location) 363-366, 369, 372 topology (word order) 171-173, 177-179, 215-217, 226-227 (see also word order) trajector 366-373 transitivity 65-95, 96, 221-222, 243, 344-350 typicality (location) 375-376 underlying structure viii, 442-447 underlying information 237, 245, 248" unit accentuation 143, 166-171, 477 universal ix, 1-2, 13, 23, 27, 2933, 105, 201, 227, 385, 386,
504
SUBJECT INDEX
387, 410, 411, 465, 473, 481482 Universal Grammar 385 unspecifiability 4, 7-13 (see also subject, unspecifiable) V2 language 216, 388, 395, 396, 399-400, 417, 472-476 valency 103-148 verb class 65-95, 344-355 valency pattern, typical vs. coerced 105-106, 116, 119 verb focus 18-22, 28-29, 34, 36 verb phrase 74, 93, 95 verbo-nominal predicate 250, 256, 257 vertical dimension (location) 362, 370, 377-378 voice 115-116, 152, 199-201 (see
also mediopassive, passive) volition (agentivity) 347-348, 352 Vulgar Latin 298 West Circassian 83 West Greenlandic 17-38, 79, 8081, 84 word order 17, 23-26, 28, 30, 32, 34, 116, 215-228, 269, 272, 298-300, 309-310, 311, 385, 389-417, 442, 469-491 (see also topology (word order)) working memory - see cognitive constraints written language 285, 287-289, 311 Yidiny 79 Yukagir 17-38
Index of names
Abasheikh, M. 91 Abildgaard, E. 62 Abraham, W. 283 Adiv, E. 400 Ahlgren, I. 45 Aksu-Koç, A. 66 Amith, J. 58, 59 Andersen, Η. 453,454,456,461, 462 Andersen, T. 283, 285 Andersen, R.W. 400 Anderson, S.R. 95 Andrews, J.R. 2 Anscombre, J-C. 316 Aske, J. 176 Atkinson, M. 66 Auchlin, A. 316 Aurnague, M. 362 Bach, E. 66 Bache, 286, 302, 312 Banfield, A. 62 Baron, I. 235,236,244,251,257 Barwise, J. 66 Basbøll, H. 166 Bates, E. 444 Bech, G. 209 Behrendt, P. 221 Bellugi, U. 62 Benveniste, E. 208, 235, 485 Berman, R.A. 400 Berrendonner, A. 331
Berson, M. 321, 324-327, 334 Bever, T. 391 Bichard, M. 318, 319, 329, 331, 335, 339 Bickerton, D. 66 Bierwisch, M. 368 Bittner, M. 79, 80, 81, 84 Bjerrum, A. 230 Blakemore, D. 316 Blass, R. 331 Bloomfield, L. 59, 443 Bodelsen, A. 220, 221, 295, 304 Bodelsen, C.A. 286 Bolander, M. 407, 412 Bolinger, D. 86, 462 Booth, W.C. 206 Brentari, D. 53 Bresnan, J. 391 Brinton, L. 82, 86, 94 Brown, P. 334 Brown, R. 66, 402, 410 Butler, C.S. 475 Bybee, J.L. 469, 472, 480 Baar, T. van 299, 301, 306, 311 Canger, U. 1, 58, 228, 471 Carochi, H. 2, 7-9 Chafe, W.L. 262, 267, 333 Chomsky, N. 1,423,437,443 Churchland, P. 449 Clahsen, H. 388, 391, 407, 410, 414
506
INDEX OF NAMES
Clark, H.H. 324 Claudi, U. 343 Collinder, . 17 Colovou, . 330 Comrie, . 10, 17, 18, 35, 48, 62, 83, 244, 256 Croft, W. 453, 459, 463 Crystal, D. 285, 297, 338 Cutler, A. 386 Dahl, Ö. 95, 480 Dahlstrom, Α. 358 Danes, F. 245, 261, 264 Davidsen, L. 205, 220 Davidsen-Nielsen, N. 283, 301, 303, 304, 310, 315 Diderichsen, P. 159, 230 Dik, S.C. x, 17, 18, 21, 26, 28, 30, 33, 103, 106, 151-153, 173, 180, 201, 228, 237, 261, 301, 306-308, 311, 315, 322, 357, 443, 474 Dixon, R.M.W. 79, 82, 96, 358 Dowty, D.R. 66 Ducrot, . 289, 316, 322, 330, 338 Duncan, S. Jr. 339 Durst-Andersen, P. 65-67, 69, 74, 7 6 , 7 7 , 8 1 , 160, 162, 185,215, 228, 295 Dyvik, H. 473, 486 Edelman, G.M. 427 Ellis, R. 386,387,402,407,411, 414, 417 Engberg-Pedersen, E. xv, 39, 41, 42, 45, 47, 53, 56, 59, 227, 228, 453, 466, 469, 491 Engel, U. 112
Enkvist, N.E. 217 Eyben, W.E. von 237 Faarlund, J.T. 472, 482, 483 Fabricius-Hansen, C. 160 Falster Jakobsen, L. See Jakobsen, L.F. Faltz, L.M. 49 Feldbæk, . 308 Ferreira, I. 318, 323, 326, 332, 333 Fillmore, C.J. 40, 48, 103, 109 Firbas, J. 23, 24, 27, 35, 227, 256 Fiske, D.W. 339 Fletcher, P. 66 Foley, W.A. 56, 81-83, 165 Fornel, M. de 334 Fortescue, M. xv, 17, 23, 26, 36, 184, 228, 278 Frege, G. 321 Galberg Jacobsen, H. 284, 310, 312 Gernsbacher, Μ.Α. 337 Givón, T. 40, 66, 81, 211, 229, 246, 256, 261, 262, 266, 267, 269, 278, 315, 331, 426, 444, 449, 450, 458-461, 472, 483 Gregersen, F. 262, 435 Gregores, E. 351 Grice, H.P. 318 Groupe λ-1 328 Gülich, E. 316, 338 Gärdenfors, P. 448
286,
228, 264, 330, 453,
Haiman, J. 39, 40, 264, 280, 322, 444, 453, 454, 459, 460, 463 Halliday, M.A.K. 238, 245, 256,
INDEX OF NAMES
320, 475 Hammarberg, B. 397, 399 Hannay, M. 23, 25, 30, 32, 33, 36 Hansen, M.A. 364, 365 Hansen, M-B.M. 315, 337, 338 Hansen, E. 159, 161, 172, 176, 194, 207, 213, 224, 261, 284, 299, 491 Harder, P. xv, 154, 155, 159, 160, 201, 206, 213, 218, 228, 278, 283, 285, 287, 292, 312, 423, 466, 469, 476, 477, 491 Hare, R.M. 306 Haviland, S.E. 324 Hawkins, J.L. 480, 482 Heine, B. 343, 472, 490 Helbig, G. 112, 148 Heltoft, L. xv, 96, 159, 166, 173, 199, 201, 207, 213, 224, 230, 469, 471, 476, 477, 483, 487 Hengeveld, K. 173, 178, 187, 188, 195, 201, 228 Henriksen, . 491 Herskovits, A. 361, 362, 366, 373, 376, 378 Herslund, M. 65, 70, 73, 74, 76, 77, 81, 82, 85, 86, 88, 160, 162, 166, 185, 215, 236, 257, 312, 485 Herweg, M. 363 Hjelmslev, L. viii, xv, 34, 201, 211, 435, 436, 438, 439, 461, 471, 490 Hjulmand, L-L. 320 Hock, H.H. 472, 473 Hockett, C F . 357 Holmen, Α. 400 Hopper, P.J. 203, 343, 469, 471,
507
472, 487 Horn, L.R. vii Hulstijn, J.H. 400 Hvilshøj, U. xv Hwang, Y-a 318-321 Hyltenstam, . 387, 402, 403, 407, 410, 412, 413 Hünnemeyer, F. 343 Høeg, P. 364, 368, 369 Ibsen, H. 380, 382 Itkonen, E. 453, 454, 467 Jackendoff, R.S. 150, 446 Jacobsen, H.G. See Galberg Jacob sen, H. Jakobsen, L.F. xiv, xv, 103, 154, 199, 471, 476, 483, 487, 488, 491 Jakobson, R. 45, 46, 453, 455 Jespersen, . 45, 47, 166, 442 Jochelson, V.l. 18 Johnson, M. 448, 449, 465, 484 Johnson-Laird, P.N. 339, 362, 371 Juul, H. 201, 210 Kasper, G. 386 Kaufman, T.S. 343, 355, 358 Keenan, E.L. 246 Keizer, M.E. 30, 32 Kemmer, S. 203, 487 Kenny, A. 66 Kisseberth, . 91 Kjærsgaard, P.S. 88 Klima, E.S. 45, 46, 62 Klimov, G.A. 358 Knudsen, T. 244, 254 Koptjevskaja, M. 256 Korzen, Η. 339
508
INDEX OF NAMES
Krejnovich, E.A. 17-19, 20-23, 25, 31, 33-36 Kristiansen, E. 261, 269, 271 Køppe, S. 424, 442 Lakoff, G. 109,465,484 Lambrecht, . 321, 322 Lang, E. 368, 369 Langacker, R.W. 2, 13, 66, 92, 185, 195, 196, 210, 228, 361, 362, 450 Larsen-Freeman, D. 386, 387, 390, 402, 403, 411, 414, 417, 418 Launey, M. 2, 6, 8, 13 Lecomte, G. 96 Leech, G.N. 442 Lehmann, . 55, 56, 58, 297, 298, 299, 469, 472, 473, 478480, 486 Lehmann, W.P. 472 Levelt, W.J.M. 391 Levinson, S.C. vii, 318, 321, 334 Li, C.N. 472 Lie, S. 231 Lillo-Martin, D. 45, 46 Long, M. 386, 387, 390, 402, 403,411,414,417,418 Lund, J. 261,284,299 Lund, K. 385 Lundkvist, L. 261 Lyon, S. 59 Lyons, J. 40, 48, 66, 174, 208, 228, 306, 484, 485 Mackenzie, J.L. 30, 32 Maslova, J.S. 18, 36 McLendon, S. 355 McWhinney, . 444
Meier, R.P. 45, 46 Meillet, A. 208, 472, 474, 479 Meisel, J. 388, 410, 413 Métrich, R. 318 Mikkelsen, . 201,210,230,257 Miller, G.A. 362, 371 Millikan, R. 427 Mithun, M. 348, 349, 351, 355 Mock, C.C. 358 Moeschler, J. 330, 333 Moltke, E. 483 Moshinsky, J. 355 Munro, P. 2, 264, 280 Murdock, B.B. Jr. 391 Nalouti, M. 321, 324 Nedergaard Thomsen, O. 81, 82, 143, 159, 166, 167, 170, 184, 185, 187, 195, 213, 261, 263-265, 278, 446, 476, 477 Nehls, D. 283 Newmeyer, F.J. 453 Nielsen, G. 62 Nielsen, S.J. 244 Novotny, R. 88 Nuyts, J. 201, 228 Nølke, H. 289, 292, 321, 339 O'Connor, M.C. 355 Olmos, F.A. de 2, 8 Padden, C A . 53 Pagliuca, W. 469 Palmer, F.R. 297, 304 Parsons, T. 66 Pedersen, I.L. 262 Pedersen, J. 96 Peirce, C.S. xv, 454-456 Perkins, R. 469
INDEX OF NAMES
Perlmutter, D.M. 41 Perry, J. 66 Pienemann, M. 385, 388-391, 407, 418 Platzack, . 95, 257 Platzack, S. 257 Pomerantz, A. 334 Putnam, Η. 425 Rasmussen, L.S. See Schack Ras mussen, L. Ravnholt, . 45 Reh, M. 472 Rehling, E. 201, 210 Rensch, C.R. 343 Rijkhoff, J.N.M. 237 Rijksbaron, Α. 322, 338 Rischei, J. 166 Roberts, . 322 Rue, H. 361 Rumelhart, D.E. 448 Sacks, H. 318 Sapir, E. 343, 358 Saussure, F. de vii, viii, xv, 316, 423, 432-437, 439, 450, 453, 454, 456, 457, 463, 465, 470 Schack Rasmussen, L. 103, 109, 125, 148, 149, 151, 155 Schegloff, E.A. 318, 333 Schenkel, W. 112 Scherfig, H. 219 Schiffrin, D. 329 Schumann, J. 408-410, 417, 418 Searle, J.R. 338, 427 Shakespeare, W. 374 Shibatani, M. 2 Siewierska, A. 1, 2 Sirdar-Iskandar, 316,317,320,
509
338 Skadhauge, P. 201, 210 Skou-Hansen, T. 287, 290, 291, 293-295,304, 310, 311 Slobin, D.I. 400, 407 Smith Stark, T. 358 Spang-Hanssen, E. 361 Sperber, D. 316, 318 Stalnaker, R.C. 339 Stauble, A-M. 415 Suárez, J.A. 343, 351, 355 Sweetser, E.E. 303, 465 Sørensen, F. 236 Talmy, L. 106, 131, 135, 141, 142, 145, 148, 149, 160, 165, 168, 188, 193 Thévenon, E. 321,323,325,327, 330, 332, 337 Thompson, S.A. 244, 256, 472 Thomsen, O.N. See Nedergaard Thomsen, . Togeby, O. 244 Tomlin, R.S. 387 Traugott, E.C. 203, 343, 469, 471, 472, 487, 490 Turner, P. 358 Turner, S. 358 van Baar, T. See Baar, T. van Vandeloise, . 361-364 Van Valin, R.D. 56, 81-83, 165, 358 Vargas, P. 352 Vendler, Z. 66, 67 Verkuyl, H.J. 66, 82, 95 Vet, . 189 Viberg, À. 418 Vieu, L. 362, 382
510
INDEX OF NAMES
Vinterberg, H. 286 von Eyben, W.E. See Eyben, W.E. von von Wright, G.H. See Wright, G.H. von Vries, L. de 27 Waterhouse, V.G. 358 Wegener, H. 244 Wichmann, S. 37, 343, 344, 357 Wilson, D. 316, 318
Winograd, T. 442 Wode, H. 387, 409, 414, 418 Wright, G.H. von 107 Zavaleta, Α. 351 Zisa group, the 388, 389, 391, 392, 394-397, 399-402, 407, 410, 413, 417, 418 Àfarli, T.A. 85
