Constructions in Cognitive Linguistics: Selected Papers from the International Cognitive Linguistics Conference, Amsterdam, 1997 (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory)

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CONSTRUCTIONS IN COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS

AMSTERDAM STUDIES IN THE THEORY AND HISTORY OF LINGUISTIC SCIENCE General Editor E. F. KONRAD KOERNER (University of Ottawa)

Series IV - CURRENT ISSUES IN LINGUISTIC THEORY

Advisory Editorial Board Raimo Anttila (Los Angeles); Lyle Campbell (Christchurch, N.Z.) Sheila Embleton (Toronto); John E. Joseph (Edinburgh) Manfred Krifka (Austin, Tex.); Hans-Heinrich Lieb (Berlin) E. Wyn Roberts (Vancouver, B.C.); Hans-Jürgen Sasse (Köln)

Volume 178

Ad Fooien and Frederike van der Leek (eds.) Constructions in Cognitive Linguistics Selected papers from the Fiflh International Cognitive Linguistics Conference, Amsterdam, 1997

CONSTRUCTIONS IN COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS SELECTED PAPERS FROM THE FIFTH INTERNATIONAL COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS CONFERENCE Amsterdam, 1997

Edited by AD FOOLEN University of Nijmegen FREDFRIKE VAN DER LEEK University of Amsterdam

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 International Cognitive Linguistics Conference (1997 : He Amsterdam) Constructions in cognitive linguistics : selected papers from the Fifth International Cognitive Linguistics Conference, Amster dam, 1997 / edited by Ad Fooien, Frederike van der Leek. p. cm. -- (Amsterdam studies in the theory and history of linguistic science. Series IV, Current issues in linguistic theory, ISSN 0304-0763 ; v. 178) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Cognitive grammar-Congresses. I. Fooien, Ad. II. Leek, Frederike van der. III. Title. IV. Series. P165.I58 2000 415-4IC21 99-089845 ISBN 90 272 3684 4 (Eur.) / 1 55619 955 4 (US) (Hb; alk. paper) CIP © 2000 - 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

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

vii

Editors' Foreword

ix

Pragmatic Conditionals Angeliki Athanasiadou & René Dirven

1

How Polish Structures Space: Prepositions, Direction Nouns, Case, and Metaphor Barbara Dancygier

27

Case Meaning and Sequence of Attention: Source Landmarks as Accusative and Dative Objects of the Verb Robert B. Dewell

47

Fijian Children's Possessive Categories and Constructions Patrick Griffiths

67

Facing up to the Meaning of 'face up to': A Cognitive Semantico-Pragmatic Analysis of an English Verb-Particle Construction Beate Hampe

81

Gerundive Nominalization: From Type Specification to Grounded Instance Liesbet Heyvaert A Cognitive Approach to Errors in Case Marking in Japanese Agrammatism: The Priority of the Goal -ni over the Source -kara Hiroko  & Ikuyo Fujita

103

123

VI

CONTENTS

Verbal Aspect and Construal Agota Kochañska

141

How I got myself arrested: Underspecificity in Grammatical Blends as a Source for Constructional Ambiguity Nili Mandelblit & Gilles Fauconnier

167

Konjunktiv II and Epistemic Modals in German: A Division of Labour Tanja Mortelmans

191

Subjectivity and Conditionality: The Marking of Speaker Involvement in Modern Greek Kiki Nikiforidou & Demetra Katis

111

English Imperatives and Passives Hidemitsu Takahashi

239

Lexical Causatives in Thai Kingkarn Thepkanjana

259

Cognitive Models in Transitive Construal in the Japanese Adversative Passive Eijiro Tsuboi

283

Caused-Motion and the 'Bottom-Up' Role of Grammar Frederike van der Leek

301

Addresses

333

Index

335

Acknowledgements

This volume was realized with the help of a great many people. First of all we would like to thank all authors for their contributions and cooperation. Thanks are also due to the following people who acted as anonymous reviewers: Michel Achard, Willem Botha, Melissa Bowerman, Claudia Brugman, Eve Clark, Herbert Clark, Kenneth Cook, Barbara Dancygier, Bob Dewell, Matthew Dryer, Patrick Duffley, Peter Harder, Joe Hilferty, Bob Kirsner, Ron Langacker, David Lee, Ricardo Maldonado, Yo Matsumoto, Haruko Minegishi Cook, Laura Michaelis, Kiki Nikiforidou, Jan Nuyts, Jan-Ola Östman, Maria Polinsky, Klaus-Uwe Panther, Jo Rubba, Masayoshi Shibatani, Simon Slings, Michael Smith, Leon Stassen, Eve Sweetser, John Taylor, Friedrich Ungerer, Johan van der Auwera, Marjolijn Verspoor and Margaret Winters. We thank Anke de Looper of John Benjamins Publishing Company for her professional advice and her patience and, last but not least, Rob van den Berg for his moral support and his expertise in preparing the final versions of the papers. Nijmegen/Amsterdam November 1999 Ad Fooien & Frederike van der Leek

Editors' Foreword

This volume contains a selection from the proceedings of the 5th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference, which was held at the Free University in Amsterdam, from July 14-19, 1997. The volume is a companion of two others that also contain selected papers of the same conference: Metaphor in Cognitive Linguistics, edited by Raymond W. Gibbs Jr. and Gerard J. Steen (CILT 175) and Discourse Studies in Cognitive Linguistics, edited by Karen van Hoek, Andrej A. Kibrik and Leo Noordman (CILT 176). The title of the present volume may be assumed to speak, to a certain extent, for itself. As Goldberg (1995:1) observes, "[t]he notion construction has a time-honored place in linguistics", but was temporarily renounced in the Chomsky an Government and Binding framework. In Cognitive Linguistics, it is given pride of place again, though the notion is, on the whole, subject to different interpretations as far as scope and organizational level are concerned. Langacker (1987:409) sees grammatical constructions as the form-meaning "integration of two or more component structures to form a composite expression". The Construction Grammar framework (cf. Fillmore & Kay to appear) employs the much more rigorous notion that a particular form-meaning combination is a construction only if it has some (form and/or meaning) property that "is not strictly predictable from [its] component parts, or from other previously established constructions" (Goldberg 1995:4). Beyond the consensus, then, that constructions constitute recognizable form-meaning patterns, opinions differ. This is also evident from the papers making up the present volume. They seem to vary significantly in their vision on what constructions are. The research areas they are concerned with, also cover a wide range of different topics. For this reason we have decided to make no attempt to organize the papers thematically; we simply present them in alphabetical order. In order to give the reader some preliminary idea of what this volume has to offer, we will, however, first outline its contents from various angles. Except for Griffiths' paper, which deals with child language, all the papers are directly concerned with particular constructions as used by mature speakers. A variety of languages is covered; in alphabetical order: English, Fijian, French, German, (Modern) Greek, (Modern) Hebrew, Japanese, Polish and Thai. Two of the papers, by Griffiths and Ihara & Fujita, are experimentally based and approach the constructions dealt with from psychological angles, i.e.

X

EDITOR'S FOREWORD

that of acquisition and agrammatism respectively, a widening of the field that is very welcome. Thematically, we can recognize, very roughly, the following constructional fields of interest: (verbal) Aspect, (Kochanska), Case (Dancygier; Dewell; Griffiths; Ihara & Fujita), Causation (Mandelblit & Fauconnier; Thepkanjana; Van der Leek), Conditionals (Athanasiadou & Dirven; Nikiforidou & Katis), Gerundive Nomináis (Heyvaert), Modality (Mortelmans), Particles (Hampe), and Passives (Takahashi; Tsuboi). Various authors furthermore both argue and illustrate the importance of corpus-based data (Athanasiadou & Dirven; Hampe; Mortelmans; Nikiforidou & Katis). As for what we might call 'cognitive mechanisms', we find the notion Construal to be pervasive throughout all the papers, while the following types of mecha nisms play a central role in more specific analyses: Blending and Underspecificity (Mandelblit & Fauconnier), Compositionality (and beyond) (Dancygier; Kochanska; Van der Leek), Grounding (Heyvaert; Mortelmans); Cognitive Models/Frames (Takahashi; Tsuboi; Van der Leek); Lexical Alternation (Thepkanjana; Van der Leek), Subjectivity (Mortelmans; Nikiforidou & Katis), and, lastly, Sequence of Attention (Dewell). Obviously, the above classification is a rough cross-specification, not intended as exhaus tive; too many specifically cognitive issues crop up in individual papers to be all mentioned here. Assuming that the above has nevertheless provided the reader with enough of a first impression of what to expect from this volume, we will now turn to a brief characterization of each individual paper. Athanasiadou & Dirven discuss English pragmatic, non-prototypical conditionals, a class which, in their conception, also comprises epistemic/ logical conditionals. Their paper, which is corpus-based, argues that the four subtypes they distinguish, 'identifying' and 'inferencing' (both logical) and 'discourse' and 'metacommunicative' (both conversational) all share certain basic pragmatic characteristics that are extended in different ways and the paper aims to show that these differences can account for the variety of forms each type can manifest. Dancygier analyzes the conceptualization of space in Polish, arguing that the way this language construes space is dependent on three subsystems, i.e. direction nouns, prepositions and case. Her overall conclusion is that the spatial expressions in question are constructed compositionally, with each of the three structural subsystems making a consistent meaning contribution of its own. Dewell discusses the schematic meanings of accusative and dative cases, arguing that these do not simply reflect different roles in the action chain, but,

EDITORS' FOREWORD

XI

instead, impose a certain way of construing an event. In particular, he points out a central difference between the above two cases that concerns the notion 'sequence of attention'. The accusative, he argues, typically makes one change focus from the subject to the direct object referent, while atypical variants (with the accusative NP itself evoking a pathway) effect a construal that makes one stay attentive to both at the same time. The dative, on the other hand, has the effect that the NP referent never gains central attention, but is construed as staying, in a sense, outside the direct action chain. In his comparison of English and German, Dewell shows that the structure of the languages involved (absence of a difference between dative and accusative case in English) is a factor that plays its own role in the type of construals that the two languages make available for an event. Griffiths analyzes children's acquisition data on Fijian possessive constructions. Fijian differentiates between alienable and inalienable possession and has, besides an unmarked possessive marker, special markers for possession of 'food' and 'drink'. The data suggest that acquisition of this type of markers is cognitively driven in that, firstly, possessive meanings get lin guistically expressed before the relevant constructions are mastered, secondly, conceptually simpler categories, e.g. the singular marker and the default possessive marker, are learnt prior to the 'food' and 'drink' ones, and, thirdly, the latter type of markers are applied first to prototypical food and drink categories, and only later to more abstract members of the category. Hampe shows that the existence in English of the phrasal verb 'to face up to' side by side with the simple verb 'to face' is not to be seen as 'wordy speech', but as a multiply motivated construction, showing that the particle combination conveys that the challenge induced by some problem/obstacle is actually met, whereas the simple verb merely expresses that the problem/ obstacle does not go, so to speak, unnoticed. Conceptually speaking, the meaning of the phrasal verb is 'motivated' by the meaning of its parts, though motivation, as Hampe is careful to point out, is not the same as strict compositionality. From a pragmatic perspective, the phrasal verb is motivated by expressivity, and a corpus analysis method is used to argue this latter point. Heyvaert presents a proposal for refining Langacker's analysis of English gerundive nomináis. She argues that the -ing marker in gerundive nomináis indicates, differently from the same marker in action nomináis, that the complex predication made up of the verb and its object (which she analyzes, pace Langacker (1991), as a clausal type rather than a clausal instance) has the status of nonfinite clausal head of the gerundive construction, a construction which requires a (periphrastic) subject for its instantiation. This analysis enables her to distinguish intrinsically between action nomináis, gerundive

Xll

EDITORS' FOREWORD

nomináis and that-clmse nomináis, and thereby account for the semantic differences these three types of nomináis exhibit, as well as for the way they differ in their external behaviour. Ihara & Fujita discover, from an experimental study with three Japanese subjects suffering from agrammatism, that these patients wrongly use the source marker -kara instead of the goal marker -ni in a significant number of cases, and not the other way around. This behaviour, they argue, is in line with certain linguistic phenomena relating to source and goal markers: source markers are marked in comparison to goal markers and source constructions can, diachronically, develop into goal constructions. Both the linguistic phenomena and the agrammatic data can be explained by the cognitive action chain model, in which the goal is in line with the energy flow that originates in an actor, whereas a source conceptualizes a point that is opposite to the direction of the action chain. Kochañska, dealing with verbal aspect in Polish, restricts herself to accounting for the acceptability and possible interpretations of coordinated VP constructions involving perfective/imperfective VPs, seen from a temporally extended or a temporally momentary Viewing Frame. On the basis of her findings, she argues, with Langacker (1991, inter alia), that the notions of temporal boundedness/unboundedness and internal heterogeneity/homogeneity should be kept distinct; both, she argues, pace Verkuyl (1993), are relevant for verbal aspect. Her general conclusions are that Polish perfective and imperfective VPs are both polysemous, that the meaning of coordinated VPs is constructional rather than purely compositional, and that notions like boundedness are a matter of construal rather than constituting 'objective' facets of the world: an event is, for instance, bounded if we (can) think of it as such, not because it is bounded regardless of how one looks at the situation. An important consequence of this latter viewpoint is that only a truly subjectivist analysis of aspectual phenomena can, according to Kochañska, deal with the facts in a revealing manner. Mandelblit & Fauconnier argue that a generic conceptual causative schema underlies not only grammatical causative constructions, but passive, middle and reflexive constructions as well. They analyze, to concentrate on the first type, causative syntactic constructions in English, Modern Hebrew (hif'il) and French. In their view, a sentence is the result of blending a conceived event with a schematically meaningful syntactic construction. Because not every element of the conceived event is projected on the construction, possible ambiguities may arise, for example between middle and passive constructions in Modern Hebrew. Because, furthermore, mappings from the conceived event onto the meaningful syntax may differ in systematic ways, the blending

EDITORS' FOREWORD

Xlll

mechanism can also account for the difference in mapping responsible for the meanings of Rachel sneezed the napkin off the table on the one hand (here the construction's subject referent is understood to do the sneezing), and of She trotted the horse into the stable on the other (here the trotting is understood as done by the object referent). Language being to a large extent under specified, grammatical blending can thus account for various kinds of constructional ambiguity. Mortelmans shows, on the basis of original data, that the Konjunktiv II mood in German on its own signals negative epistemic stance (irrealis), that epistemic modals in the Konjunktiv II form, e.g. könnte (cf. Indicative kann), still signal positive epistemic stance (potentiality), be it in a weakened form. However, in conditionals with Konjunktiv II functioning as grounding predi cation in the protasis, the effect on e.g. könnte is that it now can only express negative epistemic stance (irrealis). Interestingly, the form dürfte has grammaticalized in a different direction, expressing a highly subjective epistemic evaluation; it is therefore on the whole considered unacceptable if Konjunktiv II has a dominant grounding function. Her conclusion is, therefore, that mood and modals exhibit what she aptly calls 'division of labour'. Nikiforidou & Katis show, on the basis of authentic material, that the traditional claim that the conditional markers ama, ean and na are free variants of the basic conditional marker an is wrong, and that the three markers under discussion code extra semantic dimensions, in that each involves, in its own way, a "subjective construal ... of the situation depicted in the protasis" (section 5; 'subjective' in Langacker's (1987) sense of 'egocentric construal'). The authors show that the three markers display semantic extensions as well, extensions which seem to point more in the direction of Traugott's (1995) notion of subjectivity by marking highly personal facets like empathy or involvement, thus providing motivated links from the basic egocentric semantics of the markers in question. As Takahashi points out, imperatives do not, normally speaking, occur in the passive voice in English, cf. *Be helped by Jill; however, there are felicitous examples of passive imperatives as well, cf. Be flattered by what he says, it'll make his day. Takahashi shows that it is conceptual incompatibility that leads to the typical unacceptability of passive imperatives. The (second person) subject of an imperative is, given a prototypical Imperative Event Model, an agent, whereas the subject of a passive, given a prototypical Passive Model, is a patient. Only when used in non-prototypical ways, can the two constructions become compatible. It is this cognitive viewpoint that enables Takahashi, moreover, to explain why in Japanese passive imperatives are hardly (if at all) acceptable: unlike English, the meaning of the Japanese

XlV

EDITORS' FOREWORD

imperative is restricted to the prototypical Imperative Event Model, hence passive and imperative constructions are bound to clash in Japanese. Thepkanjana, analysing the semantics of lexical causative verbs in Thai, makes a major distinction between alternating and non-alternating lexical causatives, and a further subdivision into (a) different types of causatives, (b) agent-oriented causatives and (c) patient-oriented causatives. On the basis of these distinctions, and with the help of Talmy's notion of 'windowing of attention', she neatly accounts for the kind of constructions the verbs in question can, or cannot, occur in, while also making it clear that the notion 'accidental lexical gap' is a misnomer as far as suppletive lexical causatives in Thai are concerned: their distribution is by no means random. Tsuboi deals with the adversative passive construction in Japanese, a construction which involves the quite fascinating phenomenon of valence increase: particular verb types, which are intransitive when used actively, can passivize provided an extra argument, marked by ablative -ni, is added to the passive construction. Earlier analyses essentially account for this valence increase in random terms: the construction requires an extra-thematic NP. Tsuboi, on the other hand, argues that the adversative passive is motivated by a particular Japanese cultural cognitive model that involves a person's 'sense of responsibility'. This models a person A responsible for something bad happening to a person B, provided A could have prevented this from happen ing; A is thus seen as having affected  adversatively (regardless whether this was intentional or not). The meaning of the passive adversative can only be understood against this ICM, with the --marked actor mapping onto person A, provided, moreover, that the passive subject referent (the focus of attention in the passive) is actually annoyed at the actor in question. This model of responsibility ascription shows itself not only in the passive construction, but also in some active contexts that also involve valence increase. The adversative passive is, thus, not an isolated phenomenon in Japanese, as previous analyses suggested. Van der Leek, lastly, argues against the analysis of the English causedmotion construction as proposed by Goldberg (1995), who claims, essentially, that this is a construction in the Construction Grammar sense (cf. Fillmore & Kay to appear), in that its syntax prototypically pairs up with a caused-motion sense, and with extended senses in nonprototypical uses of the construction; thanks to this claim, she can argue that verbs have basically only one meaning, and that a verb is licensed in the construction provided its basic meaning is compatible with one of the construction's conventional senses. Van der Leek argues instead that, where mature speakers are concerned, the pure syntax of the construction makes no semantic contribution of its own, and that the

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caused-motion pattern (or any of its extensions) gets extracted by the language user as a superordinate conceptual category, a category that, indeed, licenses particular usages without, however, lending them their meaning. She further argues that pure syntactic configurations have no semantic value prior to conceptualization, even though children begin by assuming that there is a direct mapping between their prelinguistic conceptualizations of caused-motion and the meaning of the syntactic configuration in question. References Fillmore,  & P. Kay. To appear. Construction Grammar. Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information. Goldberg, A. 1995. A Construction Grammar Approach to Argument Structure. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Langacker, R. 1987. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar. Vol. I. Theoretical Perspectives. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 1991. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar. Vol. 2. Descriptive Application. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Traugott, E. 1995. "Subjectification in Grammaticalization". Subjectivity and Subjectivization in Language eds. D. Stein & S. Wright, 31-54. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Verkuyl, H. 1993. A theory of aspectuality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Pragmatic Conditionals Angeliki Athanasiadou University of Thessaloniki, Greece

René Dirven University of Duisburg, G

1.

Introduction: Types of conditionals * In previous papers on conditionals, we have distinguished between three major types of conditionals. The first type is the traditionally perceived 'hypo home, in which the consequent fully depends on the realisation of the antecedent. A second type has largely remained unobserved in English grammars and in the recent literature,1 though it has a very high statistical occurrence in the corpora excerpted.2 It is marked by the absence of modal forms in the consequent, but describes regularly co-occurring sequences of events as in If there is a drought, the eggs remain dormant. Such a sequence of events is somehow also causally related, but not construed as such, i.e. the two events are not construed as simply triggering each other but just as co-occurring. Therefore we have labelled it as 'course-of-events conditional'. The we are having dinner at six, which Fauconnier (1994:121) analyses in terms of a hidden conditional of the type If you are hungry, join us at six. But the real complexity of this pragmatic type of conditional is much greater and we will devote this whole paper to this subtype of a pragmatic conditional amongst various other members of this hybrid category.

Before beginning the analysis of pragmatic conditionals proper we want to point out that both course-of-events conditionals and pragmatic conditionals, contain their own subclass of 'inferencing' conditionals. This raises the question of the fundamental difference between the conceptual domains of course-of-eventness and of pragmaticity. This problem can be best approached by looking into some distinctions that can be made between these two types of conditionals: inferencing course-of-events conditionals as in (1) contrast in various respects with inferencing pragmatic conditionals as in (2): (1) He looked at his watch; if the soldier was coming, it was nearly time. [COB:243] (2) If she's divorced, (then) she's been married. [Sweetser 1990:116]

2

ANGELIKI ATHANASIADOU & RENE DIRVEN

The main difference between the two inferencing processes is a question of the nature of the evidence: in (1) the inferencing process is about a really occurring situation, whereas in (2) the inferencing is about the explicitation of a given concept; the mental process in (2) need not involve any actual situation, but may be a purely logical operation in the mind.

In the course-of-events conditional of (1), the course-of-events character fol soldier's coming is always so punctual that the observer automatically knows what time it is and what to do next; he just checks the time of the situation by looking at his watch. The inferencing process is embedded in an actually occurring situation, so that the inference is based on an obser consequently linked with a second situation which tends to co-occur with the first. In the pragmatic conditional of (2), there is no observation of situations, but only a logical operation of spelling out entailments of a given statement or concept; the notion of 'being divorced' implies a previous state of 'having been married before'. Here the consecutive aspect of the two events is adequately expressed by the originally temporal, i.e. consecutive use of the adverb then. Historically, this temporal adverb has been grammaticalized as a logical operator, associating temporal succession with logical inference. In (2) the temporal meaning is no longer present, but only the logical 'inference' meaning is given. The two inferencing processes are thus of a different nature: in an observational inference' we make simultaneous ad hoc inferences, applicable to the situational context; it is the logic of simultaneous events. But in a purely 'logical' inference, we make generic inferences, based on the meanings of consecutive events found in our conceptual world; it is the logic of concepts. But why can the logical inferencing process, as illustrated in (2), be called a 'pragmatic' conditional? This question only arises if one takes the term pragmatic in a narrow sense. Very often the term pragmatic is used only in relation to speech acts, but its original meaning, as specified by Charles Morris (1946), is much wider. Morris made the distinction between syntactics, semantics, and pragmatics, such that each level involves different relations: syntactics specifies the relations between the signs themselves, semantics specifies the relations between signs and the world, and sense that we want to use the term 'pragmatic' for our present purposes. When speaking of 'pragmatic conditionals', we thus suggest that there is always a special emphasis on the presence of the user of the signs. This is

pragm

PRAGMATIC CONDITIONALS



most emphatically felt in 'interpersonal' speech acts,3 such as requests or offers, but it can also be present in speech acts of the ideational type such as inferencing processes of the logical type. Indeed, here the logical

inferenc

In an interpersonal speech-act situation the pragmatic aspect is explicitly or implicitly. The speaker, when using a pragmatic conditional in a discourse situation, performs a speech act, and the if-clause explicates one of the preparatory conditions, i.e. the speaker suggests to the hearer that he believes that the state of affairs in the consequent may become true. Consider sentence (3) below taken from Athanasiadou and Dirven (1996): (3) If anyone wants me, I'm downstairs.

This issue has led to a great diversity of opinions concerning the categorisation of types of conditionals. On the one hand, we have those such as Sweetser (1990:123), who maintain that logical conditionals as in (2) and conversational conditionals as in (3) are strictly separate categories;4 on the other hand, we have those such as Comrie (1986:81), who group logical and conversational conditionals together. By establishing the superordinate category of pragmatic conditionals we adopt the latter position. Our various degrees for the three main types of conditionals. The causal dependency conditionals; causal dependency decreases considerably, but remains imp a purely logical, i.e. non-causal, relationship in pragmatic conditionals of the inferencing type as found in (2), and to a merely conversational point of relevance in pragmatic conditionals of the discourse type found in (3). But the dependency relation is never totally absent.

The categories and subcategories we propose for discussion in this paper are summarised in Table 1. This table reflects a taxonomic hierarchy, consisting of the 'logical' and 'conversational' conditionals (where the term 'basic level' is taken in a wider sense than usual), and the four subordinate categories or subcategories.

superordi

4

ANGELIKI ATHANASIADOU & RENÉ DIRVEN

Table 1. Categories and subcategories of pragmatic conditionals (PCs)

-

The paper, then, deals with each of these categories in their turn: General characteristics of pragmatic conditionals, Identifying conditionals, Inferencing conditionals, Discourse conditionals, Metacommunicative conditionals.

2.

General characteristics of pragmatic conditionals (PCs) As Table 1 shows, pragmatic conditionals comprise four main types: two of them involve logical processes, i.e. the 'identifying' PC as illustrated in (4) below, and the 'inferencing' PC as depicted in sentence (5). The two other types involve conversational contexts, and comprise the 'discourse' PC as in (6) and the 'metacommunicative' PC as in (7). (4) If there's one human species that ought to be put out to pasture, it's Presidents and Prime Ministers. [COB: 136] (5) If the super-organism created by a colony of termites can be compared to an antelope, then the disciplined aggressive columns of the army ants must be reckoned to be the insect equivalent of a beast of prey. [COB:268] (6) What about the parents demonstrating, if there are no friends? [COB:84] (7) I've come to offer my congratulations, if that's the right word. [LDC:42] Before characterising the internal structure of each of these four categories, we must first address more general questions which are relevant


5

to the present discussion. First of all, these four types of conditionals belong to two basic-level categories, namely logical conditionals (examples (4) and (5)) and conversational conditionals (examples (6) and (7)). Whereas the logical conditionals involve analytic reasoning processes, and as a result the antecedent can only be preposed to the consequent, conversational conditionals involve speech acts in actual discourse (6) or aspects of the discourse such as metalinguistic references to the linguistic choices made by the speakers (7) and the antecedent tends to be postposed. Secondly, the separate category of a logical inferencing conditional is not an additional complication or multiplication of categories, since we need the category of 'logical conditionals' anyhow because of the existence of a logical identifying conditional. We can therefore make a distinction between two types of inferencing conditionals, viz. inferencing course-of-events conditionals and inferencing pragmatic conditionals. The latter is much closer to the 'identifying' pragmatic conditional than to the inferencing course-of-events conditional, because both pragmatic logical conditionals express merely reasoning operations, but do not involve any actual observed reality. Thirdly, the diversity of subcategories within the two basic-level categories of logical and conversational conditionals and the conceptual difference between these two basic-level categories themselves calls for the introduction of a unifying superordinate category, which groups these course-of-events and hypothetical conditionals. The term 'pragmatic of the four subcategories: as will be shown in the next sections, they are all, each in its own way, more strongly either 'speaker-oriented' or this respect, pragmatic conditionals contrast very strongly with the primordially ideational functions associated with the use of course-of-events and hypothetical conditionals.

Having established these internal commonalities and distinctions in the area of pragmatic conditionals, we will now try to specify the conceptual link between the degree of independency of the antecedent and the consequent, on the one hand, and the functions of the four types of How great is the degree of independency between antecedent and consequent in logical pragmatic conditionals? How much smaller is it in comparison with hypothetical conditionals and course-of-events conditionals? As shown in Athanasiadou and Dirven (1997), hypothetical conditionals are

subcate conditio

'hearer

pragm

6


the central or prototypical member of the class of three types since they show the highest level of dependency between antecedent and consequent. In course-of-events conditionals the dependency is still present but less co-occur but they are not explicitly linked in any causally or otherwise determined way. Let us examine somewhat more closely the degree of dependency implied in sentence (1) and contrast it to the logical pragmatic conditional in example (5), both of which are repeated here for the sake of convenience:

pr

(1) He looked at his watch; if the soldier was coming, it was nearly time. (5) If termites are the equivalent of antelopes, army ants are the equivalent of beasts of prey. The dependency between the two events in (1), viz. the soldier coming and it nearly being time is based on recurring experience, that is to say, on observation of regularly, consecutively occurring events. The dependency between the two events in an inferencing course-of-events conditional like (1) is greater because the construal of this dependency is based on repeatedly observed facts. In an inferencing pragmatic conditional like (5), the dependency between antecedent and consequent is much weaker because the link is based upon a construal of analytic definitions: termites are only comparable to non-carnivorous antelopes from a very special, namely nutritional point of view, and on the basis of that specific parallel we infer a similar comparability between army ants and carnivorous beasts of prey. It is even the case that in (5) the antecedent and the consequent are theoretical constructions in the mind which in themselves have no validity and thus cannot be dependent on one another. In its simplest form, such parallel between a=b and c=d created by the logical inferencing ifconstruction that makes some slight form of dependency plausible. In the scale of dependency of antecedent and consequent — as already shown in Athanasiadou and Dirven (1996, 1997) for hypothetical and course-of-events conditionals — we can see the following global picture of decreasing dependency for all the types of conditionals:

construc


7

Table 2. Scale of (in) dependency between antecedent and consequent in conditionals

3.

Identifying conditionals The above scale of (in)dependency of conditionals in Table 2 implies that identifying pragmatic conditionals show a relatively greater dependency degree than inferencing pragmatic conditionals. This has not been (4) If there's one human species that ought to be put out to pasture, it's Presidents and Prime Ministers. Such an identifying conditional consists of two parts: an antecedent which functions as an identifying description and a consequent which is the identified one or the identifier. The matching of the entity to be identified and the identifier depends to a large extent on the detailed description in the antecedent. Although there is no causal relationship between the antecedent and the consequent, the two parts are strongly interrelated: the description in the antecedent is made to fit the identifier in the consequent. But in actual fact, things are more complicated. Although identifying pragmatic conditionals seem to function in order to identify the unknown or

demon

8


as yet unidentified member of a category, this may be a very misleading interpretation of their communicative function. What the speaker is doing by means of the identifying construction is not only just to accomplish an act of revealing an entity's identity, but rather to create expectations, which is done by a very long description of the entity to be identified: (8) Now, if any part of the Bible is assuredly the very Word of God speaking through His servant, it is John's Gospel. [BRO:91] Thus, the identifying pragmatic conditional assumes a strong rhetorical function emphasising the important features of the category to be identified and raising the expectation for the identity of the variable of this category precisely by postponing the naming of it. Preposing of the consequent would therefore not make any sense in identifying pragmatic conditionals. Our thesis that the main function of the identifying pragmatic conditional is not necessarily that of revealing someone's identity can also be shown by the fact that the construction can be used with a negation thus rather excluding possible candidates than carrying through an identification process: (9) Luckily both women knew my position and if anyone suffered in their opinion it was not I. [BRO: 104] The rhetorical use of the identifying pragmatic conditional can even be strengthened by the use of adverbs like ever in the antecedent and the reduction of the consequent to a very short formula, as in the following examples: (10) If ever a rifle met the needs of the whitetail hunter, this is it. [BRO: 189] (11) Brains and beauty, high position in both the social and intellectual worlds, athlete, fabled lover — if ever the world was any man's oyster it was his. [BRO: 191] As with most pragmatic phenomena in language, here too we are left again with the rather predictable conclusion that there is no one to one relationship between the syntactic form of this construction and its various pragmatic uses. The syntactic form typically serves an identifying function, but the pragmatic use overrides this syntactic function, as is usually the case


9

in the pragmatic use of language. This conclusion contains another argument for categorising identifying pragmatic conditionals as a member of the category of pragmatic conditionals and not as a separate category. Whereas the examples (8) to (11) contain cases of subject sentence of the antecedent may be selected for the identification process. The entity to be identified may be the topic of the sentence (12), the location (13), or the reason why something is the case (14): (12) If there was one thing Julie couldn't be doing with, it was anonymity. [COB:20] (13) If there's trouble in a home, it isn't always in the bedroom - it's quite often in the budget. [COB: 19] (14) If, indeed, we are inclined to deny one particular thing, this is because of the failure to recognize some other aspect of it. [LOB:3, adapted] Sentence (12) illustrates a colloquial and popular means of using identifying conditionals: it is purely emotional. Sentence (13), does not seem to provide an identification of what the main marriage trouble might be, but rather an identification of where the trouble might have to be situated, whereby the locatives in the bedroom and in the budget are metonymically used for the sexual aspect of marriage and for its financial management, respectively. In sentence (14), the identification process is related to a subclause denoting reason. In the identification formula this is because, the pronoun this indeed refers to the whole of the antecedent. So the pragmatic type of identifying conditional in (14) follows the pattern 'if a, then because of b'. From a cognitive point of view, however, examples (12-14) represent a borderline case of identifying conditionals in the sense that they form a transition from the process of subject identification to a process of emphasising a particular constituent in the sentence. Still in all the examples discussed in this section, the dependency between the antecedent and the consequent is manifestly, though weakly present. 4.

Inferencing conditionals Identifying conditionals are used for other communicative purposes than mere identification. Similarly, inferencing pragmatic conditionals are not only used to make inferences, but also and perhaps even more

identifi

10


importantly, to emphasise the inferencing force of the utterance, which again foregrounds the pragmatic character of the construction. One of the many items emphasising the 'inferencing' force of an inferencing logical then still preserves a strong deictic link with some previous state of affairs. This presupposes an interdependency between antecedent and consequent. If the interdependency is not strong enough, then is ruled out. Thus, it cannot be used in discourse conditionals such as (3). Hence we cannot say *Iƒ anyone wants me, then I'm downstairs. In this respect it is worth noting that there is a very strong contrast between inferencing pragmatic conditionals and inferencing course-of-events conditionals. In inferencing pragmatic conditionals the use of then may sometimes be absolutely indispensable as in the following example:

(15) If Arthur Williams was involved in the fraud or the murder, then he too had another identity. [BRO: 114] This use of the logical operator then can be further clarified by its compatibility with the epistemic auxiliary must, i.e. 'then he too must have had another identity'. Without then it is much more difficult to interpret this inferencing pragmatic conditional since we would not be inclined to stress the pronoun form he and make it refer back to Arthur Williams. In inferencing course-of-events conditionals, on the other hand, such as the soldier example in (1), the inference is drawn without any further focus on the inferencing process as such.5 That may also be the reason why inferencing conditionals with then and without then do not always have the same implications. Let us, for instance, repeat the soldier example without and with then for the sake of easy comparison: (16) a. He looked at his watch; if the soldier was coming, it was nearly time. b. He looked at his watch; if the soldier was coming, then it was nearly time. In the course-of-events context of (16a) the conclusion follows from observation: the two events in the antecedent and the consequent are contiguous, in the sense that the one stands metonymically for the other. That's why both are factual: the soldier was coming and this was the sign that it was nearly time. The subject checks the time on his watch to confirm his factual inference. So both the antecedent and the consequent are based

condit


11

on observational deduction. Here the observational conclusion seems to exclude the use of the logical operator then, which requires a fully different conceptual scene. The speaker of (16b) would not even need to see the soldier coming. Moreover, he could also use the form with must, i.e. then it must nearly be time. Consequently, in (16b) the soldier's coming is much less certain because it is no longer based on an observation of a course of events, but on a logical, truth-finding deduction. Moreover, (16b) now looks like an event only occurring once, whereas (16a) clearly implies a recurring event, which is precisely the basis for the inference. The use of then in (16b) changes the nature of an inferencing course-of-events conditional into that of a logical conditional. The possibility of using then is merely the tip of the iceberg in that it is but one of a whole range of epistemic, inferencing expressions, all of which stress the epistemic or truth-finding nature of the inferencing process and as such stress the pragmatic relationship between 'the sign' and һ user'. These epistemic expressions in inferencing conditionals may range from epistemic modal auxiliaries like may, must, should, have to, and paraphrasing constructions for modality such as it is possible, surely, it seems likely, etc. to explicit lexical expressions denoting the truth-finding process, such as (we) conclude, it follows that, is it any wonder, it stands to reason, you must admit, or negative conclusions like it does not follow, it is not necessary, it is strange, I see no reason, etc. Even a certain rhetorical flavour may be present occasionally, especially through the use of rhetorical questions introduced by why shouldn't, why not, how much less, etc. Of all these possibilities the preferred devices are modal auxiliaries or modal paraphrases: (17) On the other hand, if there have been no signs of active infection for some time, the murmur may be due to old scars left over from a previous attack. [COB: 106] (18) If this is so, why is it not also possible that they achieved their original dominance by stealth and cunning and bloodshed.... and not, as they claim, by Heaven's will? [COB:336] These modal auxiliaries are, more often than not, combined with other inference-focusing devices such as I think it should, should+progressive, there may be some reason, then...should, etc.

12


(19) If arranging for the girls must take time into account, I think a day or two should be enough to finish our business. [BRO: 112] (20) If, as Reid says, nearly all his poetry was produced when he was not taking opium, there may be some reason to doubt that he was under its influence in the period from 1896 to 1900. [BRO: 119] The inference-focusing devices can be even more elaborate and contain a certain degree of redundancy: (21) Nor is it necessary to hold that if a man wants to get food, he must be tempted to steal. [LOB:4] (22) It stands to reason that if a horse is too backward to race during his first season in training, he is most unlikely to be sufficiently mature to beat the best of his generation in the late May or early June. [LOB:81] The phrases in (21-22) are characteristic of the jargon of logic. In more colloquial language the inference-focusing devices tend to be less elaborate, as the following expressions from the Leuven Drama Corpus show. The expressions found here are: I'd say, is it any wonder, I see no reason, it follows, etc. (23) If I saw a man eating grass I'd say he was hungry. [LDC:31] (24) If he fails to see me in a room, is it any wonder he has difficulty finding the enemy in the whole of Flanders. [LDC:70] (25) If the sun never sets on your empires, it follows that it never rises either. [LDC:109] It turns out that not only the logical adverb then, but several other colloquial devices such as so, or after all, or whole phrases like you must admit, etc. are devices emphasising the act of inferencing. (26) So there is a God after all, if it is reason. [LDC:93] (27) If you persist in maintaining the almighty Jove aimed a thunderbolt at me, then, you must admit he had the unusual experience of missing. [LDC:102]


13

But most clearly, the rhetorical force of an inference-focusing construction is found in an interrogative conditional· (28) If birds can fly, why shouldn't man? [LDC:65] (29) If he is a man, how much less of a man am I? [LDC:72] The analysis of the many examples in this section was necessary to pave the way to one important conclusion. The linguistic realisation of the process of inferencing includes more than mere inferencing, that is, drawing all sorts of logical consequences. It also includes an awareness of the as in example (2) If she 's divorced, (then) she 's been married, is rather the exception, not the rule, since it only suggests a minimum of focusing. The rule is rather that the speaker uses numerous inference-focusing devices to refer to the ongoing process of inferencing. In this respect, the speaker is signalling very explicitly that he is engaging upon making the inference and thus these inference-focusing devices are a pragmatic strategy to signal the pragmatic force of the utterance. Of course, such pragmatic self-monitoring is not to be confused with performative acts, but these devices reveal that speakers' interests are far beyond making purely analytic inferences. The many inference-focusing devices also invite us to use the term 'pragmatic conditionals' in a much wider sense than that of conditional speech-acts, as found in the literature, (e.g. Sweetser 1990:118). Whereas traditionally the concept 'pragmatic' was limited in its application to performing speech acts, presuppositions, hedging, etc., we now propose to use it again in the wider, original — as intended by Morris — sense of the relationship between the sign and its user, so that it does not only cover the things we do, but also the things we think and say, while performing speech acts or any other communicative acts. Moreover it comprises various sorts of hints at the thought processes behind our speech acts, at the special appeals to the hearer or at comments on the speaker's choice of certain wordings. 5.

Discourse conditionals Discourse conditionals link the consequent to some or other, usually hearer-oriented, pragmatic factor in the conversation. The split between the antecedent and the consequent is extremely great. In English, this split cannot show up in different word orders in antecedent and consequent, as in German and Dutch, but only in the intonation pattern. Thus, discourse con-

14


(i) (ii) (iii) (iv) (v) (vi) (vii)

no possibility of using then no hypothetical forms no change of tenses (see Sweetser 1990; and see (31) below) intonational 'caesura' no explicit use of performatives very great ambiguity of possible speech-act forces (see (32) below) preferred order: antecedent before consequent Table 3. Characteristics of prototypical discourse conditionals

ditionals show a very important 'caesura' between the antecedent and the consequent. Intonationally, this 'caesura' is shown by the fact that one cannot read or pronounce a discourse conditional (30a) in the same way as a hypothetical conditional as in (30b) below: (30) a. If you're hungry, there's food in the fridge. b. If you ask him kindly, John will help you. If one reads the hypothetical conditional in (30b) with a 'caesura' or an intonational break, an odd effect is achieved, but in (30a) it is quite normal. Conversely, (30b) must be read as one intonational unit but if one applies this intonational pattern in the discourse conditional in (30a) the result is very odd. The discourse conditional is much more a construction sui generis, i.e. a highly idiosyncratic category with very specific characteristics of its own, summarised in Table 3, which can also be seen as a summarising definition of the prototypical discourse conditional. (31) ?If you were hungry, there was food in the fridge. (32) If anyone wants me, I'm downstairs. The question mark in front of the sentence in (31) means that this sentence cannot be given the interpretation of a discourse conditional. But in itself the sentence is not impossible; on the contrary, it is a very clear instance of a course-of-events conditional which is to be interpreted as 'Whenever you were hungry, there was always food in the fridge'. In (32) the ambiguity of the possible conversational implicature of the speech act is very great. Possible candidates are 'please tell X', 'don't tell X', 'I don't want to be disturbed', 'they can find me', etc.


15

5.1. The great variety of discourse conditionals Most discourse conditionals exhibit the following central or prototypical features of their category: they have a very clear 'caesura', they use present tenses in both antecedent and consequent, they are of the affirmative type and they have the sequence antecedent-consequent. However, structural possibilities with discourse conditionals, which differ in some interesting respects from the prototypical ones discussed before. (i) The first discourse conditional ever pointed out is found in Austin's paper "Ifs and cans" (1961:210-12) and its structure has the reversed order of a prototypical discourse conditional, i.e. consequent before antecedent: (33) There are biscuits on the sideboard if you want them. Not only is there a reversed order of consequent and antecedent in this example, but there is also absence of a strong 'caesura'. Here in the marked order of consequent and antecedent, this 'caesura' can almost be reduced to zero. This may be due to the fact that with a preposed consequent, as in (33), there is no communicative need for an intonational break, since the //-clause cannot be misunderstood now. But note that here, too, at the end of the antecedent, there is a slightly rising intonation contour, typical of questions or offers. What is even more striking is that instead of a postposed antecedent, one can use an intonation question or any other type of question as in (34): (34) There are biscuits on the sideboard. You want some? This possibility of using two independent sentences instead of a discourse conditional is a very strong indication for the very low degree of dependency between the antecedent and consequent in this type of pragmatic conditional. (ii) A second structural variant found with the discourse conditional is the interrogative form, as in the following example: (35) If it is found that in recent years the habit of discussing with the chair has increased, may I ask you not to hesitate to say so? [LOB: 131]

in co

16


The hearer-oriented character of the discourse conditional triggers the use not only of you forms, but also of invitations, requests, etc. (iii) Another pragmatic form frequently and commonly used to express a discourse conditional is a why not-question in the main clause, as in (36): (36) a. If he attaches little importance to personal liberty, why not make this known to the world? [BRO:243] b. If anti-Semitism was on trial in Jerusalem, why was it not identified? [BRO:78] The negated why-question with infinitive in (36a) has an urging force and comes close to a challenge to do something about some negative discoveries. But in (36b) the same negated wh-question is not a challenge to do something about a situation but, since it is in the past tense, it is rather ambiguous between a neutral information question and a reproach on moral grounds. Here the position of the negation adverb not is very significant: it can remain unstressed and then it is an information question, but when it is stressed, it becomes a reproach. But if it is used as a contracted form with the auxiliary (why wasn't it identified?), the contracted form rather suggests the reproach meaning, i.e. 'it should have been identified', as the preferred interpretation. (iv) An equally common structural realisation of the discourse conditional is an imperative form in the consequent, which is not only postposed as in (37a), but probably more often preposed, as in (37b,c). (37) a. If it is hallucinations you are after, get drunk. [LDC:96] b. Keep them, if you feel so lost. [LDC:52] c. Prove it if you can. Such an imperative form in discourse conditionals may express many different speech-act forces, such as letting someone down or cursing (get lost, go to hell), typically found in postposed position (37a), and acts of reassuring (37b), challenging (37c), etc. typically found in preposed positions. (v) Other structural possibilities are offered by the combinations of different tenses in the antecedent and the consequent. In addition to the prototypical pattern 'present + present' in antecedent and consequent there


17

are also the unexpected combinations of 'past + present', 'past + past', 'past + past perfect', etc. Most of these tense combinations are motivated by the different times referred to in the antecedent and in the consequent: (38) Castle thought: that's a bad slip if the telephone call this morning was from the office. [COB:275] Here, the different use of tenses (present in the consequent + past in the antecedent) is motivated by the different moments when the evaluation occurs (consequent) and when the event evaluated took place (antecedent). Since speech acts are grounded in the present time of the speech act itself, acts of offering, inviting, challenging, evaluating tend to occur in the present tense, and they do not normally occur with past tense forms hungry, there was food in the fridge. 6

Metacommunicative conditionals

The function of the if-clause in a discourse conditional is force expressed in the antecedent is relevant. In this respect a differs markedly from discourse conditionals:

he metacommunicativ

(39) a. ...and if I might say so at this stage, that is one of the sentences it may impose on a young male in prison. [Haegeman 1984:487] b. If I may say so, that's a crazy idea. [Sweetser 1990:118] Here the link between the antecedent and the consequent is a preparatory link: the if-clause has the function of softening the possible unpleasantness of the statement of the consequent. Besides softening there may be many other metacommunicative functions of pragmatic if-clauses, a very frequent case being that of relativising one's presuppositions in the making of the speech act. Therefore we can define a metacommunicative conditional as the pointing out of some aspects of the global communicative act which need special attention. Consequently, these ¿/-clauses can be seen as comments on various aspects of the communicative act and are therefore metacommunicative in nature.

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6.1. Various uses of metacommunicative conditionals Since there are so many different types of communicative acts, of which speech acts are just one, though very important, subcategory, it may be advisable to make further distinctions between a number of metacommunicati the whole speech act is concerned we can speak of the metapragmatic use of the conditional. If separate aspects are involved, we can distinguish between a metalinguistic or a restrictive use of the conditional; the //-clause relates either to the 'wording' of the speech act, i.e. the locution used by the speaker or to the presuppositions made by the speaker. In the former case we have a metalinguistic use — as this term is traditionally understood in linguistics — and in the latter we usually have a 'restrictive' use. In this section we therefore address the following three functions of metacommunicative

(i) The metapragmatic use of metacommunicative conditionals, (ii) The metalinguistic use of metacommunicative conditionals, (iii) The restrictive use of metacommunicative conditionals. (i) The 'metapragmatic * use of metacommunicative conditionals Alongside the stereotypical formula if I may say so in (39b), we find many other metapragmatic references to the appropriateness or distance may be too great for the speaker in a lower hierarchical position to perform a blunt speech act of evaluation, and therefore he must 'preface' his evaluation by means of a softening metapragmatic cajoler, as in (40):

inappropri

(40) Good gracious me, sir, if I may make so bold - it's a bit shocking, isn't it? [LDC:86] This comment in the if-clause is, in fact, just as in the two examples in (39), a parenthetical construction, which can as easily be left out as not, and which therefore further emphasises the fact that the metacommunicative function is not an essential part of the utterance. This does not mean of course that parenthetical constructions are always optional, e.g. the following construction if you'll excuse us could not be omitted because this would produce an awkward, if not impossible, utterance:

m


19

(41) a. Splendid! Now ladies, if you'll excuse us, we have a lot to do. [LDC:54] b. ** Splendid! Now ladies, we have a lot to do. Here the if-clause in fact expresses the speech act of asking for the permission to leave and the consequent gives the reason for this. The metacommunicative conditional may also be used (42a), or to challenge the hearer to use the correct procedure to find

metapragmatica info

(42) a. I've always been interested in people, sir, if that's what you mean. [LDC:107] b. It's all on the back pages of the paper, just before the sport, if you know where to look. [LDC:16] (ii) The 'metalinguistic ' use of metacommunicative conditionals Whereas in the above cases the metacommunicative conditional relates to the speech act as a whole, in the following cases it has a more limited function, and relates only to particular aspects of the speech act, such as to its formal aspects, or more importantly, its functional aspects. Speakers of a language are aware of performing a large number of metalinguistic acts. But, in fact, very few examples occur in the selected corpora: (43) a. I've come to offer my congratulations, if thaťs the right word. [LDC:42] b. He was beginning to feel sure that she had recognised him and wanted to talk but could not summon up the courage - if courage was the word. [LOB:180] As these examples illustrate, the metalinguistic reference always concerns a single word or expression, and therefore the metalinguistic reference is made by means of an anaphoric pronoun such as that (43a), or by the full word or expression courage, as in (43b). This formal device also shows the enormous difference between the metapragmatic use (42) of the metacommunicative conditional, which can have any possible structural form, and its metalinguistic use which can only have a nominal form such as that in (43), because it must refer to some element in the consequent.

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(iii) The 'restrictive' use of metacommunicative conditionals When uttering speech acts the existence of (some of) the referents of the noun phrases used, or of the events described are presupposed. Metacommunicative conditionals are often used to draw attention to these presuppositions and are typically used either to strengthen the belief of the existence of the referents (assertive use of some or one) or, on the contrary, not to commit oneself to the existence of the referent (non-assertive any) and to restrict the validity of such a belief. These opposite functions are expressed by the parenthetical formula if there is one for the assertive attitude (44), and if there is any for the non-assertive attitude (45): (44) a. This is a time — if there ever was one — for parents to show their thoughtfulness and generosity towards each other. [COB: 117] b. That, I smarted, is a royal rebuff if ever there was one. [BRO: 192] (45) The shooting-season opens Saturday and the birds'11 be scattered all over the place after that — if there's any left. [COB: 165] In (44a) the main clause implies that now the occasion is present, so the speaker takes an affirmative stand to the existence of such a single referent. This attitude completely changes if one is replaced by any. Then the assertive attitude becomes non-assertive, and the speaker no longer commits himself to the existence of such a referent. In (45) the use of any is the only possibility because the non-assertive suggestion is that there might not be a single bird left. In addition to these two possibilities of the metacommunicative conditional, its non-assertive use seems to be the only possibility in the elliptic formulaic expression if any, as in (46): (46) a. Secondly, we must pool and ration our supplies of food, if any. [LOB:64] b. The change, if any, in foreign policy will consist rather of a freshness of approach. [LOB:98] The elliptical use of if any in these two examples relates to the non-affirmed existence of the referents of the noun phrases supplies of food in (46a), and change in (46b). Structurally, the if any-phrase does not function as an antecedent to the consequent, but it is simply attached to the


21

noun phrase it modifies, and therefore functions as a small afterthought related to the presupposition made by the use of the definite determiners in the noun phrases. When the presupposition is related to a locative expression such as here, the elliptic phrase uses the adverbial form anywhere as in (47): (47) For here if anywhere in contemporary literature is a major effort to counterbalance Existentialism. [BRO: 108] The use of if anywhere in (47) is ambiguous: it can either restrict the belief in the existence of a given place in contemporary literature referred to by here, or it can also function in a rhetorical way and stress the fact that it is precisely here that Existentialism will be counterbalanced. This rhetorical function has become the only use of the elliptical expression if anything, but now it is not the existence of the referents or the processes that is focussed upon; on the contrary, the phrase if anything no longer has a reference-modifying function, but rather a sentential function leading to some strengthening effect as in (48): (48) a. If anything, he had merely become a little more reserved, and much more polite. [LOB: 127] b. The effect of make-believe was, if anything, heightened by the arrival in the room of the German uniforms. [LOB: 126] Thus the phrase if anything has become an idiomatic expression relating to the sentence as a whole and meaning something like 'the least one can say is that...'. This idiomatic use may also be the explanation why the phrase if anything can be used at the beginning of a sentence, as in (48a) or with an almost adverbial function in mid-position between an auxiliary and a verb as in (48b). The elliptical use of the metacommunicative conditional occurs in the context of adjectives as in (49): (49) a. And I suppose now that you've finally grown up, if a little late, you'd go on producing kittens every six months or so. [BRO:20] b. As usual, delegates were entertained to dinner by the Royal Yachting Association and a very pleasant affair it was, if a little cramped in its temporary quarters. [LOB:87]

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(49) c. Hobhouse was Byron's intimate, if a little stuffy and unimaginative friend from Cambridge. [LOB:88] Here the elliptical construction is in fact a double elliptical construction: it is (i) syntactically elliptical as in the former cases since there is no subject or verb, but only an adjective and some adjuncts; and (ii) the conjunction if itself is an elliptical form of the concessive conjunction even if. Therefore, the elliptical construction does not relate to a utterance: the positive characteristic in the consequent, for instance you've finally grown up in (49a), is somewhat restricted by contrasting it with the concession in the antecedent that this achievement happened a little late. So examples (49a, b, c) illustrate a merely concessive construction rather than a metacommunicative conditional and rather fall in a different, though related category of conceptual constructions.6

presuppo

7.

Conclusions The above analyses have shown that although pragmatic conditionals cover a wide variety of specialized conditional uses, they also have very typical common characteristics as well as specific idiosyncratic ones.

(i) Pragmatic conditionals all have one thing in common. Their an of a communicative act contained in the consequent. In identifying conditiona rhetorical impact on the hearer in his communicative act. In inferencing conditionals the speaker uses all possible types of inference-focusing devices in order to emphasise the speaker's process of inferencing. In discourse conditionals, speakers express the many different conditions under which their speech act forces are relevant for the hearer. And finally, in metacommunicati highlighting some or other important aspects of their communicative acts. In spite of these common aspects of pragmatic conditionals, which consist in the emphasis put on either the speaker's or the hearer's role in the process of communication, their specific functions or uses stand out clearly, too.

(ii) A second common and distinguishing element between the four types of pragmatic conditionals is the relatively great to almost absolute amount of independency of antecedent and consequent. This is a common element in so far as it distinguishes pragmatic conditionals from courseof-events conditionals and hypothetical conditionals, but it also differentiates


23

between the four subcategories of pragmatic conditionals, i.e. the distinction between identifying and inferencing conditionals on the one hand, and discourse conditionals and metacommunicative conditionals, on the other. This distinction is extremely great, since in the latter two (conversational) conditionals the if-clause can even be omitted. In its turn, the distinction between discourse conditionals and metacommunicative ones is again very great because the former have no formal link with the consequent whereas the latter always have a referential link. Of all the four pragmatic deviation from the prototypical member of the category of conditionals, viz. the hypothetical conditional, since it conveys the highest degree of be it intonational, syntactic, referential or pragmatic ones.7 (iii) Although the two conversational conditionals, i.e. discourse conditionals and metacommunicative conditionals, have some elements in common, the differences between the two have proved to be even greater than originally thought. The present analysis has shown that the biggest difference between the two is precisely what the term 'metacommunicative' suggests: in each metacommunicative conditional there is always a comment on the consequent and the communicative act contained in it. This pragmatic link is syntactically expressed by means of a reference device such as so, in If I may ask so, any in phrases such as if any, if anything, if anywhere, substitution elements such as one in If there is one or anaphoric elements such as that in If that's what you mean. Discourse conditionals contrast very strongly with metacommunicative conditionals in this respect: they do not contain any referential link, but only a relevance link, to the consequent. In fact, as will be remembered, they are characterised by an intonational and syntactic 'caesura'. The 'caesura' which reflects a major conceptual point of view. Anything that can be left out in the communicative transfer is both linguistically and conceptually less prominent. (iv) The more general conclusion to be drawn from the analysis of the above structural patterns is that authentic discourse yields many more structural possibilities of any type of conditional, or, more generally, of any type of conceptual structure, than could ever be identified by mere introspection. While analysing these many examples, it was not primarily our purpose to give an exhaustive list of all the types and features of pragmatic conditionals, but in the first place to show that any conceptual category has many more structural realisations than an approach solely based on introspection can guarantee. Probably introspection will or tends to

conditi

indep

distinc

24


produce the prototypical cases only, and corpus-based examples will provide the whole range of structural possibilities. Both approaches complement one another, which is a conclusion everyone could probably agree with. Thus one could say that Austin, an introspectivist if ever there was one, put the pragmatic conditional firmly on the agenda. But at the same time, it is only thanks to corpus linguistics that the many diverse subtypes could be brought out. The ultimate purpose of this paper is to take this conclusion one notch higher: neither of the two approaches can do without the other. Without an extensive corpus study, descriptive linguistics would never have managed to single out a class of 'course-of-events conditionals' and similarly, we would never have arrived at the insight of the existence of a superordinate category of 'pragmatic conditionals', comprising a fairly heterogeneous number of subcategories. In fact, we might still be concentrating only on the most prototypical category, i.e. that of 'hypothetical conditionals'. Notes * We want to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their highly insightful remarks and queries. 1 It is, for instance, not discussed in Comrie (1986), Haegeman (1984), Sweetser (1990), Sweetser (1996), and Dancygier and Sweetser (1996). This latter paper discusses both (our) hypothetical and pragmatic conditionals, but not (our) course-of-events conditionals. This category is vaguely present in Dancygier and Sweetser (1997:123) under the name 'generic conditional' and exemplified by non-corpus-based examples such as If Mary bakes a cake, then she gives a party. 2 The four corpora used here are abbreviated as follows: BRO for Brown Corpus, COB for Cobuild, LDC for Leuven Drama Corpus, and LOB for Lancaster-Oslo-Bergen Corpus. 3 This term is one of a set of three terms, designating Halliday's functions of language use, i.e. the ideational, interpersonal, and textual functions. It is not implied that pragmatic conditionals solely serve the interpersonal function, but that they do so prototypically. The inverse applies to hypothetical and course-of-events conditionals, which mainly serve the ideational function, but allow many other indirect speech acts as well. Sweetser (1990) and Dancygier and Sweetser (1996:88ff.) even refer to hypothetical conditionals as 'content' conditionals, which is an even stronger ideational characterisation. 4 Although it is not explicitly stated, it looks as if Dancygier and Sweetser (1996, 1997) still keep this position. 5 The function of then in conditionals is extensively discussed in Dancygier and Sweetser (1997) and is seen as a deictic reference to a mental space built up by an if-clause, which must therefore precede the consequent. However, this analysis can at best only say when the consequent can take then, not what its presence actually adds to the meaning of the whole sentence. Starting from the iconic principle 'that more linguistic material also implies more meaning', we suggest in the text that the additional function of then is to highlight and to focus on the inferencing process. Thus in (16a) there is an 'inductive leap' from an observation to a conclusion, but in (16b) with the use of then there is a deliberate


25

inference, which may also be marked by many other syntactic devices, as shown in the further discussion. 6 This view is elaborated in Dirven (1997). 7 This conclusion seems to be somewhat in conflict with the scale of dependency in Table 2 where the metacommunicative conditionals are claimed to have the lowest degree of dependency. However, there is not a real contradiction, since in Table 2 we look at the relationship between antecedent and consequent. Metacommunicative conditionals do not relate to the complete relationship but only to one element in the antecedent. But the link with this selected element is much stronger than the link between the antecedent and the consequent in a discourse conditional.

References Athanasiadou Angeliki and René Dirven. 1996. "Typology of if-clauses". Cognitive Linguistics in the Redwoods ed. Casad Eugene, 609-654. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. . 1997. "Conditionality, hypotheticality, counterfactuality". On Conditionals Again eds. Athanasiadou Angeliki & René Dirven, 61-96. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: J. Benjamins. Austin, J.L. 1961. 'Ifs and cans". Philosophical papers eds. J.O. Urmson & G.J. Warnock, 153-180 (3rd edition, 1979). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Comrie, Bernard. 1986. "Conditionals: A Typology". On Conditionals eds. E.C. Traugott et al., 77-99. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dancygier, Barbara & Eve Sweetser. 1996. "Conditionals, Distancing, and Alternative Spaces". Conceptual Structure, Discourse and Language ed. Adele E. Goldberg, 83-98. Stanford, Calif.: CSLI Publications. . 1997. "Then in Conditional Constructions". Cognitive Linguistics 8:2. 109-136. Dirven, René. 1997. "The conceptual space between conditionals and so-called concessives". Grammar and Text in Synchrony and Diachrony. In Honour of Gottfried Graustein eds. Mechtild Rheinhardt & Wolfgang Thiele, 77-99. Frankfurt: Vervuert / Madrid: Iberoamericana. Fauconnier, Gilles. 1994. Mental Space. Aspects of meaning construction in natural language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Haegeman, Liliane, 1984. "Pragmatic Conditionals in English". Folia Linguistica 18.485-502. Morris, Charles. 1946. Signs, Language and Behavior. New York: Prentice-Hall. Sweetser, Eve. 1990. From Etymology to Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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. 1996. "Mental Spaces and the Grammar of Conditional Constructions". Spaces, Worlds, and Grammars eds. Gilles Fauconnier & Eve Sweetser, 318-333. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press. Traugott, Elizabeth  , Alice ter Meulen, Judy Snitzer Reilly & Charles A. Ferguson, eds. 1986. On Conditionals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

How Polish Structures Space Prepositions, Direction Nouns, Case, and Metaphor Barbara Dancygier Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada

1.

Introduction Numerous studies have now shown that spatial construais in different languages can rely on the cooperation among various subsystems of the language (cf. Talmy 1983, Ameka 1995, Sinha and Kuteva 1994). Even in languages in which prepositions are primary carriers of spatial information, their interaction with other subsystems is an important aspect of the resulting spatial interpretation (cf. Smith 1987, 1993, 1995, Serra-Borneto 1997). In this paper I will present some data from Polish to show how spatial construais result from an interaction of three major subsystems: direction nouns, prepositions, and the case form which is marked on the noun, following the choice of a given preposition. In Polish, as in a number of languages, prepositions make the most significant contribution to building spatial construais and, not surprisingly, they also display a variety of meanings and uses. At the same time, the main orientation axes ('up/down' and 'front/back') are not expressed by prepositions, but by nouns (which I will call 'direction nouns'). The direction nouns with prepositions, so that the two subsystems often interact closely. The third subsystem which contributes to constructing spatial similar to Smith's 'two-way' prepositions, in that the nouns following them can be marked with two different case endings, and that each choice of case results in a different spatial interpretation of the whole expression (cf. Smith 1987, 1993, 1995, Serra-Borneto 1997). Cases themselves can thus be claimed to carry their own meaning, possibly the kind of meaning relevant to spatial interpretations (as regards meaningfulness of case, it has been proposed independently of prepositional contrasts by Smith 1987, Langacker 1991, Janda 1993). On the other hand, at least one case in Polish, the instrumental, can express spatial information independently of prepositions, as well as in interaction with them. It can also be marked on the direction nouns. It seems, then, that, although the three subsystems are mostly seen

in

info

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BARBARA DANCYGIER

in interaction (preposition and case, preposition and a direction noun and case, a direction noun and case), direction nouns and case endings can make their meaningful contributions to spatial interpretation independently of the remaining subsystems. In Polish, as well as in other Slavic languages, spatial information can also be found in verbal prefixes. The prefixes are often similar to function is that of providing aspectual information. As was shown in Janda (1986) on the example of some Russian prefixes, the numerous meanings of such prefixes can be related to their spatial source, but their representation of spatial information is not quite straightforward and regular. If they are used to represent spatial information, they do not seem to interact with the remaining subsystems; in fact, the same information is often repeated in a preposition quite like the prefix itself. The analysis of verbal prefixes thus seems to fall beyond the scope of the present paper.

prep

In what follows I will also not attempt to tackle individual prepositions of Polish in any way; rather, I will try to show how broadly defined groups of prepositions interact with the other systems in building spatial construais. In other words, I will argue that spatial construais are motivated compositionally, and that the role of prepositions here is significant, but not unique. The first section will show the ways in which direction nouns on the role of case marking options, primarily in prepositional phrases, but, in the case of the instrumental, also independently of prepositions. Finally, I will consider some metaphorical mappings motivated by the spatial construais reviewed in the main body of the paper. 2.

Direction nouns The spatial nominals that I refer to as 'direction nouns' are used to describe regions in space or regions of landmarks and usually come in pairs representing the contrasting directions along major orientation axes. For example, nouns such as góra and dół ("up" and "down"), or przód and tyl ("front" and "back") are used, with prepositions and appropriate case of objects with respect to the observer, as in (2), or parts of objects, as in (3):

co

HOW POLISH STRUCTURES SPACE

29

(1) Poszliśmy w górę / w dół We-walked in up-ACC / in down-ACC "We walked up/down" (2) Miasto zostało w tyle City stayed in back-LOC "I left the city behind me" (3) Kino jest na dole Cinema is on down-LOC "The cinema is on the ground level/downstairs" The two orientation axes exemplified above seem to be the most salient in Polish, since the direction nouns marking the contrast are used in the greatest number of 'preposition + noun' combinations, and all of the case-marking options are also used. Another orientational nominal commonly used is the noun środek ("middle" and "the inside"), which used with a number of prepositions, as in w środku (in middle-LOC, "in the middle" or "inside") or do środka (into middle-GEN, "into the middle"). Also the noun bok ("side") has a number of similar uses, even though it is not clear whether środek and bok make a contrasting pair in the same way as góra and dół.

rep

As regards other spatial nominals, however, they are used with much less regularity and their use with prepositions is much more conventiona in use than the nominals mentioned above, and its natural counter-part denoting the exterior part of a landmark, the noun zewnętrze, is perceived as archaic and not used at all. Interestingly enough, the exterior region is commonly described by an adverbial expression composed of a preposition and an adverb: na zewnątrz (on exterior-ADV).

The left/right orientation axis is also represented by highly conventionalized ex so the only expressions available rely an adjectives and adverbs, as in po lewej stronie (on/at left-ADJ-LOC-SING-FEM side-N-LOC-SING-FEM, "on the left") or w lewo (in left-ADV, "to the left"). The pairs of direction nouns which represent the up/down and front/back orientation are also conventionalized to some degree and express essentially adverbial meanings, as can be seen in examples (1-3). Neverthe-

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BARBARA DANCYGIER

less, the contribution of all elements of the phrases (that is, of prepositions, case markings and particular nouns) matches the use of the same elements in spatial expressions which are less conventionalized or not built in the same way in expressions with all nouns, not just direction nouns. Direction nouns have a special role only in the sense that certain basic spatial concepts (e.g., up/down or front/back orientation) are not systematically expressed by other lexical elements. Contrasting pairs of direction nouns divide space into complementary regions. The nature of such regions in space does not have to be specified any further, which seems to be the case in (1). All the spatial information provided by the sentence can be summarized by saying that the participants of the walk entered a spatial region above or below their position prior to walking. Also, the boundary between the complementary regions is defined with respect to the position of the moving subject, so that whatever counts as 'up', involves the subject moving or looking upwards. A very similar construal involving front/back orientation seems to be offered by (2). In the case of (3), where the regions are defined within a three dimensional, bounded object (a building) the object may impose a bounded, possibly three-dimensional interpretation on the regions within it. Part of the problem with coming up with a more specific interpretation of (3) seems to be the use of the preposition na ("on"). As it was observed by going far beyond the central uses of similar prepositions in other languages. For example, on is most commonly associated with two-dimensional regions and with concepts such as 'support' or 'attachment'. In Polish, however, na has been found to invoke the concept of a three-dimensional region (at least in the sense in which the boundaries are boundaries of volume, as in the phrase na rynku ("in the market"). Also, in absence of a preposition like at (as described by Cuyckens 1984) in Polish, na seems to be developing into a preposition signifying "general direct location" (Cienki 1989). characteristics of the spatial region represented by the direction noun are specified with respect to the preposition used and the actual object described. This seems to confirm the claim proposed above that spatial construais arise on the basis of information offered by all the relevant subsystems, rather than by any of the systems alone.

At the same time, some of the direction nouns have been extended to denote features of landscape which are primary examples of the spatial concepts in question. For example, a noun like góra ("up") is also (or

convent

Sysak-Bo

Interpr


31

perhaps first of all) used in the sense of "a mountain", while dół ("down") also means "a ditch", "a hole in the ground". These nouns, however, are used with prepositions and case according to the general rules, that is, in the same way as nouns not related to direction nouns. 3.

Prepositions and case Case plays a significant role in spatial construais in Polish, first of all because the choice of case marking may distinguish different uses of prepositions. More specifically, a given preposition may be used in two different spatial construais and the choice of the actual interpretation will depend on the choice of case marking on the noun following the preposition. Smith (1987, 1993) describes a similar phenomenon in German and refers to such prepositions as 'two-way prepositions'. Smith's interpretation of case after two-way prepositions attributes different semantics to the cases under analysis, and offers an account of spatial construais which shows how the two subsystems of German complement each other in the construction of spatial information. In what follows (section 3.2), I will try to show how two-way prepositions and their accompanying cases create spatial information in Polish. The meaning of case outside prepositional phrases has recently More specifically, the semantics of case in Slavic languages came under a close scrutiny in a number of studies (to mention only Dąbrowska 1994 and 1997, Janda 1993, Rudzka-Ostyn 1992, Brecht and Levine 1986). It is interesting to note that some uses of case outside prepositional phrases also give rise to spatially relevant construais. One such instance is the use of the instrumental, which will be discussed in section 3.1 below. The instrumental, as well as other Slavic cases, has been shown to have a variety of meanings. However, the scope of this paper will allow me to discuss only those uses which contribute to the construction of spatial information. 3.1

The spatial use of the instrumental The Polish instrumental seems to be the most interesting of the cases which have meanings related to spatial construais. The reason is that the instrumental can be used to represent spatial information without the help of a preposition, but it is also found as one of the choices following a two-way preposition (to be discussed in section 3.2) and that the two uses seem to be related. The concept most commonly associated with the instrumental is that of a 'path'. For example, when we use direction nouns in the instrumental

in

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BARBARA DANCYGIER

case, as in (4), the meaning is that of a path allowing motion within or through the region designated by the noun. (4) Marysia poszła do jeziora górą, a ja dołem Mary went to lake up-INSTR, while I down-INSTR "Mary took the upper path to the lake, while I took the lower

path" Sentence (4) presents a situation where the area between the point where the two people separate and the lake which they are both trying to reach is divided into an upper and a lower part (perhaps this means going over the hill or along the foot of the hill). It is not in fact implied that there are specific paths or trails to choose between, rather, the options differ in altitude only (which may involve other concerns, such as the time spent hiking or the strenuousness of the walk, but this is not a part of the spatial construal here). The role of the instrumental case does not seem to be to 'draw' a path across the region, but rather to 'redefine' the whole region as a path. The use of the instrumental in the way described above seems to be motivated by its basic meaning of 'instrument' or 'manner'. In both cases the instrumental describes the 'way', or 'method' of accomplishing a goal or getting to a destination. In fact, when asking a question to which the instrumental-as-path is expected to be an answer, we would use the question word którędy?, which should be translated into English as "which way?". Interestingly, a similar motivation has been postulated by Janda (1993) to account for related uses of the Russian instrumental. This 'region is path' meaning of the instrumental remains unchanged if the case marking appears on other nouns denoting regions. The contrast between the uses involving the instrumental and those involving prepositions and other cases confirms the interpretation of the instrumental as an forest-INSTR, "We were/started walking through the forest") the speaker communicates that the people referred to in the subject were walking and that there was forest where they walked, but not that they entered the forest and were crossing it. The latter interpretation, indicating a specific, ("across"). Interestingly enough, region nouns marked with the instrumental are often used in the plural, as in Poszliśmy lasami (We-walked-PERF forests-INSTR, "We were/started walking through forests"). The intro-

goal-ori


33

duction of the plural has the effect of broadening the region, and is usually interpreted to mean that the walk took a long time, and/or that the walkers were in and out of the forest as they walked. This addition, however, does not affect the overall 'region-as-path' construal. The instrumental 'path' is not necesarily more specified even if the noun denotes a region which is canonically used with a certain orientation. For instance, a noun like droga ("road") represents a region of a specific shape which is typically used to get from one place to another. To put it simply, roads are perfect examples of paths, and their users move either along them or across them. This is reflected in the fact that sentences such as Żołnierze maszerowali drogą (Soldiers were-marching road-INSTR, "The soldiers were marching along the road") are conventionally interpreted to mean that the soldiers were moving along the road. However, the instrumental itself does not imply the direction of the movement, as we can see in the sentence Wąż pełzł drogą (Snake was-crawling road-INSTR, "The snake was crawling on the road"), which does not carry any information about the actual path of the snake's motion. All we know is that the snake was moving within the region delineated as 'the road'. The instrumental is sometimes (though admittedly rarely) used to indicate motion with respect to concepts which are not easily construed as regions. One such example is the noun powietrze ("air"), which is in fact sometimes conceptualized as a region which can be entered (consider The bird flew up into the air). If one says Zapach dymu płynął powietrzem (Smell smoke-GEN floated air-INSTR, "The smell of smoke floated through the air"), there is no indication of motion along a specific path; still, as in the remaining cases, the region itself defines the path travelled. It is interesting to compare the uses of the Polish instrumental with those of the instrumental in Russian, as described in Janda (1993). Janda discusses the Russian instrumental of setting (which includes space and time), such that the case ending appears on the nominal denoting a setting in which a nominative acts on an accusative. In the most typical examples of the instrumental of space, however, the action is described by a verb of motion. In Polish, at least in the examples I have considered, motion (expressed most naturally by the verb) is an indispensable part of the construal. The instrumental in Polish could not be used to mark the setting for an action not involving motion. In fact, it is most naturally used in the cases where the nominative (the subject) is moving, and it is difficult to find examples where the accusative (the object) is set in motion and the instrumental specifies the path. Perhaps a sentence such as Generał posłał nasz oddział górami (General-NOM sent our unit-ACC mountains-INSTR,

34

BARBARA DANCYGIER

"The general sent our unit via the mountains") could serve as an example, but in fact the accusative (the soldiers in our unit) is involved in self-propelled motion, rather than set in motion by the nominative (the general). It seems, then, that the concept of setting is not specific enough to adequately describe the use of the Polish instrumental, which involves motion via a region. At the same time, it should be clear from the discussion above that the concept of 'region-as-path' is not rich in semantic detail either. In fact, the instrumental would be the likely form to be chosen in portraying motion only if certain more specific elements of the spatial construal are missing. For example, if crossing the boundaries of the region becomes a part of the construal, the speaker will probably choose the preposition przez ("through, across"), while the use of the preposition po ("on the surface of, along, all over") will be more likely if the region involved in the motion can also be distinguished in terms of a topmost surface, or if the motion does not cross the boundaries of the region. That is, prepositions przez and po will not, in all likelihood, be used to indicate motion through the air (no surface, no boundaries to be crossed), while the instrumental will be less likely if we are describing a mouse running away from the cat and using a table-top as its route of escape (clear boundaries, elevated surface). On the other hand, if the region in question is the forest, all three uses are possible. The phrase przez las (through forest-ACC, "through the forest") can indicate either crossing the forest (as a whole region) or walking through the trees, being surrounded by the forest as you walk. In the latter case, the construal does not necessarily include the moment of crossing the forest boundary. The use with the preposition po, as in po lesie (all over forest-LOC, "all over the forest"), indicates motion within the region. Finally, the instrumental use, as in lasem (forest-INSTR, "via the forest"), will indicate being in the forest at least part of the way, and the context may enrich the interpretation in the direction of either przez or po construais. This, however, is possible thanks to the rich experiential basis of our use of the concept 'forest'. In view of the above remarks, it is not surprising that the more of the instrumental. The pair of direction nouns przód/tyl ("front/back") is used in Polish to mark the orientation of objects (e.g., przód/tył samochodu, "the front/back of the car"), but not of people; different words are also used to denote body parts. As a result, our front/back orientation in the surrounding space is conceptualized via the front and back regions adjacent


35

to the human body. However, the actual expressions motivated by the conceptualization are not always interpreted symmetrically. For example, the expression iść przodem (go front-INSTR) describes going in front of someone in the same direction (through the 'region' in front of them, which is moving along with the forward motion). On the other hand, a with your back (not your face) facing the direction of the motion (like a crayfish); in other words, this is walking through the 'region' behind you. Thus, both uses are based on the conceptualization of regions surrounding the human body, but in the former case the 'walker' walks in 'the front region of the person behind him', while in the latter he walks in his own 'back region'. Both uses are based on the instrumental's meaning of 'region-as-path', but also highly conventionalized.

mi

3.2

Case after two-way prepositions In the literature on Polish it has often been assumed that the choice of case marking for the noun following a preposition is largely arbitrary. It seems, however, that the use of case with particular prepositions is quite regular and compositionally significant. In the combinations considered cases such as the locative, the accusative, the genitive, and the instrumental are used with groups of prepositions to contribute similar aspects of meaning to the construal. Let us first consider the examples with direction nouns: (5) Ptak wzlecial w górę Bird flew in up-ACC "The bird flew up" (6) Patrzyłam na szybującego w górze ptaka I-was-looking at flying in up-LOC bird-ACC "I was looking at the bird flying above" The preposition in (5) and (6) is w ("in"), the most common either with the locative (as in (6), or with the accusative (as in (5)). The contrast between the uses of w with the two cases has often been described in terms of opposition between 'static' meanings, expressed by the locative, and 'dynamic' ones, expressed by the accusative. However, as (6) suggests, the contrast does not really consist in the presence or absence of motion. I

representa

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BARBARA DANCYGIER

want to argue that the accusative is used when the trajector has to cross the boundary of the region to enter it, while the locative is appropriate when the trajector is already contained within the landmark region. This is clearly the case for (5) and (6): in the former the bird starts flying and gains hight, thus entering the 'upper region', in the latter the bird that the speaker is watching is flying quite high already. Let us also note that in the case of (5), as in the cases discussed above, the region does not have any natural boundaries, but is delineated with respect to the moving agent's position. That is, the region above the bird's position before flying is the 'upper region' which the bird enters upon taking off. In (6), on the other hand, the bird continues its motion without changing the altitude in any significant way and is already 'up' from the point of the observer or its previous position. It can be argued, then, that the contrast between the accusative and the locative is not between 'motion' and 'lack of motion', but between 'entering the region' and 'location or motion within the region'. The nature of the contrast is the same in the case of another Type A preposition — na ("on"). By saying Weszłam na górę (I-went on up-ACC, "I went upstairs") the speaker describes the agent's motion from the lower to the upper part of the building, while a sentence such as Mieszkam na górze (I-live on up-LOC, "I live upstairs") locates the subject in the upper part without indicating motion from the contrasting lower region. 'Preposition + direction noun' combinations are used in a similar way to mark the orientation of other landmark nouns. For example, one can mark the 'upstream' and the 'downstream' part of the river by using appropriate prepositions and direction nouns, and by choosing case according to the rules outlined above. Thus, a sentence such as Poszliśmy dalej w górę/dół rzeki (We-went farther in up-ACC/down-ACC river-GEN. "We went farther up/down the river") talks about motion (into and in the upper/lower part of the river), while a sentence like Miasto leży w górze/dole rzeki (Town lies in up-LOC/down-LOC river-GEN, "The town is up/down the river") locates the town in relation to the parts of the river defined with respect to the position of the speaker. Type A prepositions are used in essentialy the same way with most nouns denoting regions. For example, nouns like las ("forest") are freely used with either case pattern (so that we can say both Byliśmy w lesie (We-were in forest-LOC, "We were in the forest") and Weszliśmy w las (We-went in forest-ACC, "We went into the forest")). Perhaps less construais.

typical


37

The contrast between the uses of w requiring the locative and those where the accusative is appropriate is best represented in those cases in which the region in question does not have very clear boundaries. However, if the region can be construed as having strict boundaries, and especially if it invites the concept of containment, only the locative variant is acceptable with w. Consequently, we can talk about someone being w pokoju (in room-LOC, "in the room"), but the form ??w pokój (in room-ACC) is inappropriate. The form w + ACC with nouns denoting bounded regions and containers is considered archaic now, and can be found only in the uses where traditional form has been preserved, as in proverbs or old texts. It is understood, however, similarly to the modern use with unbounded regions — to denote entering the region. When w + ACC form is inappropriate, motion into the region will be described with the preposition do ("to") and the genitive case marking. The main difference between w + ACC on the one hand and do + GEN on the other is that the former describes crossing the boundary into a region without specifying whether any distance (path) had to be covered prior to entering, while the latter adds a path/goal component to the 'entering the region' part. That is, it enriches the conceptualization with the image of covering a certain path to get to the goal (the goal is then located within the region considered). Do receives a genitive case marking and belongs to a different group of prepositions, which I will refer to as Type B. These are prepositions such as do ("to") and od ("from"), which are understood as inherently dynamic, which typically involve path/goal and source/path construais, and which accept only the genitive case marking for the nouns they precede. (7) Podrzuciłam piłkę do góry I-threw ball to up-GEN "I threw the ball up" In (7), which uses a direction noun góra, the goal of throwing the ball is to send it, along a predictable trajectory, into the 'upper region'. This use differs from the w + ACC cases discussed above in that the trajector follows the path leading upwards, rather than immediately entering the region perceived as higher than the initial position. The contrast between the dynamic construais offered by w and do is the first case we have seen so far where the concepts such as boundedness, three-dimensionality, or containment play an important role in the choice of

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the preposition. It is interesting to note, then, that both w + ACC and do + GEN can appear in phrases with direction nouns, even though direction nouns do not seem to impose any a priori characterization of the regions they represent. In fact, as we could see above, the only boundary that seems to be relevant in the standard case is the reference point established with respect to the moving subject (or the speaker) which separates the 'up' from 'down' or 'front' from 'back'. If there are other boundaries, they are imposed by other elements of the construal, rather than by the direction nouns themselves. As a result, the image of a path involved in the construais motivated by do is often much less clearly present in the interpretations of phrases with direction nouns than in the phrases using other, more specific landmark nouns. For example, the interpretation of Spojrzałam w górę (I-looked in up-ACC, "I looked up") is very close to the understanding of Spojrzałam do góry (I-looked to up-GEN, "I looked up"). This is because in such a case 'entering the region' and 'a path leading into the region' mean practically the same thing. The contrast between w + ACC and do + GEN is clearer in the cases of nouns representing regions with more specific characteristics. The sentence Poszliśmy w las (We went in forest-ACC, "We entered the forest") suggests that the people referred to walked until they found themselves in the forest, and continued their walk within its boundaries. The central aspect of the interpretation is that they are now in the forest, walking in it, but not across it, and that getting to the forest was not the primary goal of the trip. For comparison, Poszliśmy do lasu (We went to forest-GEN, "We went to the forest") presents the forest as the goal of the walk, reached along a certain path. The contrast is also seen in the inappropriateness of using do with some nouns which accept w. For example, we have a phrase strzelać w powietrze (shoot in air-ACC, "fire a shot into the air"), which seems to be acceptable thanks to the fact that such shooting has no aim, that the path the bullet travels does not matter, and that we are surrounded by air (so the bullet does not have to 'reach the air' along any path. The same factors seem to account for the fact that a phrase such as ??strzelać do powietrza (shoot to air-GEN, "shoot at air") requires a rather unlikely construal whereby the air is the target. In other cases, the contrast gives rise to interesting conventional collocations. For example, iść do miasta (go to town-GEN) is interpreted as taking a special trip downtown from a suburb or a less central area of the city, while iść w miasto (go in town-ACC) is


39

used to describe wandering around the city, exploring it. The latter use does not imply the stage of reaching the area (no path), and focuses on 'being in', rather than on 'getting to'. As I observed above, direction nouns do not carry any built-in information concerning boundedness or dimensionality. Consequently, they are not used with the third set of basic prepositions, Type C, which are mainly used to talk about three-dimensional landmarks; they are prepositions like przed/za ("in front of/behind") and nad/pod ("above/under"). Type  prepositions also show the static/dynamic contrast through case: the former is marked by the instrumental, the latter again by the accusative. (8) Schowałam się za drzewo / I-hid myself behind tree-ACC / Byłam schowana za drzewem I-was hidden behind tree-INSTR "I hid myself behind a tree / I was hidden behind a tree" As in the cases analysed above, the case marking is making a consistent contribution to the meaning of the spatial expression overall. In the accusative variant of (8), the case indicates again that the landmark noun is a goal to reach in order to be able to hide, the preposition locates the hiding place with respect to the landmark noun. The conceptualization behind the use of the instrumental, for comparison, is that the hearer's vision or thought has to travel an imagined path around, above, or case of 'fictive motion', as described by Talmy 1996). The instrumental thus seems to be consistently used to introduce the concept of a path, but, contrary to the genitive, it does not involve the concept of a goal. It was pointed out to me that the use of the instrumental in the way exemplified in (8) may also be interpreted differently. Namely, it could perhaps be argued that the tree is in fact an instrument the subject uses to hide. However, this interpretation does not seem plausible. First of all, not all uses of the instrumental with za and other such prepositions require the presence of an agent in the construal and many are not compatible with any use of instruments. For example, za + INSTR would be appropriate with most verbs which are not motion verbs (which arises out of the primary static/dynamic contrast between the accusative and the instrumental with Type  prepositions). We could say, among others, that somebody was, slept, sat, ate, sang a song, or painted a picture behind a tree and in each

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case the form za + INSTR would be used. This is the reason why the second sentence in (8) is in the passive voice, for the active voice variant implies motion to the hiding place. Also, if the instrumental were to mean 'instrument' here, why would the first sentence use the accusative to do the same? Secondly, it might be interesting to note that verbs involving 'fictive motion' belong with the dynamic construal, not the static one. That is, in order to say I looked behind the tree in Polish one would have to use za + ACC, not za + INSTR. The difference is that in the accusative case it is the subject's vision that has to reach behind the tree, while in the instrumental case, it is the hearer's. It seems, then, that the interpretation of the phrase is quite specific in this case. Finally, there are examples of the uses with za where the meaning of the instrumental seems more directly related to the 'region-as-path' interpretation I described in section 3.1. In the sentence Mieszkam za lasem (I-live behind forest-SING-INSTR, 'I live over the forest") the forest is easily conceptualized as a region (possibly as a three-dimensional region) and as a path to be travelled (mentally) to establish where the subject lives. Furthermore, the similarity is even clearer in the use of the instrumental with plural nouns. When one describes something as being za lasami (behind forests-INSTR, "over many forests, far away"), the use of the instrumental is almost identical to the one we saw in the phrases like iść lasami (walk forests-INSTR, "walk through many forests"), where the noun lasami indicates that the walking covered a long distance and part of the route led through the forest, but the length of the walk is unspecified and the 'regions' passed on the way are not clearly conceptualized at all. There is practically no difference in the way lasami is understood on its own or with za, while the difference in the understanding of the path (physical motion versus fictive motion) arises on the basis of the absence or presence of the preposition. To sum up, the choice of case after prepositions of all three types makes a consistent meaning contribution to the spatial expression overall. Thus, Type A prepositions always require the locative in the so-called static uses to denote the landmark region; they always require the accusative in the so-called dynamic uses - this seems to indicate that the trajector enters the landmark region. For Type B, the case required is the genitive, and the description of motion through space involves path/goal or source/path structure. Finally, Type  prepositions use either the accusative (in essentially the same sense as in Type A phrases), or the instrumental (which marks a mental path leading to the location). Consequently, the instrumental


41

can be seen as consistently marking the concept of a path - whether in prepositional phrases or in other spatial construais. 4.

Metaphorical extensions The construais outlined above to describe the primary uses of basic prepositions are further extended into non-spatial domains. Not surprisingly, the most common domain of metaphorical extension is time, but specific construais of spatial regions are also involved in describing states or activities. In the present section I will review several mappings, to show how spatial interpretation motivates the non-spatial one. First, it is interesting to note that the spatial regions usually marked by the direction nouns, which organize our basic spatial orientation, can also be interpreted in a metaphorical way. (9) Ty pójdziesz górą a ja doliną You go-FUT mountain-INSTR while I valley-INSTR "You'll go up the mountain, I'll go down the valley" Sentence (9) is a line from a song where a boy and a girl separate and decide to go through life their different ways (the interpretation is similar to the well know line from "Loch Lommond": I'll take the high road, you'll take the low road). The regions associated with the words 'mountain' and 'valley', used in the 'path' instrumental, suggest taking two different It is almost trivial to observe that spatial expressions are often metaphorically extended to describe time and it is by now a well recognized fact that prepositions are used to express temporal relations (for some observations concerning prepositions in Polish see Kochańska 1996). It is thus not surprising that the use of case which marks a certain spatial construal can also be extended into the domain of time. In the sentence Nie lubię spacerować nocą (Not I-like to-walk night-INSTR, "I don't like to walk at night") the instrumental reinterprets the 'time-region' (the night) in the same way as in the case of space. It is in fact common for nouns denoting major units of time (such as an hour, a week, a month, a year) to be used in the plural and with the instrumental, marking (as in the spatial cases) to indicate the speaker's annoyance with the length of time spent working towards the goal (as in the case of spatial uses of the instrumental achieving a goal is not part of the construal). For example, one can describe working on a project for a long time by saying Pracowałem nad tym

dir

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godzinami / tygodniami / miesiącami / latami (I-worked over this hours-INSTR / weeks-INSTR / months-INSTR / years-INSTR, "I spent hours / weeks / months / years working on this"). Interestingly enough, the word czas ("time") itself can also be used with the instrumental. The singular form has the meaning similar to 'occasionally, by chance', while the plural is closer to 'from time to time'. Both uses seem to refer to 'time' as 'any point or section of the time axis' and conceptualize units of time as regions in space. Many of the spatial construais described in section 2 motivate temporal uses where units of time are conceptualized similarly to spatial regions. That is, we can talk about seeing a doctor once a month using the expression raz w miesiącu (once in month-LOC), thereby locating the event anywhere in the region represented by the word miesiąc. The pattern w + ACC is also used to mark entering temporal units, as in wkroczyć w nowy miesiąc (enter in new month-ACC, "start a new month"). Perhaps the most interesting use, though, is that of za + ACC, as in wyjeżdżamy za miesiąc (we-leave behind month-ACC, "we leave in a month")· The use of the accusative and the preposition suggest motion through time until we (mentally) reach a point beyond the suggested 'temporal region' (a month). The contrasts among w + LOC, w + ACC, and do + GEN give rise to interesting construais in the domain of states and activities. For example, we śnie (in sleep-LOC) describes a person in the state ('region') of being asleep (via the STATES ARE LOCATIONS metaphor). Zapaść w sen (fall in sleep-ACC, "fall asleep"), for comparison, represents an inception of the state via the 'entering the region' construal represented by the w + ACC pattern. Finally, ułożyć się do snu (lie oneself to sleep-GEN, "lie down to be able to fall asleep") uses the path/goal structure of the spatial construal to represent taking steps to reach/enter the state ('region'). Similar extensions can be found in descriptions of activities. An activity noun like taniec ("dancing") can represent a landmark region in a number of different prepositional phrases. W tańcu (in dancing-LOC, "while dancing") describes just the 'goings-on' within the landmark region/activity, as in Uśmiechała się w tańcu (She-was-smiling herself in dancing-LOC, "She was smiling while dancing"). W taniec (in dancing-ACC, "into dancing") also involves the stage of beginning the activity, just as it involves entering the region in the spatial use (as in Poszli w taniec [They-went in dancing-ACC, "They started dancing"]). Finally, do tańca (into dancing-GEN) maps the path/goal structure onto taking steps to enter


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an activity, as in Zagrali do tańca (They-played-PERF to dancing-GEN, "They started playing so that people could dance"). Finally, it is interesting to note that nouns which are ambiguous between spatial and other meanings use preposition + case combinations in the way which matches each of the meanings independently. For example, a noun like droga ("road") is commonly used with the instrumental (drogą [road-INSTR, "along the road"] or with prepositions like na ("on"), przy ("by"), or phrases like po drugiej stronie ("on the other side/across"). Such construais are clearly related to the salient aspects of the spatial configuration of a road: being a path, having a surface, being bounded on two sides. However, when the meaning of the word is extended into the concept of 'travel', it is now conceptualized broadly as a region, and expressions such as w drogę (in road-ACC), w drodze (in road-LOC), or do drogi (to road-GEN) are used to describe aspects of travel. Thus w drogę (in road-ACC) indicates starting on one's way (entering the travel 'region'), w drodze (in road-LOC) represents being in the process of travelling (in the travel 'region'), while do drogi (to road-GEN), as in przygotować się do drogi ("get ready for travelling"), indicates the steps (the path) one needs to take to begin travelling (enter the travel 'region'). 5.

Conclusion I hope to have shown, then, that there are three subsystems responsible for spatial construais in Polish: direction nouns, prepositions, and case. Each of the subsystems makes a consistent meaning contribution to the spatial construal represented by the expression. Elements of the subsystems can be combined in different (though well defined) ways, but each of the possible configurations receives its interpretation on the basis of the contribution each of the systems makes. References Ameka, Felix K. 1995. "The Linguistic Construction of Space in Ewe." Cognitive Linguistics 6:2/3.139-182. Brecht, Richard D. & James S. Levine, eds. 1986. Case in Slavic. Columbus, Ohio: Slavica Publishers. Cienki, Alan J. 1989. Spatial Cognition and the Semantics of Prepositions in English, Polish, and Russian. München: Verlag Otto Sagner. Cuyckens, Hubert. 1984. "At: a Typically English Preposition". Papers and Studies in Contrastive Linguistics 19.49-64.

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Dąbrowska, Ewa. 1994. "Radial Categories in Grammar: the Polish Instrumental Case". Linguistica Silesiana 15.83-94. . 1997. Cognitive Semantics and the Polish Dative. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Janda, Laura. 1986. A Semantic Analysis of the Russian Verbal Prefixes za-, pere-, do-, do- and ot-. München: Verlag Otto Sagner. . 1993. A Geography of Case Semantics: the Czech Dative and the Russian Instrumental. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Kochańska, Agata. 1996. "Temporal Meanings of Spatial Prepositions in Polish: the Case of przez and w". In: The Construal of Space in Language and Thought, eds. Martin Pütz & René Dirven, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 491-508. Langacker, Ronald W. 1991. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar. Vol II: Descriptive Applications. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Serra-Borneto, Carlo. 1997. "Two-way Prepositions in German: Image and Constraints". In: Lexical and Syntactical Constructions and the Construction of Meaning, eds. Marjolijn Verspoor, Kee Dong Lee & Eve Sweetser, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 187-204. Sinha, Chris & Tania Kuteva. 1994. "Distributed Spatial Semantics". Paper presented at LAUD International Symposium on Language and Space, Duisburg, March 1994. Smith, Michael B. 1987. The Semantics of Dative and Accusative in German. Ph.D. dissertation. San Diego: UCSD. . 1993. "Cases as Conceptual Categories: Evidence from German". In: Conceptualization and Mental Processing in Language, eds. R.A.Geiger & . Rudzka-Ostyn, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 531-565. . 1995. "Semantic Motivation vs. Arbitrariness in Grammar: Toward a More General Account of the DAT/ACC Contrast With German Two-way Prepositions". Insights in Germanic Linguistics: Methodology and Transition, 293-323. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Sysak-Borońska, Maria. 1975. "Some Remarks on the Spatio-Relative System in English and Polish". Papers and Studies in Contrastive Linguistics 3.185-208. . 1980. The Spatial System in English and Polish: Prepositions of Direct Location. Ph.D. dissertation. Katowice, Poland: University of Silesia. Talmy, Leonard. 1983. "How Language Structures Space". Spatial Orientation: Theory, Research, and Application, eds. Herbert L. Pick & Linda P. Acredolo, New York: Plenum Press: 225-282.


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— . 1996. "Fictive Motion in Language and 'Ception'". Language and Space, eds. Paul Bloom, Mary Peterson, Lynn Nadel & Merrill Garrett, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 211-275.

Case Meaning and Sequence of Attention Source Landmarks as Accusative and Dative Objects of the Verb Robert B. Dewell Loyola University, New Orleans, U.S.A.

1.

Introduction This paper will examine a set of source-path constructions in German and English with an eye toward isolating the semantic contribution of the grammatical cases. It will pay particular attention to some semantically unusual constructions in which the flow of energy and motion in the event being described does not coincide completely with the flow of our focal attention as we construe the event. On the basis of these constructions we will be able to isolate meanings for the cases at the level of prominence relations, a level which is more abstract than their obvious prototypical instantiations in terms of semantic roles (agent, patient, experiencer, and so on). The key to the analysis will be a more explicitly dynamic conception of prominence relations than those previously proposed. Case meaning and shifting prominence relations Langacker (1991) proposes schematic meanings for the clausal subject and direct object, and thus for the nominative and accusative cases that signal them, in terms of relative prominence: the nominative signals the 'primary clausal figure', while the accusative signals the 'secondary clausal figure'. These abstract grammatical relations are 'a matter of construal rather than conceptual content' (1991:312), and they underlie more specific prototypical instantiations as agents and patients respectively. On the other hand Langacker (1991:324-9) analyzes dative indirect objects without a schematic meaning based on prominence relations. They are characterized in terms of the semantic role of an 'active experiencer in the target domain', with the prototypical experiencer role frequently blending with that of recipient (or possessor). When Langacker speaks of 'primary' and 'secondary' figures, he is referring to a static, hierarchical rank ordering of relative prominence — i.e., the clausal subject is the principal figure in the clause and the direct object ranks next in importance. If I understand him correctly, both the subject and the object are in the focal 'spotlight' throughout the construal (1991:301), but the light constantly shines more brightly on the subject. 1.1

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The terms 'primary' and 'secondary' potentially suggest another meaning, though — namely that the subject and direct object are the 'first' and 'second' clausal figures in the construal. It is not fully clear what role the notion of temporal sequence plays in Langacker's analysis of prominence relations, but he apparently considers it to be a matter of conceptual content. In other words, the entity profiled by the subject typically precedes the entity profiled by the object in the temporal flow of the action chain, but temporal sequence does not play an essential role in the figure/ground construal itself. Even when Langacker (1991:293) characterizes the nominative subject as the 'starting point' for a 'natural path' from primary figure to secondary figure to ground, he apparently has in mind a static relationship that does not change during the construal. In this paper I want to suggest that the spotlight of focal attention can shift during the course of construing an event, independently of the action chain, and that we need to keep a temporal dimension in mind when we speak of prominence relations. We may begin a construal focused centrally on one entity as the primary figure while another entity has secondary prominence, but then transfer our focal attention during the course of the construal so that the original secondary figure takes over primary prominence. Shifting from the spotlight metaphor, we can think of construing an event as watching a motion picture in which we control the camera (and thus the size and relative centrality and focus of the entities in view). Now it is possible to isolate single images in freeze-frame, 'synchronically' so to speak, so that each will have its own prominence relations. If we then compare frames we may note that 'diachronic' changes occur in relative prominence as well as in the content of the event being described. To make explicit this distinction between static synchronic prominence relations and a diachronic sequence of focal attention, I will avoid the word 'primary' and speak of participants that attract either 'central' or 'secondary' focus in a frame or a series of frames, paying particular attention to a comparison of the 'initial' and 'final' images of the construal. Thus we can entertain the hypothesis that the nominative subject designates an entity with 'initial central' focus, and the accusative direct object an entity that acquires 'final central' focus.1 Moreover, once we have added a temporal dimension to prominence relations a plausible schematic meaning emerges for dative indirect objects as well (i.e., as a grammatical relation underlying specific semantic roles such as active experiencer, recipient or possessor). Specifically, I will suggest in the final section of the paper that the indirect object is a participant with constant 'secondary' focus outside the sequential flow of central focal attention (i.e., it is the dative that is defined

CASE MEANING AND SEQUENCE OF ATTENTION

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mainly in terms of secondary prominence independent of the temporal dimension of construal). 2.

Trajector-centered source paths To set the stage for the constructions that require us to separate the flow of focal attention from the flow of energy in the action chain being described, we will begin with some normal source-path descriptions in which the two sequences are in harmony. Imagine the events described in (1) and (2) as if you were watching a film of schematically structured images — a film with a beginning, an end, and a variable number of images in between, ordered according to the temporal and force-dynamic flow of an action chain. (1) Bill Bill (2) Bill Bill

came out of the house. ist aus dem Haus gekommen. came out. ist herausgekommen.

The trajector (TR) Bill is in central focus at the beginning of the construal, and he remains so as he moves steadily downstream in space and time. As we construe the event, we simply follow Bill as he moves in a straightforward trajectory away from his original location. The concluding image (the resulting state) of the event as described has Bill as its central focus, just as the opening image did. As for the source-landmark (LM) house, it can be specified obliquely in a PP as in (1) or gapped altogether in a construction with a source-path particle such as off, out, or away (or German ab-, aus-, or weg-), as in (2). Either way, it is relegated to peripheral status relative to Bill. We focus primarily on Bill throughout the construal, and as he moves away from the house it fades progressively into the periphery, left behind where Bill used to be. Once Bill has reached his new location, that is where our focus is and the house is 'history'. 2.1

Source paths with an accusative subTR The situation is more complicated in transitive constructions such as (3)-(4) since the initial focal participant is the agent Helmut, who enters the construal before the letter does and, in these particular examples, continues to participate in the event all the way to the end of the construal (i.e., he never releases the letter). So the letter never receives the kind of exclusive focus that the intransitive source-path TR did in (1)-(2). Still, it is fair to say that the

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letter does become the most central entity in the construal as soon as it begins to move — it becomes a figure in its own right, the TR of a source path. (As the final image of the construal you might focus almost exclusively on the letter with Helmut extremely marginalized, the way you would if the agent were left upstream in a sentence like 'Helmut threw the letter out the window into a puddle'; but you could not focus almost exclusively on Helmut with the letter marginalized at the end.) (3) Helmut took the letter out of the drawer. Helmut nahm den Brief aus der Schublade. (4) Helmut took the letter out. Helmut nahm den Brief heraus. As far as the source path itself is concerned, the constructions in (3)-(4) are not essentially different from (1)-(2), except that the source-path TR (the letter) is now a subTR (Langacker 1987:268-9) and the source-path LM (the drawer) is now a subLM. We follow the letter's path just as we followed Bill in the intransitive constructions. The resulting state is a new location for the letter. As for the source LM (the drawer), it can be specified in exactly the same patterns as in (1)-(2): it can appear obliquely in a source PP as in (3), or it can be gapped in the presence of a source-path particle as in (4). The drawer is only peripherally relevant to the resulting state; it is left somewhere upstream as part of the 'history' of the construal. In all the sentences of (1)-(4), the conceptual flow of our focal attention is in harmony with the objective flow of energy and motion being described. Our attention focuses steadily on a nominative TR until it transfers energy to a subTR, in which case we focus steadily on that subTR until the end of the event. Everything about the construal moves, merrily merrily, down the stream. 3.

LM-centered source paths Things change in sentences such as (5)-(9), though, in ways that highlight the distinctive semantic contribution of grammatical cases to the construal of an event. (5) George peeled the apple. George schälte den Apfel. (6) Ronald deiced the windshield. Ronald enteiste die Windschutzscheibe.


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(7) Willy wiped off the table. Willy wischte den Tisch ab. (8) Ike cleared the table (of dishes). Ike räumte den Tisch ab. (9) Kurt Georg unpacked the suitcase. Kurt Georg packte den Koffer aus. The denominal constructions in (5) and (6), for example, describe events which are essentially like those in (3)-(4): an agent (George) removes a subTR (the peel) from a subLM (the apple). The same can be said for the combination of a 'wipe' verb with a source-path particle and an accusative source LM in (7),2 'clear' verbs with an accusative source LM as in (8),3 and other verbs such as the one in (9). In fact, (7)-(9) all have accusative-subTR alternations with the same verb, as in (10)-(12). (10) Willy wiped the crumbs off (of the table). Willy wischte die Krümel vom Tisch/ (vom Tisch) ab. (11) Ike cleared the dishes (from the table). Ike räumte die Teller ab. (12) Kurt Georg unpacked the clothes (from the suitcase). Kurt Georg packte die Kleider (aus dem Koffer) aus. Despite the similarity of events, however, (5)-(9) are interpreted quite differently from the constructions with an accusative source-path TR. 'Removing the peel from an apple' describes doing something to the peel, and the resulting state focuses primarily on the peel's new location; 'peeling an apple' describes doing something to the apple, and the resulting state is a state of the apple, which holds center stage at the conclusion of the event as construed. Similar comments can be made comparing (7)-(9) with (10)-(12). In effect (3)-(4) and (10)-(12) on the one hand, and (5)-(9) on the other, represent two opposed strategies for imagining a source path: a TR-centered strategy in which we follow the moving TR sequentially through space and time from the source location to somewhere else; and a LM-centered strategy in which we hold a bounded spatial setting constantly at the center of our attention and watch the TR leave that frame gradually without conceptually leaving it ourselves. If you think about it, though, the LM-centered strategy of (5)-(9) is a strained one. To interpret (9), for example, we are aware of a path in which

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the clothes move (gradually) away from the suitcase; but at the point when they begin to draw our attention away from the suitcase, we have to resist the tendency to follow the moving objects. We loop back instead to hold the suitcase ultimately at the center of our attention — a construal process I'll refer to as a separation loop. As for the clothes, they move into the periphery and become marginalized; they are out of the picture at the end, much as the subLM was out of the picture at the end of the TR-centered paths. Now it is the clothes which have become interpreted history at the end; but they are downstream history, which is an odd concept. In sum, when we have finished understanding sentences like (5)-(9), we are focused at a place upstream from the final location of the only moving entity in the source-path image. Our construal is in harmony with the flow of energy from Kurt Georg to the (contents of the) suitcase, but it does not continue on from there to follow the clothes' trajectory away from the suitcase. At the end of the construal we are 'going against the flow' of space and time, resisting the momentum of objective motion, and ultimately focusing on an upstream resulting state. While the source-path TR is floating downstream, we are conceptually swimming back upstream to remain with the source-path LM. 3.1

The 'end at the accusative' principle I want to suggest that we construe the events described in sentences like (5)-(9) in the odd way that we do because the accusative case directs us to do so. Its core schematic meaning is roughly: At some point in the construal of the event, shift the central focus from the nominative subject to the accusative direct object, and conclude the construal that way. In the case of constructions involving separation loops, this means we are not allowed to leave the accusative object behind as interpreted history even if it is a source LM. In normal transitive path descriptions such as those in (3)-(4), the role of the grammatical cases is not particularly obvious since we would naturally construe the event that way anyway. The sequence of focal attention converges with the intrinsic action-chain dynamics, so we don't need grammatical case to tell us to conclude the construal with our attention focused on the direct object (especially given English word order). In constructions requiring a separation loop, however, something in the sentence has to direct us to the marked LM-centered reading. 3.2

Relative salience and boundedness Sentences like (5)-(9) are subtle examples, however, because the source-path TR is marginalized. It takes unusual mental effort to become aware that these sentences describe a source path at all, because we tend to think only


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of a flow of energy from the agent to the source-path LM. For example, we tend to imagine that someone who unpacks a suitcase is manipulating the suitcase directly rather than the clothes, and that sentence (9) simply describes an action chain from the agent to the suitcase and nothing more. In other words we construe the accusative object to be the tail of the action chain for the complete event being described, even when it is not. Generally speaking, the constructions in (5)-(9) only occur when the subtrajectory can be marginalized in this way by concentrating primarily on a flow of energy from the agent to the direct object. The source-path TRs — the apple peel of (5), the ice in (6), the dirt, crumbs, liquid or whatever was wiped off in (7), the cleared dishes of (8), the unpacked clothes etc. of (9) — do not have bounds of their own, because that would make them distinct from the accusative LM. They are construed as distributed TRs that 'fill' the whole source-path-LM space at the beginning of the construal.4 When they depart, they do so gradually in a diffuse path, ultimately disappearing vaguely into the margins of the scene as we hold our focus steadily on the LM space they are vacating. If the thing being removed were a clearly separate entity from the source LM, the accusative-subTR constructions in (3)-(4) and (10)-(12) would be called for. By the same token, the accusative LM is the only entity with its own independent shape involved in the source path as described. To be in central focus at the end of the construal, it needs to be a setting within whose bounds the source path is construed to take place. In other words, it is the accusative counterpart to a setting-subject that hosts an internal source-path process (cf. 'The snake shed its skin', 'The bathtub drained slowly'). It follows, then, that source-path descriptions with a salient bounded TR and a salient separately bounded accusative LM are hard to find, since they would force us to shift our attention back upstream away from a focal TR moving downstream. The action chain would be in obvious opposition to the sequence of focal attention. We will see in section 4 that occasional examples do occur, though, illustrating the semantic contribution of the accusative case in a more unmistakable way. 4. Nominative source-path TRs with accusative source LMs 4.1 Nominative distributed TRs: vacating an area Clear and empty (and German raümen) can also be used on rare occasions with a distributed subject that is the source-path TR, as opposed to an agent removing a gapped source-path subTR.

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(13) ?The audience emptied the auditorium. ?Die Zuschauer räumten den Saal. The constructions are problematic, though, because the subject is more commonly read as a normal causal agent as in (8) (cf. 'The audience emptied the auditorium of debris'). Evacuate and vacate, which also lexicalize a resulting state of vacancy (complete departure by a distributed TR), are somewhat more normal with a source-path-TR subject. (14) The troops evacuated the area. (15) The tenants vacated the building. There is still ambiguity, though, since evacuate and vacate are also used with a bounded subject construed as a causal agent removing a gapped source-path TR (e.g. 'The general evacuated the area')· The subject is often metonymically included in a distributed set together with something such as possessions ('Gerald vacated the premises/ the apartment').5 To the extent that (14)-(15) do in fact have nominative source-path TRs, they provide excellent examples of separation loops with salient TRs (albeit construed as distributed and without clear separate bounds), and with direct-object source LMs that can scarcely be characterized as patients. All of the motion being described is away from the accusative direct object, yet we still conclude our construal of the event focused on the accusative and its resulting state.

4.2 Nominative bounded TRs and accusative participants: abandoning Sentences such as (16), with verbs like abandon and desert, elicit a separation loop even though the nominative source-path TR is a bounded individual. Jimmy is syntactically specified like the TR of the TR-centered constructions in (1)-(2); he has his own clear bounds and shape independent of the LM. That makes it difficult to interpret (16) with a simple LM-centered reading. Wc in effect focus on an abstract space with the children at its center and imagine a resulting state that they are left 'in' after the TR departs. (Compare 'Jimmy left his children alone'.) (16) Jimmy abandoned his children. Jimmy verließ seine Kinder.


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Sentences like (16) are particularly strong evidence for the 'end at the accusative' principle. We are forced to turn our attention back from a highly salient and moving subject and focus squarely on the upstream source LM at the end. Such sentences also strain the notion of 'patient', since the flow of energy is all away from the children (even as our focal attention moves toward them). 4.3 Atypical accusatives: leaving a place Sentences such as (16) are relatively uncommon, however, no doubt because the action chain and the sequence of focal attention are so strikingly at odds. A more entrenched construction that is superficially similar is illustrated in (17)-(18), namely the straightforward 'leaving' type with the verbs leave and verlassen and their synonyms (including depart and exit). Although 'abandoning' variants like 'Jimmy left his wife' are still possible, most 'leaving' constructions take LMs that directly describe the place itself rather than a participant that metonymically defines an associated space. These constructions cause difficulties for any approach to the meaning of the accusative. (17) Harry left the house by the back door/ at 8:00. Harry verließ das Haus durch den Hinterausgang/ um 8 Uhr. (18) Lyndon left school. Lyndon verließ die Schule. The significant difference between (16) and (17)-(18) is readily apparent in the behavior of the English sentences. (17)-(18) can take a pure place expression like here or there in the direct-object slot: contrast 'Harry left here an hour ago' with *'Jimmy abandoned here' (or *'George peeled here' or *'Willy wiped off here'). Their LMs are construed to be substantially unaffected by the event: the house itself is not changed because Harry left it, whereas Jimmy's children are definitely affected by being abandoned (compare 'an abandoned child' with the absurdity of an adjectival passive participle like *'a left school'). They also do not normally take passive: contrast *?'The house was left an hour ago/ by the rear door' with 'Rosalyn was left by her husband' or 'The children were abandoned by their parents'. Moreover, these constructions have intransitive counterparts ('Harry departed', 'Harry left from home'), which was not the case with abandoning (*'Jimmy abandoned', *'Jimmy left from his children').

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Simply put, the 'direct objects' of (17)-(18) are not very good direct objects. We do not really end our construal of the event focused centrally on the accusative source LM. (For the accusative to become the focal center it has to become a subTR participant, as in augmented resultative constructions like 'leave the house in shambles'.)6 On the other hand, (17)-(18) do not really violate the 'end at the accusative' principle either. We may not wind up looking squarely at the house as a whole bounded entity, but we cannot leave the house behind as interpreted history, either — i.e., we do not follow Harry's further path downstream (cf. 'Harry left from the house'). The event as described is a punctual interaction frozen at the moment of separation. It ends, without a clear resulting-state image, at the moment when our attention would otherwise be drawn away from the source LM. These constructions are semantically too complex to be treated adequately here, but I believe they are actually a special punctual case of a general type with an accusative pathway-LM. Compare 'walk the plank', 'run the course', 'drive the whole way', as well as 'swim two miles' — constructions with an intransitive verb of motion augmented to take an accusative that defines (delimits, 'contains') its whole path, so that the construction describes the interaction between a path and a pathway.7 There is a kind of fusion between the nominative TR and an accusative place LM that co-extends with its trajectory, reflecting the general lack of a clear distinction between a 'path' as the sequential motion of a TR and a 'path' as the route the TR follows (or the pre-existing linear-shaped surface the TR is in contact with). The nominative subject and the accusative object share the central focus for the whole duration of the TR's path (and the accusative functions as an 'incremental theme' in the sense of Dowty 1991:567-571) — or more precisely, there is an ongoing interactive transfer of both energy and focal attention from the subject to the direct object (similar to more normal transitive constructions such as 'rub the surface'). Leave (like enter) is a marked variant of this type in two ways. To begin with, it incorporates the path type into the meaning of the verb, adopting the pattern of a 'verb-framed' language rather than the usual English 'satellite-framed' oblique specification (Talmy 1992). Moreover, its built-in path type specifies punctual separation at the moment the TR clears the bounds of the LM. In normal TR-centered intransitive constructions, that moment of separation is followed by a continued path away from the LM, but when leave occurs with an accusative LM the interpretation is effectively frozen at the moment of separation, since we cannot leave the accusative object behind. In effect then, sentences like (17)-(18) are coerced into the typical transitive pattern as a special variant.


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4.3.1 Accusative route-path LMs A similar kind of punctual separation reading occurs with sentences such as (19)-(20), in which the accusative object is a route-path LM (characterizing the path in terms of an intermediate point) rather than a source LM. (19) Jack overshot the intersection. Jack hat die Kreuzung überfahren. (20) Jack jumped the ditch. Jack hat den Graben übersprungen. Although we are fully aware that the bounded TR has moved past the LM, we still conclude our construal holding the accusative upstream LM in focus — a pronounced separation loop. The LM is an unaffected place, and these sentences are not prototypically 'transitive' (*?'The intersection was overshot'). Nevertheless, the accusative directs us not to leave the LM behind as interpreted history, and we tend to wind up with a punctual reading focused on the moment of separation from it. The direct object becomes a sort of participant that interacts with the TR, either because the TR aimed at it or because it is an obstacle (adversary) to be 'overcome'. Compare Dewell (1996). 5. Interactive separation, shared focus, and the dative 5.1 Escaping Up to this point, English and German have looked like twins. The two languages part company in interesting ways, though, when it comes to sentences like (21). (21) Ludwig escaped his captors/ pursuers. Ludwig ist seinen Verfolgern entkommen. On the surface, the English sentence looks like exactly the same syntactic pattern as the 'abandoning' sentence in (16). It is also like 'leaving a place' in that it relates to intransitive constructions ('Ludwig escaped from his captors'). As its German counterpart with a dative LM (and a sein-perfect) suggests, though, escaping is different from other kinds of leaving in ways that are obscured by the English syntactic pattern. In order to focus the discussion as clearly as possible, consider the minimal pair represented in (22), again construing the event in slow motion while noticing the prominence of the participants.

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(22) a. Ludwig abandoned his family. b. Ludwig escaped his family. When Ludwig abandons his family, we end up focused mainly on them and their situation after he has departed, much as we ultimately focused on the apple without its peel or the windshield without ice. It doesn't really matter exactly where Ludwig is now, as long as he is not with the family, because we have transferred our attention from him to his poor accusative victims in their new state. If Ludwig escapes his family, on the other hand, they do not stand still and they are anything but passive victims; they are construed to be active, moving participants that pursue him, or at least try to reach out to him and pull him back. Moreover — and this is what really separates escaping from abandoning — at the end of the escaping event we are still focused principally on Ludwig! We might even imagine him breathing a sigh of relief, free at last from his family's clutches. The family is still prominent in the picture, to be sure, but we have not transferred our central focus from Ludwig to them. In the final image of the construal the relative prominence of Ludwig and the family is unchanged since the beginning image. The principal focus is steadily on the nominative TR, and the source LM retains secondary focus as an additional participant. Put another way, (22b) is not prototypically transitive. It does not exactly violate the 'end at the accusative' principle by leaving the direct object behind as interpreted history, but it does not leave us focused centrally on it either. It is like the accusative-LM types discussed under (17)-(20), in that an atypical variant is being coerced into the transitive pattern; but now the direct object is a participant rather than a place. This semantic analysis is supported by the observation that there is no passive version of escaping ('His family was abandoned' is acceptable, *'His family was escaped' is not). Similarly, it is acceptable to say 'What Ludwig did to his family was abandon them', but not *'What Ludwig did to his family was escape them'. It is also worth mentioning that escape is restricted to an animate LM when it appears with an apparent direct object, while intransitive escape is not: Ludwig can escape from his captors or from jail, but he can't *'escape jail'. Moreover, if we augment (22a) to 'Ludwig abandoned his family to a life of solitude', the additional phrase clearly has the family and not Ludwig as its TR; (22b) does not readily admit such an expansion because we cannot leave the family behind as history at the end of the construal, but if it did we would certainly interpret *?' Ludwig escaped his family to a life of solitude' with Ludwig rather than his family as the TR of the additional phrase.


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The result of (22a) is an 'abandoned family', not an *'abandoned father'; the result of escaping, on the other hand, is not an *'escaped captor' but an 'escaped captive'. From the point of view of the speaker, the situation is roughly as follows. When we want to describe an escape so that it is not simply TR-centered like the intransitive expressions, we have no obvious alternative in English other than the transitive pattern of (22b). But that means we have to press the intended meaning into a syntactic mold that it does not completely fit. The 'accusative' is still there at the end of the interpretation, but it retains secondary status relative to the nominative TR. Interestingly, the closest we can come to capturing the relevant semantic distinctions explicitly in English is the creative use of a 'dative' object in a double-object construction such as (23).8 (23) Ludwig gave his pursuers the slip. 5.2 Shared-focus separation in German: 'ablative' ent-verbs with dative LMs While English is basically limited to a choice between two opposing syntactic constructions (an apparently transitive direct object or no non-oblique object at all), German offers a middle road via the dative construction in the German version of (21), further illustrated in (24)-(25). This construction is particularly associated with what Barbara Stiebels (1996) calls the 'ablative' ent-verbs, so that ent- again emerges as a form uniquely associated with a separation loop. The status of the nominative subject as the central focal participant throughout the path construal is reflected in the use of sein as the perfect auxiliary. (24) Dick ist seinen Wächtern entflohen. Dick is his guards (DAT) away-fled "Dick escaped (from) his guards." (25) Die Kassette ist seinen Händen entglitten. The cassette is his hands (DAT) away-slipped "The cassette slipped out of his hands." 5.3

How to 'steal' and 'rob' at the same time in German The additional German option is also available in transitive constructions such as (26)-(27), with an accusative subTR and a dative source subLM. Again the constructions are particularly associated with ablative ent-, although they also occur with plain base verbs such as nehmen and stehlen. The resulting

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state of (27) is primarily a new home for the letter, but it also includes an affected former owner as a secondary participant. (26) Sie hat dem Alten ihre Hand entzogen. She has the old man (DAT) her hand (ACC) away-pulled "She withdrew her hand from the old man." (27) Konrad hat ihr den Brief gestohlen. Konrad has her (DAT) the letter (ACC) stolen "Konrad stole the letter from her." The construction with a dative source LM still involves a kind of separation loop, but it does not require transferring our attention to the source LM and ignoring the source-path TR at the end. We only need to allow room in the final picture for an upstream dative participant that lags behind, still in the TR's wake. To describe similar events, English offers only the usual basic alternatives: either a TR-centered accusative-subTR pattern like (28) (Levin's 'steal' verbs), or a LM-centered accusative-subLM pattern like (29) that gaps the vanishing subTR (Levin's 'cheat' verbs). (28) Konrad stole the letter from her. (29) a. Konrad robbed her (of everything she had/ ??of the letter). b. Konrad relieved her of her duties. 5.4 A schematic meaning for the dative Smith (1993) offers a good schematic analysis of the German dative that can easily be adapted to the approach being proposed in this paper. He contrasts the 'asymmetry' characteristic of the clausal accusative with the 'bilateral involvement' of a clausal dative, which means that dative objects are simultaneously object-like (affected by the flow of energy in the action chain) and subject-like ('conceived to exert control over their immediate sphere of influence'). They are active participants that do something, something related to but separate from whatever the other TRs in the clause are doing. They may take possession ('ihm das Buch geben'), lose possession or control ('ihm das Buch nehmen', 'ihm entfliehen'), follow ('ihm vorausgehen/ vorangehen'), lead or be an ongoing target ('ihm folgen/ nachgehen', 'sich ihm nähern'), give orders ('ihm gehorchen'), carry on an activity assisted by the verb activity


61

('ihm helfen'), or simply undergo an internal reaction to a state of affairs they are aware of ('ihm kalt sein'). The core insights of Smith's analysis can be readily reformulated in terms of the sequence of focal attention. That is, the subject-like nature of dative participants reflects their presence as secondary participants at the beginning of the construal and their object-like nature reflects their continued presence as secondary participants at the conclusion of the construal. Dative objects lack the strong asymmetry of the nominative-accusative relationship because their secondary status is constant throughout the construal. They share the stage with the nominative and the accusative (if there is one), but they never compete with them for central focus. There are two main advantages to thinking of the dative's schematic meaning in terms of relative prominence with a temporal dimension. One is beyond the scope of this paper and w i l l be mentioned only in passing, namely that the analysis extends naturally to the objects of two-way prepositions as well (compare Smith 1993). That is, 'in dem Haus' with a dative object means that the house is constantly present as a locational L M throughout the construal, while 'in das Haus' is marked by the accusative case to mean the location is not a profiled part of the scene at the beginning of the construal but it becomes so at the conclusion. The other advantage is that the schematic meaning becomes clearly distinct from the conceptual content of the action chain, so that we are less apt to confuse the level of focal attention with that of prototypical instantiations. We especially need to avoid presuming that the dative's activity is particularly tied to a downstream position within the action chain, a presumption implicit in Langacker's 'target domain' and clearly evident in Smith's earlier work as well. For example, Smith (1985:395) speaks of dative participants whose 'further action' is a subsequent causal result of the main clausal action, occurring 'after being set in motion by the TR'. 9 It is admittedly tempting to think of dative participants primarily in terms of a downstream position in the action chain as long as we are thinking of prototypical transfers to a recipient, or possibly even of helping or feeling cold; but clearly the activity of the dative object is not downstream from the subject's action in examples with folgen or gehorchen, or with entfliehen, entkommen and entgleiten. The semantic fact is that the dative participant is there in the construal all along, not just near the end — or more precisely, it stands outside the main flow of central attention. Even in a prototypical sentence like 'Dick gave Gerald the keys', the dative recipient is a presence during the whole event, interacting with Dick and motivating his act. We begin with a scene that focuses centrally on Dick but also includes Gerald, and then we shift our principal focal attention from Dick to the keys, while Gerald

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retains his secondary focus. Contrast 'Dick gave the keys to Gerald', which really does introduce Gerald as a subsequent downstream subLM that appears only in the final stage of the construal. Dative objects are in a sense the real 'secondary figures', active but semifocal participants that are always 'also involved', subordinated either to the nominative or to the accusative. Their status is relatively constant, as reflected in the fact that dative remains dative even in passive constructions in German. While we may shift our primary focus rather abruptly from nominative to accusative, the dative is always already there. In English, the German dative objects are consistently translated with coerced direct objects and verbs such as escape (and precede, follow, approach, obey, help, etc., which are less problematic because they do not require a separation loop), or else with double-object constructions and verbs such as give and buy. Otherwise, English has no alternative to oblique phrases with to, from or for, sacrificing the object's participant status. 6.

Summary Speaking very broadly, we might summarize the lessons gained from examining separation loops this way: The accusative case typically directs us to transfer our central focus from the nominative subject to the direct object in the course of construing the event, so that we conclude our construal looking mainly at the accusative. Accusative pathway LMs are atypical variants which fuse the trajectory of the nominative with an accusative place and direct us to look at both together (albeit with ongoing conceptual 'motion' directed from subject to object). English also has 'dative' objects — participants that are still there at the end of the construal, but which never gain central focus — that are coerced into the transitive pattern. We are never allowed to leave an accusative object behind as interpreted history. Dative objects of the verb are included in an event construal as secondary participants outside the main flow of central attention. They have special prominence as participants that are still present and 'doing something' in the final image, somehow interacting with the nominative subject and the accusative object (if there is one) — but they never compete for central focus.10 Notes 1 Langacker (1991:382) contrasts two opposing 'natural paths': the one from primary figure to secondary figure to ground that serves as the basis for the nominative-accusative system (with the nominative as the more basic 'starting point'), and the one defined in terms of conceptual autonomy/dependence that serves as the basis for the ergative-absolutive system


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(with the absolutive case as the more basic starting point representing the conceptually autonomous core thematic participant). In effect, I am recasting this description slightly by identifying the core theme of A / D layering with the concluding central focus (the TR of the resulting state). The nominative is thus construed as the beginning central focus (which may or may not be replaced as the centrally focal participant by a marked accusative before the interpretation has concluded), while the absolutive is understood to be the concluding central focus (which may or may not be preceded by a marked focal ergative). I do not mean to deny that the nominative subject will be more salient than the accusative direct object in overall semantic effect. The subject has privileged status as the starting point. Moreover, it is prototypically associated with highly salient human agents that are the responsible, autonomous heads of an action chain. As far as their most schematic meaning is concerned, though, the nominative and the accusative both occupy central focal attention at some point in the construal, in contrast with the dative and with oblique LMs. 2 See Levin (1993:125-128). The 'wipe' verbs are a large class that includes wipe, sweep, brush, rake, wash, lick, suck, squeeze, and many others. The source-path subtrajectory is explicitly introduced by the deceptively simple device of augmenting the verb with the particles off or out (ab- or aus-), even though the subTR itself is completely gapped. Sentences like (7) are essentially like those with prefixes such as de- or ent- — compare 'wiping off a table' and 'dusting a table'. The only difference is that the 'wipe' verb refers specifically to the manner of the agentive activity and the subTR is not even designated generically in the root of the base verb. 3 The so-called 'clear' verbs, according to Levin (1993:124-125), are clear, empty, drain and clean. This class is difficult to define satisfactorily, and German has no real counterpart to it, but for our purposes what matters is that a sentence such as (8) lexicalizes the achievement of a state which results when a distributed subTR is removed from a subLM. That means the constructions always involve a separation loop, even without any explicit augmentation with a particle such as out or off, or an of-pp that mentions the subTR. They are semantically very similar to resultative 'wipe'-verb constructions (compare 'He cleared the table' and 'He swept the table clear'), except that the 'clear' verb does not specify the agentive manner. Since they lexicalize a resulting state, clear, drain, and empty can occur in an intransitive inchoative variant with the source-path L M as a nominative subject when there is no definite agent in the image ('The sky slowly cleared (of clouds)'). Compare Langacker's (1991: 345-355) discussion of 'setting-subjects'. 4 Ent-verbs like enthaupten ('behead') and entkorken ('uncork') do exist, with a root subTR known pragmatically to be an individual with its own shape. Although these verbs are frequently chosen as typical examples, they are actually quite atypical. They are specialized instances in which the pattern for removing a distributed subTR is used to describe removing an individual subTR, thus implying a vaguer reverberating functional effect on the whole L M space — the whole bottle is put in a new state when its cork is removed. Similar comments can be made about the English 'pit' and 'debone' verbs (Levin 1993: 130-131). The overwhelming majority of these verbs incorporate a distributed TR, and an expression such as 'debone the fish' clearly describes removing all of the bones and not just a single bone. Potential counterexamples with incorporated subTRs that are known to be a single defined entity not spread over or through the L M are essential core parts whose removal has effects that reverberate through the whole L M and change its overall state (core, pit).

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5 Unlike most 'clear' verbs, vacate and evacuate do not have nominative-subLM variants (*'The area vacated/ evacuated (of troops)'). On the other hand, clear is not very good with subjects like this either (??'The area cleared (of troops)'. Given that 'The general evacuated his troops from the area' is acceptable, evacuate does alternate an accusative subTR with an accusative source L M (albeit without an of-PP): 'The general evacuated/cleared (the troops from) the area'. Levin (1993) does not mention vacate, and she lists evacuate only as a 'banish' verb. As for German raümen, it behaves like the English verbs treated in this section (e.g. 'ein Hotelzimmer räumen', 'Polizei raümte die Straße von Passanten', 'Bücher vom Tisch räumen'). 6 'Harry left the apartment in shambles' is a good example of an accusative that directs a shift of central focus without necessarily implying an action-chain transfer of energy to a 'patient'. The sentence does not necessarily mean that Harry put the apartment in that state — he could have found it that way. 7 The type is more common in extended variants with abstract pathways such as 'sing a song', and is related to more typically transitive extensions in which the accusative object is also altered as a result of the path that it defines — e.g. 'mow the lawn', 'eat the soup'. There are also temporal extensions like 'all day' or 'den ganzen Tag', which are clearly accusative in German. 8 The atypical accusative of escaping is similar to the atypical nominative of stative experiencer-subject verbs (Levin's (1993:191-192) 'admire' verbs, e.g. like, love, admire, enjoy, esteem, detest, fear, despise, hate), which often correspond to dative-experiencer verbs in a language like Russian. Contrast experiencer-object verbs (Levin's (1993:189-191) 'amuse' verbs, e.g. please, amuse, bore, astonish, surprise, thrill, frighten, scare, terrify), which are basically causal. Experiencer-object constructions have a true 'accusative' (transitive) shift of central focus to a subTR that contains a separate reflexive-TR process; experiencer-subject constructions in English have a 'dative'-style subject that yields primary focus to the direct object but remains in the picture to the end, with a stative yet interactive relation drawn between the subject and the object. The same kind of 'dative' relation is found in possessive constructions (e.g. with have). 9 The tendency to assume vaguely that the activity of dative objects is located downstream from the activity of other participants in the action chain is still subtly evident in Smith (1993), for example when he says of a sentence with folgen (1993:560) that the energy transmitted by the nominative agent 'stimulates some type of reaction' in the dative object. Of course I agree that the interaction between the nominative and dative participants continues throughout the construal, but the follower's motion is certainly not located upstream from that of the dative participant being followed. Incidentally, I do not mean to invalidate semantic analyses in terms of semantic roles within prototypical instantiations, only to guard against confusing that level of analysis with more schematic meanings involving dynamic relative prominence. I agree, for example, with analyses such as Janda's (1993) that consider communicative transfers with the pattern 'She told him a story' to be metaphorically extended from an established prototype construction like 'She gave him a book'. 10 A further advantage of emphasizing the sequence of central focus, aside from opening the way to a schematic account of the dative, is that it encourages us to isolate highly general dynamic construal processes from the 'content' of the scene being described. For example, I suspect that the general role of interpretative 'history' in construing an event is related to


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'fictive' constructions (Talmy 1996). They can be understood as constructions in which stative marking directs us to conclude by 'forgetting' the path history and considering only the resulting state to be objectively real. Compare the sequential scanning operations that underlie the generation of any schematic gestalt, but which are normally sublexical as we concentrate only on the result.

References Dewell, Robert B. 1996. "The separability of German über-: A cognitive approach". The Construal of Space in Language and Thought ( = Cognitive linguistics research 8) eds. Martin Pütz & René Dirven, 109-133. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Dowty, David. 1991. "Thematic proto-roles and argument selection". Language 67.547-619. Janda, Laura. 1993. "The shape of the indirect object in central and eastern Europe". Slavic and East European Journal 37.533-563. Langacker, Ronald W. 1991. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar II: Descriptive Application. Stanford: University Press. . 1987. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar I: Theoretical Prerequisites. tanford: University Press. Levin, Beth. 1993. English Verb Classes and Alternations: A Preliminary Investigation ( = Linguistic Inquiry Monographs 26). Chicago: University Press. Smith, Michael B. 1993. "Cases as conceptual categories: Evidence from German". in Conceptualizations and Mental Processing in Language eds. Richard A. Geiger & Brygida Rudzka-Ostyn, 531-565. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. . 1985. "Event chains, grammatical relations, and the semantics of case in German". Chicago Linguistic Society 21.388-407. Stiebels, Barbara. 1996. Lexikalische Argumente und Adjunkte: Zum semantischen Beitrag von verbalen Präfixen und Partikeln. ( = studia grammatica 39). Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Talmy, Leonard. 1996. "Fictive motion in language and 'ception'". Language and Space eds. Paul Bloom, Mary A . Peterson, Lynn Nadel, & M e r r i l l F. Garrett, 211-276. Cambridge, Mass.: M I T Press (Bradford Book). . 1992. Path to realization: A typology of event integration. Technical report 92-01 of the Center for Cognitive Science, State University of New York, Buffalo.

Fijian Children's Possessive Categories and Constructions Patrick Griffiths University of the South Pacific,

1.

Fiji

Introduction * The pronoun system of Fijian is elaborate. Possessive proforms constitute a substantial subsystem of this. This report concentrates on Fijian children's learning of the morphology of possessive constructions of their language, mainly in a set of proforms, but also the use of the same morphemes as possessive suffixes on nouns. A table of possessive suffixes w i l l be presented later. It may be useful, however, to make a summary statement now regarding the salient features of the possessive system of Fijian. In the first person non-singular forms, there is an 'inclusive' versus 'exclusive' distinction, depending upon whether or not the addressee is in cluded: "belonging to us and you" as opposed to "belonging to us, but not to you". There is a four-way system of number distinctions: 'singular', 'dual', 'paucal' (denoting groups of three or more, up to about a dozen or a score) and 'plural' (when there are more entities than the number denoted by a paucal form). Two types of possessive relationship are recognised: 'inalienable' and 'alienable'. Inalienable possession is signalled by putting the possessive suffix on to a noun denoting the possession, e.g. the noun ulu means "head" and the suffix -mu is a second person singular possessive marker; so "your head" is na ulumu, not something you can readily give away. Na is an article. For alienable possession, on the other hand, special possessive stems are used as bases for suffixation. By contrast with one's head, a bag (kato in Fijian) is a possession that can easily change ownership, and "your bag" is na  kato, not *na katomu. I n na noma kato the suffix -mu is attached to the possessive stem no. No is the 'default' possessive stem. There are two other stems used in constructing alienable possessive forms. They are ke for 'food', possessions that are for eating, are being eaten or have been eaten by the possessor, and me for 'drinks', possessions that have been, are being or w i l l be imbibed by the possessor. Thus there is a considerable amount of detail for Fijian children to gain control over in learning this part of their language. See Geraghty (1994) for

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a concise, non-technical account of the relevant constructions and meanings, and Schütz (1985) for a detailed treatment. Fijian is a VOS language, except that when the subject is a pronoun it goes in front of the verb. 1.1

Overview I n a cross-sectional study of 2- to 5-year-old Fijian children: (a) there are indications of meanings being acquired before mastery of the constructions which conventionally express those meanings; (b) there are strong indications of systematicity in acquisition; and (c), in connection with the 'food' versus 'drink' alienable possessive distinction, prototypicality effects are observable. (a) Possession appears first to be expressed by just naming the possessor, or using a non-possessive pronoun to refer to the possessor, or by simply putting together two nouns in the order Possession+Possessor, not a well formed construction in adult Fijian. The earliest well-formed possessive constructions follow the alienable pattern, in which a possessive suffix is attached to one of the possessive stems. The inalienable pattern noun+suffix is acquired rather later. (b) The distinctions that show evidence of systematic acquisition among possessives are number, for which the starting point is 'singular', and the alienable categories where the 'default' stem no is the first to be used. (c) Two observations testify to prototypicality as a foundation for the cognitive organisation underpinning possession in Fijian. One is that there are restrictions on the meanings associated with the ke stem: the 24 children in the sample gave no evidence of an abstract use that adults have for ke-based possessives. Secondly, there are some errors whereby certain non-liquid foods, which nonetheless belong in the 'drink' category — a category for which they could be regarded as non-prototypical — are referred to by children using constructions with the 'food' or 'default' possessive stems. Arguments in support of these conclusions are set out in section 2 of the paper. 1.2

The data The child language data on which this report is based come from a project carried out jointly with my colleague Asela Bavadra. The subjects were 24 children whose first language is Fijian. Each child was recorded once only. The investigation was therefore cross-sectional, rather than longitudinal. The children were spread across the age range 1 year 10 months to 4 years 10 months. I n the 24 transcripts there are 346 occurrences of possessive forms. Discussion w i l l principally be concerned with these, though I begin with some

FIJIAN CHILDREN'S POSSESSIVE CATEGORIES AND CONSTRUCTIONS

69

instances in which children conveyed possessive meanings without producing conventional possessive expressions. The methodology of the study is described in greater detail in Griffiths & Bavadra (forthcoming), a paper which also reports more general findings about the first language acquisition of Fijian pronouns. A leap has to be made in inferring developmental sequences from cross-sectional data. The researcher has to assume that the younger children w i l l eventually come to have language systems very similar to the older ones, and that the older children were previously linguistically like the younger ones, i.e. that all the children are on essentially the same trajectory. Cross-sectional sampling is appropriate for exploratory research in language development, however. And, until there is evidence to the contrary, it is a justifiable initial assumption that all the children are following the same developmental path. I have not found any other studies of Fijian first language acquisition; so the work reported on here is indeed exploratory. A start has been made on language acquisition research in a related language, Samoan (Ochs, 1985, for instance). In the presentation of examples, I replace personal names with plausible pseudonyms, chosen because they have equivalents in English. 2. 2.1

Patterns in the data Ill-formed expressions of possession There are instances where the intention to express a relationship of possession seems, clearly enough, to be there, but the child does not explicitly mark possession. I first quote cases in which the child avoids the morpho logical choices that have to be made for the production of well-formed Fijian possessive constructions. Morphological contrasts side-stepped. A child can evade the complexities of Fijian possessive marking by just naming a possessor. The result is generally understandable but ill-formed. Examples (1) and (2) show this starting point for talking about possession. These examples, as well as others below, also illustrate how adult possession questions are worded. I n example (1) the child is asked whom a serving of rice standing nearby is for. He answers with his younger brother's name. (1) O cei na kena na raisi? O ART who ART 'food'-3rdSgPOSS ART rice? ART Who? "Whose is the rice? Who?" [Adult]

cei?

70

PATRICK GRIFFITHS

(1) O Samu. A R T Sam "Sam." [Child 9 (3;9.15)] 1 I n example (2), the same child, who was being recorded in his family's home, is asked whose house it is. He supplies his own name as an answer. (2) O cei nona vale qo:? A R T who 'default'-3rdSgPOSS house this "Whose house is this?" [Adult]  Siti. A R T Steve "Steve." [Child 9 (3;9.15)] Example (3) shows another pattern. Here the possessor's name is put into construction with a label for the possessed object. This too is ungrammatical, but, in our data, it appears to be the most basic way of producing some sort of construction for conveying the possessive relationship. I n this respect Fijian children are similar to children acquiring English as a first language, where Mummy sock can mean "Mummy's sock" (Bloom 1970), though it is found in the present corpus at a later age than the second year, which is when English speaking children characteristically produce Noun+Noun possessives. This may be a pointer to the complexity of Fijian possession as a language learning task. I n example (3) the child is asked who a bag in the room belongs to. She starts to respond with the preposition used in the question, but then just juxtaposes the owner's name with the word denoting the possession. (3) Na kato nei cei? A R T bag of who "Whose bag?" [Adult]

Nei... kato Pita. Of bag Peter "Of... Peter bag" [Child 10 (3;9.6)]

Non-possessive pronouns used as possessives. Examples (1-3) showed children expressing possession without recourse to morphology. There are 18 tokens in the data, from 7 children, where non-possessive pronouns are pressed into service as possessives. I n almost all of these the utterance is not well formed, but they can be rated as more complex than (1-3) because virtually any use of a pronoun in Fijian generally requires some morphological distinctions to be observed. Examples (4) and (5) are illustrative. I n (4), the two research assis-


71

tants, K T and L V , ask Child 1 about the ownership of a toy car on the floor. He answers with a non-possessive pronoun. His mother then shows, in a recast, how a preposition could turn his answer into a well-formed one, i f he insists on not using possessive pronouns. (4) Nei cei na motoka:? of who A R T car "Whose is the car?" [KT]

M? hm? " H m ? " [Child 1 (2;8.15)]

Na noqu. Nei cei? A R T 'default'-lstSgPOSS of who

Koya. 3rdSg

"Mine.

" H i m / H e r " [Child 1]

Nei of

Whose?" [ L V ]

koya. 3rdSg

" O f him/her." [Child 1's mother] I n (5) the child answers a question about the ownership of the house by claiming that it belongs to her and her four-year-old cousin, Kata. (5) Nei cei of

na

vale

qo:?

who A R T house this

"Whose is this house?" [Adult] Kata, keirau mama. Kate 1stExclDu both. "Kate, both us-two." [Child 11 (2;11.27)] Use of non-possessive pronouns requires the child to select grammatical number: examples (4) and (5) showed a singular and a dual. And person contrasts have to be handled as well: 3rd person in (4) and 1st person (exclusive of addressee) in (5). However, by answering like this, the children are avoiding further choices that have to be made for appropriate use of Fijian possessive proforms. 2.2

Possession expressed with possessive proforms I n example (6), Child 11 is asked about a radio standing in the room. She first answers with a non-possessive pronoun — a grammatically ill-formed answer — and then, after doubt is expressed over the truth of her answer, reaffirms it, but this time with the appropriate possessive pronoun.

72

PATRICK GRIFFITHS

(6)  cei nona re:tio: ART who 'default'-3rdSgPOSS radio this "Whose radio is this?" [Adult]

qo:?

Au. 1stSg " M e . " [Child 11 (2; 11.27)] Seti, seni ! disapproval-interjection not 'default'-2ndSgPOSS "Tut! It's not yours." [Adult] Noqu! 'default'-lstSgPOSS " M i n e ! " [Child 11] Example 6 shows three of the possessive suffixes of Fijian, looking at what the adults said as well as the child's utterances: -na 3rdSgPOSS, -mu 2ndSgPOSS and -qu 1stSgPOSS. I n each case they are attached to a stem no, the 'default' alienable possessive stem. This is a suitable point to provide more details about Fijian possessive constructions. 2.3

The Fijian system of possessive suffixes Table 1 catalogues the possessive suffixes of Fijian. They attach to possessive stems and to nouns denoting possessed objects. The stem no has been exemplified several times above. No is used for possessions that are not possessed for eating or drinking. I n Fijian, the word for "chicken" is toa. I am a vegetarian. I f I had a chicken it would be a pet, not possessed for eating, and I could talk of it as noqu toa " m y chicken". I f I was not a vegetarian and possessed a chicken with a view to eating it, then that would be kequ toa "my chicken". There is another possessive stem me for things that the possessor drinks, e.g. mequjusi " m y fruit juice that I drank, am drinking or w i l l drink". In the 1st person exclusive row of Table 1 there is some allomorphy which should be mentioned. The forms of the suffixes as shown in the table are for attachment to nouns, when one is constructing inalienable possessives. When they go on to the possessive stems no, ke and me the sequence -ike- is omitted. Furthermore, when these non-singular 1st person exclusive possessive suffixes are applied to no the stem then surfaces as an allomorph ne. Example (7) illustrates this. Child 15, commenting on a tap from which water no longer flows, because the settlement's supply had been cut off that day, correctly uses neitou, instead of *noikeitou.


73

Number singular

dual (exactly 2)

paucal (3-~20)

plural ( > paucal)

1st Excl

-qu my

-ikeirau us-two's, not yours

-ikeitou our group's, not yours

-ikeimami us-many's, not yours

1st Incl

—

-daru me-and-yours

-datou me&you& others in a group's

-da me&you& many others'

2nd

-mu your, Singular

-mudrau you-two's

-mudou your group's

-muni you-many's

3rd

-na her/his

-drau them-two's

-dratou their group's

-dra them-many's

Person

Table 1. Fijian possessive suffixes

(7) Sa: maca na neitou ASP empty ART 'default'-lstExclPauPOSS pipe "Our water's run dry." [Child 15 (3;4.25)]

palpo.

2.4 Systematic aspects of the acquisition of the Fijian possessive system Number. Every one of the 24 children used at least one singular possessive suffix, and 10 of them manifested only singular possessives. Eighty-four percent of correct possessive uses were singular. Nine children had not only singular but also paucal possessives. Although paucal possessive forms were greatly outnumbered by singulars in our data, paucals occurred twice as often as dual and plural possessives added together. Only one child produced possessives in all four number categories. The remaining four children had Sg&PIu, S g & D u & P l u , Sg&Du&Pau, Sg&Pau&Pl. From all this I infer that number distinctions are fairly systematically acquired in the possessive system, in the following order (where ' > ' indicates that the item to its left is acquired earlier than the item to its right): singular > paucal > {dual, plural}

74

PATRICK GRIFFITHS

Stem categories. Among the possessive stems it is the 'default' (neither for eating nor drinking) stem no that appears to be acquired first. It is over whelmingly the most frequent in our child data (82% of tokens). A l l 24 of the children use it and nine of them were not recorded with any other possessive stem. The 'food' stem ke appeared in the transcripts of nine children, with a total of 30 tokens. Eight children used me the 'drink' stem (16 tokens). The acquisition order that I infer from this is: no 'default' > ke 'food' > me 'drink' The dearth of errors. Errors are not common in our corpus. Only 8 of the children were detected in making possessive errors and the total number of tokens involved was only 24, by comparison with 340 correct uses. One set consisting of 18 of the 24 possessive errors has already been illustrated. They were the ones where a non-possessive pronoun was used in place of a possessive form. The many correctly used possessive proforms included quite a number of instances where the complicated allomorphy mentioned earlier (e.g. neitou < *noikeitou) was successfully negotiated. A possible explanation for this impressive level of accuracy is that children start with possessive constructions that they have heard from more proficient speakers and that they tend to be cautious about generalising beyond what has been attested in their experience, a beginning reminiscent of Tomasello's (1992) account of his daughter treating English verbs as 'islands'. Some of the children having noqu Na:2 "my M u m " as their only possessive phrase tends to support this idea. However, they soon do generalise. For instance, Child 3 (2; 11.15) gave us 20 possessive proforms, all first person singular. Eighteen were noqu " m y " but it was in construction with not just Na: " M u m " , but also with words meaning " D a d " , "Granddad", " b a l l " and "car". His other two possessives were correct uses of the 'drink' stem in the phrase mequ loli "my l o l l y " , which he said twice while sucking a lolly. (Things that are sucked, like lollies, count as drinkable.) Which possessive stem to use in an answer can often be picked up from the question. I n example 1, for instance, Child 9 could have discovered or confirmed from kena in the question that raisi "rice" for his little brother to eat is in the ke category, as a basis for constructing a correct possessive answer, such as na kena o Samu "Sam's". Example (8) shows one of the frequent instances we have in the data of a possessive stem matching across a question and answer pair; so this quite likely is a way in which the children learn which stem to use. I n this example, it can be seen that the questions provide three cues that ke is the appropriate stem.


(8) O

cei

na

kena

sos

ya:?

75

Ya:?

ART who ART 'food'-3rdSgPOSS sauce over-there over-there "Whose sauce is over there? Over there?" O cei na kena? Ya:? Kei Art who ART 'food'-3rdSgPOSS over-there ' food'-of who? "Whose (food) is it? Over there? Whose (food)?"

cei?

[Adult] Kequ. 'food'-1stSgPOSS "Mine (food)." [Child 5 (2;4.5)] However, possessives were also used by the children to assert or demand possession, and to construct noun phrases for use in sentences that were not answers, or were not answers to questions about ownership. I n such cases the child does not get discourse cues regarding which stem to use. Furthermore we have a few instances in which children went against the model offered in a question, as in example (9), below. 2.5

Prototype effects The small number of errors in which wrong possessive stems are used is interesting. They generally involved children failing to include in the me 'drink' class items that belong there. Child 6 (2;0.10) wrongly used kequ (constructed on the ke 'food' stem) instead of mequ for a lolly. I n Fijian anything that is sucked belongs in the 'drink' category, and lollies are commonly sucked. Child 10 (3;9.6) used keitou ('food'-1stExclPauPOSS) and neitou ('default'-lstExclPauPOSS) for sugar, which also counts as a drinkable (because it too melts in the mouth into a liquid and has as, probably, its most common use in F i j i that of being an additive in tea, which again means that it goes down the throat as a liquid) and should therefore have been spoken about with meitou ('drink'-lstExclPauPOSS). Child 24 (3;9.12), speaking of citrus fruit (moli) that he said he had picked, used both keitou ('food'lstExclPauPOSS) and neitou ('default'-lstExclPauPOSS), instead of the required meitou ('drink'-lstExclPauPOSS), citrus being juicy fruits. The learning needed would appear to be the semantic subtleties of the Fijian 'food'/'drink' boundary. A reasonable surmise is that prototypical substances in the 'drink' category are liquids in our ordinary experience, and citrus fruits, lollies and sugar are non-prototypical in only becoming liquid as they are taken in.

76

PATRICK GRIFFITHS

A further pointer to an influence of prototypicality is that there are no instances in our data of an abstract use of the possessive stem ke. As well as being for 'food' possession, ke is used to mark deverbal nominals in which the possessor is not the agent of what the verb denotes, e.g. a punch that you receive, a picture of you or a story about you. See the account of 'PASSIVE POSSESSION' in Geraghty (1983, 248f). This suggests that the children had induced a simpler category for ke, taking it as covering just ' f o o d ' , with the abstract use perhaps being learned beyond the 4; 10 upper age boundary of our sample. 2.6

Possessive suffixation on nouns The suffixes shown in Table 1 can be added directly to nouns. When they

are, ' I N A L I E N A B I L I T Y ' is signalled.

There are 16 occurrences in the corpus of possessive forms constructed by direct suffixation to nouns. Examples (9) and (10) w i l l serve for illustration. I n example (9) the child is asked what kin relationship another little girl bears to her. (9) Qo: this

nornu cava? Nomu cava qo:? 'default'-2ndSgPOSS what 'default'-2ndSgPOSS what this

"This (one) is your what?

Your what is this (one)?" [Adult]

Taciqu. younger-sibling-1stSgPOSS "My younger sister." [Child 10 (3;9.6)]

(10)  cei drau dau moce vota na ART who 2ndDu usually sleep together ART night "Who do you usually sleep with at night?" [Adult]

bogi?

Noqu... na taciqu. 'default'-lstSgPOSS ART younger-sibling-1stSgPOSS "My... my younger sister." [Child 23 (4;2.21)]

The false start in example (10) is interesting. It suggests that she was going to put her younger sister into the no possessive category, which is what she, entirely appropriately, did with the words Na:, : and Bu.bu: ( " M u m " , "Dad" and "Grandmother", respectively) in the same transcript, but that would have been an error and she avoids it. Another child did not self-correct a simi lar error, as seen in the final utterance of example (11), where Child 16 is


77

asked about relationships in a picture that shows a mother, a father, a boy called Qalo and Qalo's younger brother. The questioner points out the individuals in the picture as she asks about them. (11) Nona

cava o

Qalo qo:?

'default'-3rdSgPOSS what ART Qalo this "Qalo's what is this (one)?" [Adult] Nona Na:. E? Va:cava qo:? 'defauIt'-3rdSgPOSS Mum Eh? how this "His M u m . " [Child 16 (4;6)] "Eh? How about this (one)?" [Adulti Nona Ta:. Qo:? 'default'-3rdSgPOSS Dad this "His D a d . " [Child 16] Nona gone. 'default'-3rdSgPOSS child "His child." [hid16]

"This (one)?" [Adult]

I n saying Nona gone "his c h i l d " , it seems that Child 16 was wanting to indicate that the smallest boy in the picture was the child of the father who, in the picture, was helping him ride a tricycle. This is an ill-formed response. She should have said Luvena (luve "offspring" + na 3rdSgPOSS), w i t h the possessive suffix attached to a noun. The number of different nouns occurring in our data with direct possessive suffixation is small: ulu "hair", gusu "mouth" and taci "younger sibling". This suggests rote learning. However, there is an indication of systematic acquisition too. Every instance we recorded of possessive suffix ation to a noun is singular, i.e. the suffix is a singular one. Given the restric tion to singular number, I infer that direct suffixation to nouns is acquired after proforms constructed with me, which also appeared 16 times in the data and also came in the records of 8 different children, but were found with singular, paucal and plural suffixes. This makes it possible to offer the following order of acquisition for Fijian possessive constructions (where ' > ' indicates that the morphological construction to the left is acquired before the construction to the right): n+suFFix 'default' > k e + s u F F I X 'food' > me+suFFIX 'drink' NOUN+SUFFIX

>

78

PATRICK GRIFFITHS

The first three in the sequence are predominanlty alienable possessives and they are proforms. The last type in the sequence is inalienable and non pronominal. 3.

Conclusion Fijian expression of possession is complicated. Table 1 shows 15 possessive suffixes, varying according to person and number. Each suffix can appear on any of three possessive stems {no 'default', ke ' f o o d ' , me 'drink') to signal 'alienable possession', or on common nouns to mark 'inalienable' possession. The cross-sectional dataset that has been reported on here, from 24 Fijian children, points to a systematic developmental sequence in which possession is first conveyed without morphological marking (by just naming the possessor or via an ill-formed construction Possession + Name of Possessor); later by using a pronoun of appropriate person and number (but ill-formed because it is not possessive). Next comes possessive suffixation, starting with the default stem and singular number, progressing eventually to suffixation on common nouns. Four aspects of this sequence suggest that cognition may be a driving influence: (i) Possessive meanings are expressed before the necessary constructions are controlled, (ii) Singular is intuitively simpler conceptually than the other numbers, (iii) The default possessive category (using the no stem) likewise appears conceptually simpler than the other two ('food' and 'drink'), (iv) It might be that 'alienable' forms are learnt before 'inalienables' because possession is easier to understand when it can be seen to be transferable. That the children in this study were learning the possessive categories as semantic ones is hinted at by prototypicality effects: the transcripts yielded no instances of an abstract use that is available to adults for the ke 'food' stem; and, in a few cases, non-liquid items, such as sugar, failed to be put into the me 'drink' category, where they belong in Fijian. Children's language errors are informative. They are signs that generalisations are being made. However, the low rate of error in the present study (24/364 = 0.003) is itself an observation in need of explanation. Because this investigation was cross-sectional and relatively small in scale, the conclusions have to be regarded as tentative. Data on the frequency of Fijian children's exposure to different forms, patterns and categories must be gathered and brought into consideration.


79

Notes * The project was funded by the Research Committee of the University of the South Pacific (award 6133-1201-70766-15). I am grateful to my co-researcher, Asela Bavadra, for her contributions to all aspects of the investigation. Of especial value in connection with the present paper was her checking of the translations in the examples used here. Karalaini Tubuna and Louise Vakamocea have my gratitude for making the recordings and putting considerable time and effort into transcribing the tapes, a task on which we worked as a team. Mrs Vatira Cereilagi provided invaluable liaison with the community. I offer her my thanks. Two anonymous referees made useful suggestions for improving the paper, not all of which I am able to adopt without undertaking further research. Finally, but very importantly, I express my appreciation to the 24 children who were recorded in Nadonumai settlement and to their families. The research could not have been done without their cooperation. 1 Children's ages are given in brackets in the form years;months.days. The following abbreviations are used in the glosses: 1st '1st person', 2nd '2nd person', 3rd '3rd person', ART 'Article', ASP 'aspect marker', Du 'dual', Excl 'excluding 2nd person', Pau 'paucal', Pl 'plural', POSS 'possessive', Sg 'singular'. Long vowels are marked with a colon. 2 It is a fact about Fijian that not all inalienable possession is explicitly marked as such. The terms for quite a number of family members simply go into possessive phrases constructed with the 'default' stem no. Noqu Na: "my M u m " is one such. This does not mean that alienability is not an important contrast in the system. It is, because when a possessive suffix is put directly on to a noun we can be sure that we are dealing with an inalienable, e.g. Tamaqu "my father", which has the possessive suffix -qu attached to the noun Tama "father". The inference does not go the other way round, however: when the suffix appears on the possessive stem no 'default', the possession is often alienable, but in some cases is not. References Bloom, Lois. 1970. Language development: form grammars.

and function

in

emerging

languages.

(=

Oceanic

Cambridge, Mass.: M I T Press.

Geraghty, Paul. 1983. The history

of the Fijian

Linguistics Special Publication, 19). Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. . 1994. Fijian phrasebook. Hawthorn, Victoria: Lonely Planet Publications. Griffiths, Patrick & Asela Bavadra. Forthcoming. "Systematic development in preschool Fijian children's production of pronouns". Ochs, Elinor.

1985. "Variation and error:

a sociolinguistic

language acquisition i n Samoa". The crosslinguistic acquisition.

approach to

study of language

Vol.I: The data, ed. Dan I. Slobin, 783-838. Hillsdale, N.J.:

Erlbaum. Schütz, A . J . 1985. The Fijian

language.

Honolulu: University of Hawaii

Press. Tomasello, Michael. 1992. First verbs: a case study of early grammatical velopment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

de

Facing up to the Meaning of 'face up to' A Cognitive Semantico-Pragmatic Analysis of an English Verb-Particle Construction Beate Hampe Friedrich Schiller University, Jena, Germany

81 "No longer does man face a problem, he faces up to it." ' (TIMES, 8 September, 1958) 1.

Goals of this analysis The above quote from The Times implies that the use of the phrasal verb is just an example of 'wordy' speech and that the adverbial particle and preposition can be regarded as superfluous. Such opinions can also be found in the literature on phrasal verbs (cf. Potter 1965:289). The purpose of this paper is to pin down exactly in which respects, both semantically and pragmatically, the phrasal verb to face up to differs from the simple verb to face in the relevant, non-literal sense. Even though it is true that the simple verb is often used in similar contexts denoting a seemingly similar state of affairs (in fact, in the corpora checked, the simple verb is used in the overwhelming majority) it will be shown that the particle is not an arbitrary, meaningless or redundant addition to the verb, but that its presence is meaningful in the sense of 'motivated', determining both semantic and pragmatic properties of the construction. Parallels to other verb-particle constructions with up (to/with) will be drawn in the course of the semantic analysis. While the description of the phrasal verb's meaning is based on the general approach offered by cognitive semantics, the pragmatic properties of the construction are determined by means of frequency counts of both verbs in different types of text and discourse as well as by an analysis of the characteristics of the immediate linguistic environments of hundreds of actual occurrences of both verbs in a corpus of spoken and written British English. 2.

The phrasal verb in lexicography Lexicography has only recently started to deal with the existence of such seemingly redundant phrasal verbs as to face up to. The phrasal verb is not recognized at all in many dictionaries of the German-English and monolingual variety before 1950.1

82

BEATE HAMPE

Early attempts to characterize the phrasal verb have mainly stated its synonymy with some senses of the simple verb to face. None of the major monolingual dictionaries of 20th century British English which recognize the existence of the phrasal verb allows the use of the phrasal verb in any of the following senses of the simple verb: 'to have/turn the face to or in a certain direction', 'to be situated opposite of (of inanimate things)', 'to look in the face of/stand confronting','to meet face to face (weak sense)', 'to present itself to (of a problem etc.)', 'to cover with a layer of a different material'/'to put a facing on' or 'to coat tea with a colouring substance'.2 The only senses in which both the simple and the phrasal verb are said to be possible are the following: 'meet confidently/accept and deal with/ confront/oppose', 'show no fear at time of trial/danger/difficulty' and 'recog nize existence of (facts etc)'. 3 The Universal Dictionary of the English Language, edited by H.C. W y l d in 1932, for example, defines the phrasal verb by relating it to the simple verb in the following way: (i)

to face:

to be ready to undergo examination, trial etc. to dare, have courage, to come face to face with to confront, to oppose, also "face up to", to recognize existence of, and be prepared to meet, also "face up to ".

But even in those cases where (more recent) monolingual dictionaries try to provide the phrasal verb with a definition of its own, these definitions do not actually set apart the meaning of the phrasal verb from that of the simple one in one of the three relevant senses (c.f. e.g. (ii) Collins Cobuild: English Language Dictionary, edited by J. Sinclair in 1987, (iii): Oxford English Reference Dictionary, edited by J. Pearsall in 1995): (ii)

to face:

15. I f you ~ sth. difficult or unpleasant, it is going to affect you and you have to deal with it. 16. I f you ~ the truth, a fact or a problem, you accept that it is true or really exists and respond to it in a suitable way although you would prefer to ignore it.

to face up to: I f you ~ a difficult situation you accept it and deal with

FACING UP TO THE MEANING OF 'FACE UP TO' (iii) to face:

83

meet resolutely or defiantly, confront, not shrink from, present itself to (sb.)

to face up to: accept bravely, confront, stand up to I have so far come across one dictionary only (Lexicon of Contemporary English, edited by T. McArthur in 1981) which approached the meaning of the phrasal verb differently, defining to face up to as an emphatic version of the simple verb: (iv)

to face:

to go, turn or look towards or standing looking at (Fig.) The men faced great dangers fearlessly.

to face up to: (emph.) to face, accept (sth. unpleasant) confront = face or face up to From these observations the following questions arise: 1. What exactly is the semantic difference between the simple and the phrasal verb? 2. Why is the adverbial particle compatible with some senses of the simple verb and not with others? In which way can this situation be accounted for by an appropriate notion of compositionality that seeks to uncover the motivations underlying the construction while viewing all elements of the verb-particle construction as meaningful? 3. Can a semantic analysis explain the increased emphaticness of the phrasal verb? Can the semantic properties of the verb-particle construction be seen as motivating its pragmatic characteristics? 3.

The phrasal verb as a marked lexical item What seems to be clear from the cursory look at the dictionaries is that the phrasal verb to face up to can be said to be roughly synonymous with some of the non-literal senses of the polysemous simple verb to face (1a-c), while it cannot combine with the various literal (both spatial and specialized) senses (2a-d): (1) a. During the last months we have faced (up to) a lot of difficulties. b. They have learned to face (up to) the facts of parenthood. c.  has managed to face (up to) his illness.

(aper

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(2) a. Grandmother was still facing (*up to) the wall, not talking to anybody. b. She turned round and faced (*up to) her visitors. c. Our living room windows face (*up to) the main street. d. The dress-maker has faced (*up to) the woolen coat with silk. But even concerning the abstract senses of to face ('to confront, meet'), the phrasal verb cannot always replace the simple verb (3). (3) a. We are facing (up to) great problems, b. Great problems are facing (*up to) us. The fact that replacing the phrasal verb by the simple one always yields an acceptable sentence but not vice versa, suggests that the meaning of the phrasal verb is more specific than that of the simple one. This is not at all unexpected, assuming, that is, that the particle up is a meaningful element of the construction. It also corresponds to the fact that in my corpus of 3.5 mill. words containing samples of both spoken and written British English, the simple verb in its relevant abstract senses was used much more frequently than the phrasal verb, with the particle occurring in only 6.01 % of all the relevant non-literal contexts.4 As a first approximation, we claim that the verb-particle construction is more marked than that containing the simple verb, for the following reasons: 1. The verb particle construction involves additional linguistic material and is thus more 'costly'. 2. The verb particle construction is significantly less frequent than the simple verb, even if only the relevant senses of the simple verb are counted (cf. also section 5.1). 3. The simple verb can occur in all the contexts that the verb particle construction occurs in, but not vice versa; the verb-particle construction is therefore more restricted in its use. 4. Moreover, the phrasal verb is additionally marked stylistically as an informal lexical item. At the same time we are aware of the fact that this perception of 'markedness' itself is only the observation of a surface phenomenon and needs further explanation. The following cognitive semantic analysis will show in which way the meaning of the phrasal verb can be said to be more specific and what sort of conceptualizations are 'behind' the markedness perceived.

FACING UP TO THE MEANING OF 'FACE UP TO'

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4. A cognitive semantic analysis of 'to face' and 'to face up to' 4.1 Foundations A semantic analysis of the kind we are employing here rests upon the recognition of the fact that linguistic meaning can only be analysed with reference to the conceptualizations that give rise to it. The following analysis of the meaning of the verb-particle construction to face up (to) is therefore dependent on the basic assumptions of cognitive semantics as they are outlined in Langacker's Cognitive Grammar under the cover term 'construal'/'conven tional imagery' (cf. e.g. Langacker 1988/1993), the theory of metaphor and image-schemas (cf. e.g. Lakoff & Johnson 1980, Lakoff 1987, Johnson 1987, Lakoff 1990, Lakoff 1993), the theory of 'mental spaces' (cf. Fauconnier 1994) and the notion of 'conceptual blending' (cf. Turner & Fauconnier 1995). It is also compatible with central notions of construction grammar (cf. e.g. Goldberg 1995, Fillmore 1988). Any analysis of the meaning of the phrasal-prepositional verb to face up to needs to take into consideration the central literal meanings of its highly polysemous components, though none of these literal meanings features in the construction itself. However, all the central literal meanings serve as source domains for the construction of the non-literal meaning of the construction as a whole, the target being the abstract realm of our being confronted and dealing with problems and difficulties. The following analysis does not claim that the meaning of the phrasal verb is 'compositional' in the sense of being completely predictable. Rather, it wants to point out that a small range of conceptual metaphors which are conventionalized in English is responsible for a series of extensions of the meaning of its components and thus 'motivates' the meaning of the con struction as a whole. In other words, the components point in a heavily abbre viated manner at the complex (though conventionalized) conceptual blend 'behind' the construction as a whole. 4.2

The meaning of 'to face' The literal meaning of the verb to face is derived from the noun denoting the part of the head we call face. In its central literal meaning the verb denotes a spatial configuration in which a living agent is situated in front of/opposite an (animate or inanimate) object (the 'landmark') so that s/he can (visually) perceive it (4a-c): (4) a. Grandma was still facing the wall, not talking to anybody. b. She turned around and found herself facing a lion.  When they came round the corner they were facing a huge rock.

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By means of a shift of the 'deictic centre', a 'body projection' of faces onto objects (in other words the creation of fronts) and possibly a metaphorical construal that ascribes agenthood to external objects, it is also possible to re verse the perception of trajector and landmark in a scene as the one described by example (4c) and construe it in the following way: (4) d. Around the corner a huge rock was facing us, obstructing our way. Via a projection from animate to inanimate involving the creation of fronts just mentioned, the verb to face conventionally also refers to the (perceived) fronts of objects, e.g. buildings, which are situated opposite other objects. (4) e. All our sitting room windows face the main street. To sum this up in cognitive grammar terms, in each of these transitive constructions the subject-NP instantiates a trajector whose 'active zone' (the face or front) is situated opposite a landmark which is instantiated by the direct object NP. It is, however, the central literal sense (4a-b) which is the source for further extensions of meaning. Under the EVENT STRUCTURE metaphor, location version (cf. Lakoff 1993:219-229/Lakoff, Espenson & Schwartz 1991), activity is conceptualized as motion, and purposes are locations to be reached. Thus, purposeful activity can be understood as movement along a path leading to that goal. Objects obstructing that path are impediments to motion, preventing further progress. Via the ontological metaphor ABSTRACT THINGS ARE CONCRETE OBJECTS, difficulties and problems can be understood as such concrete obstacles. It comes as no surprise that humans can face abstract things the same way as they do concrete objects once the vast and complex conceptual background that is provided by the EVENT-STRUCTURE metaphor is taken for granted, i.e. recognized as conventional in English (5a): (5) a. She has really faced a lot of serious difficulties lately. As with the literal use of the verb, the perception of what is landmark and what is trajector can also be reversed (5)b: (5) b. These are the difficulties that have faced her recently.


87

Sometimes, both the literal reading and the reading under the EVENT metaphor are simultaneously possible, e.g. when the landmark object is a problem, e.g. potentially dangerous, as in (5c): STRUCTURE

(5) 

She turned round and found herself facing a lion.

Situations such as the one described by example (5c) provide a kind of 'cognitive bridge' between the literal and the non-literal sense, since both senses are simultaneously active and thus provide an actual correlation in experience. They have recently been described as 'primary scenes', the results of which are 'primary metaphors' (cf. Grady 1997a,b). Since they are directly grounded in experience, they serve as the foundations for more complex conceptual structures elaborating upon and integrating these 'basic' ones (cf. ibid.). Interestingly, the corpus analysis5 of all instances of to face up to and to face in the non-literal sense revealed that the object NPs instantiating the landmark mainly stemmed from the semantic fields of difficulties and problems (or were explicitly described as difficult, unpleasant, challenging etc.), indicating that the EVENT-STRUCTURE metaphor indeed provides the basis for the extension of the meaning of to face (see Table 1). In the target domain of event structure, the verb to face also has emergent structure of its own due to the nature of the target domain, i.e. it also has structure which does not stem from the metaphorical mapping providing a set of fixed correspondences between the source and the target domain. In the case of the event structure reading of the construction to face + NP, being confronted with an entity that is a potential problem or danger may (urgently) require a certain course of action. This is neither a central feature of the central literal meanings of to face denoting perceived constellations in space, nor of its abstract readings: whether such an action is taken or not, is something that the construction itself does not reveal. In other words, there is nothing in the EVENT-STRUCTURE reading of the linguistic construction itself that determines whether an animate subject is merely 'confronted by' or else 'actively confronting and dealing with' the entity instantiating the landmark. Hence, the construction in the non-literal sense is ambiguous concerning the semantic role of its grammatical subject — it could either be construed as AFFECTED or as AGENT.

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semantic field of object-NP instantiating the landmark

to face (total: 297 examples)

to face up to (total: : 19 examples)

117

3

task, challenge, decision

40

5

hardship, danger, risk

18

1

future, change

17

3

reality, things as they are

15

6

criticism, failure

12

0

various others

78

1

problem, crisis

Table 1: Most frequent semantic fields of direct-object NPs

The following sentences show that with the simple verb both construals are actually possible; the selection of the proper reading is determined by the context: (6) a. We doubt that he is capable of meeting the challenges he is facing now. (= 'is confronted with') b. Don't worry, she has faced problems like this for years and will manage. (= 'has confronted and dealt with') Further linguistic means, such as modal verbs and adverbial adjuncts, are often necessary to avoid ambiguity and limit possible interpretations to one of the readings: (7) a. We have known her to face reality with as brave a heart as she could. b. God, help us to know that when we face life boldly, we won't be lost.  Labour should face the challenge. As can be seen from the examples below, this is where the phrasal verb comes in. The answer as to why it is possible that to face up to a


89

challenge entails meeting it, is also the description of the semantic contribution of the particle to the meaning of this construction: (8) a. He suddenly faced that huge challenge, but was unable to meet it. b. *He suddenly faced up to that huge challenge, but was unable to meet it. 4.3

The contributions of the particle and preposition to the meaning of to face up (to) ' The particle up in its central literal sense denotes verticality in oriented physical space, a notion that has arisen out of our bodily experience (of gravity), i.e. the relative position of head and feet to each other when we stand, sit or move. Thus, an experiential correlation exists between verticality and being awake, active and conscious, giving rise to such well-known conceptual metaphors as ACTIVE IS UP, WELL-BEING IS UP, RATIONAL IS UP, CONTROL IS UP (cf. Lakoff & Johnson 1980/Lakoff, Espenson & Schwartz 1991). That the notion of verticality and its metaphorical extensions also underlie the use of the particle up in verb-particle constructions was first described by Susan Lindner (cf. 1983), although without the help of the concepts that metaphor theory has provided since. Lindner (Lindner 1983:132) discovered that " U P paths have as either point of departure or as goal a region which we may call the region of interactive focus — the realm of shared experience, existence, action, function, conscious interaction and awareness." Under the conceptual metaphor ACTIVE IS UP, the up-path, therefore, can denote (among other things) "the transition from a resting and motionless state to an active, operational, prototypically moving state" (ibid. :129). This explains why there is a sense of action, and possibly even control, in the phrasal verb that the simple verb lacks. There are, however, two more metaphoric links that motivate the use of the particle and preposition in this construction. They are both provided by the EVENT STRUCTURE metaphor and its entailments. Firstly, the non-literal use of up in to face up to (sth.) can be regarded as a metaphorical extension of the literal meaning of up in such constructions as the following: (9) a. climb up to the top, go up to the third floor

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In these literal examples, the prepositional phrase with to denotes the goal of a movement in space, while the adverbial up specifies that the movement is along the vertical axis. The topology of this is retained in the non-literal meaning of to face up to sth under the EVENT STRUCTURE metaphor. Supplying the metaphorical frame that enables us to conceptualize difficulties etc. as physical obstacles obstructing the way to some goal, the EVENT STRUCTURE metaphor entails that the height of these obstacles should correspond directly to the degree of difficulty encountered. The higher an obstacle is, the more difficult it is to overcome. We find independent linguistic evidence for the fact that this is conventionalized in English in examples such as (9b): (9) b. high requirements/standards, the next examination loomed in the distance Related phrasal verbs such as to stand up to (a challenge), own up to (a mistake) or live up to (expectations) also support such an analysis. We may say, thus, that facing up to a problem involves a metaphorical 'upwards gaze' whose goal is the metaphorical object obstructing the metaphorical path of action.6 But there is a lot more to it. Lindner (cf. 1983:142) also observed that up can refer to reaching a goal, either in space or in some abstract domain. This, in turn, she connected to the observation that up can also describe "a path from far to near" (cf. ibid. : 143). Recasting her two observations in terms of metaphor theory, we can state that the use of up is due to the conceptual metaphor CLOSE IS UP, which captures the experiential fact that things which come closer to an observer rise in his/her visual field, as in (10a): (10) a. She came up to me. A transfer of the deictic centre makes it possible that any entity approaching another entity being the deictic centre can be seen as coming up to the latter. Up, therefore, can denote "increasing proximity" or the movement of a trajector to a landmark that is the deictic centre. The use of the preposition to indicates the deictic centre of the movement in both (10a) and (10b). (10) b. The car drove up to the entrance door.


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A n example for a literal use of the notion of 'increased proximity' i n a verb-particle construction with up to is provided by to meet up, which codes 'coming together', in contrast with the simple verb to meet that merely denotes 'be together' (cf. Lindner 1983:144). We claim that the meaning o f the verb-particle construction to face up to likewise contains an element o f motion, namely o f the trajector (the grammatical subject) toward the landmark (the prepositional object), which may be a part of the conceptual base of the verb to face, but which is not an especially salient or 'profiled' dimension of its meaning. However, since the verb-particle construction to face up to is only used non-literally, no literal 'movement' can be involved in facing up to a problem. Under the metaphors K N O W I N G IS SEEING/PERCEIVING (cf. Sweetser 1991) and A C T I O N Is M O T I O N , the latter being a part of the EVENT-STRUCTURE

METAPHOR complex, actively dealing with a problem can be conceptualized as moving towards an obstacle which obstructs further progress on a path. I t is important to note that i n the metaphorical extensions the inference patterns are retained (cf. Lakoff 1990/1993): approaching an object entails seeing it clearly and i n more detail, approaching a problem entails realizing its nature and getting to know it i n more detail. Furthermore, up also provides the phrasal verb with a sense of completion: the metaphor CLOSE IS U P has been grammaticalized under the EVENT-STRUCTURE metaphor yielding C O M P L E T I O N IS UP (cf. Lakoff, Espenson

& Schwartz 1991). Therefore, any activity approaching completion can be understood as motion towards a goal which is the deictic centre and can be furnished with the aspect marker up. 4.4

Summary We have tried to demonstrate why facing up to a problem entails meeting it. The complex conceptual blend 'behind' the phrasal verb is not 'contained' by its components or by the way they are put together. The complex f o r m , i n other words, underspecifies this rich conceptual structure. The components are mere hints that provide some 'guidance' to the target structure (which is now conventionalized and need not be actively created). This guidance to a specific target conceptualization is not coded i n the simple verb, but left unspecified and needs to be supplied by contextual clues. Hence, the simple verb to face can also code a mere (static) constellation i n space where no movement o f the trajector towards the landmark is involved. I n such static situations what is perceived as landmark or trajector may mainly be a matter of perspective or of thematic focus:

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(11) a. The hospital faces the old church. b. The old church faces the hospital. As we have mentioned before, the same is true for the non-literal use: (12) a. We are facing a huge problem. b. A huge problem is facing us. Obviously, this cannot be done with the phrasal verb since it is simply nonsensical to construe people as obstacles that need to be overcome by the problems moving towards them: (13) a. We are facing up to a huge problem. b. *A huge problem is facing up to us. We claim that the use of the particle up in the verb-particle construction is motivated by conceptual metaphors in multiple ways. This simultaneous motivation by more than one metaphor is a very common property of particles in verb-particle constructions. Firstly, the EVENT-STRUCTURE metaphor (location branch) and its entailments accounts for the non-literal use of to face — allowing us to conceptualize event structure in terms of physical experience while retaining the basic topology of the literal use. It also accounts for the grammaticalized use of the particle up as an aspekt/aktionsart marker. Secondly, the conceptual metaphors CLOSE IS UP, ACTIVE IS UP, CONTROL

IS UP — allow us to use the image schema up, literally coding verticality, to denote both increasing proximity of the trajector (grammatical subject) to the landmark (prepositional object) and the transition of the trajector to a state of activity and, possibly, control. Thirdly, though the target interpretation of the construction ('to actively confront an entity that poses a difficulty, danger etc.') cannot be 'predicted' by means of a simple calculus operating on the literal meanings of its elements, the construction is 'compositional' in the sense that the presence of all its elements is 'motivated' and that all elements contribute to this target interpretation: the verb by supplying the source domain for the activity, the particle by 'profiling' an image-schematic dimension of the verbal base which is left unspecified when the simple verb alone is used. Thus, it can indeed be claimed that the meaning of the verb-particle construction is more specific than that of the simple verb — the profiling of the relevant image-schema restricts possible metaphorical construals of the verb


face

up

to [NP]

source domains

being situtated in front of/opposite an entity

vertical movement

goal in space

conceptual metaphors

- event structure metaphor, loc. - problems are obstacles

-

- purposeful action is motion towards a goal (event structure met.)

target domains

confront sth.

activity, control, completion

target interpretation

close is up active is up control is up completion is up (event structure met.)

93

goal of activity

'to actively confront an entity that poses a problem, difficulty etc. for one's further actions'

Figure 1 : Metaphors motivating the components of the verb-particle construction 'to face up to'

content by effectively providing the relevant clues to the construal. Thus, the profiling of the image-schema up 'guides' the construal of the activity in theabstract target domain. In this way, possible ambiguities that may arise from construing the simple verb alone in a non-literal way can be avoided. Figure 1 is a representation of the complex metaphors involved in the verb particle construction to face up to. 5.

Pragmatic characteristics of the verb-particle construction 'to face up (toy) 5.1 Frequencies of the phrasal verb in different types of text and discourse In general, as was to be expected, the verb-particle construction to face up to is much more infrequent than the simple verb. We carried out a frequency count of the occurrences of both the simple and the phrasal verb using the British and American parts of the Collins Online corpus (totalling about 50 mill words).7 While there were 4,578 occurrences of the simple verb in BE ( = 127.17 per million words) and 3,723 occurrences in AE ( = 413.67

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per million words), only 110 instances of the phrasal-prepositional verb were counted in BE ( = 3.05 per million words), and 51 instances in A E ( = 5.67 per million words). We put the occurrences of the simple and phrasal verb in relation to each other and found that 2.33% of all forms of to face appeared in the company of the particles up (to) in BE, and 1.35% in A E . We furthermore wanted to check whether the percentage of the phrasal verb increased significantly when it was related to the occurrences of to face in one of the three relevant non-literal senses only. Obviously, this could not be done with a corpus of the size of the Collins Online, so we used a collection of four small British corpora comprising a total of 3.5 million words (cf. note 4) and sorted all occurrences of to face manually, ending up with 297 examples (84.86 per million words) as compared to 19 instances of to face up to (5.43 per million words). We could say, in other words, that the particle and preposition up (to) accompanied the verb to face in only 6.01 % of all instances in the sense 'to confront/actively meet/recognize existence of and deal w i t h ' . The smaller corpus also had the advantage that minute details about the text sources could easily be obtained. Table 2 displays the percentage of the verb-particle construction with respect to the text types in the corpus. Concerning the distribution of to face up to in the corpus, the following details are interesting to note: (i) I n the text type literature, two of the three phrasal verbs found occurred in the genre humour, the third in a creative writing text. (ii) I n semi-official spoken discourse, one of the two phrasal verbs appeared in a speech in the House of Commons, the other in an interview. (iii) In business texts, one phrasal verb occurred in a reader's letter, all others in headlines. (iv) In the news texts, two of the three phrasal verbs detected appeared in direct speech, i.e. were no part of the commentary itself, the third example was found in a headline. (v) The percentage of the phrasal verb in headlines that contained either to face in the relevant meaning or to face up (to) was 15,38%, i.e. as high as in private spoken discourse. (vi) No phrasal verbs occurred in scientific and religious discourse. The general tendency in the corpus analysed seems to be that the phrasal verb predominantly occurs in spoken (vs written) and informal (vs formal) types of discourse. This is a confirmed property of all phrasal verbs. A t the same time, informal speech situations and text types are also those where evaluative dimensions of meaning may be of increased relevance. This is also consistent with the high percentage of phrasal verbs in headlines. Indeed, the use of informal lexical items has been linked to indirect evaluative speaker strategies (cf. Powell 1992), and the phrasal verb is certainly (stylistically) marked as an informal lexical item. But this is not the

95


instances of to face vs to face up to

percentage of to face up to

297 vs 19

6.01 %

spoken discourse: private conversation between intimates and equals

11 vs 2

15.38%

press: arts, journals, general articles

27 vs 3

10.00%

literature: biography, creative writing

27 vs 3

10.00%

spoken discourse: semi-official and public (speeches, interviews)

20 vs 2

9.09%

press: reviews

14 vs 1

6.66%

written: business

62 vs 4

6.06%

press: sports

17 vs 1

5.55%

100 vs 3

2.91%

7 vs 0

0.00%

type of text or discourse

average occurrence of the phrasal verb (all types of text/discourse)

press: editorial, reportage, news written: scientific, learned/religion: sermons, books

Table 2: Types of discourse with the highest amounts of the phrasal verb

only respect in which the preference of the phrasal verb over the simple one may be significant in a pragmatic perspective. We interpret the fact that a speaker uses a lexical item that is marked in two ways — both as more informal and as more specific than the simple verb — as 'indexical' of an extralinguistic dimension of the speech situation: the speaker's emotional state and/or attitude towards the state of affairs described (cf. Hübler 1987/1998). Seen from a slightly different angle, the fact that the speaker takes the effort to make explicit the particular construal intended by inserting the particle up (and thus avoids possible ambiguities) can be interpreted in the same way. I n this respect it must be noted that instead of choosing further lexical means that merely 'describe' the intended non-literal meaning of to face, such as the adverbial adjunct in face boldly, the speaker chooses the kinaesthetic/ schematic meaning of the particle up, which seems to be a lot closer to non verbal expressions such as vivid iconic gestures (cf. Lindner 1983:231, quotation), the latter being often a by-product of vivid speaker emotions.

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Moreover, we may say that this 'emphasis' or 'expressivity' — though certainly present in all phrasal verbs — is especially foregrounded in phrasal verbs with an increased conceptual overlap between their components, i.e. in such phrasal verbs where the particle 'profiles' an image-schema that is already part of the conceptual base of the verb. A very similar observation was made almost 40 years ago: "Such particle verbs or phrasal verbs [i.e. hurry up, lend out, gather together, link together, meet together, open up, rise up, settle up, swallow down etc.] are felt to be more dynamic than their older synonyms, which have grown static and dull with old age and much use. For these particle verbs are composed of some simple and common verb combined with a preposition that expresses the idea of motion (up, down, off, over, away etc.) in both literal and figurative ... signification, whereby they translate into ... 'kinaesthetic' ... images ... these 'kinaesthetic metaphors' arouse the imagined sensations of muscular effort, and thereby become highly suggestive and expressive. Being the expression of muscular effort and motion, these verbs may easily be accompanied by a strong emotional feeling ... it is especially the adverb up that is filled with 'motor suggestion' . . . " [Charleston 1960:131] Thus we hypothesized that the immediate contexts8 of the phrasal verbs should be more expressive than those of the simple verbs, i.e. contain a higher amount of semantically, grammatically or stylistically marked items. 9 To this end we analysed the immediate contexts of all occurrences of both to face in the relevant sense (297 examples, 22 in headlines) and to face up to (19 examples, 4 in headlines) in the small collection of British corpora totalling 3.5 m i l l words. Since 19 instances of the phrasal verb seemed insufficient for our purposes, we additionally analysed the contexts of all occurrences of the verbparticle construction in the British part of the Collins Online (110 examples, 4 in headlines).10 We are aware of the fact that our analysis is merely suggestive in that it compiles evidence for the plausibility of our approach, rather than actually proves it. We think the latter option is not available when talking about speaker emotions and attitudes which are not directly expressed, ie which are not part of the signification itself, but occur on a user-level. Concerning the results, our expectations were largely confirmed. Though there was a large amount of variation according to text types, the average over all text types showed that the environments of the phrasal verb contained a

97


contextual feature

number of contextual fea tures counted (average occurrence of contextual feature per context) to face up to, 121 examples

number of contextual fea tures counted (average occurrence of contextual feature per context) to face, 215 examples

stylistic connotation: colloquial/slang

84

(0.69)

85

(0.31)

other VPCs

53

(0.44)

73

(0.26)

stylistic connotation: formal/literary/biblical

10

(0.08)

74

(0.27)

evaluative connotations

85

(0.70)

99

(0.36)

intensifying adjuncts/modifiers

98

(0.81)

190

(0.69)

metaphor/metonymy/ idioms

111

(0.92)

183

(0.66)

irony

14

(0.12)

21

(0.08)

marked word order (clefts, pseudo-clefts, fronting)

34

(0.28)

59

(0.21)

repetition/parallelism etc.

46

(0.38)

57

(0.21)

expressive use of doperiphrase/get-passive/ expanded form/perfect form

10

(0.08)

11

(0.04)

other rhetorical figures

38

(0.31)

34

(0.12)

non-finite and verbless clauses

174

(1.44)

271

(0.98)

Table 3: Marked linguistic features in the immediate textual environments of phrasal vs. simple verbs

higher amount of nearly all the features we looked for (cf. Table 3). The only exception to this finding regards the use of lexical items marked as formal or literary; here the result indicates that it is the simple rather than the phrasal verb that tends to occur in more formal environments.

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We concluded that both the phrasal verb's frequency in/distribution over the text types in the corpus and the fact that the immediate linguistic environ ments of the phrasal verbs contained on average more marked items than those of the simple verb supported our claim that the use of the phrasal verb is more expressive and can index an evaluative/emotive dimension at the speaker level. The fact that informal lexical items in general have been observed to point at indirect evaluative strategies of speakers corroborates this view. 6.

Summary Firstly, the analysis at the level of the construction has made it clear that the particle is in no way void of meaning or superfluous. By providing the construction with the topology of the image schema up, it guides the construal of the non-literal meaning of to face, thus restricting possible interpretations to a particular one, namely the active and more dynamic reading. This fact and the possible closeness of particles to iconic gestures, may be the reasons why the phrasal verb appears to be an emphatic variant of the simple verb used in the same sense. Secondly, the analysis at the level of actual usage has suggested that the phrasal verb may very well index some emotional or attitudinal dimension at the speaker level — considering that the frequency of the phrasal verb corre sponds with the degree of informality of a type of text or discourse and, hence, also with the importance of emotive and evaluative functions of language within that type of discourse. We regarded the fact that the immediate lin guistic environments of the phrasal verbs contain an increased amount of expressive linguistic elements as supportive of such a view. Notes 1 This is the case, for example, with the Encyclopaedic Dictionary, edited by Prof. Muret. German-English/English-German (1900), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English by Fowler & Fowler (1911-1951), the English-German/German-English Dictionary by Wildhagen (1932) and by Wildhagen & Heraucourt (1956). 2 This is true, among others, for The Oxford English Dictionary (1989), The Universal Dictionary of the English Language (1932), The Concise Oxford Dictionary (1976-1990), The Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary (1974-1989), The Collins Cobuild English Language Dictionary (1987), The Longman Dictionary of Current English (1987), and The Collins Concise Dictionary of the English Language (1988). 3 In a variety of other verb-particle constructions with 'superfluous' particles, the same pattern has been discovered: the simple verb is polysemous, and the corresponding phrasal verb is said to be synonymous with a very restricted number of senses only: cover up, rise up, tighten up, seek out, narrow down, cool down, sketch out, meet up (with) etc. Interestingly, these senses tend to be metaphorical, abstract or otherwise specialized.

FACING UP TO THE MEANING OF 'FACE UP TO

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4 The corpora I had access to in 1997 included the London-Lund corpus of spoken English: 0.5 mill, the LOB Corpus of British English: 1 mill, the Microconcord Texts A, The Independent: 1 mill and parts of the British National Corpus, section K: 1 mill words. Only in 1998 could I augment some of my findings by additionally using the Collins Online corpus (parts of the Bank of English): about 50 mill words. 5 We used the 3.5 mill word corpus of British English described in note 4. 6 That such a construal additionally depends on the independently existing metaphor KNOWING Is PERCEIVING (cf Sweetser 1991) is discussed below. 7 The Collins Online (part of the Bank of English) contained about 36 million words of written and spoken British English and about 9 million words of written and spoken American English at the time we used it. 8 We chose the surrounding 50 words. 9 We looked for stylistically marked lexical items in the immediate environment, such as items marked as informal/slang vs formal/literary/biblical etc. Concerning the former, we additionally counted the occurrences of other verb-particle constructions. We also searched for lexical items with strong emotive/evaluative connotations as well as for modifiers and adjuncts with an intensifying/emphatic/hyperbolic or evaluative function. Concerning syntax, marked word orders, as those produced by fronting (topicalization), clefts and pseudoclefts, were included for their emphatic function, as were get-passives, doperiphrases and the expanded and perfect form, the latter two only i f not used with an aspectual, but an expressive function (cf. Hübler 1998). Furthermore, we searched for other syntactic features, such as non-finite and verbless clauses, which might signal an increased level of informality. Also included were rhetorical devises, such as metaphor/metonymy, repetitions, syntactic paralellisms etc. The list of features is, of course, in no way exhaustive (marked phonological forms were not included, for example). 10 We excluded from the analysis any occurrences of either of the two verbs in headlines since these lack a sufficient amount of context. References Charleston, Britta M . 1960. Studies on the emotional and affective means of expression in modern English. Bern: Francke Verlag. Fauconnier, Gilles. 1985/1994 [2nd edition]. Mental Spaces. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Fillmore, Charles J. 1988. "The Mechanisms of Construction Grammar". Proceedings Society.

of the 14th Annual

Meeting

of the Berkeley

Linguistic

General Session and Parasession on Grammaticalization

eds.

Shelley Axmaker, Annie Jaisser & Helen Singmaster, 35-55. Berkeley: Berkeley Linguistics Society. Goldberg, Adele. 1995. Constructions. A Construction Grammar Approach to Argument Structure. Chicago & London: Chicago University Press. Grady, Joseph. 1997a. "Typology of Motivation for Conceptual Metaphor". Paper at the 5th International 1997 in Amsterdam.

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Conference, July 7

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. 1997b. Foundations of Meaning: Primary Metaphors and Primary Scenes. PhD Dissertation. Berkeley: Department of Linguistics, University of California. Hübler, Axel. 1987. "Communication and Expressivity". Functionalism in Linguistics eds. René Dirven & Villem Fried, 357-380. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. . 1998. The Expressivity of Grammar. Grammatical Devices Expressing Emotion across Time. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Johnson, Mark. 1987. The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination and Reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, George. 1993. "The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor". Metaphor and Thought (2nd edition) ed. Andrew Ortony, 202-251. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. . 1990. "The Invariance Hypothesis: Is Abstract Reason Based on Image Schemas?" Cognitive Linguistics 1:1.39-74. . 1987. Women, Fire and Dangerous Things. What Categories Reveal about the Mind. Chicago: Chicago University Press. & Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors we live by. Chicago & London: Chicago University Press. , Espenson, Jane & Alan Schwartz. 1989. "Master Metaphor List". Second Edition. MS at the Cognitive Linguistics Group, University of California at Berkeley. Langacker, Ronald W. 1988. "A View of Linguistic Semantics". Topics in Cognitive Linguistics ed. Brygida Rydzka-Ostyn, 49-90. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. . 1993. "Universals of Construal". Proceedings of the 19th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, Febr. 12-15, 1993. eds. Joshua Guenter, Barbara A . Kaiser & Cheryl  Z o l l , 447-463. Berkeley: Berkeley Linguistics Society. . 1995. "Viewing in cognition and grammar". Alternative Linguistics: Descriptive and Theoretical Modes ed. Philip Davis, 153-212. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Lindner, Susan J. 1983. A Lexico-Semantic Analysis of Verb-Particle Constructions with UP and OUT Trier: L . A . U . T . Series A , No 101. Powell, Mava J. 1992. "Semantic/Pragmatic Regularities in Informal Lexis". Text 12:1.19-58. Potter, Simon. 1965. "English Phrasal Verbs". Philologica Pragensia 8:23. 285-289.


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Sweetser, Eve. 1991. From Etymology to Pragmatics. Metaphorical and Cultural Aspects of Semantic Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Turner, Mark & Gilles Fauconnier. 1995. "Conceptual Integration and Formal Expression". Journal of Metaphor and Symbolic Activity 10:3.183-204.

Gerundive Nominalization From Type Specification to Grounded Instance Liesbet Heyvaert University of Leuven, Belgium 1.

Introduction Langacker (1991) claims that the semantic concepts of type specification, instantiation and grounding tend to be reflected iconically in the nominal and clausal structure. A type "specifies the basis for identifying various entities as being representatives of the same class but is not tied to any particular instance of that class" (Langacker 1991:53). An instance "is thought of as having a particular location in the domain of instantiation" (ibid.:57) and a grounding predication "presupposes that an instance has been established and gives some indication concerning its relation to the speech-act participants: instantiation per se provides no such indication" (ibid. :58). Langacker (1991:422) illustrates this claim by means of an elaborate analysis of nominalizations of the following kind: (1) Zelda's reluctant signing of the contract surprised the entire crew. (2) Zelda's reluctantly signing the contract surprised the entire crew. Traditionally, the distinction between these two constructions has been explained as a difference in degree of nominal features (see, among others, Lees 1960, Fraser 1970, Chomsky 1970, Kiparsky andKiparsky 1970, Menzel 1975, Wierzbicka 1988 and Declerck 1991). In (1), the nominalization signing behaves as a typical nominal head: it can be modified by an adjective {reluctant signing of the contract), does not tolerate an auxiliary verb {*Zelda's having signed of the contract), it can take a determiner {the signing of the contract) and it is postmodified by an ^/-prepositional phrase. This type is called 'action' nominalization (Lees 1960:64). The second nominalization, on the other hand, has preserved a clause-like internal structure: it takes an adverb rather than an adjective {reluctantly signing the contract), can have auxiliaries {Zelda 's having signed the contract), it cannot be preceded by an article or by a pronominal determiner (except for the possessive) {*the signing the contract), and the direct object follows the gerund like in a clause. Lees (1960:71) calls this 'gerundive' nominalization.

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Langacker attempts to offer a semantic motivation for the structures' features. He argues that structural differences exist between action, gerundive and that-nomimls (e.g. That Zelda signed the contract surprised us all), because they are derived from three different "levels of organization in the assembly of a finite clause" (1991:33), i.e. verb stem, intermediate processual structure and finite clause. These structural levels are said to correspond to a type, an ungrounded and a grounded instance respectively. The action nominal the signing of the contract is analysed as a 'type' nominalization because the nominalizing process involves the reification of a verb stem (e.g. sign) into a noun (signing), whose "semantic function (...) is limited to specifying a type" (Langacker 1991:33). If that noun is used as head of a nominal, it becomes an instance and the nominal means of instantiating and grounding apply. In the case of a gerundive nominal, however, the nominalization derives not from a verb stem (process type), but from an intermediate processual expression or ungrounded instance (e.g. sign the contract), which Langacker defines as "a structure that is like a finite clause except for the absence of an explicit subject and a predication of tense or modality" (1991:34). The result is a "complex noun" (1991:34) which functions as head noun, the schematic trajector of which is expressed by means of possessive periphrasis (Zelda's signing the contract). Finally, unlike gerundive nomináis, í/z¿zf-nominals derive from a grounded instance or a finite clause, whose internal structure is retained in the nominalization. The type/instance approach is especially worthwhile in as far as it brings out semantic parallels and differences across clausal and nominal structures: it offers the necessary descriptive tools for the analysis of the process of nominalization from clausal starting point to nominal construction. However, Langacker seems to be primarily concerned with illustrating the explanatory power of the concepts of type specification, instantiation and grounding, rather than with a thorough examination of the various kinds of nominalizations. In other words, he does not attempt to apply the conceptual framework to action and gerundive nomináis to the full, as a result of which he leaves some interesting phenomena unaccounted for. The analysis of both the internal structure and the external functioning of the nominal Zelda's signing the contract needs to be refined if one is to come at a plausible explanation for the various differences with the action nominal the signing of the contract. To start with, the status of the -ing form in gerundive nomináis should be clarified. In his discussion of action nomináis, Langacker explicitly attributes a nominalizing function to the -ing suffix, claiming that it turns a verb stem into a noun. Similarly, in gerundive nomináis, -ing is said to attach to the verb stem, only this time the verb belongs to a processual expression

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(cf. supra), identified as an intermediate level of organization of a finite clause. The initial, clause-like internal organization of the processual expression is preserved in the complex noun that is formed through the addition of -ing (signing the contract). It seems to be implied in Langacker's discussion that the change from processual expression to complex noun itself is brought about by the -ing suffix (1991:32). Or, in other words, that the -ing suffix has the same, i.e. nominalizing, function as in action nomináis (Taylor's 1996 analysis of gerundive nomináis follows Langacker in this respect). Unfortunately, this is as far as Langacker takes the issue: he does not question the nature of the -ing form (signing) in the complex noun (signing the contract) any further. Nevertheless, I feel that the key to understanding gerundive nomináis lies precisely in the status of the -ing form. It is my opinion that careful consideration of the nature of the -ing suffix in gerundive nominalization is essential to elucidate the category's features and to correctly describe it in terms of the semantic concepts of type specification, instantiation and grounding. Firstly, it has to be noted that -ing in gerundive nomináis does not create a noun (like in action nomináis), but preserves the verbal character of the verb it attaches to. In other words, the -ing form in gerundive nomináis is not responsible for the reification process. Secondly, and most importantly, I claim that gerundive nomináis do not have the intermediate structural level of a finite clause as starting point (e.g. sign the contract), but rather derive from a structure that underlies a nonfinite or atemporal clausal structure (e.g. signing the contract). More specifically, I claim that the gerundive verb form which is created by the -ing suffix in gerundive nomináis should be analysed as nonfinite clausal head. In his discussion of the verb group (1991 :ch.5), Langacker argues that, parallel to the noun in the nominal, the verb group minus the grounding predication (tense or modality) can be considered as clausal head, providing a clausal type specification. But Langacker only takes into account finite clausal heads, i.e. heads that can function in a finite clause once they have been combined with a grounding predication (e.g. be playing; have opened; be killed ...). I intend to show that the grammatical system of clausal heads offers both a finite and a nonfinite option, and that this distinction is crucial for the analysis of gerundive and action nomináis. Not only does Langacker only consider finite clausal heads, he also analyzes signing the contract as an instance rather than a type, on the basis of the inclusion of the direct object. Following Davidse (in press), I claim that objects do not have an instantiating role, but rather provide a further specification of the clausal type. They can thus be compared to adjectival and nominal modifiers accompanying nominal heads.

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As pointed out above, Langacker claims that the -ing form in an action nominal (the signing of the contract) creates a noun type specification. I argue that in the gerundive nominal her signing the contract, -ing produces a (nonfinite) clausal type specification and does not itself reify the construction. Consequently, action and gerundive nomináis should also be discriminated in terms of the kind of nominalizing process that they result from. Two different kinds of nominalization will be distinguished, namely word nominalization (involving a verb being turned into a noun by adding -ing) and clause nomi nalization, in which a clausal structure, e.g. signing the contract, externally functions within the structure of a nominal while retaining the internal outlook of a clausal type. Exactly how a clausal structure can come to function in a nominal environment is yet another issue that needs to be raised. Langacker (1991) has discussed the similarities between a finite clause that is nominalized, on the one hand, and personal pronouns and proper names on the other hand. The question of how nonfinite clausal types behave in the nominal, however, is left unanswered. It will be shown that, even though at first sight the heads of action and gerundive nomináis seem to behave similarly, significant differences exist. Finally, the obligatory inclusion of the clausal subject in the form of a possessive will be looked at. Different kinds of instantiation and grounding are shown to be at work in action and gerundive nomináis: the noun type speci fication resulting from word nominalization (signing) is instantiated and grounded with nominal means, namely determiners. The complex process type specification that is preserved in clause nominalization, however, requires what will be classified as a mixture of nominal and clausal instantiation, namely the presence of the periphrastic subject. 2. Nonfinite clausal type specification 2.1 The semantic functions of type, instance and grounding are reflected both in the nominal and clausal structure: nouns and verbs represent types, nomináis and finite clauses profile grounded instances of these types. More specifically, Langacker suggests that in the verb group "the specification of tense and modality be analyzed as the grounding predication, with the remainder of the group (other auxiliaries and the main verb) regarded as complex clausal head analogous to a head noun" (1991:195): (the clausal heads are in italics; in (3a) the clausal head itself is inflected for tense).


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(3) a. She cleaned the room. b. She may clean the room.  She must have been cleaning the room. If a verb group is to function as clausal head and provide a clausal type specification, it must profile a 'process', i.e. a series of component states which are distributed continuously through time and scanned in a sequential way (ibid. :21). Even though each auxiliary element imposes its own profile on the main verb and thereby derives a higher-order type specification, it is only "the leftmost verb in the sequence" (ibid. : 196) which determines the profile of the entire verb group. Langacker argues that the function of the auxiliaries have (perfect aspect), be (progressive aspect) and be (passive voice) is pre cisely to impose a processual profile on the atemporal relation that is formed by the affixal/inflectional pair members -ed (perfect aspect), -ing (progressive aspect) and -ed (passive voice) (ibid.: 199): he claims that "the members of a given pair must co-occur if the resulting expression is to be processual and thus able to serve as clausal head" (ibid.:200). Examples of clausal heads in which auxiliary pairs function are: (4) a. perfect aspect They must have known it all the time. b. progressive aspect She will be singing in several operas this year. c. passive voice You will be notified in due course. The auxiliary pairs can also occur in combination (examples drawn from the Collins COBUILD Corpus): (5) a. perfect and progressive They have argued that the Inkatha leader has been deliberately orchestrating the recent violence. b. progressive and passive Samples from 90 horses are being tested at the Australian Animal Health Laboratory, in Geelong. c. perfect and passive A computer program which diagnoses schizophrenia has been developed by a University of Queensland research team.

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(5) d. perfect, progressive and passive And will the Queensland Government agree? Well, the papers have been being put into the Cabinet in-basket and taken out of the Cabinet in-basket since some time in March. 2.2 However, verb groups with a processual profile cannot only be grounded in the speech event. What Langacker does not consider in his discussion of clausal heads is that processual verb groups or clausal heads can also be atemporalized. In what follows I will first present structural evidence in favour of extending the concept of clausal head to include both finite and nonfinite heads: more specifically, nonfinite clausal heads or processual structures which have been given an atemporal profile provide a complex type specification which cannot in any way be grounded in the speech event. In a second part, the structural similarities with gerundive nominalizations will be pointed out and illustrated, and it will be concluded that the -ing suffix in gerundive nomináis must be analyzed as being part of a nonfinite clausal head, rather than having a reifying function. How a clausal type specification can come to function in a nominalization will be dealt with later on in the discussion. To start with, one of Langacker's arguments in favour of the existence of a fundamental division between tense/modality on the one hand and the remainder of the verb group on the other hand is the following: an infinitive (with to) can be formed on a main verb together with its auxiliaries but without markers of tense or modality: thus, constructions like to wash, to be washing, to have washed, to have been washed are possible, while Ho washed, Ho should wash, Ho had been washed are unacceptable. However, it seems to me that this does not only illustrate that it is the non-grounding auxiliaries (like be and have), rather than the grounding expressions of tense and modality, that form a strong unit with the main verb. These structures also show that the combination of main verb and auxiliaries which is termed 'clausal head' by Langacker cannot only be turned into a finite expression, but that it can just as well be elaborated into a to-infinitive, while using an equally wide range of auxiliaries and auxiliary combinations as with a grounded clausal head. Moreover, note also that, besides a to-infinitive, the -ing suffix can also function as an alternative for grounding the clausal head, witness the following examples: (6) washes/washed has washed has been washing

washing/ to wash having washed/ to have washed having been washing/ to have been washing


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Grounding the non-finite verb group which is thus formed is impossible: *shoulding wash, *hadding been washed. Only when the clausal head is progressive in profile, is -ing impossible: e.g. be playing, but *being playing. In his discussion of the -ing suffix, Langacker attributes this to the fact that "simpler alternatives are available that do essentially the same job" (1991:232). In other words, playing is a simpler alternative for being playing and therefore makes the latter structure redundant. What do the finite and nonfinite way of elaborating clausal heads have in common and in which way do they differ? Firstly, the examples make clear that both the atemporal markers (-ing and to-infinitive) and elements of tense/modality need a processualprofile as basis: atemporal verb phrases like playing and played have to be complemented with the auxiliaries be or have, which profile a process, before they can be grounded or atemporalized. Moreover, grounding or atemporalizing a clausal head prove to be mutually exclusive choices. This means that, once a head has been grounded, it can no longer be atemporalized, neither can an atemporalized head be grounded. In short, a processual structure or clausal head is either grounded or turned into a structure which is nonfinite and cannot, in any way, be grounded: (7) a. *to was sitting on that bench [Langacker 1991:421] *shoulding have sat on that bench [ibid.] b. *should being killed *will to play in the garden Of course, if the atemporal -ing suffix is elaborated into a structure with be, a new processual structure or clausal head is formed and grounding be comes possible again: being dropped -*• be being dropped -> is being dropped. In addition, like finite clausal heads, nonfinite heads can be made to function in a clausal structure with a subject, direct object, complement, adjuncts and adverbials (examples drawn from the Collins COBUILD Corpus): (8) a. Those who ate the apples ran off wild and mad into the forest the apples having been poisoned by a woman who had loved Merlin (...). b. (...) there has been another explosion at an office of the ruling National Party, with evidence pointing to it having been the work of white extremists.

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(8) . Falling water levels at Somerset Dam have led to restrictions being placed on boating in the area. d. There his father (...) lived the life of a recluse, conscientiously tending the woods he loved. e. Last Friday, he sent a telegram to the annual meeting of Quebec's independence party, openly endorsing their separatist demands. If the atemporal markers -ing and to-infinitive do not ground the type specification provided by the clausal head, then what exactly is their semantic impact? I follow Langacker when he argues that atemporal markers primarily affect the conceptualizer's mode of scanning the component states of the process: rather than the step-by-step, serial way of scanning typical of processual structures (e.g. play, have played, be playing) and finite clauses, nonfinite clausal heads offer a holistic view on the component states. This means that the component states are viewed "as a single gestalt" (1991:21). In other words, turning a clausal head into a finite structure implies grounding the type specification which it provides, without changing the mode of scanning. In contrast, when a clausal head is atemporalized, it still profiles a clausal type, but the way in which the component states of the verb type are scanned changes from processual to holistic. Characteristic of -ing is that it moreover restricts the profile to "a series of component states that does not include the initial and final states" (ibid.:209). Because the basic semantic effect of -ing and to-infinitive is that the component states of the process are scanned holistically, it does not matter whether the component states of the process to which they are added are identical or not. In other words, the atemporal markers -ing and to-infinitive can be used with both 'imperfective' and 'perfective' verbs: imperfective verbs profile processes with identical component states (e.g. know -*■ to know /knowing), perfective verbs profile some kind of change due to the differences that exist among the component states (e.g. hit -> to hit/hitting) (Langacker 1991:21). However, when turning the atemporal -ing profile into a processual head with be, sequential scanning of the component states is reestablished. More specifically, the distinctive semantic feature of the progressive pair which is thus created is what Langacker calls its 'imperfectivizing' effect, i.e. "the component states are construed at a level of schematicity that neutralizes their differences" (ibid.:209). Therefore, only perfective verbs (with different component states) can be used in a progressive construction: imperfectivizing an already imperfective verb would not make sense (ibid.:208).


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To sum up, I hope to have shown that there are strong structural indications that the atemporal markers -ing and to-infinitive can give rise to a second type of clausal head, next to grounded clausal heads. Even though both types of clausal head display similarities, there are of course also differences, especially as far as the semantic function which they fulfill is concerned: a finite clausal head grounds the clause in the speech event, whereas a nonfinite clausal head merely creates a different, i.e. atemporal or holistic, way of looking at verbal types. Now, if we consider gerundive nomináis, a striking resemblance with atemporal clausal heads can be witnessed, both structurally and semantically. More particularly, gerundive nomináis can also take a range of auxiliaries and, secondly, other constituents typical of clausal structures (such as adverbials, complements, direct objects and adjuncts) can be included: (9) a. perfect aspect One of those individuals who is unaccountably gifted as a contemplative, she knew nonetheless that her discovery of that hidden track inward, and her having been able to follow it into full, ecstatic awareness of God, was sheer grace. It has been observed that the emphasis on Christ's humanity — his having rendered himself up without resistance to the authorities and the fact that his body was broken and bleeding — allowed women in particular to identify with him at a very deep level. b. passive voice But his outliving her made him a rare specimen in this setting. Also her being awed by their vast drawing-room and the grand piano that nobody ever played. Vice President Quayle announces that his being dropped from the ticket is a closed issue, as though the decision is his to make.  perfect aspect and passive voice Its volume alone would be impressive, but its originality and sheer brilliance vindicate completely her having been declared Doctor of the Church. d. perfect aspect and progressive voice Their having been camping in the nature reserve got them a fine, [personal example]

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What's more, the other atemporal marker, namely to-infinitive, can also function as part of a nominalization: e.g. For her to have been able to follow it into filli, ecstatic awareness of God, was sheer grace; (...) For them to have been camping in the nature reserve got them a fine (for a further description of this type of nominalization, see Lees 1960). Together with nominals of the kind That Zelda signed the contract surprised the crew (see above), in which the clausal head is grounded, these to-infinitive nominalizations complete the picture of clausal heads which can function in a nominal environment. Finally, similar to nonfinite clausal heads, gerundive nominals can draw on both perfective (see examples) and imperfective process types: e.g. John('s) knowing the answer surprised us all; Lucy('s) being late worried her father. I n short, I claim that gerundive nominals systematically draw on nonfinite clausal heads, or heads which cannot be grounded in the speech event, which present the action holistically and from "an internal perspective" (Langacker 1991:209), ignoring its initial and final states. The possibility of using such an 'ungroundable' clausal type may well motivate the construction and partly explain its semantic import (for instance with regard to its 'factive' status, see below). Langacker's 'ungrounded instance' analysis of gerundive nominals can now be refined. I n the first place, it has been shown that the structure from which gerundive nominalization starts already contains the -ing suffix, which provides an atemporal profile. Being a nonfinite clausal head, the initial structure is not only ungrounded, but, more particularly, it can never be grounded. Secondly, the nonfinite type specification constituted by the head signing is not instantiated by the direct object (cf. signing the contract), but rather described in more detail by it. I n other words, gerundive nominais derive not from an ungrounded instance, but from a complex type specification that cannot be grounded. The latter claim concerning the nature of the direct object, however, w i l l be further elaborated upon in the next section. 2.3 Nominal heads can take nominal, adjectival and prepositional modifiers subcategorizing the 'thing' designated by the head noun without instantiating it: Langacker describes the construction excellent convention site in the Midwest (1991:53) as a type specification which is "rendered progressively more specific". He argues that a noun type can be characterized with any desired degree of precision, thanks to adjectival and other modifiers that are not determining (ibid. :54). Similarly, verb stems can be 'modified' without being instantiated: Langacker considers auxiliaries as part of clausal types. Following Davidse (in press), I claim that a clausal type specification does not

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only consist of the main verb and its nonfinite auxiliaries, but that also objects should be included: in other words, I disagree with Langacker when he states about the gerundive nominal Zelda's signing the contract that "The fact that the nominalized structure incorporates a fully specified direct object supports the claim that it represents an instance and not just a type" (1991:34). I view signing the contract as a whole as providing a complex process type specifi cation. Instead of fulfilling an instantiating function, the direct object is thus claimed to merely 'subcategorize' the process type expressed by the verb stem "into more specific process types" (Davidse 1997:422). Davidse (in press) gives the following arguments for a type-specifying role of the object and an instantiating function of the subject: her claims are based on the observation that a fundamental structural split exists between the subject and the finite verb (and polarity) on the one hand (called ' M o o d ' by Halliday 1994), and the rest of the clause on the other hand (which Halliday calls 'Residue'): Mood element Subject

Finite

Residue Polarity

Predicator IO DO

GROUNDING

TYPE

INSTANTIATION

SPECIFICATION

I

am

You

're

Complement

writing you a letter not

being

a pest (are you ?)

Formal evidence for this grammatical split is found in tags (which isolate the Mood element) and in elliptical clauses (Mood ellipsis: e.g. What were they doing? Holding hands/ Being chased by a bull; and Residue ellipsis: e.g. I am writing you a letter? Oh, are you? Yes, I am). Other formal properties of objects that are in line with their typespecifying role can be found in Keenan (1976, as cited in Davidse, in press: 161): he points out that objects are typically lowly referential (relatively indefinite), while subjects are usually highly referential (relatively definite). Moreover, Keenan claims that one of the most universal properties of the subject is that its reference "must be determinable by the addressee at the moment of utterance. It cannot be made to depend on the reference of other NPs which follow i t " , e.g. *He-self admires John cannot replace John admires himself (Keenan 1976:313). The reference of the object, however, can be made dependent on that of the subject, and is generally controlled by the subject.

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That clausal type specifications are formed by the predicator and its objects is also reflected in the general grammatico-semantic categorization of process types/ clausal heads, which is based on whether or not an object is included: intransitive (incl. passive of the transitive): no object (e.g. sleeping; being hit) transitive (incl. passive of the ditransitive): object (e.g. hitting so.;being given sth.) ditransitive: indirect and direct object (e.g. giving so.sth.) Why does Davidse prefer to call the subject rather than both subject and object instantiating? Langacker (1991) defines 'grounding' as relating an instance to the ground (i.e. the speech event and its participants). Grounding presupposes that a type specification has been tied to a particular instance, and it involves pointing out the relation between the instance and the ground, thus rendering the instance identifiable to the hearer. For the clause, this means that it is finite. The finite verb establishes 'subjective grounding' by indicating the expression's temporal and modal relation to the speech participants (the ground or reference point is maximally subjective within the scope of predication, i.e. it remains implicit, cf. Langacker 1991:93-94). Davidse (in press) claims that, in addition to being grounded by the finite element, a clause is also grounded by the person deixis which the subject expresses: the finite verb does not only indicate tense or modality, it also implies (implicit hence 'subjective') PERSON deixis (grammatical person), which is yet another way of relating the instance to the speech event. The subject can be said to make explicit this grammatical person of the finite verb, which is expressed on the finite element by person and number marking, and on the subject by the nominative case (note that no information about objects is expressed on the English finite verb). Therefore, the subject can be said to constitute an objective form of grounding, via what could be called 'objective' person deixis. Davidse moreover argues that 'finiteness' is also crucially instantiation of a process type: 'infinitives' designate types (be, break . . . ) , whereas finite verbs designate instances of types (was, broke, has broken . . . ) : "the process type specification is instantiated in the first place (...) by the Finite [verb]" (in press: 161). The subject is claimed to make explicit which instance the finite verb designates: it explicitates the person implied in the finite verb, thus instantiating the process type, and opening the way for relating the instance to the ground or speech event.


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To conclude, I claim that the starting point or the structure which the reification applies to in gerundive nominais is a nonfinite clausal head, which, together with its object, provides a complex process type specification (signing the contract). So far, Langacker's analysis of gerundive nominais has thus been modified with regard to two points: -ing is claimed to be part of the initial, nonfinite clausal head structure and is therefore not itself nominalizing (as it is in action nominalizations). And secondly, the direct object is not instantiating, but rather belongs to the original type specification. 3. Different kinds of nominalization 3.1. It has been shown that action and gerundive nominais differ with regard to the structure that is nominalized: in nominalizations like the signing of the contract (action), a simple process type specification (sign) is reified. Gerundive nominais, on the other hand, derive from a complex process type specification (e.g. signing the contract). Because of these different starting points, distinct kinds of nominalization apply: action nominalization turns a simple process type into a noun type by adding -ing. Because the nomina lization is carried out at word level (from verb to noun), I suggest to call it word nominalization. Apart from -ing ('action' noun), other suffixes can be used, e.g. -er ('agentive' noun, e.g. signer). The resulting noun can be used as head of a nominal, cf. The signing of the contract took an hour; The signer of the contract had used the wrong pencil. Gerundive nominalization, on the other hand, retains the internal structure of a complex process type, but makes it function within a nominal structure, itself fulfilling the role of a main-clause participant (e.g. Zelda's signing the contract shocked us all). I n other words, the nonfinite clausal head comes to function as nominal head externally (and nominal means of instantiation and grounding the head apply), but internally it retains its status as clausal head. Because the internal clausal structure is left intact, I prefer to call this clause nominalization. 'Factive' nominais (cf. Lees 1960; e.g. That Zelda signed the contract) also fall under this type of nominalization. 3.2. I n how far can action and gerundive nominais be considered as prototypical nominal structures? A prototypical nominal reflects its semantic function directly, i.e. it incorporates both a head noun and a determiner, each fulfilling a specific semantic function: the head noun specifies a type, and the determiner grounds an instance of that type (Langacker 1991:143). Nominal structures which deviate from this canonical organization arguably only differ from prototypical nominais in that they lack (visible) structural implementation

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of the semantic functions. Langacker (1991:148-149) describes the nominalization of a finite clause (e.g. That Zelda signed the contract surprised the crew) as an illustration of a non-prototypical nominal: the nominalization itself makes up the nominal, and determiners cannot be added. This is attributed to the fact that the clause, functioning as head noun, designates a grounded instance: "The specified type therefore has only a single instance, with the consequence that the derived noun is inherently definite" (ibid. :149). As a result, no separate grounding predication is required: "conceptual reification alone converts a finite clause into a nominal" (ibid. :149). Finite clauses that are nominalized are thus comparable to proper names and personal pronouns: due to the fact that they designate single instances of a type and that they are inherently definite, their being grounded does not need separate structural symbolization. Gerundive nominais, containing a nonfinite clausal head, differ from finite nominalizations in that they do take a premodifying structure, namely the possessive (e.g. Zelda's / Her signing the contract). I n action nominais, the nominal head is prototypical in that it can be pre- and postmodified (e.g. the signing of the contract). As a result, one is tempted to classify action and ge rundive nominais as typical nominal constructions. However, when comparing the way in which the heads of action and gerundive nominais function within the nominal structure, some interesting differences show up, suggesting that in gerundive nominais, the internal clausal structure of the head crucially influences the way in which it can function in a nominal structure. I n what follows, I w i l l show that action heads are fully nominalized in that they take the nominal means of instantiation and grounding, whereas gerundive heads take a mixture of nominal and clausal instantiation and can therefore be said to be only partly nominalized. 4. Means of instantiation and grounding 4.1 The noun type signing (as in Zelda's [signing] of the contract) can only function as head of a nominal after it has been instantiated and grounded. Grounding implies that the type specification is tied to a specific instance and that the speaker makes this instance identifiable to the hearer. I n the case of an action nominal, the following grounding options are available: definite article 1 : e.g. The [signing] of the contract took place in this room. demonstrative pronoun: e.g. We must try to stop this massive [killing] of innocent people. possessive: e.g. Zelda's/Her [signing] of the contract shocked us all.


117

What strikes the eye is, firstly, that the various ways of grounding the head are all distinctly nominal, and, secondly, that it is only the addition of determiners that enables the head to take up its function in a nominal: adjectives and postmodifying structures (like of the contract) only render the noun type more specific, more complex, without instantiating or grounding it. Moreover, it has to be pointed out that the Agent of the verb forming the basis of the action nominal is not necessarily expressed (cf. the signing of the contract), and when it is expressed (periphrastically of course), it is not necessarily located in front of the head, functioning as possessive grounding element. It can take the form of an of-prepositional phrase (namely when the verb which is nominalized is intransitive): e.g. The cooing of the pigeons; The coming of the Prince of Wales (Declerck 1991:499). When, on the other hand, the verb does take a direct object (i.e. it is transitive), and this direct object is periphrastically expressed in the form of an -of prepositional phrase, the Agent is indicated by means of a by -prepositional phrase, e.g. The climbing of Mont Blanc by a solitary girl is an incredible performance (Declerck 1991:499). 4.2. When functioning as head of a nominal, the complex process type signing the contract has only one grounding option available: possessive: Zelda's/His signing the contract surprised the crew. article: *the signing the contract demonstrative: *that killing innocent people A t first sight, one is tempted to conclude that, the possessive being a nominal means of grounding, the gerundive nominal functions as a 'normal' nominal head. However, things are more complicated. Firstly, the subject of the nonfinite clausal head (which may be conflated with Agent, e.g. his having rendered himself up, or Patient, e.g. his being dropped from the ticket) must be expressed: not only is it impossible to use other nominal means of construing the nonfinite clausal grounding (*the/that signing the contract...), head immediately as nominal entails a shift in meaning. Lees (1960:72) speaks of a semantic change leading from a 'fact' to an 'action', but he does not analyze the 'action' variant of gerundive nominais any further (see also ibid. 1960:106): (10) a. *Signing the contract surprised the entire crew. b. Signing the contract was a stupid thing to do.

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LIESBET HEYVAERT

Secondly, in informal language, the periphrastic form of the subject is often replaced by a bare noun: John writing us a letter is rather unusual Lees (1960:72) claims that an interesting feature of the gerundive nominal is that in "colloquial English" and " i f it is very long, it usually takes no nominal affixes", e.g. I don't approve of the crew's only remaining man going there. The least one can conclude from this is that the structural position filled by the possessive differs in action and gerundive nominais: in action nominais the possessive is only one of a series of nominal grounding options; i n gerundives the expression of the subject is obligatory; i n gerundives the possessive can be replaced by a bare noun, i.e. a clausal form of expressing the subject 4.3. Starting from the observation that it is always the subject of the nonfinite clausal head that functions as premodifier in gerundive nominais, I claim that the possessive form of the subject instantiates and grounds the clausal head in its (external) function as head of the nominal. A t the same time, however, the subject which is periphrastically expressed by the possessive is needed to instantiate the (internal) clausal structure signing the contract, thus allowing it to figure i n 'factive' contexts (see below). I n short, in view of the fundamental difference between direct object and subject which I discussed earlier, and considering the close relation between subject and finite as far as instantiation and grounding are concerned, I would like to propose an alternative analysis for the gerundive nominal Zelda's [signing the contract]: instead of calling [signing the contract] an instance whose subject is periphrastically expressed, I prefer to call it a type which is necessarily instantiated by the subject. As was argued before, the subject realizes instantiation of the clause together with the finite verb: only the addition of a finite verb w i l l fully instantiate the clause, i.e. indicate the location of the clausal type specification in terms of tense or modality. But the presence of a subject can be seen as a first step towards instantiation. 5.

Factive Nominais? Langacker's discussion of -ing nominalizations in terms of type/instance also attempts to account for a semantic difference which has often been observed between action and gerundive nominais: action nominais seem to "focus on the event as a physical activity" (e.g. Sam's washing of the windows was meticulous, Langacker 1991:32), whereas gerundive nominais seem to imply that the designated event has occurred, that it is a 'fact' (e.g. Sam's


119

washing the windows was a shock to everybody, Langacker 1991:32). Langacker argues that it is the instantiated nature of gerundive nominais which allows them to figure in factive contexts. Due to the ungrounded nature of the reified process, however, this need not always be the case (e.g. I would definitely object to your taunting the bear (should you ever decide to do it), ibid. :32). For various reasons I w i l l not elaborate on the topic of 'factivity': comparing the many different definitions (cf. Lees 1960; Kiparsky and Kiparsky 1971; Menzel 1975; Davidse 1991; Halliday 1994) of the concept alone would require another article. But, more importantly, 'factivity' is not an exclusive property of gerundive nominais: as Lees (1960) points out, 'factive nominais' 2 (e.g. That he came was obvious, ibid.:59) and 'for ... to' nominais (e.g. For him to eat vegetables is surprising, ibid. :71) also refer to 'facts'. A n account of factivity should therefore incorporate a detailed analysis of these types of nominalizations as well. Due to time and space limitations I have had to restrict myself to remarks about Langacker's type/instance analysis itself. However, my claim concerning the instantiating function of the periphrastically worded subject in gerundive nominais certainly offers interesting perspectives on the analysis of factivity: i f Langacker's hypothesis that a factive meaning is linked with instantiation is correct, and i f the subject is, next to the finite verb, an instantiator, then it should logically follow that subject-less, nonfinite nominalizations cannot have a 'factive' meaning. Interestingly enough, observations in that direction have already been made by Lees (1960), who distinguishes gerundive and 'for ... to' nominais with a factive meaning from those with an 'action' interpretation; the latter type "cannot have any expressed subject" (ibid.:72; e.g. It's great fun swimming there; It's great fun to swim there). 6.

Conclusion This article has been an attempt to refine Langacker's type/instance analysis of nominalizations. His account has the merit of offering a whole new perspective on phenomena whose structural properties had, despite extensive discussion in the literature, as yet not been motivated satisfactorily. However, I claim that Langacker does not use his conceptual framework to the f u l l : as far as gerundive nominais are concerned, I suggest an analysis which deviates from Langacker's interpretation in three ways: firstly, I want to stress the importance of describing the -ing form in detail. Gerundive nominais turn out to contain a nonfinite clausal head, which forms a complex clausal type specification with its object. Secondly, two kinds of reification processes can be distinguished, depending on the internal outlook of the nominalization.

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Finally, the complex clausal type specification in gerundive nominais is argued to be necessarily instantiated by the periphrastically worded subject. As already hinted at in the previous paragraph, several other types of nominais and a range of semantic peculiarities should be taken into account as well if one is to come at an understanding of the concept of nominalization and its various 'instantiations'. I hope to have shown that such a large-scale analysis of -ing nominalization will necessarily have to be 'grounded' in a detailed description of the head, of the paradigmatic variants or options that are available to the language user to fill the modifier positions, and of the syntagmatic or contextual potential of each subtype. Notes 1 Though less frequently occurring, the indefinite article, the zero determiner, and relative quantifiers like no, some, any ... can also be found in Action nominais: e.g. (...) removal of references to the monarch is an act of sedition and a breaking of the oath of office taken by politicians; (...) the Ministry of Agriculture will allow burning of herbage seeds, reeds, lavender (...); There was no breaking of ranks with Cabinet colleagues; Certainly there seemed to be no burning of bridges for these two; ... [Source: Collins COBUILD Corpus] 2 Langacker (1991) uses the term 'factive' as a synonym for 'gerundive' nominais. This does not correspond to Lees' terminology: he argues that gerundive nominalization (i.e. of the kind Zelda's signing the contract) "refers to a fact" (Lees, 1960:65), but he reserves the term 'factive' nominalization for finite nominalizations (e.g. that Zelda signed the contract). Chomsky (1970) follows Lees in his choice for the term 'gerundive'. It is only Fraser (1970) who uses the term 'factive' for 'gerundive' nominais. Considering Langacker's explanation for the factive meaning which gerundive nominais often have (i.e. their being instances), and his analysis of the fact that they can also have a non-factive meaning (because they are ungrounded instances), it seems best to follow Lees' terminology and reserve the term 'factive' only for that type of nominal which, being a grounded instance, is always factive in meaning.

References Chomsky, N. 1970. "Remarks on Nominalization". Readings in English Transformational Grammar eds. R.A. Jacobs & P.S. Rosenbaum, 184221. Waltham, Mass.: Ginn. Davidse, K. 1991. Categories of Experiential Grammar. PhD Dissertation, Dept. of Linguistics, University of Leuven. Davidse, K. 1997. "The Subject-Object versus the Agent-Patient asymmetry". Leuven Contributions in Linguistics and Philology 86.413-431. Davidse, K. in press. "The Dative as participant role versus the Indirect Object: on the need to distinguish two layers of organization". The Dative: Theoretical and Contrastive Studies. eds. W. Van Langendonck & W. Van Belle, 143-184. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.


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Declerck, R. 1991. A Comprehensive Descriptive Grammar of English. Tokyo: Kaitakusha Co. Fraser, B. 1970. "Some Remarks on the Action Nominalization in English". Readings in English Transformational Grammareds.R.A. Jacobs & P.S. Rosenbaum, 184-221. Waltham, Mass.: Ginn. Halliday, Μ.Α.K. 1994. An Introduction to Functional Grammar. London, Melbourne & Auckland: Edward Arnold. Kiparsky, P. and C. Kiparsky 1971. "Fact". Semantics: An Interdisciplinary Reader in Philosophy, Linguistics, and Psychology eds. D.D. Steinberg & L.A. Jakobovits, 345-369, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. angacker,R. 1991. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar 2: Descriptive application. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Lees, R.B. 1960. The Grammar of English Nominalizations. Bloomington: Indiana University Research Center in Anthropology, Folklore, and Linguistics, Publication 12. Menzel, P. 1975. Semantics and Syntax in Complementation. The Hague, Paris: Mouton. Taylor, J. 1996. Possessives in English. An Exploration in Cognitive Grammar. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Wierzbicka, A. 1988. The Semantics of Grammar. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

A Cognitive Approach to Errors in Case Marking in Japanese Agrammatism The Priority of the Goal -ni over the Source -kara Hiroko Ihara Tokyo Zokei University Tokyo, Japan

Ikuyo Fujita International University of Health and Welfare Tochigi, Japan

1.

Introduction * Agrammatism is a syndrome that occurs in aphasia caused by brain damage. It is generally admitted that one of its characteristics is the omission of, or errors in, function words (Caplan & Futter 1986; Caramazza & Berndt 1985). In Japanese agrammatism, case particles are very often omitted (Sasanuma et al. 1990) or incorrect case particles are sometimes substituted for them (Kamio 1979) in spontaneous speech. It is also ob served that incorrect case particles are substituted for correct ones in many cases in elicited speech (Fujita 1991; Fujita &Ihr1992,1993; Ihara & Fujita 1995). The aim of this paper is to show that the priority of the dative -ni representing the goal role over the ablative -kara representing the source role in the sentences produced by Japanese agrammatic patients is in accord with the goal-orientedness observed pervasively in human language. It also aims to show that the priority of the dative -ni can be explained using the notion of action chain proposed in Langacker (1991). Section 2 gives an outline of Japanese case particles and section 3 gives a brief outline of the characteristics of agrammatism. Section 4 gives details of the experiment and shows the results. Section 5 argues that the results of the experiment indicate goal-orientedness pervasively observable in human language, and attempts an explanation using the notion of action chain proposed in Langacker (1991). The final section gives concluding remarks. 2.

Outline of case particles in Japanese Japanese is an SOV language and grammatical and semantic relations between a predicate and its participants are in principle realized as case particles placed after nouns.1 Although a sentence typically begins with the subject, word order is relatively free except for the position of verbs, which come at the end of the sentence, as the following examples show (NOM = NOMINATIVE, ACC= ACCUSATIVE):

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HIROKO IHARA & IKUYO FUJITA

(1) a. Keiko-ga Taroo-o but-ta Keiko-NOM Taro-ACC hit-Past "Keiko hit Taro." b. Taroo-o Keiko-ga but-ta Taro-ACC Keiko-NOM hit-Past "Keiko hit Taro." c. ??But-ta Taroo-o Keiko-ga2 hit-Past Taro-ACC Keiko-NOM There are a number of case particles. In principle the nominative -ga and the accusative -o indicate that the accompanying nouns are the subject and the object of the sentence respectively.3 The other case particles represent semantic roles. As far as transfer-of-possession verbs are concerned, the dative -ni in principle represents the goal role in GIVE-type verbs and the ablative -kara represents the source role in RECEIVE-type verbs, as the following examples show (DAT=DATIVE, ABL=ABLATIVE): (2) a. Taroo-ga Keiko-ni hana-o age-ta Taro-NOM Keiko-DAT flower-ACC give-Past "Taro gave Keiko flowers." b. Keiko-ga Taroo-kara -o uketot-ta Keiko-NOM Taro-ABL money-ACC receive-Past "Keiko received money from Taro." However, as will be shown in section 5.1, the dative -ni can be substi tuted for the ablative -kara with a limited number of RECEIVE-type verbs. 3.

Characteristics of agrammatism Before giving details of the experiment, we will take a brief look at the characteristics of agrammatism. In general, aphasia is a language disor der caused by brain damage after a language has been acquired, and agram matism is one kind of aphasic syndrome. It very often overlaps with one traditionally classified type of aphasia known as Broca's, "resulting from a lesion of the anterior part of the language zone of the dominant (in most cases) left hemisphere" (Tonkonogy 1986:53).4 The characteristics of agrammatism are speaking effortfully with phonemic distortion and producing sentences with minimal syntactic structure (Schwartz et al. 1987). It is also generally agreed that one of the characteristics is the omission or

ERRORS IN CASE MARKING IN JAPANESE AGRAMMATISM

misselection of grammatical markers and function words (Caramazza & Berndt 1985; Linebarger 1990). In the case of Japanese agrammatism, it is reported that in spontaneous speech case particles are frequently omitted and are sometimes substituted (Kamio 1979; Sasanuma et al. 1990), and in elicited speech case particles are very often substituted (Fujita 1991; Fujita & Ihara 1992, 1993; Ihara & Fujita 1995). 4. Experiment and results 4.1 Experiment Purpose. The aim of the experiment was to see whether there is any difference between the rates of errors made in supplying the dative -ni and the ablative -kara by agrammatic aphasics as far as transfer-of-possession verbs are concerned, and how the errors are made. Materials. A picture-description task was used. Twenty pictures were prepared and the names of the objects and people in the pictures were written beside them. Each picture was to be described with a verb that was provided. Two GIVE-type verbs, i.e. watasu "hand" and ageru "give", and two RECEIVE-type verbs, i.e. uketoru "receive" and azukaru "be entrusted with" were used. Both types of verbs take -ga for a subject, and GIVE-type verbs take -ni for the goal role and RECEIVE-type verbs take -kara for the source role. Each verb was used five times with different pictures. Procedure. The subjects were asked to describe each picture orally in a complete sentence, using a given verb. Each subject was shown the same 20 pictures, and was given one picture and one verb at a time. The verb was given to them orally as well as visually. The pictures were arranged in such a way that the same type of verbs were not in succession. Each subject was given a preliminary test to confirm his/her understanding of the task. Subjects. Three Broca's aphasics (T.S./I../F.T.), and two normal controls served as the subjects of the study. All the subjects were native speakers of Japanese. The aphasie patients were all right-handed, and had lesions in the left hemisphere. They produced agrammatic speech and had difficulty in producing function words. They often made errors in using case particles. 4.2 Results The rates of -ni representing the goal role and -kara representing the source role correctly supplied and those incorrectly supplied are shown in Table 1. It shows that the rate of the dative -ni correctly supplied is significantly higher than that of the ablative -kara correctly supplied (χ2 = 52.325,

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HIROKO IHARA & IKUYO FUJITA

-ni

-kara

subject

correct

error

others

correct

error

others

T.S.

10/10 (100%)

0/10 (0%)

0/10 (0%)

0/10 (0%)

10/10 (100%)

0/10 (0%)

I.K.

10/10 (100%)

0/10 (0%)

0/10 (0%)

1/10 (10%

8/10 (80%)

1/10 (10%

F.T.

10/10 (100%)

0/10 (0%)

0/10 (0%)

0/10 (0%)

10/10 (100%)

0/10 (0%)

N1

10/10 (100%)

0/10 (0%)

0/10 (0%)

10/10 (100%)

0/10 (0%)

0/10 (0%)

N2

10/10 (100%)

0/10 (0%)

0/10 (0%)

10/10 (100%)

0/10 (0%)

0/10 (0%)

Table 1. Rates of -ni and -kara correctly or incorrectly supplied

p

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