Three-participant Constructions in English: A functional-cognitive approach to caused relations (Studies in Language Companion Series)

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Three-Participant Constructions in English

Studies in Language Companion Series (SLCS) The SLCS series has been established as a companion series to Studies in Language, International Journal, sponsored by the Foundation “Foundations of Language”.

Series Editors Werner Abraham

Michael Noonan

University of Vienna

University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

Editorial Board Joan Bybee

Christian Lehmann

University of New Mexico

University of Erfurt

Ulrike Claudi

Robert Longacre

University of Cologne

University of Texas, Arlington

Bernard Comrie

Brian MacWhinney

Max Planck Institute For Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig

Carnegie-Mellon University

William Croft

University of California, Santa Barbara

University of Manchester

Edith Moravcsik

Östen Dahl

University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

University of Stockholm

Masayoshi Shibatani

Gerrit Dimmendaal

Rice University and Kobe University

University of Leiden

Russell Tomlin

Ekkehard König

University of Oregon

Marianne Mithun

Free University of Berlin

Volume 79 Three-Participant Constructions in English: A functional-cognitive approach to caused relations by An Laffut

Three-Participant Constructions in English A functional-cognitive approach to caused relations

An Laffut University of Leuven

John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam/Philadelphia

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TM

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 An Laffut Three-Participant Constructions in English : A functional-cognitive approach to caused relations / An Laffut. p. cm. (Studies in Language Companion Series, issn 0165–7763 ; v. 79) Includes bibliographical references and indexes. 1. English language--Syntax. 2. English language--Locative constructions. 3. Grammar, Comparative and general--Locative constructions. 4. English language--Prepositions. I. Title. II. Title: 3participant constructions in English. III. Series. PE1369.L25 2006 425--dc22 isbn 90 272 3089 7 (Hb; alk. paper)

2006040573

© 2006 – 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 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands John Benjamins North America · P.O. Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

ix

INTRODUCTION 1. The constructions 2. A functional-cognitive approach 3. Methodology 4. Outline

1 1 4 10 14

CHAPTER I STATE OF THE ART 1. The partitive/holistic approach: did John ever finish the job? 2. Textual explanations 3. Lexicalist-formalist approaches 3.1. Levin and Rappaport: Lexical Conceptual Structures 3.2. Pinker: constraints and narrow conflation classes 3.3. Tenny: an aspectual approach 4. Conclusion

16 17 23 27 29 32 36 39

CHAPTER II TEXTUAL DIMENSIONS 1. The notion of relative topicality 2. Relative topicality as motivation for the alternations 2.1. Identifiability of nominal referents 2.2. Analysis of corpus data 2.3. A structural analysis of information distribution 2.4. Analysis of corpus data 3. Interpretation and conclusion

41 43 47 47 54 61 65 69

CHAPTER III HOLICITY AND PARTIVITY 1. The Location 1.1. The relation between Location and PrepP 1.2. The relation between Location and NG: holicity (?) 2. The Locatum 2.1. Holicity for the Locatum: quantity 2.2. Holicity/partivity and definiteness 2.3. A quantificational approach 3. Conclusion

74 76 76 78 84 84 88 94 103

vi

THREE-PARTICIPANT CONSTRUCTIONS IN ENGLISH

CHAPTER IV PROCESS AND PARTICIPANTS 1. Participants and circumstances 1.1. Formal tests 1.2. Semantic arguments 1.3. The syntagmatic relations: Langacker’s dependence model 1.4. Conclusion 2. The roles 2.1. The Location 2.2. The Locatum 2.3. The Image 2.4. Material and Product 3. The Process 3.1. Constructionally determined polysemy 3.2. A dialectically motivated relation 4. Conclusion

105 105 108 113 120 127 128 129 131 137 141 144 145 150 154

CHAPTER V A RELATIONAL ANALYSIS 1. The relational domain: from semiosis to possession, from identification to attribution 1.1. The intensive subdomain: semiosis 1.1.1. Intensive identification 1.1.2. Intensive attribution 1.2. Circumstantials and possessives 1.2.1. Attribution and identification 1.2.2. The semiosis-possession cline 2. Caused relations 2.1. Caused intensives and possessives 2.2. A caused relational continuum 3. Conclusion

157 160 162 164 167 167 170 180 181 184 189

CHAPTER VI THE MATERIAL/PRODUCT CONSTRUCTIONS 1. The semiotic type: instantiation and realization models 1.1. Indefinite Products 1.2. Definite Products 1.3. Alternation and reversibility 1.4. Interim conclusion

191 192 193 196 203 205

156

vii

2. The part/whole type 2.1. Part/whole semantics: a discussion 2.2. Alternation 3. Conclusion CHAPTER VII THE IMAGE IMPRESSION AND LOCATIVE CONSTRUCTIONS 1. Locative constructions as caused circumstantial relational configurations 2. Variants and markedness 2.1 A quantitative approach 2.2. Collocations and lexical selection restrictions 3. The locative alternation and agnation 4. Conclusion

206 206 211 216

219 220 224 224 233 237 244

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

247

REFERENCE LIST

257

INDEX

267

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Writing this book has been hard but rewarding. My main thanks and appreciation must go to Kristin Davidse, my supervisor, who has directed my work in one form and another for many years. She has always combined enthusiasm with inspiration and encouragement. Thanks, too, must be gratefully extended to Jean-Christophe Verstraete and Liesbet Heyvaert, for the frequent and valuable conversations we have had, Jurgen Benteyn for his hard work on the lay-out, Marjan De Smet and Ann Trappers for their regular visits, and my parents for always being there. I would also like to thank the members of the research project I worked on between 1996 and 2000, and the members of the jury of my doctoral defence, whose comments and advice were very stimulating: prof. dr. R. Declerck, prof. dr. N. Delbecque, prof. dr. M. Goyens, prof. dr. W. McGregor and prof. dr. A. Simon-Vandernbergen. But while acknowledging all those who have commented on and read my work, I accept the end result with its mistakes as entirely my own responsibility. A final acknowledgement must go to my husband, Geert Ceuppens, for all the practical, but especially the mental support without which this book would never have been written.

INTRODUCTION

1. The constructions This study aims to give a systematic and comprehensive description of the constructions involved in three important types of alternation: the locative alternation, which is by far the most researched of the three, the image impression alternation and the material/product alternation. We will look at the constructions as part of an alternation, but will also look beyond the alternations, and analyze and describe the constructions in their own right. The approach taken is inspired by systemic functional grammar and can broadly be characterized as cognitive-functional. Characteristic of all three alternations is that they involve a nominal groupprepositional phrase shift: the possibility of coding what is expressed as nominal group (henceforth NG) in one variant as a prepositional phrase (henceforth PrepP) in the other variant. The well-known locative alternation relates, roughly, to the application of substances on surfaces or the transfer of things in containers. Traditional examples are: (1) (2)

a. John sprayed paint on the wall. b. John sprayed the wall with paint. a. John loaded hay on the wagon. b. John loaded the wagon with hay.

I will use the labels proposed by Levin (1993: 50) for the two roles involved in the alternation: ‘Location’ for both container and surface, and ‘Locatum’ for the substance being sprayed or loaded. The image impression alternation (Levin 1993:66) is closely related to the locative alternation and shares some of its verbs, but is concerned with a different sort of ‘application’:

2


(3)

a. She inscribed their names on the ring. b. She inscribed the ring with their names.

Image impression construals involve the impression of an ‘Image’ on a Location. The material/product alternation, on the other hand, is quite different semantically: it is not about transferring a substance or filling a container, but about the creation of something from a material (Levin 1993:56). This alternation is exemplified by the following pair: (4)

a. She carved the piece of wood into a toy. b. She carved a toy out of the piece of wood.

The alternation here consists of a switch between what is transformed into something else – the Material – and the result of this transformation – the Product. Essentially, the constructions involved in the three alternations are characterized by an agentive entity, an Agent, and two non-agentive entities whose realization alternates between prepositional and bare nominal. The three alternations are often accompanied by a discussion of the counterparts that do not participate in the alternation (Levin 1993, Pinker 1989). These are the construals with a fixed process-participant constellation, i.e. those that do not have the alternation between a prepositional and a bare coding of, for in-stance, Location and Locatum: (5) (6)

a. He dripped some oil on the hot plate. a. She littered the floor with cigarette ends.

The first clause in this pair is not related to a with-variant with the Locatum as a PrepP, whereas the second clause can only be realized as a with-construction and does not have an on-variant: (5) (6)

b. *He dripped the hot plate with some oil. b. *She littered cigarette ends on the floor.

Similarly for the image impression ((7) and (8)) and the material/product alternation ((9) and (10)): (7)

a. He scribbled a few words on a piece of paper. b. *He scribbled the piece of paper with a few words.

INTRODUCTION

3

(8)

a. She decorated the ring with their names. b. *She decorated their names on the ring. (9) a. He constructed the drawers from a solid piece of oak. b. *He constructed a solid piece of oak into the drawers. (10) a. She kneaded the ball of dough into three big loaves. b. *She kneaded three big loaves from the ball of dough. More lexically oriented approaches, with which the approach taken here wants to enter into a constructive dialogue, devote much attention to the issue of alternation or non-alternation. Typically, construals with and without an alternate take different verbs, and at the heart of many lexicalist descriptions of the alternations lies an attempt to characterize which (lexical) characteristics (of a verb) enable alternation. This book aims to complement this focus on the verb with attention to the construction as a whole and to the building blocks of the construction as part of the construction – not as isolated elements. The choice for locative, image impression and material/product constructions is not random. Constructions like these have received a lot of attention within certain frameworks but have been relatively neglected in the neoFirthian tradition. One of the central descriptive proposals of the book pertains to the representational semantics of these constructions, i.e. the way our experience of the world is organized: they are analyzed as three-participant constructions involving an Agent and two patientive participants. While there has been a lot of theorizing about ‘ordinary’ transitive clauses (involving an Agent and a Patient), few attempts have been made to give a coherent account of these ‘compound-transitive’ structures in the cognitive-functional approach which informs this study. The main idea put forward is that the Agent’s action brings about a relation between the two patientive participants: these are three-participant constructions with a ‘caused relation’. Systemic functional grammar does have an important tradition of study of relational clauses, but not of this caused type. In the SFG tradition, (non-caused) relational clause configurations are situated on a grammatico-semantic continuum. This continuum ranges from clauses expressing ‘being’ to ‘having’, i.e. from ‘intensive’ to ‘possessive’ relations, with an extended in-between area of ‘circumstantial’ relations (Halliday 1967a, 1994; Matthiessen 1991, 1995; Davidse 1992, 2000). The locative, image impression and material/product constructions will be related to three-participant constructions with a nominal complement, which are also caused relations, and it will be proposed that the meanings (and meaning extensions) of the constructions under investigation here can be plotted along this relational conti-

4


nuum. Together they express relations of all types found on relational continuum. The choice to analyze and describe precisely these constructions is thus motivated by the similarities and differences between them, and the fact that by investigating them, the full relational continuum can be covered.

2. A functional-cognitive approach Language is not passively reflecting some pre-existing conceptual structure; on the contrary, it is actively engaged in bringing such structures into being. (Halliday and Martin 1993:8)

The locative, image impression and material/product constructions will be approached from a functional-cognitive perspective: many of the ideas and analyses proposed in this study are inspired by the basic theoretical notions of SFG, but as we go along, theoretical constructs from Cognitive Grammar will be introduced to complement or modify the functional approach. One of the distinguishing characteristics of SFG is the multi-stratal view on language. Whereas lexico-semantic approaches work with autonomous components for lexis and syntax, SFG holds that language is organized in three strata that are related to each other by means of realization. These are semantics, lexicogrammar and phonology/graphology: semantics is realized by lexicogrammar, which is in its turn realized, i.e. materialized or visualized, by the system of sounds or graphemes.

stratification

semantics

lexicogrammar

phonology

Figure 1: A three-stratal language model.

Semantics is the system of meaning, but meaning as realized by the lexicogrammatical form, by the wording. When, in the final chapters, we will be concerned with the semantics of the constructions, this then refers to the meaning

INTRODUCTION

5

encoded by process-participant constellations. The lexicogrammar, in other words, structures what Hjelmslev (1969:52) calls (content-)purport – an a-morphous thought-mass that remains the same over the different languages, and which is not part of the linguistic sign – into a specific conceptual form, the content-form. This coupling of lexicogrammar and semantics is in its turn realized by the phonological or graphological system of a language (this ‘material’ component of the sign falls outside the scope of this study, which deals with semantics and lexicogrammar). The term ‘lexicogrammar’ captures the SFG viewpoint that lexis and grammar are two ends of a continuum and that both are involved in constructing experience. This constant interaction and interdependency between grammar and lexicon will surface regularly in the description of the constructions. Inherent in this conceptualization of language is the position that there is a natural, non-arbitrary relationship between semantics and grammar. Whereas the relation between lexicogrammar and phonology is (typically) a non-motivated one, the form of the grammar relates naturally to the meanings (Halliday 1994:xvii).1 The semantics and the structures we use in the adult language are plausible, and so are the lexicogrammatical structures, hence “the distinction into word classes of verb and noun reflects the analysis of experience into goings-on, expressed as verbs, and participants in the goings-on, expressed as nouns” (Halliday 1994:xviii). While in the protolanguage there is a direct, arbitrary link between meaning and wording, the growing child needs an interface between these two so as to accommodate its growing demands on language. The naturalness of the relation between lexicogrammar and meaning is a logical consequence: if the lexicogrammar were a non-motivated interface, the system would become impossible to learn. As it is now, the code makes sense: we are able to make a link between the categories of grammar and the semantic structures with which we interpret our experiences. Meaning, this implies, is never ‘objective’ meaning in the sense of ‘the referent situation’, but is always construed by language: “categories and relations are not ‘given’ to us by nature, to be passively reflected in language, but are actively constructed by language, with the lexicogrammar as the driving force” (Halliday and Matthiesen 1999:xi). Hence, any difference in form is taken to entail a difference in meaning, and any difference in meaning to bring with it a difference in form.

1

Onomatopoeia, for instance, are a notable exception to the arbitrary relation between phonology and lexis.

6


Meaning, from this perspective, is quite different from meaning in more formally oriented approaches, where syntax and semantics are autonomous components. But what is truly specific to the SFG view on meaning is the assumption that “the fundamental components of meaning in language are functional components”, as Halliday (1994:xiii) puts it in his Introduction to Functional Grammar. Underlying this tenet is the idea that language has evolved to serve human needs, and that the language is shaped accordingly: “the grammar has as it were a functional input and a structural output” (Halliday 1973:36). The various language uses of the adult speaker lead to a ‘metafunctional diversification’ of the linguistic system, i.e. the content plane is organized into a small set of ‘metafunctions’, highly generalized groupings of meaning. These are the ideational, the interpersonal and the textual, and in every utterance, the three layers can be discerned. The interpersonal metafunction is concerned with the speaker’s role in the utterance, and with the interaction and exchange between the speaker and others. A prominent example of interpersonal meaning is speech function: whether the utterance is concerned with giving or asking information or goodsand-services. The speaker’s choice here is realized in the mood structure of the clause: the presence and order of Subject and Finite, which together constitute the Mood, tell us more about the role the speaker assumes in the interaction. The remainder of the clause (the Residue) is the component that is negotiated in the verbal interaction, and that carries the argument forward. It is on this level that the resources for ‘grounding’ the utterance are found, the resources that link it to the ‘here and now’ and the ‘I and you’, such as tense and modality. Labels such as Subject and Object apply to the interpersonal level; they label elements that have a specific function in making the clause work as an interaction between speaker and hearer. In the description of the locative, image impression and material/product constructions, however, we will be concerned with the other two metafunctions, viz. the ideational and the textual metafunctions. The ideational metafunction actually subsumes two macrofunctions, the logical and the experiential. The latter is concerned with construing our experiences, with modelling what we experience as going on inside and around ourselves. This is what people usually refer to when they speak about the meaning of a sentence. Clause grammar, and more specifically the system of transitivity, is very important in this ‘representational’ function. Transitivity is the system of process types and participant roles. All the goings-on in the experienced world are sorted out into three main process types: the material process, which has an Actor and a Goal associated with it, for outer ex-

INTRODUCTION

7

periences; mental processes, which have a Senser and a Phenomenon, for inner experiences; and relational processes (which are discussed at length in chapter V) for relating experiences to each other. Subsidiary process types on the borderline between these three are verbal, behavioural and existential processes. The logical metafunction is concerned with complexes on all ranks, the logico-semantic relations between words, groups, phrases and clauses. Experiential and logical relations are of a different kind. The former are multivariate: they hold between constituents, which have a specific, unique function in the whole; the latter form a univariate structure, which holds between elements that are in a dependency relation. The description and analysis of the constructions will mainly be concerned with the experiential, representational function of language. Chapter IV will provide some critical reflections on constituency and participanthood in SFG theory, in which since the seventies some important categories have tended to become reified and are in need of a critical re-evaluation. The textual metafunction, finally, underlies the other two metafunctions. It is concerned with organizing the other meanings into coherent and contextualized discourse; it “expresses the structure of information, and the relation of each part of the discourse to the whole and to the setting” (Halliday 1973:99). Two of the key-systems are Theme-Rheme and Given and New: the former system organizes the message in a ‘point of departure’ and what is further said about it, the latter is concerned with information distribution. Unlike thematic structure, and unlike transitivity and mood, the Given-New system, which figures prominently in chapter II, does not operate at clause rank, but defines its own environment: the ‘information unit.’ Non-structural resources at the textual level are cohesive systems such as phoricity – reference, substitution, ellipsis, etc. (Halliday and Hasan 1976:4) – and taxonomic and collocational lexical relations, i.e. the resources that make a text ‘a text.’ Linguistic structure is thus explained by reference to the notion that language is required to serve universal types of demand, and that this is reflected in the internal organization of language. Any, or virtually any, clause is analysed on three levels, as in the following example:2

2

This is only a partial analysis, at clause rank.

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ideational interpersonal textual

The lion

has

chased

Actor

Process:

Material

Mood Theme

the tourist

Goal Residue Rheme

Whereas a multi-layered view is not uncommon in more functionally oriented approaches – Dik’s Functional Grammar, for instance, distinguishes an interpersonal and a representational level, each of which consists of two further layers – the specific interpretation and elaboration of this functional diversification is very different in each school (see e.g. Butler 1996). Typical of SFG is that the different layers stand for a set of semantic choices which are realized by three sets of largely independent lexicogrammatical elements. This view determines the form in which the semantics is represented: each layer takes the form of a series of ‘system networks’ which represent the choices the language user has at their disposal. For each possible feature, the realization is specified (e.g. in the system of personal pronouns, the first person singular is realized by I). In many cases, the system involves a choice between two options, as when the language user has to choose between an ‘effective’ (i.e. goal-directed action) or ‘descriptive’ (i.e. non-directed action). Usually, it is a particular choice in one system that opens up new choices in the system that is next in delicacy: the choice for ‘effective’, for instance, is an entry condition for a further choice between ‘goal-transitive’ (as in he ate the apple) and ‘absolute’ (as in he ate), a choice that is not open when the feature ‘descriptive’ is opted for in the first system. A description of the systemic choices thus leads to a compound description: he ate an apple realizes the features ‘effective, active, goal-transitive.’ Note that the system network envisaged for experiential construals (and hence also for the verb classes derived from them) is not only a subclassificatory network, but also a cross-classificatory one. The features ‘goal-transitive’ or ‘absolute’, for instance are next in delicacy after the feature ‘effective’, but ‘effective’ and ‘active’ represent two simultaneous systems. A clause can be both active and effective, as above in he ate an apple, but the combination ‘effective’ with ‘not active’ (i.e. passive) is also possible, as in the apple was eaten:

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INTRODUCTION

effective extensive

descriptive active passive

major clause

goal-transitive absolute

agent-oriented process-oriented

intensive

Figure 2: Part of the transitivity network (based on Halliday 1976:111).

The network allows for subclassification by spelling out more and more delicate choices, as well as for cross-classification by means of simultaneous choices and options. The qualifier systemic in this branch of functional linguistics thus refers to the representation of linguistic items in terms of a set of features, where each feature is in contrast with other features, and where the features are ordered in a system network: “for any set of systems associated with a given environment it is possible to construct a system network in which each system […] is hierarchically ordered with respect to at least one other system” (Halliday 1966:62). The grammar is conceived of as a huge network of options, and with each move through the system, an increasing degree of delicacy is reached. Hence also the idea of a lexicogrammar (see above): the resources we have for expressing ourselves are a continuum of systems in which the more delicate levels tend to be associated with lexical issues. This conceptualization of the grammar entails that paradigmatic oppositions and similarities play a fundamental role in linguistic description, relations which to a large extent shape the methodology followed here.

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3. Methodology Since Firth (1957) voiced his criticism on the neglect of the paradigmatic to the advantage of the syntagmatic, a growing body of linguists has advocated the need to complement the description of syntagmatic relations with paradigmatic ones. For these linguists, paradigmatic relations between sentences are relations that exist as part of the language system and have a very different status from the transformations in formal approaches: “transformations are the manipulations which the language user employs as he, perhaps only figuratively, moves through that language system,” as Gleason (1965:195-196) puts it, “A trip is not part of a highway system, though only the highway system makes it possible.” Besides Gleason, important propagators in the latter half of the century are Haas (1954), Whorf (1956) and Togeby (1965), Van Den Eynde (1995, Van Den Eynde et al. 1997), McGregor (1997), to a certain extent Goldberg (2002) and – prominently – Halliday. The generalizing principle behind the system of a language, according to Halliday (1994:xxxii), is the proportionality that exists between linguistic units, which makes them members of a paradigm; i.e. the fact that there is a basic similarity but also a systematic difference between groups of items. Without denying the importance of the syntagmatic axis, SFG holds that the investigation and description of such paradigmatic relations is fundamental in linguistic research. The functional labels in SFG are nothing but a generalization about the proportionality between sets of items. One of the basic tenets is that the meaning of a category can often only be discovered by looking at its paradigmatic variants, at which reformulations are possible and which are impossible. In this investigation, too, paradigmatic variation as a heuristic plays a fundamental role. One of the most important tools worked with is what Gleason (1965) labels ‘agnation’. Agnation is one of a pair of terms – the other being ‘enation’ – that Gleason introduced for an explicit reflection on syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations. Agnate sentences have the same main lexical items but a different structure, where the relation between the structures is regular and systematic. On the other hand, two or more sentences are enate when they are structurally identical, i.e. when they are characterized by the same processparticipant constellation. In this view, for sentences to be enate, they should share the same agnates: (11) The man killed a stranger. (12) The man questioned a stranger.

INTRODUCTION

11

(13) The man seemed a stranger. Of these syntagmatically similar construals, only the first two are enate. Looking at the agnates of (11), (12) and (13) teaches us that the sequence NG+VG+NG has to be disambiguated into two different constructions: (11) The man killed a stranger: a. A stranger was killed by the man. b. *The man killed to be a stranger. (12) The man questioned a stranger: a. A stranger was questioned by the man. b. *The man questioned to be a stranger. (13) The man seemed a stranger: a. *A stranger was seemed by the man. b. The man seemed to be a stranger. The paradigmatic variants are the same for (11) and (12), which are structurally identical. (13) has different paradigmatic relatives, and is non-enate with the other two. The difference between the three sentences can be interpreted as follows. They do not differ textually or interpersonally, but in terms of their experiential semantics: whereas (11) and (12) are two-participant construals, (13) is a one-participant construal. This is an important, high-level difference. Agnates that mark such high-level differences are wide-ranging, criterial agnates (such as those that reveal something about the number of participants and the basic voice relation between participants and the process). Construals that differ in such criterial agnates, are non-enate.3 In order to avoid a strict binary division into ‘enate’ or ‘non-enate’, Gleason also introduces the concept of partial enation, which account for those construals which share important, criterial agnates but differ in the agnates that sort out less pervasive features and mark out finer distinctions. Gleason himself did not elaborate on the cut-off point between non-enate and partially enate, or that between criterial and non-diagnostic agnates. This question needs to be further addressed; however, it is a fact that there are more and less central distinguishing features.

3

Van Den Eynde, in the same vein, distinguishes (among others) between ‘dispositives’, or verb-general paradigmatic variants (such as thematic pre-posing, or Subject-Finite inversion); ‘reformulations’, which are verb-specific variants that occur with some regularity (such as the passive); and ‘linked constructions’, which are also verb-specific but lack regularity (Van den Eynde 1995:116).

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As far as the locative, image impression and material/product constructions are concerned, any difference between them is of the ‘partially enate’ type, as they share a number of central agnates. For instance, they all have a passive agnate, which shows that with respect to the important ‘directed’ or ‘nondirected’ cut, they all group on the same side. Further, they are all linked to a do to reformulation, which means that they also share the same process type (i.e. material), and finally, they are also systematically related to a construal of the type ‘the Agent V-s the nominal participant, and now the nominal participant is on/in/etc. the prepositional participant’, as in the Agent sprayed the paint, and now the paint is on the wall (see further chapter V). Any difference in other agnates only makes them partially enate, not non-enate. The matter of further shared and non-shared agnates, and subcategorization, will be picked up again in chapter VII. Besides its function in the disambiguation and subclassification of syntagmatically similar construals, agnation will also be used as a heuristic to interpret the constructions at hand. It is typical of the SF approach that after paradigmatic variation has been used to identify one construction, the agnation network is further examined with a view to identifying the distinct semantic relations between process and participants associated with this construction. In other words, the description does not stop after different agnates have set apart one construction from a superficially similar one. The features that the construction in question shares with its agnates, and that differentiate it from the syntagmatically similar construal from which it has been disambiguated have to be analysed, and, crucially, the semantics internal to the construction itself have to be looked at. As to the constructions at hand here, it has already been remarked above that the shared paradigmatic variants reveal important semantic characteristics: they are three-participant construals with a strong asymmetry between the agentive and patientive entities. Furthermore, they all share a relational component that is brought about by this Agent-Patient interaction. The more detailed semantics of the constructions, which are reflected by agnates specific to them and by collocational restrictions on the participants, will be described in the last two chapters: the material/product constructions will be described in chapter VI, and the semantics of the image impression and locative alternation are developed in chapter VII. Note how in one specific branch of Government and Binding commonly referred to as the ‘lexicalist approach’, paradigmatic variation is also used as a heuristic. Levin’s 1993 classification of English verbs, for instance, relies heavily on participation in so-called ‘diathesis alternations’, i.e. in variants with a difference in argument structure (see further chapters I, IV and VII).

INTRODUCTION

13

Importantly, however, paradigmatic variation is not used to disambiguate syntagms: the interpretation of a structure is not established on the basis of paradigmatic generalizations. For instance, they drove the car to Chicago, which is transitive, is assumed to have exactly the same role configuration as they threw the ball to Mary, which is ditransitive; and on the other hand, they threw Mary the ball is assumed to have a different role configuration from its ditransitive agnate (Pinker 1989). Paradigmatic variation, for the lexicalists, is a tool to set up verb classes and identify the meaning components in these classes. In contrast to a lexicalist approach, the description of the constructions under investigation in this book assumes an essentially constructionist point of view. Although not under the same name, the concept of constructionism has been present in Halliday’s work from very early onwards (for an early formulation, see Halliday 1967a), and it has continued to inform systemic functional thinking. Even though there are some commonalities with a lexicalist approach, such as the use of alternations as a heuristic and attention for the semantic properties of verb, there is a fundamental theoretical difference between them. In the lexicalist approach, syntactic patterns are claimed to be uniquely predictable from the lexical semantics of the verb (Levin 1993:16). In the SFG approach subscribed to here, the construction is seen as the unit determining the semantic value of its elements, not the other way round. The units making up a construction play a function in that con-struction and should be interpreted as such. In such a constructionist approach, verb classification is not neglected, but it is explicitly linked to the nature of the constructional meaning, with which the verbal meaning has to chime in. As Goldberg puts it: “it is clearly not the case that the grammar works entirely top-down, with the constructions simply imposing their meaning on unsuspecting verbs” (1995:24).4 Verbs have certain ‘quanta’ of lexical meaning associated with them, which cannot be extended indefinitely (Lemmens 1998). In its embrace of both the lexical (which is not limited to the verb) and the constructional level, this form of constructionism will regularly be argued to have an edge over lexicalism.5

4

‘Constructionist’ in Goldberg’s Construction Grammar, is taken to mean ‘recognizing the existence of independent constructions which are more than the sum of their parts.’ The terms construction and constructionist as used in the present study are more in line with Halliday 1967a, Haas 1954, etc., viz. with the construction as the unit determining the relations between process and participants. 5 See Goldberg (1995:9-21) for a general overview of the advantages of constructionism over lexicalism.

14


4. Outline The description of the constructions is spread out over seven chapters, the bulk of which deal with the representational semantics of the locative, image impression and material/product constructions. The aim is a positive characterization of the ‘full’ constructions on the basis of an investigation of specific agnates and collocational properties of process and participants. Chapter I is a status quaestionis, in which the most common approaches in the literature on locative, image impression and material/product construction are discussed. Most approaches center on the alternations and are concerned with either textual, ‘pragmatic’ factors or with representational factors, such as verb meaning. The claim that NG-PrepP variation is determined by textual factors is investigated in chapter II, where it is carefully broken down into two testable hypotheses, which are then checked against corpus material. Chapter III deals with one of the most frequently made descriptive claims, viz. that the post-verbal (bare) participant is totally affected by the action, whereas the one that is realized prepositionally is only partially affected. This ‘partitive/holistic’ effect will be shown to be more complex than has hitherto been assumed. Furthermore, it will be argued that holicity is not some curious characteristic of these alternations, but can be interpreted as the instantiation of the more general principle that the Patient in transitive construals is in direct interaction with the process. Chapter IV takes a closer look at the building blocks of the constructions. In a first section, the matter of participanthood and the structural relations between process and participants is taken up. Next each of the participants – Location, Locatum, Image, Material and Product – is discussed separately; a last section focuses on the verbs, and more specifically on their status in the two alternates, and their interaction with the construction. The following three chapters deal with the level of the ‘construction.’ As the central argument with regard to these ‘NG+VG+NG+PrepP’ constructions is that they are instances of caused relations, chapter V introduces the SFG notion of relationality, and also offers some critical reflections on Halliday’s 1994 relational topology. The last two chapters are fully devoted to the constructions at hand. Chapter VI is concerned with the material/product constructions, which actually involve two separate groups: one more semiotically oriented, and one more possessive type. Chapter VII, finally, discusses the image impression and locative alternations. Some interesting, but intuitive hypotheses advanced in earlier literature, are checked and modified in terms of a quantified corpus analysis. Pinker’s hypothesis, which posits a distinction between two subclasses of locative verbs,

INTRODUCTION

15

is re-interpreted: the difference between them is not a matter of primary construal of Location or Locatum as Patient, but of primary collocational relations between process and Location or Locatum. In this refined analysis, statal passives turn out to play a key role. Whenever possible, descriptions and theoretical claims are illustrated with corpus-examples. Most of these have been taken from the online COBUILDcorpus: they are marked (CB), and are reproduced with the kind permission of HarperCollins. As will regularly surface in this study, the use of corpus-examples is indispensable. Hypotheses on the basis of introspection easily lead to overgeneralizations, as will be shown in chapter II with regard to Givón’s textual claims. Also, lexico-grammatical descriptions of factors such as holicity, polysemy and verbal meaning, collocation etc. based on an empirically based study have an edge over descriptions based on construed examples, as in, for instance, Brinkmann (1997), Pinker (1989) and Levin and Rappaport Hovav (1992). Another advantage of corpus-analysis is that the quantitative instantiation of certain construal types can lead to a corroboration of markedness judgements. The use of corpus-examples, therefore, contributes significantly to a more accurate insight into the lexico-grammatical features of the constructions under investigation.

CHAPTER I STATE OF THE ART

A state of the art is of necessity usually limited to the discussion of only a few approaches, and this one is no different. The more prominent descriptions in the existing literature have been singled out and grouped together, at the risk of sketching too uniform a picture. Syntactic alternation has always exerted considerable attraction: Since the earliest days of generative grammar, there has existed a strong tendency to consider one argument structure construction in relation to a particular rough paraphrase. Initially this was a result of the emphasis on transformations that derived one pattern from another. While today there exist many non-derivational theories for which this motivation no longer exists, the traditional outlook has not completely lost its grip, as can be seen from continuing focus on partial or incomplete generalizations such as the ‘‘dative’’ construction or the ‘‘locative’’ alternation. (Goldberg 2002:327)

This preoccupation is reflected in this state of the art: whereas recently the focus seems to have been slowly shifting away from alternation as such (Michaelis and Ruppenhofer 2001, Goldberg 2002), most descriptions of the constructions under investigation here have tended to concentrate on these patterns in terms of “the alternation”. Of the three alternations in question, the most researched is the locative alternation. Although the literature is very diverse, the various approaches to this alternation can be grouped together under three headings: holicity vs. partitivity (Anderson 1971, Schwartz-Norman 1976, Sgall 1980, Jeffries and Willis 1984 and Dowty 1991), textuality (Givón 1979, Halliday 1994, Collins 1995, Foley and Van Valin 1985, Dixon 1991), and lexico-semantics (Levin 1993, Levin and Rappaport Hovav 1992, Pinker 1989, Rappaport and Levin 1988). The other two alternation types, which in comparison have been treated in a stepmotherly way in the literature, have been ranged under the same headings in this chapter.

STATE OF THE ART

17

1. The partitive/holistic approach: did John ever finish the job? This heading groups descriptions of various theoretical backgrounds which all resort to the concept of holicity in order to describe and motivate the two alternating constructions. As a matter of fact, holicity is in one way or another touched upon in most accounts of NG-PrepP variation (including the lexicosemantic ones discussed in section 3). The following quote nicely captures the crux of the partitive/holistic approach: When a given ‘participant’ associated with a particular verb can appear either as an unmarked NP or in a prepositional phrase, it is (often) the case that the unmarked NP is interpreted HOLISTICALLY (as affected more completely, definitely, successfully, etc. by the action) as opposed to PARTITIVELY. (Anderson 1988:291)

This general principle, which is designed to account for all types of syntactic variation between bare nominals and prepositional phrases, is frequently cited in descriptions of the locative alternation (Fillmore 1968b, Anderson 1971, Sgall 1980, Dik 1980). The meaning of ‘holistically’ and ‘partitively’ affected, with regard to locative construals, can be illustrated as follows. In an alternating pair like (1a) and (1b), the first variant is usually taken to express that the wagon has been completely loaded: (1)

a. John loaded the wagon with hay. b. John loaded hay on the wagon.

This is because in (1a) the Location is realized by a NG: holicity typically boils down to complete coverage or occupancy of the Location. In (1b) on the other hand, where the Location is realized by a PrepP, there is no such implication: this is the so-called ‘partitive interpretation.’ Dik (1980) compares the partitive/holistic effect for the locative alternation with Dutch, where this alternation exhibits a similar meaning difference: (2)

a. Jan John b. Jan John

smeerde verf op de muur. smeared paint on the wall. besmeerde de muur met verf. be-smeared the wall with paint.

18


Notice how Dutch uses a prefix in (2b), the variant with the Location realized by a bare nominal.6 As a matter of fact, it is not just Dutch that makes use of this prefix. In their description of the German applicative pattern, Michaelis and Ruppenhofer (2002:23) put it like this: “Holism refers to the fact that the goal argument of a be-verb is construed as wholly affected by the action the beverb denotes.” In their inventory of the types of structural relations between linguistic units, Van den Eynde et al. (1997) comment on holicity for the locative alternation in French. They touch on the phenomenon when they discuss the structural relation between the two constructions that make up the locative alternation. These form a ‘linked construction group’, and the relation between the two alternates in pairs such as (1a) and (1b) above is labelled “metataxis” (Van Den Eynde et al. 1997:17). Metataxis is the relation that is characterized by an implication relation between the two units: (3)

a. Ils chargent le camion de ça. ⇓ b. Ils chargent ça sur le camion.

Because holicity for the Location is associated only with the a-sentence, there is a one-way implication relation between (3a) and (3b): the a-sentence implies the b-sentence, but the b-sentence does not imply the a-variant, as the former leaves open the possibility to have other loads, whereas the latter expresses that the Location is fully loaded (Van Den Eynde et al. 1997:8). Most authors focus on the partitive or holistic interpretation of the Location, i.e. the container or surface, when discussing the locative alternation, but others maintain that this is not a privilege of the Location and also apply it to the Locatum: the Locatum – that which is relocated – too alternates between the NG and the PrepP, and just like the Location displays a holistic reading in the first and a partitive reading in the second case. Dowty, for instance, illustrates this as follows:

6

For Dik, it is this prefix – which for him has a completive meaning – that signals holicity (1980:35). See also Laffut 1998 for a comparison of the locative alternation in Dutch and English.

STATE OF THE ART

(4)

19

a. Mary loaded the hay on the truck. b. Mary loaded the truck with (the) hay. (Dowty 1991:587)

He claims that in (4a) Mary has loaded all the hay on the truck, whereas (4b) is vague as to whether or not all the hay has been used for loading the wagon or not. Jeffries and Willis demonstrate the possibility of a holistic reading for the Locatum by means of the following example: (5)

They loaded the carts. (Jeffries and Willis 1984:719-720)

The carts can be read as a Location (They loaded the carts with hay) in which case the NG, in agreement with the partitive/holistic principle, can be interpreted holistically. But it can also function as Locatum, if we complete the sentence as follows: (6)

They loaded the carts on the trailer.

In this case too, the carts is interpreted holistically: we read the sentence as all the carts being loaded on the trailer (1984:719). The partitive/holistic effect and its applicability to Location and Locatum will be dealt with in detail in chapter III. To end this brief overview, let’s look in some detail at Dowty’s interpretation of the meaning difference associated with locative NG-PrepP variation. Dowty himself does not speak of holicity, but introduces the notion of Incremental Theme: a Theme whose referent stands in a homomorphic relation to the process specified by the verb.7 A homomorphism is ‘a function, from its domain to its range, which preserves some structural relation defined on its domain in a similar relation defined on the range’ (Dowty 1991:567). The struc-

7

See also Krifka (1989). In some cases a holistically interpreted NG (a term Dowty uses more broadly than just for NGs in the locative alternation) is not an Incremental Theme: in examples like push a cart, Dowty argues that the whole cart is pushed, and yet the cart is not an Incremental Theme (see above). As far as the locative alternation is concerned, however, the two concepts seem quite close, as holicity there always entails a definite change of state, in the sense that the performance of the activity leaves at least a visible trace (as opposed to the indefinite change of a cart). This ‘definite change’ allows the NG to function as Incremental Theme, since the changes are responsible for the homomorphism between the ‘Theme’ and the process.

20


tural relation, in this case, is a ‘part of’ relation: parts of the Incremental Theme will be mapped onto parts of the process. Compare He mowed the lawn with He pushed a cart. In the first case the state of the lawn reflects the progress of the process: depending on whether the grass is long, partly short or short, we can conclude that the mowing has not started yet, that it is partly done, or completely done. But in the second sentence, the state of the cart does not tell us anything about the pushing: any possible visible traces on the cart do not (necessarily) tell us anything about the progress of the pushing; Dowty speaks of an ‘indefinite change of state’ (1991:568). Consider the following attestation of an alternating locative structure: (7)

(Or you could plan well ahead) and smear your face thickly with garlic paste, say, two weeks beforehand. (CB)

The NG your face functions as Dowty’s Incremental Theme: the progress of the activity of smearing can be measured by looking at the state of the face, which can be fully, partially or not at all covered with garlic paste. Dowty uses the concept of incrementality to motivate alternation. In his conception of semantic roles, Agent and Patient are not discrete categories, but clusters of concepts described on the basis of lists of ‘contributing properties’ or ‘entailments’ (Dowty 1991: 571). Incremental Themehood is one of the entailments of the Proto-Patient, and the argument with the highest number of Proto-Patient entailments will be selected as the ‘direct object’, and be realized by a NG. Alternation can then be explained as the result of a difference in Incremental Theme: depending on whether the Location or the Locatum has the property of Incremental Theme, one of these will function as Patient. To illustrate this, Dowty uses examples in which the adverb completely explicitates a completive reading: (8)

Mary completely loaded the hay onto the truck.

As it is the state of the Incremental Theme that reflects the progression of the event, the completion of the action will correspond to ‘a completion’ in the Incremental Theme. Dowty argues that since it is true that the endpoint of the loading goes together with the fact that all the hay is on the truck (the answer to (9) is yes), but that there is no such homomorphism between the loading and

STATE OF THE ART

21

the state of the truck (Dowty’s answer to (10) is no), it is the hay, and not the truck, that is the Incremental Theme in (8): (9) Was all the hay put in the truck? (10) Was the whole truck loaded with hay? Dowty also discusses the alternate to (8) above: (11) Mary completely loaded the truck with the hay. (Dowty 1991:587) Since in this sentence the truck is the Incremental Theme, the expected answer is no for (9), and yes for (10). At this point, however, Dowty himself claims that this expectation is not borne out, because in his view (10) is true only when the quantity of hay is such as to fill the truck exactly. This is quite a categorical judgement, based on a narrow interpretation of the definite article in the PrepP with the hay, as we will see in chapter III. The definite article may be used to refer to the whole set of relevant entities, but this is only an implicature, and the article can also be used with its identifying function only (Declerck 1986). If, however, Dowty is right, this presents a serious flaw to his theory of Incremental Themehood, as there does not seem to be a connection between the completion of the event and the state of the Patient (which normally realizes the Incremental Theme). In his discussion, however, Dowty simply further disregards (11), and instead discusses (12), which has an indefinite PrepP: (12) Mary completely loaded the truck with hay. Without taking into account the non-proportionality with (8), he remarks that this sentence does have the expected ‘no’ for (9), and ‘yes’ for (10). Despite this inconsistency, however, Dowty presents a coherent picture of NGPrepP alternation, and is one of the few to go deeper into ‘complete affectedness’ associated with a nominal realization. Finally, let us take a look at the partitive/holistic effect and the other two alternation types. Holicity and partitivity have occasionally also been commented upon for the material/product alternation. In the following pair, Anderson (1988) observes, the first variant implies that the volleyball team consists of all the members of the linguistics department:

22


(13) a. Jones assembled the linguistics department into a volleyball team. b. Jones assembled a volleyball team from the linguistics department. (Anderson 1988:292) Example (13a) presupposes that after the assemblage of the volleyball team, there are no members of the department left that do not form part of the team: the Material is interpreted holistically. This does not hold for (13b), where the Material is coded as the PrepP: the result of the assemblage is a volleyball team, but not necessarily all the members of the linguistics department have been drummed up. The total amount of members of the department may be higher than the number that is needed for the volleyball team. As to the image impression alternation, Levin notes that it “does not appear to show the “partitive/holistic” effect associated with the locative alternation” (1993:67). Consider the following examples: (14) I will have your name inscribed in the chapel's book of remembrance. (CB) (15) The seat of your choice can be engraved with your own name. (CB) (16) Prince Albert's slippers, believed to have been embroidered with a rose and thistle by Queen Victoria. (CB) (17) Mrs. Davies has a peacock tattooed on her right shoulder. (CB) The Images in these sentences do not alternate between a partitive and a holistic reading. The name in the first two examples is in both cases ‘completely affected’: there is no implication that it is not fully written in (15), where it occurs as a PrepP. Similarly for the rose and thistle and the peacock: sentence (16) does not entail that Queen Victoria perhaps never finished embroidering the rose and the thistle. The Location too remains unaffected by a partitive/holistic effect: there is no difference in interpretation as to the degree of ‘coverage’ between the nominally realized Location in (15) and the prepositionally realized Location in (14). In conclusion, a number of linguists approach the constructions being studied here as part of an alternation, and focus on the different degrees of affectedness they encode. Only the participant in the NG is considered to be totally affected; groups in the PrepP receive what Anderson (1971:389) calls a parti-

STATE OF THE ART

23

tive interpretation. The speaker chooses a variant on the basis of which participant he wants to encode as being partly or totally affected. This explanation has its counterpart, it would seem, in one of the traditional form-meaning explanations for the dative alternation. As discussed in Davidse (1996a:312-313), linguists such as Green (1974), Lakoff and Johnson (1980) and Kirsner (1985), also see the bare NG as completely involved in the action, whereas the formal distance that is imposed by the preposition in the PrepP is taken to iconically reflect less involvement. (18) a. John showed Fido a bone. b. John showed a bone to Fido. (Green 1974:158) In the first sentence, Fido is claimed to have seen the bone, whereas in the second member of the pair there is no such implication. Similarly for (19), where the teaching is said to have had an effect on Harry in the first, but not necessarily so in the second example. (19) a. I taught Harry Greek. b. I taught Greek to Harry. (Lakoff and Johnson 1980:130) Although they are not exactly alike, this explanation looks like a correlative of the partitive/holistic effect: just as there is an opposition between having paint all over a wall or not, there is an opposition between, for instance, Greek being ‘all over’ Harry – i.e. Harry having learnt Greek – and not. Holicity is clearly a factor that cannot be overlooked in a description of these constructions. Despite the fact that most descriptions refer to the partitive/holistic effect, however, some central issues have not yet been studied in depth. The whole of chapter III will therefore be devoted to a more thorough investigation of holicity and partitivity

2. Textual explanations Whereas accounts that take holicity and partitivity as the principles underlying alternation draw on experiential semantics, other approaches to varying degrees draw on the textual level (Givón 1979, Dixon 1991, Halliday 1994, Foley and Van Valin 1985). Motivations for syntactic variation are sought in information

24


distribution, referential considerations and thematic structure. Just as with the partitive/holistic approach, textual explanations tend to concentrate on the locative alternation. For Givón (1979) topicality is the primary motivation for NG-PrepP variation. The locative alternation is subsumed under what he refers to as the ‘dative-shift’, which is defined as any change from indirect or prepositional object into direct object (1979:160). Givón argues that “the most common function of the dative-shift rule involves changing the relative topicality of the accusative vis-à-vis the prepositional object” (1979:161). Thus, the normal word order in the answer to a question such as (20) is (21): (20) What did you do to the wall? (21) I sprayed it with paint. The wall is more topical and thus appears as the postverbal constituent, whereas paint is what is being focussed on: “the right-most constituent is the focus of the new information” (1979:161). Similarly for (22), for which the most appropriate answer is (23), following Givón: (22) What did you do with the paint? (23) I sprayed it on the wall. The reason for choosing the on-variant with the Locatum realized by a bare nominal is that the Locatum, it, is topicaland the wall is the focus. Although Givón does not explicitly mention the image impression and the material/ product alternation, they also fall under his definition of the dative shift, and consequently the same principle can be taken to apply to them. Thus the choice between the two variants for Material and Product, and for Image and Location depends not on a difference in degree of affectedness or in ‘semantic entailment’ (Givón 1979:164), but on discourse-functional factors. Interestingly, Givón does admit that besides this pragmatic variation, semantic differences may also appear in this sort of construals, and he refers to the holistic/partitive distinction. But he immediately adds that this semantic variation is only the result of the pragmatic word-order variation: “it is the effect of ‘talking about x’ which gives rise to the inference of ‘talking about all of x’” (1979:164). The ultimate motivation for alternation resides in topicality.

STATE OF THE ART

25

Halliday’s (1994:168-169) explanation of a number of NG-PrepP alternations, some of which resemble the locative, material/product and image impression alternation, moves along similar lines. In general, he subscribes to the principle that in an information unit (see further chapter II), the given element precedes the new one: “the typical sequence of informational elements is thus Given followed by New” (Halliday 1994:296). In cases where alternation between NG and PrepP is possible, the choice for one or the other of the two alternates can be attributed to the requirements of information distribution: syntactic variation allows the newest information to be expressed in clause-final position, in accordance with the normal organization of an information unit. In his discussion of Agent, Patient and Range (an element indicating the scope of the process, see further chapter III, section 1.2), Halliday argues that a prepositional realization marks a participant as having special textual prominence, as news that occurs after “some other participant, or circumstance, that already follows the process” (1994:168). He gives the following examples: No special prominence

prominent new PrepP

Her nephew sent her the flowers.

She was sent flowers by her nephew.

He sent his aunt flowers.

He sent flowers to his aunt.

John wins the high jump every time.

John wins every time at the high jump.

Table 1: Association of PrepP with textual prominence (based on Halliday 1994:168).

The prominence arises from the late occurrence in the sentence, and the preposition functions as a marker of this special status in the message.8 With respect to the locative, image impression and material/product alternations, the typical correlation between new information and clause-final position means that the choice for which non-agentive participant will be realized by a PrepP depends on which one specifies the newest information:

8

Examples like these make the link with the constructions/alternations being investigated in this book, but they are a slightly different case, as they involve a more and a less marked variant – to a higher degree than the two variants in the locative, image impression and material/product alternations. They serve to illustrate the general principle of clause-final information focus.

26


She sprayed paint on the wall. Location, Material newest information

He inscribed the names on the ring. He carved a toy from the piece of wood.

Locatum, Image, Product newest information

She sprayed the wall with paint. He inscribed the ring with the names. He carved the piece of wood into a toy.

Table 2: Application to the locative, image impression and material/product alternation.

Although this approach has some similarities with Givón’s approach, which allows them to be grouped together, there are also some important differences. More particularly, Givón’s notion of topicality does not correspond to Halliday’s system of given and new information. A comparison of these, and of still other notions, such as Theme and Rheme, will be provided in chapter II, where a number of textually-oriented claims will be tested on corpus-material. In conclusion, textual factors such as topicality, givenness of participants and information distribution have been offered as (partial) motivation for NGPrepP alternation. The basic principle is that the more given constituent is realized postverbally, by a bare nominal, whereas the newer element is typically realized by a PrepP more towards the end of the clause. Undoubtedly, these textual factors figure prominently in the choice for one or the other alternate. Chapter II will prove with corpus counts that information distribution has a very high correlation with alternation. However, corpus material also shows that some of these intuitive claims lack foundation. For instance, Givón (1979:162163) discards sentences like the following: (24) ?I sprayed paint on it. But as a counterexample, consider the following sentences in which the topical anaphoric pronoun does not occur postverbally, occupying the leftmost position. (25) (Everyone kept taking the mick out of her) and spraying this water on her. (CB) (26) (When he spotted a clean white wall, he worked himself free) and etched a vertical calendar in it. (CB)

STATE OF THE ART

27

Similarly for structures in which the other element is more topical: (27) (At this point my mother suggested that since Kip hated the smell of perfume) we spray the dustbin liberally with it. (CB) This goes against the idea that the ordering of what is expressed in the NG and PrepP is such as to position the most focal element in final position. It is more topical than the dustbin, yet occurs clause-finally, realized by a PrepP. Counterexamples like these demonstrate the importance of a systematic and full-scale investigation of the weight of discourse factors such as the given/new principle in the alternation. As will already have transpired from this overview, the terms ‘given’ and ‘new’ are used for a number of different concepts. In the following chapter, the different ways in which the terms have been used will be discussed. This second chapter will also report on the results of a quantified corpus-study involving two different types of textual analysis.

3. Lexicalist-formalist approaches More lexically and formally oriented approaches have displayed a keen interest in alternations of the type investigated here (Rappaport and Levin 1988, Levin and Rappaport Hovav 1992, Pinker 1989, Hale and Keyser 1993, Tenny 1994, Van Hout 1998). One of the main reasons for this privileged treatment is that in most of these theories verb meaning and related issues such as aspect are considered to determine syntactic behaviour. The main tenet of the lexically oriented approaches is that the possibility for verbs to participate in certain types of alternation depends on the absence or presence of particular aspects of verb meaning. The various theories and approaches differ, however, in the formalization and the type of meaning components. The purely lexical-semantic θ-grid with θ-roles, which is illustrated in (37) for the verb put, is a tradition that starts with Gruber’s (1970) thematic relations:

28


PUT: However, such a representation has been subject to a lot of criticism and is rarely used now. Rappaport and Levin (1988) and Levin (1993) argue against a simple enumeration of θ-roles and instead propose a representation by means of Lexical Conceptual Structures (LCS), a sort of lexical semantic representation that takes the form of predicate decomposition:9 PUT: [x cause [y come to be at z]] Such a LCS is linked to the Predicate Argument Structure (PAS) of a verb, a syntactic representation that consists of a number of variables, each variable standing for one argument. The letters x, y and z in the PAS for put, for instance, indicate that this verb is triadic: PUT: x Apart from indicating the number of arguments a verb takes, the PAS also encodes the way in which the association is established between the variables and the argument positions of a verb in the syntax.10 Pinker (1989), who in his approach combines both Government and Binding and Lexical Functional Grammar insights, assumes a position very much like that of Rappaport and Levin. He too rejects the presence of thematic role labels in a verb’s argument structure, and the lexico-semantic structure he proposes is very similar to Rappaport and Levin’s LCS. The main difference is that he does

9 The advantages they see of such a LCS over a θ-grid are extensively discussed in Rappaport and Levin (1988). 10 This process of “θ-role assignment” is the only way in which Levin and Rappaport make use of the notion “θ-role”: they are concerned with “the establishment of correspondences between positions in PAS and positions in syntax, and not with the content of θ-roles” (1988:15-16). An example is the following: for the PAS for put, the variable x, which is placed outside the brackets, represents the external argument; y and z stand for the internal arguments. This means that x is associated with that NP in the syntax that falls outside the maximal projection of the verb (the Subject in SFG-terms) whereas y and z are internal to the verb’s maximal projection (the Residue-elements in SFG). Further, the fact that y is underlined means that it is the direct argument, i.e. the argument that is assigned its θ-role by the verb; z, then, is an indirect argument, which is assigned its θ-role by a locative preposition (Ploc).

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29

not see his lexico-semantic structure as a representation of concepts for typical actions and events, such as ‘cause to come to be at’ in the LCS for put, but for particular linguistically relevant aspects of the action which are not necessarily also characteristic features of that action in the world (section 3.2). Tenny (1994) has still a different vision on the link between syntax and semantics. In section 3.3, her ‘Aspectual Interface Hypothesis’ will be discussed. Evidently, these differences in the conception of lexico-semantic structure and the link with the syntactic component result in a different account of phenomena such as syntactic alternation. 3.1. Levin and Rappaport: Lexical Conceptual Structures As with the partitive/holistic and the textual approach, lexicalist approaches have also mainly been concerned with the locative alternation. Rappaport and Levin (1988) and Levin and Rappaport Hovav (1992) discuss this alternation at some length. For each alternate, they propose a different Predicate Argument Structure, and related to this, a different Lexical Conceptual Structure: specific to their approach is that they see syntactic alternation of this type not as a simple alternation in the arguments of a verb with one sense, but as a manifestation of two related but distinct LCSs. The two LCSs are related in the sense that one incorporates or subsumes the other; in the case of the locative alternation they can be formalized as follows (Rappaport and Levin 1988:26-27): (28) a. [x cause [y to come to be at z] / MANNER] b. [[x cause [z to come to be in STATE]] BY MEANS OF [x cause [y to come to be at z]] / MANNER] The LCS in (28a) lies at the basis of the in/on-variant, the one in (28b) at the basis of the with-variant. Rappaport and Levin derive the fact that (28a) is subsumed under (28b) from the following observation. (29) a. Henry loaded hay onto the wagon. b. Henry loaded the wagon with hay. Whereas (29b) entails (29a) - loading the wagon with hay implies that an amount of hay is loaded on the wagon - there is no such implication in the

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other direction: when Henry loads hay on the wagon, he does not necessarily (completely) load the wagon (Rappaport and Levin 1988:26; see also Van Den Eynde’s approach in section 1). Notice, in passing, that this argument too rests on a holistic interpretation of the Location. By representing the two LCSs as in (28), the fact that the meaning of the in/on-variant is included in that of the with-variant is captured. The meaning associated with the verb in the in/on-variant is seen as the basic meaning, since it is conceptually the simplest. In order to explain how a verb can acquire an additional, extended meaning, Levin and Rappaport Hovav appeal to the process of ‘lexical extension,’ which systematically creates extended meanings based on the basic ones (1992:137-138). This is a very general process, found with verbs (for example, the extension of whistle as a verb of sound emission to ‘move while emitting the characteristic sound’), but also with nouns (cup as a container and as the quantity held in it). When a verb manifests such an extension, it will shift to another semantic class. In the case of the locative alternation verbs, there is a shift from the change-of-location to the change-of-state group: in their basic usage, these verbs express how the Locatum is moved: ‘y to come to be at z’. But the extended meaning can be paraphrased as ‘change the state by means of changing the location of the Locatum’. The fact that only the extended meaning expresses a change of state of the location is suggested by a comparison of (29a) and (29b) above with the following sentences: (30) a. Hay was loaded on the wagon. b. The wagon was loaded with hay. Although both examples under (29) entail (30a), only (29b) - the withvariant - entails (42b), which denotes the bringing about of a change of state in the Location, and this suggests that only the verbs manifesting the extended meaning belong to the change-of-state class (Rappaport and Levin 1988:26). As a consequence of the shift in semantic class, the verb with the extended meaning will also take on the PAS of the other verbs belonging to the new class, which explains the alternate expression of the arguments. The syntactic frame of change-of-location verbs is ‘NG V NG on NG,’ but the one associated with change-of-state verbs is ‘NG V NG with NG,’ hence the reverse position of Location and Locatum when the verb manifests the extended meaning.

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The difference between alternating verbs and non-alternating verbs like put, all of which are essentially verbs of change-of-location, is a manner component. In the LCS of the verb, this is formalized as ‘/MANNER’; for load, for instance, the LCS will be [x cause [y to come to be at z] / LOAD]. According to Rappaport and Levin (1988:26-27), verbs like spray and load undergo the locative alternation precisely because they lexicalize a manner component; the non-alternating class only expresses a change of location, but is not explicit about manner. Put, for instance, does not specify how the change of location was effected like spray does: he put the paint on the shed only tells us that the paint has been moved, whereas he sprayed the paint on the shed also specifies that, roughly, this happened by means of an equal distribution of droplets of paint over the surface of the shed. In sum, the occurrence of the with and in/on variants is not a simple matter of argument-alternation of verbs with one meaning, for Levin and Rappaport. They propose that in the two cases a different meaning is involved, related through a process of lexical extension, and that the verbs belong to a different class depending on their usage. The condition for verbs to participate in the alternation is that they contain a manner component. There are, however, some weak points in this account, such as the LCSs they propose. The reason for asserting that the with-form is non-basic is that the LCS corresponding to this form subsumes the lexical structure for the in/on-form. Although this fact cannot be denied when the verb meanings are being represented as in (28a) and (28b), there does not seem to be any theory-inherent reason why the meanings have to be rendered in exactly that way. Consider the following proposal for the lexical conceptual structures of load: (31) a. [[x cause [y to come to be at z]] BY MEANS OF [x cause [z to come to be in STATE]] / LOAD] (for in/on) b. [x cause [z to come to be in STATE] / LOAD] (for with) Although one can argue that in the in/on-form no change of state is attained (see above), this representation cannot be ruled out on the basis of their own account, because Levin and Rappaport Hovav (1992) suggest something similar for the clear-verbs. For this group of verbs, they consider the construction with the Location realized by a bare nominal as basic, and the one with the Locatum realized by a bare nominal as extended:

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(32) Doug cleared the table of the dishes. (basic) (33) Doug cleared the dishes of the table. (extended) In its basic sense, clear is a change-of-state verb, and in its extended sense a verb of removal (Levin and Rappaport Hovav 1992:140). According to the entailment-relations, no change of state of the Location is implied for the extended meaning: although all the dishes are cleared, the table may still have other things left on it. Yet, this extended meaning of the verb is paraphrased as ‘remove by means of change of state clear’ (1992:140). Such conflicting arguments tend to reduce the credibility of their explanations invoked for the alternating spray/load-verbs. The manner-criterion poses some problems too: the argument that only alternating verbs lexicalize a manner component is hard to maintain when, for example, verbs like jam and ram are compared. Ram, one of the non-alternating verbs, seems to specify just as much information as jam as far as the manner in which the action happens is concerned. Admittedly, they are no synonyms, but to say that jam expresses manner and ram does not seems like tailoring the facts to the theory. Similarly, it is hard to see how verbs like scoop, dribble, coil, etc. fail to lexicalize manner: it is fairly obvious that put does not contain many specifications as to manner, but scoop (‘with or as if with a scoop, sporadically and in small bits’) and coil (‘into rings or spirals’) are very specific as to manner. To claim that the grammar is sensitive to ‘manner’ therefore seems inadequate. Pinker sets forth a more nuanced view on this account. 3.2. Pinker: constraints and narrow conflation classes Pinker’s (1989) work goes partly in the same direction as Levin and Rappaport, but there are some striking differences. Whereas the latter start from one basic construction (in/on-form) and see the other one as derived, Pinker proposes a two-way system for the locative alternation, where for some verbs the into/onto-form and for other verbs the with-form is derived. His is very brief in his discussion of the image impression and material/product alternations, so the following discussion will concentrate on the locative alternation, with additions pertaining to the other alternations where possible.

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Pinker (1989:124) reasons that since there are verbs that take only into/onto and others that take only with, there must be two rules operating in opposite directions. He therefore divides the alternating locative verbs in two classes: one with into/onto and one with with as the basic form. The latter class is exemplified by verbs like jam, load, stuff etc. For these, the Location11 is obligatory, or at least necessary to make the sentence sound non-elliptical: *to stuff breadcrumbs is ungrammatical if the breadcrumbs are the Locatum, whereas to stuff a turkey is not; further, it is possible to say he loaded the bullets, but this sounds like an abbreviation of he loaded the bullets in the gun. For this reason load a gun is taken as the basic form. On account of these facts he assumes that the with form is basic. Conversely, verbs like pile, smear, spray etc. naturally take the Locatum as direct object, witness the ungrammaticality of *to pile the shelf, as opposed to to pile the books. With verbs like smear, both Location and Locatum are optional, but, Pinker (1989:125) argues, the form with the Location has an elided feel: he smeared the wall vs he smeared the paint. The into/onto (or content-oriented) and the with (or container-oriented) class form what Pinker calls ‘broad conflation classes’: they are organized around the thematic cores ‘move a substance in a particular manner to an object’ and ‘affect Object in a particular way by adding substance’ respectively and comprise a large number of verbs that answer to this description (1989:103). In order to display the locative alternation, membership in one of these broad classes is a necessary condition. But within these broad classes the verbs still show subtle, linguistically relevant, semantic distinctions among each other; i.e. they are further divided into subgroups which Pinker calls ‘narrow conflation classes’ (1989:103). It is membership in one of these narrow classes that constitutes the sufficient condition to alternate. In a second move, therefore, Pinker (1989:124ff) further distinguishes seven semantically coherent subclasses for each broad conflation class, and the result of this classification is the following: for into/onto verbs, four of the seven narrow conflation classes alternate; for with verbs, two do. The criteria for alternation that emerged from such detailed semantic analysis are ‘simultaneous forceful contact and motion of a mass against a surface’ (e.g. smear), ‘vertical arrangement on a horizontal surface’ (e.g. heap), ‘force is imparted to a mass, 11 Pinker does not use the terms Location and Locatum, but for ease of reference they will be retained here.

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causing ballistic motion in a specified spatial distribution along a trajectory’ (e.g. spray) and ‘mass is caused to move in a widespread or nondirected distribution’ (e.g. scatter) for the into/onto-verbs, and ‘a mass is forced into a container against the limits of its capacity’ (e.g. pack) and ‘a mass of a size, shape or type defined by the intended use of a container (and not purely by its geometry) is put into the container, enabling it to accomplish its function (e.g. load) for the with-verbs. Verbs belonging to any of these classes alternate, whereas verbs that group with the other narrow conflation classes - for example ‘a set of objects is distributed over a surface’ (e.g. splotch) - do not. Pinker arrives at a similar result for the image impression alternation: the alternating and non-alternating verbs fall into a number of narrow conflation classes, which results in an overview of the constraints on the alternation. The into/onto non-alternators, for example, group into three narrow conflation classes: the properties of the type of pattern are curtailed by either manner of creation (e.g. scrawl), the source (e.g. copy) or the symbolic type (e.g. draw); and the nonalternating with-verbs express a change in the surface of an aesthetic or purposive type (e.g. illustrate). The crucial difference with the alternating verbs is that the latter have either the manner or the substance defined in concrete physical terms (e.g. embroider: with the use of a thread, piercing cloth; etch: with the use of a sharp tool, on a surface). The motivation for alternation that emerges from this classification is predictability: only verbs that specify or allow one to predict both a particular type of motion and a particular type of end state participate in the locative alternation. Thus, because fill expresses an end state only; it will not occur in an into/onto alternative. Similarly for pour, which expresses only the manner of motion and will therefore just be found in into/onto sentences. Note how this last observation runs counter to Rappaport and Levin’s interpretation of non-alternation: they claim that verbs like put and pour do not alternate because the manner of the motion is not specified, whereas Pinker says they are manner-ofmotion verbs that do not specify an end state. Pinker sees the criteria that determine the narrow conflation classes as a priori criteria that can determine whether a verb can retain components of meaning for end states and motions, independent of these end states and motions themselves (1989:124), i.e. only verbs whose lexico-semantics conform to the right narrow conflation classes – and not just verbs that specify a ‘manner’, as Rappaport and Levin (1988) have it – alternate. In this way he wants to avoid the danger of circularity: saying that alternating verbs specify both end state and manner of motion does not

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explain why some verbs do and others do not specify an end state or motion. Compare drip, which does not allow the alternation and sprinkle, which does: saying drip does not because it does not specify an end state still leaves open the question why sprinkle did acquire this meaning component. The narrow conflation classes and the criteria associated with the alternating ones allow the language user to predict which verbs express both how a surface or container has changed and the way in which this has happened. All this can be illustrated with smear, one of the alternating into/onto verbs. Besides denoting some kind of movement of the substance that is smeared (which is what the verb, as an onto-verb, is supposed to do), the verb also allows one to predict the kind of pressure, the direction and the motion: simultaneous, forceful contact of a mass against a surface. It is exactly these specifications that determine that the verb can take on a meaning component specifying an end state, because they also allow one to predict the distribution of the substance on the surface (the end state). For smear there will be a thick layer covering the surface. The lack of such specifications in, for instance, put entails that this verb will not alternate, since the listener is unable to make any predictions concerning the particular change of state of the object denoted by the PrepP. Such detailed semantic description is very important for a thorough description of alternating constructions, but there seem to be a few problems with the delimitation of the narrow conflation classes, which, though based on semantic elements that are treated in more detail in a later chapter (Pinker 1989:165ff.), do not allow for an unequivocal classification of the verbs and are sometimes rather vague. The difference between the alternating into/onto subclass ‘mass is caused to move in a widespread or nondirected distribution’ and the nonalternating with narrow class ‘a set of objects is distributed over the surface’ is very hard to tell. There are also some difficulties with the criterion for one of the non-alternating image impression subclasses: it is unclear how verbs like copy, plot, sketch and trace constrain properties of the type of pattern impressed by means of their source (Pinker 1989:129). Further, it is questionable whether a verb like mark, an alternating image impression verb, really fits in with the following description: “the alternators [...] specify a particular manner or means in which the surface was affected and properties of the substance of the image and the medium onto which it is put, all defined in concrete physical terms” (1989:129).

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The main distinguishing feature of Pinker’s description, the division into an into/onto and a with-group, is something we will return to in chapter VII, where the experiential semantics of the locative constructions will be gone into. When Pinker’s hypothesis is confronted with quantified corpus data, quite different generalizations will emerge. 3.3. Tenny: an aspectual approach Lexical Conceptual Structures, which in slightly different forms are posited by both Rappaport and Levin (1988) and Pinker (1992), also feature in Tenny’s account of the locative alternation (Tenny 1994). Further, in much the same way as Pinker, Tenny distinguishes between broad-range rules that set the necessary condition for alternation, and narrow-range rules that further specify the sufficient condition. But what sets her apart from these two lexical approaches is that, in her framework, syntax does not ‘see’ thematic roles at all. Whereas Rappaport, Levin and Pinker already greatly reduce the part of θroles, but still see them as relevant to syntax as far as linking rules are concerned, Tenny goes one step further in claiming that only the aspectual part of the θ-roles is visible to syntax.12 In other words, only the narrow-range rules can make reference to the LCS: the broad-range rules, i.e. the necessary conditions on linking, only make reference to aspectual properties (1994:124). This is what Tenny refers to as the Aspectual Interface Hypothesis (AIH). One of the central aspectual linking rules in Tenny’s AIH is the ‘measuringout constraint on direct internal arguments.’13 This constraint, which is reminiscent of Dowty’s corollary between Incremental Theme and direct object, states that the direct argument, and only the direct argument, is constrained in such a way that it “undergoes no necessary internal motion or change, unless it is motion or change which ‘measures out the event’ over time” (1994:11).14 In other words, it is the direct argument that marks the temporal terminus of the 12 As mentioned above, this does not mean that Tenny denies the existence or importance of LCSs. Instead she sees these as representing a different type of information, which stands in a modular relationship to the information contained by aspectual roles (1994:115ff.). 13 The other two linking generalizations for the indirect internal argument and the external argument are the ‘terminus-constraint’ and the ‘non-measuring constraint’ respectively. 14 For a discussion of the differences and similarities between Dowty’s Proto-Agent and ProtoPatient and Tenny’s aspectual theory, see Tenny (1994:103-105).

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event, provides some kind of scale that matches up with the event in the various stages (or at various times) of its completion. The fact that it is only the direct argument that serves to measure out the event is pertinent to the locative alternation, because these verbs have two internal arguments, both of which can be either the direct or the indirect argument (1994:49ff.) Depending on which one serves to measure out the event, either Location or Locatum is the ‘direct argument.’ Therefore, the broad-range rule for alternation that Tenny proposes is as follows: in order for verbs to participate in the locative alternation, they have to express the application of some sort of material. Further, both arguments must be able to serve as measuring-elements: the theme has to be something like a material so that it can be consumed over time, and the goal should either be a surface or a container, which can be filled up gradually (1994:193ff.). Only verbs that comply with this description participate in the alternation. As will become clear in chapter IV, this description of the locative verbs contains some very interesting points. The narrow-range rules impose further conditions on which verbs allow alternation. The AIH and its associated principles such as the ‘measuring-out constraint’ are universal linking principles, cross-linguistic constraints on rules, but every language can impose further, more specific restrictions. These are of a non-aspectual nature, and will be violated more easily than broad-range, aspectual rules associated with the broad conflation classes (1994:121ff.).15 Like Dowty’s Incremental Theme, Tenny’s measuring-out constraint has an affinity with the partitive/holistic approach. When the Locatum or the Location is the direct argument they must be ‘completely consumed in the event’ or ‘completely filled at the end of the event’, because only the direct argument serves as a measure element (1994:53). In order to demonstrate this, she compares the following sets of sentences:

15

This explains why the first sentence below, though not an actual form in contemporary standard English, will occur more readily than the second example: *Fill coffee in the mug. *Send your sister with ice-cream. The first sentence ‘only’ violates a narrow-range rule (Tenny lists some examples of actual occurrences (1994:124)), whereas the second violates an aspectual broad-range rule.

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(34) a. ??Jeremiah sprayed the paint on the wall (in five minutes) and there was half a can left over. b. Jeremiah sprayed the wall with the paint (in five minutes) and there was half a can left over. (35) a. Jeremiah sprayed the paint on the wall (in five minutes) and the wall was only half covered. b. ??Jeremiah sprayed the wall with paint (in five minutes) and the wall was only half covered. Tenny (1994:53) claims that the readings in (34a) and (35b) are forced, because as a definite direct argument, complete consumption (of the paint) and complete coverage (the wall) are entailed. In (34b) and (35a), on the other hand, the paint and the wall are indirect internal arguments and as such do not measure out the event, which explains why no ‘holistic’ interpretation of these arguments is entailed in those sentences. This representation of the facts is not wholly convincing. If (34a) has a strange ring to it, so does (34b): as will be discussed in chapter III, one of the characteristics of the definite determiner is that it can function as a universal quantifier, and this causes the sentences in (34a) and (35b) to sound strange. Compare Tenny’s example with the following sentence from Schwartz-Norman (1976), which Schwartz-Norman labels ‘odd’: (36) John loaded the waggon with the hay, but left most of the hay on the ground. (Schwartz-Norman 1976:283) One of the contexts in which a sentence like (34b) is perfectly acceptable, however, is when the identity of the paint is at stake. In that case the identifying function of the determiner can take over, and the just serves as an indication of unique identifiability, not of quantity. This may explain why Tenny (1994:53) adds moldy in the following example: (37) Bubba loaded the wagon with the moldy hay (in five minutes) and there were three bales left over. The adjective provides a further specification of the hay, which strengthens the idea that the identifying function of the determiner is more important here.

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The issue of partitive and holistic interpretations and the influence of determiners and quantifiers is the subject of sections 2.2 and 2.3 in chapter III. This discussion concludes the overview of lexicalist approaches to the alternations. Abstracting away from the formalizations, the main points of interest are Rappaport and Levin’s characterization of the alternation as involving two different verb-senses (change-of-state vs. manner-of-motion), Pinker’s two directionalities (either with or into/onto as basic form) and his detailed semantic characterization by means of the narrow conflation classes, and Tenny’s aspectual approach, which has common ground with the partitive/holistic approach.

4. Conclusion In this state of the art, the locative alternation has held centre stage. This reflects the overwhelming attention that has been paid to this type of alternation, a bias that this study cannot overcome either: in many sections the point of departure will be formed by reactions, criticism or references to earlier descriptions of the locative alternation. In the elaboration of these issues, however, we will always look at the other alternation types as well and broaden up the picture to these patterns as constructions as such, not as simply part of a (binary) alternation. The existing literature has been grouped into three not always clearly delimited approaches. The partitive/holistic effect is, in one form or another, part of most descriptions. The principle that the same participant when realized by a bare nominal is construed as totally affected, and when realized by a PrepP as partially affected, will be discussed in depth in chapter III. In chapter II, the implications of textual factors will be investigated. Starting point for this chapter will be the different proposals described in section 2: Givón’s topicality and Halliday’s information distribution. Finally, the last section of this chapter has dwelt on Pinker, Levin and Rappaport, and Tenny. As explained in the Introduction, the approach taken is construction-oriented and cognitive-functional. However, specific approaches to language always resonate with the theoretical concerns and developments of the wider linguistic community. For certain problems posed by the constructions at hand, reflection cannot be conducted without bringing in insights from compatible approaches such as

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the lexicosemantic tradition, and in the course of this investigation, we will regularly enter into a dialogue with such an approach.

CHAPTER II TEXTUAL DIMENSIONS

The starting point of the description of the locative, the material/product and the image impression constructions is formed by considerations from a textual point of view. More specifically, Givón’s hypothesis that NG-PrepP alternation is motivated pragmatically will be tested against corpus data. This will involve turning Givón’s (1979) rather loosely formulated claim into a testable hypothesis. To this end it is necessary to distinguish between, on the one hand, identifiability of nominal referents, and on the other, information distribution over, roughly, the whole clause. We will see that these two parameters trigger different correlations, which reveal the contribution and the limits of such a pragmatic approach to the alter-nation more clearly. In the previous chapter, some pragmatically motivated approaches to syntactic alternation between NGs and PrepPs were briefly reviewed. To recapitulate, the main claim is that this sort of alternation is the result of discoursefunctional considerations: the choice of which participant will be realized by the NG and which by the PrepP depends on what Givón (1979:161) calls relative topicality. More particularly, he claims that the more topical element will be presented as the leftmost constituent (realized as a NG), whereas the rightmost constituent (the PrepP) is the focus of new information. Recall examples (20) to (23) from the previous chapter, here reproduced as (1) and (2): (1) (2)

a. What did you do to the wall? b. I sprayed it with paint. a. What did you do with the paint? b. I sprayed it on the wall.

The answer to a question typically has the requested information as the final element, precisely because it is the least topical. The focus of information is placed as far as possible to the right, in order to comply with the given-new ordering principle. It is this structuring principle which leads advocates of the

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pragmatic approach such as Givón to reject or mark as dubious sentences like (3) and (4): (3) (4)

*He gave her it. I sprayed the wall with it.

?

The anaphoric pronoun is always a highly topical element and consequently should not, in this view, come at the end of the sentence. In sentences (3) and (4) the pronoun should be placed before her and the wall, because the latter constitute the focal information, which normally comes at the end of the sentence. The following corpus attestations illustrate how these discourse factors interact with the alternate expression of the two roles involved: (5)

(6)

(I got out a scrap piece of paper. I wrote everything down. All-the whole stupid song about Zanzibar.) I stuffed it in the bottom of my desk just to get rid of it. (CB) (She pulled up the flap on her coat pocket.) It was stuffed with fifty-pound notes. (CB)

In (5), the Locatum it is topical and informationally predictable: the referent of the pronoun has only just been mentioned, and as such is anaphorically retrievable from the immediately preceding part of the text. The bottom of my desk is the new and focal information here. In example (6), it is again the pronoun, which realizes the Location, that is topical, and the part that comes later provides the new information and is informationally salient. Similar examples of this discourse-motivated factor for the material/ product alternation are: (7)

(8)

(Willow branches and twigs are the favourite home-building material; the birds will strip the willow into small pieces) and weave it into a cosy cup-shaped nest within the box. (CB) (“Huh, I can match your fine Evandar, I can, and call things from the air) and weave them from the light, just as he can.” (CB)

Here again the final constituents, a cosy cup-shaped nest and the light, are the focal information, whereas the given information in the message comes first, in the postverbal NG.

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Although the validity of the given-new principle is generally accepted, it still is necessary to investigate with statistical data the claim that this pragmatic principle motivates the three types of alternation. The reason for this is twofold. First, the sample sentences Givón gives do not come from authentic (written or spoken) texts. They are made-up examples, and the danger with these is that they easily lead to major simplifications, as we will also see in chapter III. The second reason is that this pragmatic approach wants to provide a motivation and explanation for the choice between alternate constructions. The given-new principle as such has been amply documented and described (e.g. Quirk et al. 1972, Biber et al. 1999, Dirven 1989), but it is also generally recognized that this is only a tenden-cy.16 Using the given-new word order as the explanatory principle for another phenomenon takes the reasoning yet one step further, and requires a statistical investigation in its own right.17 Before we can report on the results of the analyses carried out to check the pragmatic hypothesis, there is a terminological and descriptive problem to be dealt with.

1. The notion of relative topicality The discourse-functional motivation proposed by Givón rests on topicality considerations, but he does not provide definitions of the terms topic and focus that can be systematically applied to corpus data. Furthermore, these terms are used in rather different ways by many authors, and Givón’s use of ‘topic’ and ‘focus’ differs considerably from that in other functional schools. It is impossible to test his claims against corpus material before replicable definitions have been given to these terms. In order to situate Givón’s work in a larger context and clarify his position with regard to topic and focus, the various ways in which notions like theme and rheme have been approached will first be described.18

16

Some general cases in which this principle is overruled, for instance, are sequences with heavy endweight (in which case the newer information can occur to the left of older information that requires a more elaborate formulation) and contrastive non-final information. 17 For studies of givenness and the dative alternation, see Erteschik-Shir (1979), Thompson (1989), Collins (1995), Davidse (1996a). 18 Only the most basic ideas and differences will be outlined, as we are not concerned with these functions as such; the section only serves to clarify exactly what Givón means with relative topicality.

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The theorizing around notions like theme and rheme is characterized by basically two approaches, the proponents of which have also been called ‘combiners’ and ‘separators’ (Fries 1981, Collins 1991). The reason for this is that the combiners advance a definition of theme that consists of two parts: they ‘combine’ two concepts into their view on theme. The separators, many of whom are linguists operating in the systemic functional framework, work with only one part of the combiners’ compound definition. The earliest combining definition for ‘theme’, from the well-known Prague school linguist Mathesius, goes as follows: That which is known or at least obvious in the given situation, and from which the speaker proceeds. (Mathesius 1939:234, translated in Firbas 1964:268).

The definition has since been reformulated and refined,19 but the core ideas have not changed. It is the first part, “that which is known or at least obvious in the given situation”, which the separators do not accept in their interpretation of theme. For them this is a separate system, which has to be distinguished alongside the theme-rheme configuration. The system in question is that of givenness, the systemic interpretation of which we will return to later (section 2.3). Givenness figures in the information structure of a text, whereas the concepts theme and rheme (which, as functions, are capitalized in SFG) belong to the thematic structure. Theme from the se-parators’ point of view is characterized as “the point of departure for the message” (Halliday 1994:34), a formulation which corresponds to the second part of the above definition: “that [...] from which the speaker proceeds”. For systemicists, Theme is not identified on the basis of its degree of givenness or context-dependency, but is identified as the element that is realized sentence-initially (whereas Rheme is always final).20 The important point that emerges from the above is that for the separators givenness is different from theme-rheme structure, whereas for the combiners the two cannot be separated. For the former they are two systems that are semantically closely related, because in the default case theme is mapped on to 19

See, for example, Firbas’s notion of communicative dynamism or CD in the sentence (the degree to which an element contributes to the development of the message), which helps to account for sentences like Once upon a time there was a little girl, which contain nothing but new information. 20 Halliday also shows that position does not reflect Themehood in all languages. Languages other than English have other means of marking what is Theme and Rheme. Japanese, for instance, makes use of a postposition to express the functional element Theme (1994:37).

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the given information and rheme onto what is new, but still the patterns can be manipulated independently of each other.21 For the combiners theme and known information necessarily coincide. The reason why all this is relevant to an explication of Givón’s notions of topic and focus is that these latter terms are used more or less as synonyms of theme and rheme as understood in the combining approach.22 On the one hand, the term ‘topic’ itself is suggestive of the Theme-Rheme structure: many grammarians use the term ‘topic’ as a synonym for ‘theme’, and the pair ‘topiccomment’ is often used in a context where systemicists would use the pair ‘Theme-Rheme’ (Halliday 1994:38). Givón often refers to the ‘topic-comment structure’, which shows that his ‘topicality’ is (in part) concerned with the thematic structure. On the other hand, the givenness of a constituent is an important factor to determine its topicality. Givón (1995:78) argues that topicality can be measured by means of, among other things, anaphoric accessibility and cataphoric persistence, two factors that are concerned not with the thematic structure, but with givenness. Furthermore, focus is used in the combination ‘the focus of new information’ (Givón 1979:161), so it is clearly seen as part of the non-predictable, informationally salient part of the message, and more topical information is supposed to appear earlier than newer information (1979:300). Givón’s notion of topicality thus combines elements related to givenness with elements related to Theme-Rheme structure. However, since we will mainly be looking at alternations such as she sprayed X with Y versus she sprayed Y on X, the two non-agentive participants will not normally form the topic/theme, so an analysis of the thematic structure seems less interesting than one of givenness. Before moving on to an analysis of relative topicality as determined by givenness in the alternations, however, one further distinction has to be made. As already hinted at in the previous paragraph, this boils down to the issues of

21 In this respect, consider Halliday’s (1994:300) example of a conversation overheard on a commuter train: Are you coming back into circulation? - I didn’t know I was out. - I haven’t seen you for ages. In the first move, for example, into circulation is treated as given information, and Are you coming back is treated as New, whereas the Theme is Are you (with the meaning ‘I want to know something about you’). In the second sentence, Theme and Given do coincide, because I, the Theme, is part of the Given, which runs up to was. In the third move, the Theme, I, is again part of the New information I haven’t seen. 22 Also see Givòn’s (1979:161) reference to Bolinger (1952), who explicitly subscribes to the combining approach.

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(phoric) identifiability on the hand, and information focus on the other. Confusingly, these two different phenomena have often both been referred to as ‘given’ versus ‘new’ in the literature. Yet, they are distinct categories, which apply to distinct linguistic units and involve distinct recognition criteria: 1) Identifiability of nominal referents In an analysis of identifiability, the identity of the nominal referents is at stake. The issue, basically, is whether they are presented as recoverable from context or co-text: the entities that are referred to are given when they are (presumed) identifiable, and new when they are not. The relevant linguistic unit for identifiability is the NG, where the determiner structure reflects the status of the referring group. Definite NGs typically refer to a given participant, indefinite ones to a new one. For the analysis of identifiability, Gundel, Hedberg and Zacharsky’s (1993) givenness hierachy will be used, as it covers more or less the same ground as Halliday and Hasan (1976) and Martin (1992) in their work on cohesion, but is more fine-grained when it comes to assessing the degree of givenness, because the various types of identifiability are ordered in a hierarchy.23 2) Old versus non-predictable information in the utterance as a message A second type of ‘givenness’ is not concerned with recoverability of nominal referents, but relates to the structuring of the whole message, the presentation of the material as being newsworthy or not. With regard to the ordering of the postverbal constituents, this boils down to ‘focal’, i.e. informationally most salient,24 or ‘non-focal.’ Whether or not the NG stands for an informationally salient part of the message is marked by intonation. The information focus is signalled by ‘tonic prominence’, i.e. the main pitch movement in the ‘tone group.’25 In the default case a tone group coincides with the clause, but one clause can also consist of more than one tone group, and

23

Other systemic functional descriptions of reference are, for instance, Fries (1986), Hasan (1984) and Halliday and Hasan (1989). In most of these, a basic distinction is made between presenting and presuming reference, and the referential status of expressions is dealt with as part of (non-structural) cohesion. 24 Or, in the case of illocutionary clauses, the part that is affected by the speech act. 25 Other terms for ‘tone group’ are ‘intonation unit’, ‘intonation group’, ‘breath group’, ‘phonological phrase’, ‘phonological clause’ and ‘intonation phrase’ (Tench 1996:52, fn.).

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alternatively one tone group can extend over more than one clause (Halliday 1994:295; Tench 1996:32). For an analysis of the postverbal constituents as they relate to the structuring of the message, Halliday’s intonationally based analysis of information units (which converges with that of Prague school linguists such as Daneš (1974) and Firbas (1964)) will be applied. The main differences can be summarized as follows: identifiability

information structure

functional meaning

identity of the referent

informational salience

relevant linguistic unit

NG

tone group (± the clause)

formal marking

determiner structure

intonation patterns

Table 3: identifiability versus informational value.

Given their association with different linguistic units, these parameters can only be checked separately in quantitative corpus analyses (on the importance of carefully distinguishing parameters in corpus-based study, see Delbecque 1998). Only after this sort of research can the distinct claims which are conflated in Givón’s formulation of the pragmatic motivation for the alternations be assessed.

2. Relative topicality as motivation for the alternations This section will report on the verification of Givón’s claim, which requires two steps: an analysis of the identifiability (section 2.2) and an analysis of the informational value (section 2.4) of the two non-agentive groups. 2.1. Identifiability of nominal referents In the analysis of identifiability, we will test whether or not the NG is more identifiable than the PrepP, in order to find out how important this factor is in the choice of alternate expressions. Most approaches (Halliday and Hasan 1976, Clark and Haviland 1977, Martin 1992, Prince 1992) work only with the distinction ‘identifiable’ vs. ‘non-identifiable.’ The problem with such an analysis is that in sentences where the two postverbal groups are definite, the

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pattern ‘identifiable – identifiable’ emerges, even if one of the nominals is clearly “more” identifiable than the other, as in the following sentence: (9)

(And then so it's the men who then collect the baskets do they) and load them on the trailers? (CB)

What we want to test is the relative identifiability, and an analysis which does not distinguish between the trailers, which is actually less given than them, is not sufficient for our purposes. Clearly a finer-grained analysis is called for, one that distinguishes several degrees of identifiability. The “givenness hierarchy” of Gundel, Hedberg and Zacharsky (1993) (henceforth Gundel et al.) is a good candidate. They discern six cognitive statuses for referring expressions. Each status provides the addressee with information about the location in memory and the attention state (1993: 274). Thus in a boat, the boat and this boat, a, the and this are signals to the addressee where to look for the designated object, with e.g. a making clear that he will not find it in short-term memory. As these examples show, the basis for this sixfold distinction is the form of the expression. Determiners and pronominal forms are an outward sign of the cognitive status of the designated entity, and as such provide a concrete point of departure for an analysis. Therefore, Gundel et al. distinguish only statuses that are marked by the form. This makes the hierarchy interesting: it prevents an endless subclassification into more and more refined states, which in the end becomes unworkable, and yet it allows one to analyse the forms in sufficient detail. The following table presents an overview of the different statuses with the correlating forms. in focus >

activated >

familiar >

it

that

that noun

uniquely identifiable > the noun

referential > indef. this noun

type identifiable > a noun

this this noun Figure 3: Gundel et al.’s givenness hierarchy (1993:275).

The statuses are implicationally related, i.e. each status entails all lower statuses, but not vice versa. An element that is in focus will also always be

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activated, familiar, uniquely identifiable, referential and type identifiable, but an element that is familiar is not always in focus. Note, however, that the one-to-one relation between form and status, as shown in the table, is in reality skewed. Gundel et al. point out that there is interaction with Grice’s maxims of quantity, viz. Q1: make your contri-bution as informative as required, and Q2: do not make your contribution more informative than required. Q1, for example, accounts among other things for the fact that a is not normally used to introduce NGs with uniquely identifiable entities, which, strictly speaking, is possible, because uniqueness implies type identifiability. What follows is a brief characterization of each status.26 Type identifiable: the addressee is able to reconstruct the type of the object described by the NG. (10) I couldn’t sleep last night. A dog (next door) kept me awake. The addressee is at least able to make up a mental image of what a dog is; he knows the type designated by the nominal head. Referential: for a designated element to be referential the addressee either already has to have a representation of the speaker’s intended desig-nated entity in mind which he must retrieve, or he has to be able to construct a new representation on the basis of the referential expression to-gether with the rest of the sentence. Besides the indefinite article, this status can also be realized by indefinite this, as in (11):27 (11) I couldn’t sleep last night. This dog (next door) kept me

awake.

The terminology of the second status is perhaps not particularly illuminating: naming the second type ‘referential’ seems to imply that the first type is non-referential. But this begs the question of how to interpret the term ‘nonreferential,’ since a dog in (10) clearly refers to an existing dog, viz. one that lives next door and kept the speaker awake. Let us therefore have a closer look at what ‘referential’ means in the givenness hierarchy. In a footnote Gundel et al. state that ‘referentiality’ should be distin-guished from ‘specificity’, which is illustrated as follows: 26 How exactly each status is characterized is not spelled out in great detail by the authors (see Gundel et al. 1988:217 and Gundel et al. 1993:276-280). 27 Although this is a possibility, the indefinite article is by far the most common realization (a proportion of 41 to 1, see Gundel 1993: 291, Table 3).

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(12) A student in the syntax class cheated on the final exam. They claim that in this sentence, the indefinite a student in the syntax class can be used either in a referential or in a non-referential way, but is specific in each reading because “it can only have a wide-scope existential reading (i.e. there is someone in the syntax class who ...” (1993:277). The difference between the referential and the non-referential reading can be made clear as follows: in the latter the speaker merely asserts that the set of students in the syntax class who cheated on that exam is not empty, in the referential reading the speaker has in mind one particular member of the syntax class, but does not identify him. In the referential use it is known who has cheated, whereas in the non-referential use a crib sheet may have been found, but it is not known who exactly has cheated. Referentiality for Gundel et al., therefore, depends on whether or not the speaker intends to refer to a particular object. However, this use of the terms ‘referential’ and ‘non-referential’ is not felicitous, as it causes confusion with nominals that are no discourse participants, as in the following example: (13) You know Bobby Gould is a good man and he's now paving the way for a very good third division campaign. (CB) The NG a good man is non-referential, but in a way that differs from the socalled non-referentiality of the previous examples. A good man describes one of Bobby Gould’s qualities or characteristics. There is no potential referent for it, and it does not pick out a discourse referent, as evinced by the referential properties of the personal pronoun he, which can only refer back to Bobby Gould, not to a good man (Karttunen 1968, Kuno 1970, Declerck 1988).28 Thus, rather than being ‘non-referential’, the indefinite NG in (12) (upon the reading where the speaker does not have someone in particular in mind) is ‘weakly referring’ (Donnellan 1966 as cited in Declerck 1988). The NG a good man in (13), by contrast, is truly non-referential. Therefore, Gundel et al.’s use of the term type identifiable for the first status is a much better choice, one which also ties in well with Langacker’s views. For Langacker a type “specifies the basis for identifying various entities as being representative of the same class” (1991:53), and differs from an instantiation in not having a particular location in the domain of instantiation

28

See also chapter V for a more extensive discussion of clauses of this type.

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(where instances are primarily thought of as being located; for material substance, for example, space is the domain of instantiation). In other words, an instantiated type designates one (or more) instances of a class, but a type is not bound to any particular instance. Nominal groups always presuppose instantiation, i.e. they profile an entity, and provide information concerning the number (quantification) and the status vis-à-vis the speech participants (grounding). More specifically, indefinite NGs (such as the ones discussed for the first of Gundel et al.’s statuses) are tied to a particular instance, and the addressee is furnished with extra information concerning the number of instances and the status vis-à-vis the speech participants (not uniquely identifiable to hearer). Despite the instantiation, the label ‘type identifiable’ is suitable because regardless of all the information the nominal provides, the addressee only has access to the type of entity and knows nothing about the identity of the thing itself. The instantiation, in other words, is characterized by type identifiability in these cases. Uniquely identifiable: the addressee does not need the rest of the sentence: he is able to retrieve the representation or construct the entity intended by the speaker on the basis of the referring expression alone. The latter explains why the following sentence is unproblematic even when the addressee does not know the neighbours have a dog, (14) I couldn’t sleep last night. The dog next door kept me awake. Familiar: unique identifiability because of an existing representation of the designated entity in long- or short-term memory. The following sentence assumes that the addressee knows about the dog next door: (15) I couldn’t sleep last night. That dog (next door) kept me awake. ‘That + noun’ is restricted to ‘familiar’ expressions, and is inappropriate when the designated entity is only uniquely identifiable, but not familiar. In the following sentence, the fact cannot be replaced by that fact: (16) [In “ Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?”] Juliet was bemoaning the fact that her Romeo was born into a family feuding with her own (WHY). She didn't give a hoot about WHERE he was. (CB)

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Since the fact does not refer back to something the listener has a representation of in long- or short-term memory, that fact cannot be used as a felicitous alternative here. However, despite having ‘familiarity’ as minimum requirement, ‘that’ is nearly never used to introduce a familiar NG. The most common realisation is ‘the + noun’, due to Grice’s second maxim of quantity: since many of the uniquely identifiable NGs are also familiar, the speaker gives more information than necessary when he uses ‘that’. This example illustrates how the is used when the NG is not just uniquely identifiable: (17) ‘How in the world,’ demanded Harriet, ‘did you get here?’ ‘Car,’ said Lord Peter briefly, ‘Have they produced the body?’ ‘Who told you about the body?’ (Gundel et al. 1993:295-303) In Harriet’s reply, the NG the body is more than uniquely identifiable, as Peter Wimsey has just before used a NG with the same form and the same referent (the NG is, in fact, ‘activated’ – see below). In cases like these, the definite determiner ‘that’ does not add much information, which is why the definite article is used according to Gundel et al. (1988). When ‘that + noun’ is used, there is usually a good reason for conveying the higher cognitive status in this way, for instance in order to prompt the addressee to look in long-term memory for the familiar entity. Activated: for an entity to be activated, the designated element needs to be represented in short-term memory. The familiarity here is a result of presence in the immediate discourse context, either linguistic or extra-linguistic. Thus, with ‘that’ designating the dog’s barking, the following sentence is felicitous only if 1) the dog has been barking during the conversation, 2) the barking has just been talked about. (18) I couldn’t sleep last night. That kept me awake. In focus:29 The additional restriction for an entity to be in focus is that it is also in the current centre of attention. As the givenness hierarchy shows, the realization is reserved for unstressed pronominals and zero anaphora. Compare the following examples: 29

Gundel et al. use this term in the psychological sense (focus of attention), as “distinguished from the notion of focus as the position of linguistic prominence in the part of the sentence that expresses the comment” (1993:279).

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(19) The dog next door kept me awake. It never stops barking. (20) The dog next door kept me awake. My bedroom is particularly badly situated. *It never stops barking. The latter sentence is infelicitous because at the moment it is being used, my bedroom is in focus. The following examples illustrate how the six categories were applied to the corpus: - Type identifiable: (21) I sow them either in a container and transfer them to divided trays or pots within a few days of germination. (CB) (22) A central island unit, built from an old pine cupboard, and different floorcoverings divided the room. (CB) - Referential: (23) Wardrobe man Fintan Fitzgerald is spraying an umbrella with graffiti for Bono; it will go unused despite the deluge. (CB) (24) Everyone kept taking the mick out of her and spraying this water on her. (CB) - Uniquely identifiable: (25) Te Velde said the mistake appeared to be due to the same pipette being used twice to inject sperm into the test-tube containing the mother’s egg. (CB) (26) The face of the doll is hand-shaped and sculpted from aged apples. (CB) - Familiar:30 (27) Spokesman for Swiss President and Defence Minister Kaspar Villiger was sprayed with liquid manure while cycling with a fellow MP outside capital Berne. (CB)

30 No instances of the realization with ‘that + noun’ were found in the corpus of material/product, locative and image impression constructions.

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(28) Both polls put the Liberal Democrats on fourteen per cent -their best performance in each survey since the party was formed from the ruins of the Alliance. (CB) - Activated: (29) This whisky nightcap decanter, around 6in (15cm) high, is engraved with a salmon on one side. (next to an illustration in a catalogue; CB) (30) Downy mildew also may be controlled by using a mixture of 100g washing soda in 5 liters of water into which 55g of soft soap has been added. Both these mixtures may be sprayed directly on to the plants affected. (CB) - In focus: (31) Hundreds of good cottage garden flowers like lupins, delphiniums, astrantia, violas, achilleas and many more can be raised from seed with no fancy techniques and no special equipment. Simply sow them in shallow drills in a small nursery seed bed outside. (CB) (32) The Micro Optic Cleaning Cloth will be appearing in camera shops up and down the country in the next couple of weeks. It measures 20cm square and is woven from ultra-fine microscopic ibres. (CB) 2.2. Analysis of corpus data The hypothesis tested in this section is whether or not the degree of identifiability of the two non-agentive nominals motivates the choice of alternates, in the sense that the element that ranks lowest on the givenness hierarchy occurs in clause final position. To obtain the complete picture, the structures included in the analysis were both of the alternating and non-alternating type. For each clause the NG and PrepP involved were accorded a number corresponding to their rank in the givenness hierarchy:

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in focus > 6

activated > 5

familiar > 4

uniquely identif. > 3

referential > 2

type identif. 1

On this basis, it was established which participant was most given, and the results were quantified. For the locative alternation, attestations with the following verbs have been analysed: for the non-alternating structures surround, coat, cover (only with) and pour, squeeze, drip, slosh and mount (only in/on/onto), for the alternating pairs the verbs jam, spray and sow. The tables below show that, as far as the alternation is concerned, the Givónian hypothesis does not hold. Although the figures for the with group (Tables 4 and 5) show that in this structure the newest element typically comes in the PrepP, the figures in Tables 6 and 7 clearly falsify the Givónian hypothesis. NG PrepP Equal 92.3 % 2.6 % 5.1 % (72) (2) (4) Table 4: Most given element for non-alternating with. (‘coat the nuts with chocolate’) NG PrepP Equal 68.9 % 5.4 % 25.7 % (51) (4) (19) Table 5: Most given element for alternating with. (‘spray the wall with paint’) NG PrepP Equal 43.7 % 31.3 % 25 % (42) (30) (24) Table 6: Most given element for non-alternating in/on. (‘squeeze lemon juice on the dish’) NG PrepP Equal 26.7 % 40 % 33.3 % (20) (30) (25) Table 7: most given element for alternating in/on. (‘spray paint on the wall’)

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Whereas in examples of the with-form the postverbal element hugely outnumbers the clause-final element in terms of being the most easily identifiable element, a rather different picture emerges for the in/on-examples. For non-alternating examples, the figures are already much less convincing (the NG is more given in less than 44% of the cases), but as Table 7 shows, there is an even higher proportion of ‘more given’ PrepPs than NGs for alternating sentences. Clearly there is no straight correlation between identifiability and choice of alternating structure. A typical example for alternating on, for instance, is the following example (33) (Nearly fifty rounds whistled in on Khafji, the shells cracking open above the earth) to spray hundreds of shrapnel bomblets on the battered city. Generalizing, one could say that for with-structures the tendency to have the new information in the PrepP is stronger than for in/on-structures, but since the alternating clauses do not convincingly order Location and Locatum in the sequence ‘identifiable – non-identifiable’, it cannot be maintained that identifiability is the underlying motivation for this type of syntactic variation. Instead of highlighting the hypothetical connection between referential givenness and constituent order, it is also possible to examine which of the semantic roles Location and Locatum are more identifiable. If we disregard the cases in which both are equally high on the givenness hierarchy, the mapping of Location and Locatum onto given and new results in the following figures: Location Locatum 73 % 27 % (183) (68) Table 8: Most given element (as mapped onto Location and Locatum).

These statistics show us that, when either Location or Locatum is newer than the other, chances are very high that the Location will be ranked highest on the givenness hierarchy. This matter will be taken up again in the general discussion of the analyses, at the end of this chapter. Before turning to the results for the image impression alternation, let us first look at the influence of one of the factors that disrupt the given-new ordering, viz. end-weight. According to this principle, constituents with many words are placed as far to the end of the sentence as possible. As the following tables show, there is indeed a difference in word length between the two positions.

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Constituents immediately following the verb have an average of 1.35 words less than the final constituent: NG PrepP Non-alternating with-verbs 1.5 3.8 Alternating with-verbs 2.8 3.3 Alternating in/on-verbs 2.2 3.3 Non-alternating in/on-verbs 2.1 2.6 Table 9: Difference in average word length of NG and PrepP.

In most cases the PrepP is indeed longer, or heavier, than the NG. Notice, however, that heaviness does not always determine the variant: in some sentences the longest element is moved to final position, but without triggering the use of the alternate structure. Consider, for instance, the following example: (34) One of the Kentish gardeners had sown in his garden thousands and thousands of seeds of kidney vetch, upright brook and oxeye daisy. (CB) Here too the final group is obviously the longest one, but in order to move the heaviest element to the back, the language user did not choose the withvariant, but instead opted for a shorter PrepP following the verb, with the NG at the end of the sentence. The same pattern, viz. longer constituents typically in final position, and occasionally a reversal of the normal order of NG and PrepP, was also observed with the other alternation types, and especially the image impression alternation, as in the following example Sergeant Ben Cartwright […] had inscribed on its door the proud motto “Pas de probleme.” In order to comply with the principle of endweight, NG and PrepP can simply be shifted, which avoids the use of another construction. By and large, the same picture as for the locative alternation emerges from the identifiability analysis of the image impression alternation. The figures for this alternation confirm the Givónian claim less than might be expected, particularly for the on-variant.

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NG PrepP Equal 50 % 12.1 % 37.9 % (58) (14) (44) Table 10: most given element for non-alternating with. (‘label a form with the date’) NG PrepP Equal 48 % 15 % 37 % (61) (19) (47) Table 11: Most given elements for alternating with. (‘embroider a sweater with roses’) NG PrepP Equal 39.5 % 21.8 % 38.7 % (47) (26) (46) Table 12: Most given element for non-alternating on. (‘scrawl a name on a notepad’) NG PrepP Equal 24 % 28.7 % 47.3 % (40) (48) (79) Table 13: Most given elements for alternating on. (‘embroider roses on a sweater’)

For with-patterns, NGs are often more given than PrepPs (in line with expectations), as in the following example: (35) Most common were gangs of mainly Anglo-Saxon youths […], including some whose specialty was to decorate the city with graffiti. (CB) For in/on, however, the correlation of identifiability with word order is either not very high or non-existent: Table 13 shows that in alternating in/onexamples, the PrepP outnumbers the NG with roughly 29% versus 24%. Completely against Givón’s given-new prediction, the clause-final PrepP commonly encodes the most given element:

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(36) They used Tipp-Ex to spray false watermarks on the forgeries (and it was virtually impossible to tell them from the real thing). (CB) The counts for alternating and non-alternating image impression structures thus bring to light that the relative retrievability of Image and Location is not decisive for their ordering. Mapping given and new onto the semantic roles, in this case of Location and Image, again shows us that there is no fifty-fifty distribution, but that one role is markedly more given than the other:

Location Image 61.7 % 38.3 % (193) (120) Table 14: Most given element (as mapped on to Location and Image).

These figures are similar to those of the locative alternation: the Location is the element that is most commonly more easily retrievable. The inequality of the semantic roles partly accounts for the structures that do not conform to the given-new order: the Location will often be more identifiable, also when realized by a PrepP, and the Image will also be less identifiable when realized by a bare nominal: (37) (When a child suggests a word, have everyone say the word slowly and) write a possible spelling on the scratch paper. The figures for the material/product alternation differ somewhat from those of the other two types. There is a clear opposition between the from-variant (Tables 15 and 16) and the into-variant (Tables 17 and 18), and the typical conflation of given with NG and new with PrepP stands out much more clearly.

NG PrepP Equal 47.2% 12.1% 40.7% (43) (11) (37) Table 15: Most given element for non-alternating from. (‘construct a house from glass and steel’)

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NG PrepP Equal 46 % 14 % 40 % (46) (14) (40) Table 16: Most given element for alternating from. (‘ carve a toy from wood’) NG PrepP Equal 83.9 % 1.1 % 15 % (78) (1) (14) Table 17: Most given elements for non-alternating into. (‘transform a rough stone into a diamond’) NG PrepP Equal 75. 6 % 1.2 % 23.2 % (62) (1) (19) Table 18: Most given elements for alternating into. (‘carve wood into a toy’)

Especially for alternating and non-alternating into-structures, the mapping of new onto PrepP (75.6% and 83.9% respectively) and given onto NG (the PrepP is more easily retrievable in barely more than 1% of the attestations) makes for a powerful generalization. In terms of semantic roles, the Material is almost twice as often more given than the Product: Material Product 64.5 % 35.5 % (165) (91) Table 19: Most given element (as mapped on to Material and Product).

In conclusion, the Givónian claims regarding identifiability as motivation for the alternations are all in all much less confirmed by the facts than expected. Each of the alternations contains at least one structure type which goes strongly against the prediction that the PrepP has the most identifiable referent. On the other hand, for all alternations a certain correlation emerges between degree of identifiability and semantic role. This is an indication that the semantic role’s own ‘character’ with regard to referential phoricity versus referential non-retrievability is more important than envisaged by Givón.

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We will now turn to the second aspect of Givón’s ‘relative topicality’-claim, and likewise subject it to a quantified corpus analysis. 2.3. A structural analysis of information distribution Whereas the analysis proposed by Gundel et al. (1993) is concerned with the status of nominal referents, the analysis of information distribution is concerned with the structural configuration of the functions Given and New. As textual functions, they are involved in the organization of the whole utterance as message. In the Hallidayan tradition, every chunk of natural discourse is considered to consist of one or more information units: the flow of discourse is broken down by the speaker into smaller bits of information, the ‘information units.’ Information is understood as “the tension between what is already known or predictable and what is new or unpredictable” (Halliday 1994:296). Typically, an information unit consists of a given and a new element of information. The ‘Given’ is what is presented by the speaker as predictable or recoverable, in the sense that the hearer is presumed to know about it already, either because it has been talked about before, or because it is situationally present (as, for instance, with I and you); the ‘New’ is what the speaker presents as “the news to be attended to.” The end of the New is marked by an element having special tonic prominence, an element carrying the ‘information focus’. This is the part of the message that contains the culmination point of the new information: the information focus signals the most salient piece of information, in the sense that the speaker wants the hearer to attend to it most. Informational givenness is clearly a very different functional concept from referential givenness: the former is concerned with the textual valuation of the whole utterance, the latter with marking the instance referred to by a NG as presumed identifiable or not. Of course, there is a certain correlation between identifiability and informational value. The New is, by its nature, likely not to have been mentioned before, and the NGs that realize (part of) it are therefore frequently non-recoverable. By the same token, the Given often refers to something already present in the context, and is consequently typically realized by phoric items. To illustrate the interaction between the two resources, let us briefly look at the treatment of pronouns. In the Gundelian identifiability analysis they take up the highest position in the givenness hierarchy, while in the Hallidayan intonation unit they can never carry the information focus, and always constitute the Given information (that is, when they function

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anaphorically and are used in a non-contrastive way). As a result of their ‘givenness’ in both kinds of analysis, one can expect the vast majority of pronouns to be realized by the NG rather than the PrepP. The results of a smallscale investigation for locative structures fully corroborate this hypothesis, as Table 20 shows: NG 98,2 % non-alternating locative with (56) 96,2 % alternating locative with (25) 93,8 % alternating locative in/on (15) 92,9 % non-alternating locative in/on-structures (26) Table 20: Distribution of pronouns in locatives

PrepP 1,8 % (1) 3,8 % (1) 6,2 % (1) 7,1 % (2)

However, the approaches diverge in the treatment of the stressed pronoun. As far as identifiability is concerned, stressed pronouns differ from nonstressed ones: they are still ranked high on the givenness hierarchy, viz. ‘activated’, but they are not ‘in focus’, do not rank highest. Informationally, on the other hand, stressed pronouns form an exception to the correlation between pronouns and Given: they bear information focus, and constitute the most salient part of the message. This accounts for some of the discrepancies between the two analyses: (38) They sprayed her with champagne - not her husband! The information distribution analysis yields the pattern ‘focal – non-focal’, whereas the outcome of the identifiability analysis is that the NG (her) is ranked higher on the givenness hierarchy than the PrepP (champagne). The discrepancies between the concepts of identifiability and informational salience also lead to different results with regard to construals such as the following, where the PrepP has already been mentioned before, and is consequently ranked high on the givenness hierarchy, but still constitutes new information: (39) (Let the mixture cool slightly,) then pour it into the chocolatelined pastry cases. (CB)

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(40) The organizer's task was to forge a coalition of leaders from these groups. (CB) In the first example, the PrepP the chocolate-lined pastry cases is given in Gundel’s identifiability analysis - it is a familiar constituent that has occurred in the text before. Yet in this particular information unit (which starts with then), it is the New: the writer has just been explaining about the preparation of a particular filling, and now specifies what is to happen with this. The Location adds a new element to the message, and thus constitutes the new information in this clause. In (40), these groups ranks as ‘activated’, i.e. high on the givenness hierarchy, but in terms of information distribution it is part of the New.31 The correlation ‘Given – New’ and ‘identifiable – non-identifiable’ is clearly limited: an analysis of Given and New in the clause as message at certain points yields different results from the ‘identifiability’ analysis of the same data. To ensure a replicable analysis, the opposition ‘focal’ versus ‘non-focal’ will be worked with. One of the practical problems with an analysis of informational givenness is working with written corpus-material, where intonation patterns and rhythm, which are essential to an analysis of information distribution, are lacking. The distribution of Given and New over the information unit is partly signalled by the division in feet (units consisting of a strong syllable and weaker syllable(s) depending on it); so where exactly the Given ends and the New begins cannot be analysed without a margin of doubt.32 For the information focus, which is realized by tonic prominence, the

31 The opposite goes for indefinite nominals: referentially ‘new’ indefinite nominals may be part of the Given (Fries 1998). 32 A frequently quoted example illustrating the importance of the context is the following: Now silver needs to have love. (Halliday 1994:297) Out of context, we only know that love is New, but we cannot establish how far the New reaches, i.e. whether needs to have or even silver are included. When we include the preceding sentence, however, it is clear that silver is part of the Given: In this job, Anne, we’re working with silver. If we had had the spoken material at our disposal, the rhythm would have made this clear, as it is functional in the demarcation of Given and New: Now silver / needs to have love. Given Å New Now silver needs to have / love. Given Æ New (The slash indicates the beginning of a new foot; bold type indicates information focus.) In the first version, which is a fit continuation for I’ll tell you about silver, the New starts immediately after silver. The fact that it needs to have love is all new information. The second

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analyst can indicate the intonation pattern with a reasonable degree of certainty, as it normally (but not always – see below) falls on the last constituent with a lexically full item (Halliday 1967b). Of course, intonation is not completely predictable, but there are some help-ing factors to incease the accuracy of the analysis. Givenness in context is one: the corpus attestations come with a lot of context, which helps in deciding whether something is Given or New. Personal judgement does not do badly either: Tench (1996) has conducted experiments in this respect, and in his experience, a group of people analysing the same stretch of text in terms of Given and New are expected to show a degree of conformity of about eighty percent (1996:33). Furthermore, a large part of the Cobuild material belongs to the written register, and a writer is always at pains to make clear where the information focus lies. As with written material the reader has to be able to judge for themselves what is New, the author will usually make the Given-New distribution as clear as possible. In the following examples, the last constituent with a lexically full item carries the focus: (41) They even make a profit from selling dead GIs' Zippo lighters. The GIs had their Zippos inscribed with place, date and legend. (CB) (42) He enjoyed making things up, weaving those things into a story. (CB) (43) Everyone kept […] spraying this water on her. (CB) Exceptions to this principle are stressed pronouns – which can be used exophorically (i.e. retrievable from the non-verbal context) or contrastively – and contrastive information foci on lexically full items in non-final clause position, as in (44) and (45): (44) Keep away from those sandwiches; you’re supposed to spread the olive paste on these, stupid! (45) Men who spread butter on their bread (were less likely to die of heart disease than those using margarine). (CB) Working with the opposition ‘focal’ – ‘non-focal’ also links up most closely with the Givónian hypothesis that it is the ‘focal’ element that comes last. It version is more likely to be a continuation of I’ll tell you what silver needs, which is why the Given includes needs to have.

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allows us to make a further distinction of informational ‘newness’ within the New: when both postverbal constituents are ‘news-worthy’, it is the one bearing the information focus – the most salient part of the message – that is expected to occur clause-finally. 2.4. Analysis of corpus data The aspect of Givón’s hypothesis that will be tested here can be formulated as follows: the choice of variant is such as to place the element that constitutes the non-focal information before the element that constitutes the focus, which comes in final position. This means that for each of the tables presented below, the pattern ‘non-focal – focal’ is expected to be the most frequent by far. The figures for the locative constructions are strong support for the claim that focal information is coded in final position: non-foc. – foc. foc. – non-foc. non-foc. – non-foc. 97.4 % 1.3 % 1.3 % (76) (1) (1) Table 21: Information distribution for non-alternating with. (‘coat the nuts with chocolate’) non-foc. – foc. foc. – non-foc. non-foc. – non-foc. 97.3 % 2.7 % 0% (72) (2) (0) Table 22: Information distribution for alternating with. (‘spray the wall with paint’) non-foc. – foc. foc. – non-foc. non-foc. – non-foc. 78.1 % 18.8 % 3.1 % (75) (18) (3) Table 23: Information distribution for non-alternating in/on. (‘squeeze lemon juice on the dish’)

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non-foc. – foc. foc. – non-foc. non-foc. – non-foc. 72 % 26.7 % 1.3 % (54) (20) (1) Table 24: Information distribution for alternating in/on. (‘spray paint on the wall’)

The figures for the in/on construction (Tables 23 and 24) are perhaps less marked than those for with (Tables 21 and 22), but the pattern ‘non-focal – focal’ is very clearly the unmarked option; the PrepP is clearly the typical locus for the information focus. The lower number of attestations with the ‘non-focal – focal’ pattern for in/on is mainly due to a more salient, stressed NG, as in (46) and (47), and (less frequently) non-stressed anaphoric pronouns in the PrepP, as in (43) above: (46) (The women are especially aware that survival depends on rebuilding a sense of community and they are working together) to sow their first crops on the land. (CB) (47) (And though they will have to run almost the same number of trains as there are now), they will cram more passengers into the carriages. (CB) These data show us that the overall correlation of information focus with the PrepP is much higher than that of less identifiable nominal referents in the PrepP. In other words, the second aspect of the pragmatic motivation of the locative alternation as proposed by Givón holds up much better. On the other hand, the identifiability of referents brings out much more clearly the distinct character of the semantic roles, irrespective of their ‘position’ or realization in the alternate structures: Location non-focal: 61,5 % Location focal: 38,8 % Locatum non-focal: 40 % Locatum focal: 60 % Table 25: focality as mapped on to Location and Locatum.

In line with the data for identifiability, there is a certain correlation between Location and non-focal, and Locatum and more salient, focal information; but the figures are much less sharp here. The strong contrast between ‘identifiable’ and ‘less or non-identifiable’ for Location and Locatum is here levelled out to a sixty-forty contrast.

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As regards the distribution of the three sequences with the image impression alternation, the figures correspond very much to those for the locatives. The importance of the clause-final information focus comes out clearly, although again there is a relatively greater proportion of non-clause-final focus in the onstructures (16% and 21.6 %) in comparison with with-examples (0.9 and 3.2 %): non-foc. – foc. foc. – non-foc. non-foc. – non-foc. 99.1 % 0.9 % 0% (115) (1) (0) Table 26: Information distribution for non-alternating with. (‘label a form with the date’) non-foc. – foc. foc. – non-foc. non-foc. – non-foc. 96.8 % 3.2 % 0% (123) (4) (0) Table 27: Information distribution for alternating with. (‘embroider a sweater with roses’) non-foc. – foc. foc. – non-foc. non-foc. – non-foc. 84 % 16 % 0% (100) (19) (0) Table 28: Information distribution for non-alternating in/on. (‘scrawl a name on a notepad’) non-foc. – foc. foc. – non-foc. non-foc. – non-foc. 77.2 % 21.6 % 1.2 % (129) (36) (2) Table 29: Information distribution for alternating in/on. (‘embroider roses on a sweater’)

The hypothesis that the order of the constituents is determined by the pragmatic factor of which bears the information focus is again borne out by the data. With respect to the correlation between information distribution and semantic roles, there is a slight tendency for the Location to be non-focal and the Image to be focal, but the figures are not very pronounced:

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Location non-focal: 58,5 % Location focal: 41,5 % Image non-focal: 41,5 % Image focal: 58,5 % Table 30: focality as mapped on to Location and Image.

The figures for the material/product constructions, finally, are very straightforward: totally in line with the hypothesis, a very clear preference for the pattern ‘non-focal – focal’ emerges. non-foc. – foc. foc. – non-foc. non-foc. – non-foc. 98,9 % 1,1 % 0% (90) (1) (0) Table 31: Information distribution for non-alternating from. (‘construct a house from glass and steel’) non-foc. – foc. foc. – non-foc. non-foc. – non-foc. 95 % 5% 0% (95) (5) (0) Table 32: Information distribution for alternating from. (‘carve a toy from wood’) non-foc. – foc. foc. – non-foc. non-foc. – non-foc. 98 % 2% 0% (91) (2) (0) Table 33: Information distribution for non-alternating into. (‘transform a rough stone into a diamond’) non-foc. – foc. foc. – non-foc. non-foc. – non-foc. 100 % 0% 0% (82) (0) (0) Table 34: Information distribution for alternating into. (‘carve wood into a toy’)

The quantitative patterns show us a strongly skewed distribution, and positing that non-focal information is mapped on to the NG and focal information on the PrepP makes an extremely powerful generalization here. As before, however, the distribution of information does not correlate strongly with the semantic roles, Material and Product:

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Material non-focal: 51,1 % Material focal: 48,5 % Product non-focal: 48,5 % Product focal: 51,5 % Table 35: focality as mapped on to Material and Product.

Table 35 displays an almost perfect equi-distribution: unlike for the identifiability of the referents, no clear tendency emerges with respect to informational value. In conclusion, the results for this quantified corpus analysis of information distribution unambiguously confirm the hypothesis that the more focal element comes after non-focal information. The sequence ‘non-focal – focal’ for the two non-agentive constituents accounts for between around 75 % and 95 % of the cases, and for some structures it covers 100 %. We can conclude, then, that this aspect of the Givónian hypothesis is confirmed: information focus is a major consideration in the choice for one or the other alternate.

3. Interpretation and conclusion In order to test the Givónian hypothesis that the choice between two alternates is determined by the ‘relative topicality’ of the two non-agentive participants (section 1), his loosely formulated claim has been disentangled into the two ‘discourse’, or ‘pragmatic’, factors relevant to the order of the postverbal constituents in the alternations under consideration: - identifiability (sections 2.1 and 2.2 ) - informational salience (sections 2.3 and 2.4) These two parameters – one to do with the recoverability of nominal referents, the other with information distribution in the clause as message – have informed the two quantified corpus analyses reported on in this chapter. In its global formulation, Givón’s ‘relative topicality’ claim is not borne out by the facts. The parameter that turns out to define a good ‘default’ correlation is that of the information focus, i.e. the Hallidayan formulation of the ‘textual’ motivation for NG versus PrepP choice. The pattern ‘non-focal followed by focal’ holds good for almost 90 % of all alternating structures (section 2.4), which means that there is a strong tendency to choose the variant that has the more salient element clause-finally. For these NG-PrepP alternations, the default correlation is numerically even stronger than for the dative alternation. For the structure with the Dative realized prepositionally, the focal element comes clause-finally in less than 70 % of the cases (Davidse 1996a). The largest part of the residual 30% where the PrepP is non-focal is accounted for by

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clause-final, non-contrastive pronouns. This means that either the NG or – when the NG itself is pronominal – the verb carries the information focus: (48) Fransesca, you will pay no attention to that. information focus (49) You offered it to me. (Davidse 1996a:299) information focus The frequency of pronominal Dative PrepPs may be related to the fact that the Dative often refers to humans (48) or ‘facts’ (49), which seem to pronominalize more easily in a PrepP than, for instance, the typically inanimate Location. Pronouns in the PrepP are much less frequent in the alternations under investigation here, which (partly) explains why the figures for these alternations conform better to the hypothesis than those for the dative alternation. The parameter of identifiability coincides much less with the predicted tendencies (section 2.1 and 2.2), but it reveals that the semantic roles have a rather strong identifiability profile. One non-agentive participant is typically ‘being introduced’ (Locatum, Image, Product), the other non-agentive participant is typically ‘already introduced’ in the discourse (Location and Material). The following table brings them all together: Location Locatum 73 % 27 % (183) (68) Location Image 61.7 % 38.3 % (193) (120) Material Product 64.5 % 35.5 % (165) (91) Table 36: Correlation semantic roles with high degree of identifiability.

Location and Material clearly outnumber Locatum, Image and Product as easily identifiable, ‘already introduced’ discourse participants. This phenomenon can be related to functional correlates such as ‘persistent’ versus ‘ephemeral’ discourse referents. A possible explanation for the Location and the Locatum in the locative structures, for instance, might be the following. In general, every interaction

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takes place within a setting, a “stage” one might say, typically (but not always) evoked by circumstances of time and place (see Langacker 1991:285, 343). They serve to set up some kind of scene within which the action takes place. These stage-coding elements tend to be constant for a number of subsequent processes, and thus are referentially given. The Location, which itself is more than an indicator of place, as we will see in chapter IV, tends to be related to this identifiable setting: in locative sentences, the Location often refers to an entity that has already been referred to as an element of the spatial setting. The Locatum, in contrast, often contains lowly referential groups. Consider the following text excerpt, which illustrates this continuity of the spatial setting, ex-pressed by the anaphoric relation between the location nominals: At 9 P.M. several armored companies of Saudis and Qataris, accompanied by a few Marines, pressed into Khafji from the south. Their mission was to probe the Iraqi defenses, determine enemy strength and disposition, find the besieged Marines if possible, then withdraw smartly to plan the main attack. The probe, however, had all the finesse of a cavalry charge. The Arab troops careered through the streets of southern Khafji for several hours, shooting at enemies, real and imagined, as well as at one another. The Iraqis fired back with equal indiscrimination, and for a few hours Khafji resembled Beirut. So many rounds missed high that the pilots overhead wondered whether they were taking antiaircraft fire. Just after midnight, the probe withdrew. The two reconnaissance teams, seeing the streets painted with tracers from all points of the compass, prudently remained hidden. Lawrence Lentz and his squad, concealed in their unfinished, had spent the day calling in artillery strikes. One salvo destroyed a mobile rocket launcher near a brick tower north of town. Another ripped through a ten-man foot patrol marching on the causeway, flinging bodies into the air. When the Arab probe began Wednesday night and a TOW streaked past the compound wall, Lentz moved his men to the northeast corner of the house to get as far as possible from the firefight. “Do you know what would happen if one of those things hit this house?” a Marine whispered. “Please,” Lentz replied, “don’t tell me.” After the shooting ebbed, a new wave of Iraqi tanks and personnel carriers rumbled down the causeway and a parallel beach road. Both reconnaissance teams called for additional artillery. Nearly fifty rounds whistled in on Khafji, the shells cracking open above the earth to spray hundreds of shrapnel bomblets on the battered city.

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The barrage lightly wounded one Marine hiding on the rooftop and shredded three tires on Lentz’s Humvees. The Location, the battered city, is part of a cohesive chain that runs through the whole excerpt: Khafji functions as a constant scene for the action. Hundreds of shrapnel bomblets, on the other hand, is freshly introduced (no part of a cohesive chain). As evinced by the statistics, this is a recurrent phenomenon, independent of the order/realization of Location and Locatum in the clause. For image impression, the explanation is similar to the one for the locative alternation: as a place-indicating element, the Location is often an element that has already been mentioned in the description of the general setting (as the figures show, this identifiability does not refrain the Location from usually being informationally salient in the pattern Agent + Process + Locatum + Location). The Image, on the other hand, is typically ‘new’ (in both analyses), which is not surprising, considering its ‘effected’ nature: for processes like tattooing and embroidering, the referents of the Image are constructed in the course of the action. The Image as such does not have any material existence before the action, but is the result of it, as the word Challenge in: (50) (Next, Dan drew a circle on the blackboard,) inscribing the bull's-eye with the word Challenge. (CB) The same holds for the Product in the material/product alternation, which is also an effected entity, the result of a process: (51) (The birds will strip the willow into small pieces) and weave it into a cosy cup-shaped nest within the box. (CB) Such an effected entity is often ‘new’ of its very nature: as the result of the process, it usually occurs for the first time in the text, and presents a newsworthy bit of information. This ‘newness’, however, is not an unvarying characteristic of effected elements (see also Table 19 and Table 35): in other cases the Product has already been introduced before, as in the following example:

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(52) Our choice for most valuable basic: the smoothest Jersey T yet. Our jersey T works perfectly with more tailored outfits. The pure cotton jersey is knit from a very fine, 20s singles yarn. (CB) Especially in extractions taken from advertisements, the Product tends to be given, with anaphoric reference (as in (52)) or exophoric reference to a nearby picture (as in (53)). (53) [picture] Go to the head of the class with this beautifully detailed sweater, which is knit from pure American-grown cotton. (CB) In these cases, it is usually the Material that is newly introduced, and with respect to information distribution is the newsworthy part of the message. This is, furthermore, also linked up with the matter of holicity and the ‘caused creation’ and ‘caused transformation’ senses of the from-construction and the into-construction, which will be discussed in detail in chapter VI. In any case, in the from-variant, the Material is often realized by means of uncount nouns or bare plurals (as in the retaining walls are built from hollow concrete blocks), which is why most of the attestations in the from-group have a ‘new’ Material. These semantically oriented regularities point at the importance of the ‘representational semantics’ governing these constructions as paradigm and as individual structures. It is these issues that we will be concerned with as of here.

CHAPTER III HOLICITY AND PARTIVITY

The partitive/holistic approach represents an important tradition, particularly in the description of the locative alternation. But despite the attention the ‘partitive/holistic effect’ has received over the last thirty odd years, little effort has been made to thoroughly describe the whys and wherefores. This chapter presents a detailed description of the conditions it is subject to and the reasons for this, and discusses some of the fundamental weaknesses of the traditional approach. It will be shown that the partitive/holistic effect is in fact a more complex phenomenon than most accounts lead one to suspect. A first section will call into question whether the term ‘partitive’ characterizes the referent of the Location PrepP correctly. In section 2.1 and 2.2 the meaning of the terms ‘partitive’ and ‘holistic’ for the Locatum will be described in detail, and finally it will be argued that the terms can be used felicitously only in certain cases (section 2.3). The point of departure for this scrutiny is Schwartz-Norman’s (1976) critique of the partitive/holistic approach and her suggestions for a more accurate definition of this effect. The terms partitive and holistic were first introduced by Anderson: Since the property with which we are dealing seems to be a matter of whether the whole of something is affected by the action described by the sentence, or just a part of it is affected, let us coin the terms holistic interpretation and partitive interpretation to denote the difference. (1971:389) In answer to Anderson’s (1971) claim that only direct objects are interpreted holistically, and that all other objects receive a partial interpretation, Schwartz-Norman draws the reader’s attention to sentences like the following: (1)

John loaded the waggon with the hay, but left most of the hay on the ground. (Schwartz-Norman 1976:284)

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A sentence like this is an important challenge to the partitive/holistic approach as it has been formulated in the first chapter. The contradiction one senses in (1) is related to the reading of the hay. Since the second clause is an awkward continuation, Schwartz-Norman concludes that we interpret this Locatum in a holistic way in the first clause.33 However, in this first clause, the hay is realized by a PrepP, which according to the partitive/holistic approach entails a partitive reading. Apparently, a factor other than prepositional versus bare nominal realization is at work here. In this respect, the examples Dowty (1991) gives to show that both Location and Locatum can be interpreted holistically are quite revealing. They are repeated here as (2a) and (2b): (2)

a. Mary loaded the hay on the truck. b. Mary loaded the truck with (the) hay.

In the second sentence, the Locatum is realized prepositionally, and this is claimed to entail the possibility of a partitive interpretation (Dowty 1991:587). Note, however, that the definite article has been put between brackets. When one thinks away the brackets, the interpretation of the Locatum with regard to holicity is the same in the two sentences. The partitive effect in (2b) is thus connected to the (absence of the) article. Apparently the meaningful difference for holicity/partitivity is not NG or PrepP-status, but definite versus indefinite, as is evident from Table 37: Locatum

definite

indefinite

NG

spread the prepared fruit on trays (CB)

spread prepared fruit on trays.

PrepP

spread trays with the prepared fruit

spread trays with prepared fruit

Table 37: The Locatum and its parameters.

In the left-hand column the Locatum is holistic, irrespective of its coding as NG or PrepP, in the right-hand column it is not, again regardless of its nominal or non-nominal realization.

33

Also see chapter I, where this example was given as counter-evidence for Tenny’s measuring-out constraint.

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To come back to Schwartz-Norman, she discards the ‘traditional’ partitive/holistic approach and puts forward what she believes to be the true facts about the interpretation of NGs with alternating verbs (1976:284). Her view can be summarised in two points: 1) for a Locatum to be interpreted holistically, it must be definite34 2) a Location is interpreted holistically whenever it is not PrepP In this way she both captures the earlier observation about the Location being holistic when realized by a NG and refines the claim that the Locatum is partitive when realized by a PrepP. Still, a number of questions remain unaccounted for, and these will be discussed in the sections below.

1. The Location 1.1. The relation between Location and PrepP A first issue concerns the Location: Schwartz-Norman claims that a Location is holistic when it is not realized by a PrepP (1976:284). Yet, when one turns to the corpus it becomes clear that such an interpretation is not excluded for a prepositional Location. In the following example, this is made explicit by the lexical item all over, which directs the reader towards a holistic interpretation: (3)

(Princess Anne had been given a bouquet of yellow roses at the film première) and these were scattered all over the back of the car. (CB)

Even without such explicit indication, the Location in the PrepP often is not necessarily partitive. Although there is no marker in the following examples specifically pointing to a holistic interpretation, there also is no reason to assume a partitive meaning. (4)

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Scratch-No-More is a natural herbal formulation you spray directly onto any vulnerable surfaces where your cat scratches. (CB)

An additional condition is that the noun is not used contrastively; in that case a non-holistic interpretation is possible, as in ‘They spread the jelly (on bread), not the jam.’ An explanation for this will be presented in section 2.2.


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A natural interpretation of this sentence is that the consumer is to spray the repelling liquid over the whole surface where the cat scratches. Similarly for: (5) (6)

Spread the mushroom mixture on the lasagne sheets. (CB) (Wet the bar) and roll it around in your hands and rub the rich lather on the hair. (CB)

One usually puts sauce on the whole lasagne sheet and applies shampoo to all the hair, not just a few parts. But what is actually important here is the indeterminacy: the PrepP may be interpreted in a holistic or a partitive way, but does not need to be - the construction does not specify this. He sprayed paint on the wall actually does not tell us anything about the end state of the wall: it may or may not have been completely sprayed. The question of a partitive or holistic interpretation, it can be concluded, does not really apply to the PrepP; instead the PrepP as such is neutral in orientation. It is not the prepositional realization in itself that steers the interpretation to either a parti-tive or a holistic reading, but lexical items (such as all over in (3) above) or our world knowledge. In the following sentence, for instance, the Location is easily interpreted as partitively affected by the spraying (our reservation's biggest tamale refers to the speaker’s big brother): (7)

(I raise the straw up,) and then I spray pop onto our reservation’s biggest tamale. (CB)

We know that this is a big man, a logical consequence of which is that he is unlikely to be completely covered with the little pop that can be contained in a straw. It is our practical knowledge that brings about this partitive reading: not the prepositional realization, but our encyclopaedic knowledge predisposes us to a partitive reading. One of the reasons why the PrepP has mistakenly been associated with a partitive effect is that the importance of pragmatics has long been overlooked, and that most sample-sentences that have been used in the literature so far had a ‘big’ Location.35 Jeffries and Willis (1984) show how in

35

Not all accounts simply posit a partitive interpretation for the PrepP. Dik, for example, speaks of an element of completeness which is present in one sentence, but not necessarily so in the other variant (1980:32; cf. also Foley and Van Valin, 1984:61).

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other contexts our pragmatic knowledge invites not a partitive, but a holistic reading of the PrepP. (8)

a. She sprayed her plugs with Damp Start. b. She sprayed Damp Start on her plugs. (Jeffries and Willis 1984:717)

For both sentences, we are likely to understand that the whole plugs have been sprayed, not because of the nominal realization of the Location, but because of our world knowledge: plugs are small (so, easily sprayed all over) and covering them is probably the aim of the action. However, claiming that both sentences entail the same end state of the plugs (as do Jeffries and Willis (1984:717)) takes the point very far: as we will see below, there is generally a difference in the semantics associated with the bare nominal and the prepositionsal realization. In conclusion, the partitive interpretation which has been attributed to the PrepP cannot be maintained: neither a partitive nor a holistic interpretation can be directly linked to the PrepP, which is neutral with regard to affectedness. One reason for the general use of the term ‘partitive’ is probably connected to the repeated use of the verb spray to illustrate the partitive reading. Going through corpus-examples with this verb, one immediately notices the large amount of ‘big’ Locations: in most cases the Location is a building or a wall (see further chapter IV, section 2.1). Consequently, focusing on this verb, which readily calls to mind large constructions, easily leads to the assumption that PrepP and partitive reading are intrinsically connected. Also, the contrast with the holistic interpretation that is often associated with a bare nominal realization may have played a role. As we will see in the next section, when the Location is realized by a NG, it is indeed often interpreted holistically, which may give rise to the idea that the opposite holds for a prepositional realization. However, in this case it is not the opposite of holicity that holds, but an unmarked, neutral reading. 1.2. The relation between Location and NG: holicity (?) Although there is no strict relation between a partitive interpretation of the Location and the PrepP, the fact that the interpretation of the Location often differs depending on a bare nominal or prepositional realization cannot be de-


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nied. In this section the nature of the concept ‘holicity’ will be discussed in relation to the interpretation of the Patient in general. The fact that the term ‘holicity’ is so commonly used in connection with the locative alternation suggests that holicity is a prerogative of the locative (and material/product, see chapter I) alternation. However, other types of NG-PrepP variation exhibit a similar meaning difference. The following examples, in which the clause-final constituent is alternatively realized by a NG and a PrepP, suggest that a feeling of “more complete affectedness” is associated with alternation more generally: (9)

a. Rosie ran the New York marathon. b. Rosie ran in the New York marathon. (10) a. A disappointed diner shot Girardet last week. b. A disappointed diner shot at Girardet last week. (Anderson 1988: 292) These examples illustrate how the concept of holicity applies to other types of NG-PrepP variation as well. In the first pair the prepositional in the New York marathon alternates with the nominal the New York marathon. The first variant, (9a), is usually taken to express that Rosie runs the whole marathon, whereas (9b) suggests that she does not finish it and runs only a part (Anderson 1988). The a-sentence is an example of what Halliday (1967a:58) calls ‘ranged constructions.’ Typical of the Range-element is that although it formally looks like a Goal, it has reduced participant status: as the do to–probe shows, it is not a real ‘done to’: (11) *What she did to the New York Marathon was run it. In the second pair, an alternation commonly referred to as the ‘conative alternation’, the bare nominal realization in (10a) seems to imply that Girardet was actually hit, whereas the prepositional variant in (10b) expresses an attempt, but does not specify whether the action was successfully carried out. Such a privilged interpretation of the bare nominal is not only more generally associated with NG-PrepP variation, it also applies to some sentences without an alternate construction. This goes explicitly against Anderson (1988:292), who claims that the partitive/holistic effect is associated with the alternate realization as bare nominal or prepositional phrase: “not all verbs admit such a holistic interpretation of their direct object. In particular, it appears

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to be a phenomenon associated (in English) with the specific case of verbs which can take the same participant as either a direct (unmarked) or an oblique (prepositional phrase) complement” (Anderson 1988:282). Of course, the possibility of opposition between NG and PrepP clearly brings out a difference, but Anderson’s claim (though correctly associating holicity with other alternations besides the locative one) still reflects the view that Goals in alternating patterns are in a way privileged in their interpretation. Yet, compare the Location in a non-alternating example like (12), with the Location in (13): (12) If you find an ant bed outside your house, douse it with boiling water containing a couple of teaspoons of dishwashing liquid. (CB) (13) Start with a lightly buttered muffin and daub it with some tomato relish. (CB) The fact that douse is a non-alternating verb, and that there is therefore no opposition with a Location introduced by a preposition, does not preclude a reading where the ant bed is completely covered with the boiling water. The same holds for the following examples: (14) They paved the smaller streets of central Prague with cobblestones. (15) They plastered a barn of bamboo with mud. Only plaster is an alternating verb, but despite the absence of a possible alternate in (14) again we are steered towards a holistic interpretation for both sentences. Rather than a peculiarity of the locative alternation, the proposal put forward here is that the feeling of more complete affectedness is related to the participant function the nominal Location fulfils in the process-participant constellation. The choice between coding the Location as a NG or a PrepP amounts to a choice between coding it as the Patient or not. Abstracting away from the locative alternation, we can say that in the dynamics of the process, the Patient is coded as the ‘primary affected’ or the first ‘done to’ in the process. Within the process-participant configuration, the action first extends to the Patient. Langacker’s (1991:285) canonical event model neatly visualizes


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the relation between Agent and Patient (V stands for ‘viewer’, the squiggly arrows indicate that the energy transfer has a certain effect on the patient):36

Figure 4: Langacker's canonical event model (based on Langacker 1991: 285).

The Patient stands in a privileged relation to the Process, and the entity realized by a PrepP is encoded only as a secondary affected – hence the observation that the prepositionally realized Location is less ‘affected’ than the postverbal one. In the well-known example (16), for instance, the fact that the Location is the Patient explains why it is understood to be completely covered with paint: the Patient is the first step in the chain of affected participants. (16) a. He sprayed paint on the wall. b. He sprayed the wall with paint. In combination with processes and Locations that involve surfaces or containers, the most natural way in which the primary affectedness of the Patient will be interpreted is that the whole surface/container will be involved. This also explains in a natural way why holicity can also apply to nonalternating sentences: not the potential for alternation, but the Location’s status as Patient confers on this participant an interpretation of total interaction with the process. Since verbs like douse and pave also involve the dispersion of a substance over the Location, the holicity can be explained in the same way as for the spray and load verbs: coding a surface that can be affected to various degrees as the participant with a privileged relation to the process most natu36 A more accurate visualization will be propsed in the next chapter, where the relational component in the constructions being studied is discussed.

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rally leads to this surface being interpreted as completely affected, i.e. completely covered by the dispersible substance. When holicity is divorced from the locative alternation – and alternation in general – and is seen as an instantiation of the ‘primary affectedness’ semantics associated with the Patient in general, we can also dispel the fallacy that holicity as ‘completely read’, ‘completely run’, ‘completely sprayed’ etc. is a consistent property of unmarked NGs (even when they alternate with circumstantial realizations). The Location as Patient does not as such trigger off a ‘holistic’ interpretation, but merely profiles the affectedness as such of the entity in question. For instance, the meanings conveyed by examples in which the Location is not holistically affected include ‘decorating’, ‘soiling’, ‘treating’, ‘harming’, etc. (which, of course, are also conveyed by the holistic examples), as in the examples below: (17) … the shop front had been sprayed with slogans. (CB) (18) His temper snapped just once when he sprayed a photographer with champagne. (CB) (19) … trim hostesses smelling of chlorine from the upstairs swimming pool and offering to spray you with Obsession. (CB) (20) the Vietnamese were directly sprayed with Agent Orange (CB) Discussing similar cases, some maintain that holicity still holds in such cases, but in a figurative sense. Jeffries and Willis (1984), for instance, describe the following example: (21) They stocked the store with envelopes. The Location – the store – is realized as a bare NG, yet we can hardly conclude that the whole store will be full of envelopes after the stocking. Jeffries and Willis, however, contend that it is not the idea of a full store that is important here, but the “contextually determined” notion of a complete stock. Similarly, Rappaport Hovav and Levin (1985) posit holicity for a sentence such as (22), as this example conveys that the status of the statue as an object of art was changed - even if it was not wholly covered in paint. (22) The vandal sprayed the statue However, such devices to hold on to the strict relation holicity-bare NG are unnecessary. It seems to make more sense to work with the ‘holism’ notion in


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its strict sense and to invoke it only when it applies clearly. Examples such as those above do not “undermine” the theory that bare nominals in locative constructions receive a special interpretation; they merely demonstrate that what we are looking at is the privileged relation between Patient and process, the ‘affectedness’ component of which manifests itself in various ways, only one of which being ‘holicity’. Factors other than bare nominal realization also interact with holicity. Consider the following two sentences, in which the imperfective aspect in the a-sentence has been changed to perfective in the bsentence, and the bare plural has been replaced with a singular: (23) a. They were spraying walls with paint. b. They sprayed the wall with paint. For the b-sentence, a holistic reading is much more likely than for the example in (23a). As it happens, most examples cited in the literature are also perfective in nature. Holicity is thus clearly the result of a mix of factors, and not an invariable feature of the bare Location. Finally a brief word about the Location in the image impression alternation. In the introduction to the partitive/holistic approach (chapter I, section 1), the apparent lack of a partitive/holistic meaning difference for the image impression alternation was pointed out. This has been considered as one of the main differences between the locative and the image impression alternation (Levin 1993:67), which are otherwise closely related. For a pair such as (24a) and (24b), there is no difference with regard to holicity: (24) a. He inscribed the ring with a name. b. he inscribed a name on the ring. The ‘amount’ of Location covered by the Image does not differ in the two variants. One of the reasons why the Location is not subject to the partitive/holistic effect in (24a) and (24b) is that the Image a name does not stand for a substance-like entity that can be spread over a surface or filled into a container. Unlike the prototypical Locatum, it is a single whole that either is or is not ‘applied’ in its entirety. In cases like these, the Image is materialized as a whole, or it is not materialized at all (or it would not be referred to as “a name” but as, for instance, “a part of a name” or “a few letters”). Related to this is the absence of a feature of ‘dispersion’ in image impression construals. Verbs in locative construals express the dissipation of something, and collocating with

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this, the Locatum has dispersive properties. However, not all Images are dispersive, and – what is more – even when they are dispersive, they are not ‘spread out’ as most Locatums are (see chapter IV, section 2.2). From this point of view, the fact that in an image impression constellation the interaction of the Goal with the Process is not understood as ‘holistic interaction’ is understandable: (25) Their only uniform was a medallion inscribed with the name of the ward. (CB) An Image like a name or a logo does not easily lead one to conceive of the Location as completely affected, because the letters of a word, unlike for instance drops of paint, remain together, on one line as it were. Also, the verb is not concerned with the dissemination of a substance, as verbs such as scatter, brush, smear etc. are. However, given the presence of the right features, the two alternates can also display a difference in interpretation: (26) a. He sprayed graffiti on the wall. b. He sprayed the wall with graffiti. Both the plural Image graffiti and the verb spray are characterized by a feature of ‘dissipation’, which leads to the possibility of a ‘more affected’ interpretation of the bare Location here. The fact that the wall is coded as the Patient in (26b), i.e. as the first affected in direct interaction with the process, and that one of the features of the Image is that it can be ‘spread out’, combine into a possible interpretation of this Location as more fully covered in graffiti. The semantics of the image impression verbs and the Image will be further developed in chapter IV.

2. The Locatum 2.1. Holicity for the Locatum: quantity In the previous section, it has been shown that an equation between NG and holicity on the one hand, and PrepP and partitivity on the other is an oversimplification. Schwartz-Norman’s (1976:284) second principle, that only definite Locatums can be interpreted in a holistic way, is a further fundamental criticism of the partitive/holistic claim as it is usually formulated, since this


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principle denies the relation between interpretation and bare vs. prepositional realization. Anderson, when he coined the terms ‘partitive’ and ‘holistic’, already observed that the distinction between partitivity and holicity seems to be clear in definite NGs, and remarked that “evidently, holistic versus partitive interpretation interacts in various ways with definiteness, genericness, plurality, etc.” (1971:389), but he does not elaborate on the way in which these issues “evidently” interact with interpretation. Since then, some descriptions, such as Schwartz-Norman (1976) and Jeffries and Willis (1984), have broached the definiteness subject again, but some of the core issues still remain unaddressed. One of these is the difference in behaviour between Location and Locatum: (27) a. She loaded a cart with boxes. b. She loaded the cart with boxes. versus (28) a. She loaded boxes on the cart. b. She loaded the boxes on the cart. In the first two sentences the cart is usually taken to be holistically affected, even though this NG is definite only in (27b). On the other hand, in the last two sentences, where the Locations are realized by a PrepP, their being definite does not rule out a possibly partitive interpretation. As far as the Locatums are concerned, only the definite group the boxes receives a holistic interpretation, irrespective of its realization as NG or PrepP. Although, for example, Schwartz-Norman has already remarked that the interpretation of the Locatum depends on whether it is definite or not, the question why definiteness seems to be of importance to the Locatum has been given only little thought. The divergent behaviour of Location and Locatum reflects another matter that has been overlooked, viz. the fact that the term ‘holicity’ has been used in an undifferentiated way, and that the notion has to be unravelled into two different concepts for Location and Locatum. Revealing in this respect is the fact that holicity is paraphrased differently for the two participant roles. For examples (27) and (28) above, for instance, the way in which the holistic reading is formulated for the Location is given in (29), and for the Locatum in (30):

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(29) The whole cart was loaded with boxes. (30) All the boxes were loaded on the cart. The reason for this difference lies in the distinct functions of Location and Locatum: the Location is the surface or container that the Locatum is applied to, the Locatum is dispersed over the Location. The keyword for the Location is whole because in the holistic reading its whole surface or interior is covered or filled up with something. The main conceptual difference with the Locatum is that for the latter the focus is on the particles that move from one place to another, and this correlates with the formulation that all the entities that make up the Locatum have been relocated. This difference explains why the factors influencing a holistic or partitive reading are different for Location and Locatum. The reason why holicity for the Location is connected to a bare nominal realization is that the direct, close involvement associated with the role of Patient is naturally interpreted as ‘total or more complete involvement’ or holicity, as we saw in section 1.2. For the Locatum, on the other hand, the matter of holicity is concerned with ‘all or not all the particles in the substance’, and quantity is determined by factors other than participant roles or the opposition NG-PrepP. Before continuing the discussion of what the factors influencing holicity for the Locatum are, and how the definite article is involved, two possible objections need to be considered. First, one might object that when paraphrasing holicity for the Locatum, the formulation with all is only the most typical way. It holds good for sentences with a plural or mass noun Locatum, which occur most frequently because they designate elements that consist of multiple entities. But sentences with a singular Locatum, though unprototypical, do occur and are a different case: one can only say that the whole item has been relocated. (31) One fervent admirer had even draped an enormous banner on the perimeter fencing, declaring: “Nigel - always closest to our heart.” (CB) However, singular Locatums do not really constitute a counterargument to this interpretation of holicity with the Locatum. Even though in such cases it does not make sense to speak of a relocation of entities as with e.g. paint or hay, this type of Locatum still has characteristics of the more prototypical Locatum: it is formally impossible to use all with singular count nouns, but there are certain semantic similarities between the mass/plural Locatums and


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the type of actually occurring singular Locatums that allow us to see ‘allness’ as the concept underlying holicity for the Locatum in general. A second possible objection to the claim that for the Location the notion of holicity has to do with the whole of something or someone being affected is statements of the following kind: (32) He has loaded all the wagons with hay. (33) They have sprayed all the walls with paint. These statements, although they relate to the interpretation of the Location, refer to quantity instead of wholeness. But the point here is that (32) and (33) are no paraphrases of holicity for the Locations in he loaded the wagons with hay and he sprayed the walls with paint. It should be borne in mind that the reason why ‘whole’ is used for the Location is that for the locus receiving the particles, holicity can only mean that the whole locus has been affected. Holicity for the Location is thus paraphrased as follows: (32)’ The whole wagons have been loaded with hay. (33)’ The whole walls have been sprayed with paint. When the Location is a plural NG, as in (28) above, it is always possible to refer to the number of wagons or walls with ‘all,’ but this is not the main point for a holistic interpretation. The issue is whether the wagons were completely loaded or not, and whether the walls were covered with paint or not. Observe the following sentence, which is not proportional with a formulation with all, but of which it is nevertheless asserted that it has a holistic Location: (34) He loaded wagons with hay -- ≠ All the wagons were loaded with hay. On the other hand, the Location in (35) does not necessarily receive such a holistic reading (because there is no implication that the walls will be covered with paint), although it is explicitly stated that paint was sprayed on all the walls: (35) They sprayed paint on all the walls.

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Unlike for the Locatum, the quantificational side is of only secondary importance for Locations. 2.2. Holicity/partivity and definiteness In order to clarify why definite Locatums receive a holistic interpretation, and how this links up with ‘all-ness’, it is necessary to have a closer look at the definite article. The use of the definite article has two distinct strands of meaning attached to it: on the one hand an aspect of identifiability, and on the other hand a quantificational facet (Declerk 1986:29). It is the latter that is responsible for the hook-up with holicity. With regard to bare plurals and mass nouns, we will look at why they specify a ‘reference-to-not-all’ that results in a partitive reading. In the previous chapter, the identifying nature of the definite article was discussed: on Gundel’s givenness hierarchy, NGs introduced by the rank as at least uniquely identifiable. Consider the following sentence: (36) (About 60 were mutilated and killed.) Those left alive had to load the corpses on to buses which were driven to the Iskopine pit. (CB) The definite article that precedes the Locatum indicates that the addressee is able to uniquely identify the latter, in this case because the presence of corpses is implied by the preceding clause (about 60 were…killed). At the same time, however, the article also suggests what Declerck (1986:29) calls an ‘inclusive interpretation,’ i.e. that there is reference to all the relevant entities in the context. Not only does the addressee know which corpses are being talked about, it is also clear to him that all the corpses were loaded onto buses - as opposed to (37), for which this implication is absent: (37) They had to load corpses on to buses which were driven to the Iskopine pit. As this last sentence shows, the opposite holds for bare plurals: besides implying that the referent is not uniquely identifiable, there is a suggestion of ‘exclusive reference’ or ‘reference-to-not-all’ (Declerck 1986:29). This opposition between inclusive and exclusive reference is associated with definite versus indefinite NGs in general. The view that NGs exhibit both an identi-


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fying and a quantifying meaning can also be found in other frameworks. As already indicated in the previous chapter, Langacker (1991) also holds that every nominal provides some specification of both quantity and grounding. Grounding expressions encode the ‘ground’, i.e. the speech participants, the setting, the time, etc., in the utterance: they specify how the designated instance relates to (among others) ‘you’ and ‘I’. Quantification is concerned with indicating the size or quantity of the set of designated entity/entities. These two semantic functions, grounding and quantification, are often iconically reflected in the structure of the NG: (38) those three black cats (Langacker 1991:54) The type specification, black cats, forms the nucleus to which the quantifier is added as a separate layer (three black cats, not *black three cats).37 The grounding predication forms the outermost layer, which according to Langacker, reflects its status as most extrinsic in the characterization of the instance, which is the reason why the orderings *three those black cats or black three those cats hardly ever occur among the world’s languages (Langacker 1991:54). Those indicates that the instance is uniquely apparent to speaker and hearer. This nicely layered organization, however, is not found in all NGs: there is no strict one-to-one relation between the levels and the semantic functions. For our purposes, it is important to see that quantification is not only expressed by a separate layer of quantifiers, but that, for instance, grounding predications too can specify quantity.38 In those three black cats, those also indicates quantity. And similar to Declerck, Langacker (1991:99ff.) sees the definite article – a grounding expression – as implying that the speaker and hearer both have mental contact with the designated instance (the identifying strand), and that all the elements in the discourse space are referred to (the quantifying strand). In the previous chapter, the identificational aspect of determiners has been elaborated; this chapter will explore the quantificational side, as the link between definite determiners and holicity resides in the quantificational proper37 The main difference between nouns and nominals is that the latter designate instantiations, types anchored in the domain of instantiation. The category of ‘type specification’ is also reflected in the structure of the nominal: it is the innermost layer (quantification and grounding both presuppose instantiation), formed by the head noun with its adjectives/modifiers. 38 As a matter of fact, quantifiers like some, all, every, etc. are analysed as grounding predications.

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ties of the determiner. If, for instance, the article marks whether or not all entities are involved, it is only natural that the use of a definite article correlates with what is traditionally called a holistically interpreted Locatum. Recall that a Locatum has a holistic reading when all the entities are involved. This corresponds perfectly with the use of the: the definite article implies reference-to-all, which in this way naturally brings about a holistic reading. The quantificational aspect of the determiners of course also holds for the Locations, but the reason that their reading is not affected by a shift between definite and indefinite, is that holicity for the Location is not connected to quantification, to ‘all’ or ‘not all.’ Since the matter of holicity is decided on other grounds, viz. whether the whole Location is affected or not, the choice of article does not influence the interpretation. It is this quantificational implicature that actually explains Goldberg’s (2002:338) observation that in Pat loaded the wagon with the hay, the wagon is full of hay, but that “The same [i.e. holicitiy] is not true for Pat loaded hay onto the wagon (Anderson 1971), which only entails that some hay is put on the wagon.” Goldberg attributes this to the fact that the first construal is an example of the causative construction, whereas the second is not – but notice how the two “alternates” are not really alternates: the first one has the hay, the second bare hay. It is the absence of the definite article with its reference-to-all that leads to the absence of a holistic interpretation in the second example. False pairs like this one – note that this particular example dates back to 1971 – which have been used and reused in the literature on the locative alternation, have masked the central role determiners play in the matter of holicity. Finally, something that should be kept at the back of one’s mind is that the relation between definiteness and holicity for the Locatum is not always one to one. Although Langacker (1991:100) states that the use of the definite article requires maximality, Declerck’s observation that inclusive reference is only a conversational implicature, which means it is “suggested unless there is an indication to the contrary” (1986:30), is more to the point. In some cases the use of the definite article does not entail reference-to-all. Quite often unique identifiability coincides with an inclusive interpretation, but in some cases the definite article only signals that the referent is known, without implying maximality, as in the following example: (39) (A young soccer star who had ammonia sprayed in his face may be blind in one eye. […] Holland, 20, who plays for Newcastle United, was injured a week ago as he stood at the


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bar in the city's Ritzy nightclub. Bouncers overpowered the man,) who was spraying people at random with the liquid. (CB) The definite article is clearly primarily used in its identifying function: the indicates the unique identifiability of the liquid, which has previously been referred to as ammonia. In sentences like these, the identifying function outweighs the quantifying one. Predominance of identification characterizes many definite esphoric and cataphoric (Martin 1992) Locatums: (40) He stuffed his pockets with the goodies on the banquet table. We can now also explain Schwartz-Norman’s intuition to exclude contrastive Locatums (see footnote 34) from the principle that definite Locatums are interpreted holistically: (41) They spread the jelly on the bread, not the jam. It will be clear that for contrastive NGs identity (the establishment of one identity as opposed to another) is very important, so it does not come as a surprise to see that in exactly these sentences the quantifying function becomes less important. Still, this separation of the identifying and quantifying function is rather rare: although there is no one hundred percent match, the observation that definiteness does not guarantee reference-to-all and, consequently, a holistic interpretation, applies to only a few unprototypical cases. Most of the time unique identifiability and inclusiveness coincide, and the NG refers to all the relevant entities, which have already been introduced, so that it is clear what exactly the relevant entities are. Let us now look in more detail at how quantity is expressed by articles in different types of nouns. Just as the definite article has an inclusiveness implicature, indefinite NGs are associated with an exclusiveness implicature (Declerck 1986:29). One of the main differences between bare mass and plural nouns on the one hand, and count nouns on the other, is the domain of bounding (Langacker 1987:201ff., 1991:18-19, 73-81). Both mass and singular count nouns are bounded, but the crucial difference is that only count nouns are bounded in their domain of instantiation. The domain of instantiation is the domain where the entity has its primary manifestation, where the type is anchored to an instance (Langacker 1991:56-57). For material substance, for example, the domain of instantiation normally is space: if two objects are situ-

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ated in a different location, they will not be perceived as the same object (whereas two objects seen on two different times can be recognised as the same).39 The difference between mass and count nouns can be illustrated as follows. Pig, a physical entity, is instantiated in space and is also bounded in that domain: the ‘boundaries’ of the animal are inherent in the conception of a pig. Pork, on the other hand, also has space as its domain of instantiation, but does not show bounding there: the noun pork does not impose any limits, and in physical space, pork appears in all kinds of forms: as a hump of meat at the butcher’s, in slices in the fridge, in thick dices in carbonara-sauce, etc. In other words: the instantiations of mass nouns lie, without bounding, scattered around in space, which is the domain of instantiation for locative sentences. In quality space, however, they each take up a particular region characterized by a qualitative homogeneity. The representations in Figure 5 (from Langacker 1991) nicely render these different characteristics (the arrows in the qualitative domain stand for different parameters, such as taste, colour, smell, texture, solidity, density, viscosity, transparency, rigidity, brittleness, etc).

39 Examples of other domains of bounding are moment, which is bounded in time, and beep, which is bounded in space and time.


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Figure 5: Bounding of count and mass nouns (based on Langacker 1991:28).

Just like mass nouns, bare plurals too are bounded in quality space only (Langacker even treats plurals as a special subclass of mass nouns (1991:77), see further chapter IV). The portion occupied by raisins, plants, dogs etc. is not delimited, as the nominal does not impose any limits on the set of raisins, plants or dogs. The only bounding takes place in quality space, where raisins are distinguished from other types of fruit, dogs distinguished from other animals, etc. In the case of the locative sentences, the domain of instantiation is the spatio-temporal domain. However, bare nominal Locatums such as Touch-in Spray, paint, hay etc., however, do not occupy a bounded region in this domain: (42) Those seamen of the Main had crammed their holds with pearls from the far Pacific islands. (CB) (43) They sprayed red paint on a road sign pointing to the building. (CB)

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These Locatums are only bounded in quality space, where Touch-in Spray is distinguished from paint, hay, etc. by a range of qualitative properties. It is this lack of bounding in their domain of instantiation that accounts for the absence of a holistic interpretation in sentences with a bare Locatum: since no limits are specified in the domain of instantiation, the point of exhaustion cannot be reached, and this by definition excludes holicity and reference-to-all. To round off this discussion, let us briefly look at definite mass and plural Locatums. A holistic interpretation is not excluded for examples like the following: (44) Rub the rich lather on the hair. (CB) This means there must be bounding in the spatio-temporal domain, but how is this reconcilable with the above description of bare mass and plural nouns as being bounded in quality space only? It is the definite article, whose quantifying properties were described in the previous section, that imposes bounding on the unbounded noun here. The difference with the bounding of count nouns is that for the latter the bounding is imposed by the nominal itself. With definite mass and plural nouns, the use of the limits the mass to a spatially circumscribed portion, which in turn makes a holistic reading possible. 2.3. A quantificational approach Because the examples used are often simplified or invented, the existing descriptions of the locative alternation have only looked at the type of Locatum that is discussed in the stock examples, viz. definite (the paint, the boxes) and bare (boxes, hay) Locatums. However, once we leave the beaten track and look at sentences with Locatums other than those introduced by the definite article or the zero determiner, the application of the partitive/holistic principle becomes less straightforward. The following example, for instance, seems to suggest that not only definite Locatums can receive a holistic interpretation: (45) They sprayed this base with four high explosive mortar shells. (CB) To the question how many mortar shells were sprayed on the base after the action, the answer can only be ‘four,’ so all of them. The Locatum, however, is


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not definite. Against Schwartz-Norman (1976:284), we seem to come across examples for which the Locatum is completely affected, but yet is indefinite. Upon closer investigation of the quantificational properties of the Locatum, however, we meet up with a fundamental gap in partitive/holistic thinking: why is a Locatum such as four mortar shells holistic, and hay partitive? Is the Locatum partitive or holistic because (not) all the particles of the designated entity are fully involved, or is it the result of comparing the Locatum with another mass, with respect to which it can be partitive or holistic? Before starting the discussion on holicity, a number of concepts need to be introduced. On the basis of a distributional analysis, elements expressing quantity can be divided into two groups. Confining ourselves for the moment to those elements that have traditionally been called quantifiers, we can divide them into absolute quantifiers on the one hand and relative quantifiers on the other (Langacker 1991:ch.2-3, Milsark 1976, Davidse 1999). The difference between these is that whereas the former present a direct description of the size or magnitude of the nominal, the latter do this in an indirect way, viz. with reference to another mass. The meaning of ‘absolute quantifiers’ can be clarified by looking at the cardinal numbers, which exemplify very clearly what absolute quantification entails.40 In a sentence like (46), the number, three, specifies the size of the mass of oranges: (46) I gave him three oranges. The magnitude of this mass is assessed as on a scale, so it is assigned an absolute, cardinal value. Three pegs the quantity of oranges to that step along the counting scale: the quantifier, which expresses how many entities the mass is made up of, gives us the size. In the case of cardinal numbers, the size or cardinality is specified exactly. But cardinality need not always be so specific: expressions like some, many, several etc. also express the cardinality of some set, the only difference being that they are vaguer with respect to the value. 41

40 Because the absolute quantifiers specify a certain cardinality, the are also called ‘cardinality words’ (Milsark 1976, Davidse 1999), but the term ‘absolute quantifiers’ will be used here to avoid confusion with ‘cardinal numbers’ (which are only a part of the absolute quantifiers) and to avoid a certain contradiction when cardinal numbers are used relatively (as will be argued below). 41 As we will see below, this only holds for the unstressed variants.

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Just like three or four, several indicates a low value, but without being specific as to which number exactly is involved. Quantifiers which directly indicate the size by means of a cardinal value, contrast sharply with another group which needs an external point of reference in order to make a quantitative assessment. Some typical members of this second group are most, all, every, each, etc. Since they refer to another mass, they are called relative quantifiers; the mass they refer to is the reference mass: (47) I gave him most oranges. If the I-person says that he gave most oranges, he knows that there are others left. What is given is thus compared to, weighed off against another mass: the quantity of oranges is specified relative to the reference mass. In the case of most, the quantifier indicates that the mass of oranges profiled or designated by it is only a subpart of the reference mass, but nearly coincides with it. For other relative quantifiers, the relation between designated mass and reference mass is different: every, for instance, profiles the coincidence of the two. Notice, in passing, that the reference mass can consist of the maximal extension of the category, or it can be contextually determined.42 With Langacker, we can assume that for relative quantifiers both the profiled mass and the reference mass are understood in terms of discrete entities, and that the former is superimposed on the latter to see to what extent their

42

A fully inclusive reference mass can be found in sentences like the following: Some people are colour-blind. All circles are round. In both cases the size of the designated (replicate) mass, i.e. the number of entities that it consists of, is measured off against the whole of all possible instances. The entirety of human beings constitutes the reference mass for the proposition about the number of colour-blind persons. Only when we consider the total amount of people anywhere on earth, is it possible to say that only some people suffer from this disorder (although strictly speaking it is also possible to interpret the reference mass as not fully inclusive, but contextually determined, for example in the context of a doctor telling his trainees to pick out the colour-blind people in a particular room). Similarly for circles: all indicates that the designated mass and the reference mass coincide, and this reference mass clearly comprises all instances of circles, without any restriction. In (47), however, the reference mass is contextually determined. In such cases, the quantity is not specified in relation to the maximal instantiation of the category, but to only a portion of it. In this way, a quantifier can be universal without really referring to all possible instances. Although Langacker (1991:82, 114) claims that it occurs mainly with the quantifier each and only sporadically with the others, such a contextually restrictive interpretation is quite frequent.


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boundaries differ. Compare this to the system of quantification in (46), where the size of the mass of oranges is not expressed in relation to an external point, but where ‘three,’ as an absolute quantifier, tells us what the inherent expanse is. Graphically this difference can be represented as in Figure 6.

I gave him three oranges

I gave him most oranges

Figure 6: absolute vs. relative quantifiers (based on Langacker 1991:85,108).

The opposition “relative” versus “absolute” also extends to determiners and proper names. The indefinite article and the zero determiner, for example, have been characterized as absolute quantifying elements (Davidse 1999:221). A designates exactly one instance, and as such it directly indicates the size: (48) She bought a book. The zero determiner usually designates a mass without being specific as to its size. Similar to unstressed some, with which it alternates, the assessment is absolute (see also below):43 (49) a. He sprayed paint on the wall. b. He sprayed some paint on the wall.

43 In the generic reading, the zero determiner functions as a relative quantifier (Davidse 1999:222).

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The definite article is a relative quantifying element. The inclusiveness associated with the it means that the mass designated by the definite NG is coextensive with the reference mass.44 For a further discussion of how the distinction absolute/relative extends to other elements, see Davidse (1999: 221ff). Before moving on and linking the above concepts to holicity for the Locatum, it should be pointed out that in many cases a distinction has to be made between the stressed and the unstressed variant of the same quantifier. Milsark (1976) observes for some that if this indefinite quantifier is pronounced without stress, but with an emphasis on the following headword, it is absolute (bold face indicates stress): (50) He loaded some boxes on the wagon. Some merely expresses that a relatively low amount of boxes were loaded, without being specific as to the exact number. The stressed variant is likewise unspecific, yet more informative than its unstressed counter-part: (51) He loaded some boxes on the wagon. The listener not only knows that the number of loaded boxes is not high, but also that not all the boxes have been moved to the wagon. The sentence can be continued as follows: (51)’ He loaded some boxes on the wagon, but certainly not all. Such a continuation is much less likely for unstressed some: (50)’ ? *He loaded some boxes on the wagon, but certainly not all.

44

Langacker does not really treat the as a relative quantifier, but does note that the designated instance is maximal in relation to the discourse space (1991:98). In an example such as I have seven cats. The cats are very lazy, the current discourse space holds a mass with a cardinality of seven as the maximal instance, but also less inclusive instances of this contractible mass (viz. with a cardinality ranging from two to six). The use of the in the second sentence means that only the most inclusive instance in the realm of discourse is referred to (1991:100-101). The latter can easily been seen as a contextually determined reference mass. As to the use of the definite article with singular nouns, the reference mass may only contain one instance (1991:100-101). If this is not the case, the use of the is infelicitous, as in I have a gray cat and a calico cat. *The cat is very lazy.


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This reveals that stressed some is a relative quantifier: reference is made to a mass that consists of all the instances in the realm of discourse (contextually determined reference mass), and some indicates that this reference mass has not been exhausted by far.45 Actually, the fact that the number of boxes that have been loaded is not high is not really comparable for both sentences. For (50) it means that the number is low in absolute terms, i.e. low on the numerical scale. In the case of the relative quantifier, on the other hand, the number may in fact be quite high on the scale, as long as the difference with the reference mass is still big. Not the inherent expanse, but the relation with the external point of reference is important here, as illustrated by Figure 6. This opposition between the stressed and the unstressed variant is a systematic one; the distinction runs throughout a whole list of non-universal quantifiers.46 Davidse (1999:217), elaborating Milsark’s ideas, also lists the following ambiguous indefinite quantifiers: some, many, any, no, none, few, several, plenty of and lots of. These are relative or absolute according to whether they are pronounced with or without stress.47 To summarize, absolute quantifying elements give a direct description of the intrinsic magnitude of a mass, whereas for relative quantifiers an intermediate step is needed. Here the size of the designated mass is specified by comparing it with a reference mass, and the quantifier expresses the difference in size between them. With these further insights into the types of quantification that can be expressed by determiners and the like, we can return to examples with an absolutely quantified Locatum, such as (52) and (53):

45 The difference between absolute and relative some can be nicely illustrated with the following corpus examples: some eight-year-old who had just smashed his piggy bank with a hammer and wanted some boats to play with in the bath (absolute) and It does everything well, some things really well, but it wants for a ‘love me’ feeling (relative). (CB) 46 Langacker misses this systematic opposition. Although he notes that there is a difference between stressed and unstressed some, he treats both of them as relative quantifiers (1991:103,109-110), and fails to recognize a similar contrast for the other indefinite quantifiers. 47 Note, however, that there is no one to one correlation between unstressed and absolute quantification on the one hand, and stressed and relative on the other. Stressed some, many etc. can also be cardinal contrastive (Milsark 1977), i.e. contrasting with other cardinal values, as in the following example: There were some students in my class. Some can be taken to contrast with other cardinal values, such as “some but not many.”

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(52) They sprayed this base with four high explosive mortar shells. (CB) (53) The floor had been scattered with fifty thousand silver stars. (CB) Just as sentences (54) and (55) below do not express that only part of the boxes have been loaded or that only part of the paint has been sprayed, the sentences with a cardinally quantified Locatum do not express that only part of the four shells or part of the fifty thousands stars are involved: (54) They loaded the wagon with the boxes. (55) They sprayed the wall with the paint. But also mark that, in contrast to sentences with a definite Locatum such as he loaded the wagon with hay and she sprayed the wall with paint, the question whether all the entities are involved – i.e. the question about holicity – sounds odd for the Locatums with a cardinal number: (56) Did they load all the boxes on the wagon? (57) Did they spray all the paint on the wall? (58) ??Did they spray all the mortar shells on the base? (59) ??Did they scatter all the stars on the floor? There is something inappropriate to asking or asserting that all the mortar shells and all the stars have been dispersed as a result of the spraying or scattering. To explain why the matter of ‘all-ness’ does not work very well, the concept of reference mass has to be brought into the picture again. As cardinal numbers, four and fifty thousand are absolute quantifiers, which means that the intrinsic magnitude of the mass is specified. The quantifier in four high explosive mortar shells directly tells us the size of the mass, as on a scale. When questions (58) and (59) are asked, however, the quantifier that is used is all. Unlike the cardinal numbers, all is a relative quantifier. The oddity of asking whether all the shells have been sprayed results from the clash between the absolute and the relative quantifier: asking whether all of something has been affected presupposes that there is a reference mass on the basis of which we know what all means, a mass which defines or delimits what the maximal extension is. But since the information provided by the cardinal number contains no such reference, and specifies the size of the mass in absolute terms, no statement with regard to holicity can be made. Unless the


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number is used as a relative quantifier, the examples in (54) and (55) do not have an agnate all-question, since the fifty thousand stars and four high explosive mortar shells give no indication whatsoever with reference to what all should be interpreted. It makes little sense, therefore, to speak of holicity as far as construals such as (54) and (55) are concerned. The same inappropriateness of the terms ‘partitive’ and ‘holistic’ holds for the absolute variants of some, several, a few, etc. As has been argued before, these quantifying elements are the less specific companions of the cardinal numbers. They also peg the quantity of the mass along the scale, but without indicating the exact point. And just as with the cardinal numbers, they do not presuppose a more inclusive reference mass of which the profiled mass could be part. Therefore, in sentences like (60) to (62), some does not introduce a partitive Locatum: (60) A British pilot squirted some light oil into his plane's exhaust system. (CB) (61) Brush the base with some extra virgin olive oil. (CB) (62) Brush some glue on the pinecone. 48 (CB) As far as Locatums with absolute quantification are concerned, the terms ‘holicity’ and ‘partitivity’ make little sense, because they do not imply a mass against which they can be partitive, or with which they can coincide, for a holistic interpretation. The use of these well-entrenched terms thus turns out to be quite misleading in many cases. Crucially, if the cardinal numbers and cardinal some, many, etc. lack a reference mass which justifies the use of the term ‘partitive’, then what about Locatums with bare plurals and mass nouns (in the non-universal reading)? These also belong to the absolute quantifier type, but at the same time they are 48

In contrast with this are sentences with the relative counterpart of these quantifiers: The room was packed with most of the cast and crew from My One and Only. (CB) Brush some of the beaten egg along pastry edges. (CB) Some of the and most of the indicate that the designated mass is weighed off against the reference mass and on this basis can be said to be smaller than the latter. Therefore we could speak of partitivity in these cases. (However, the question is what the term ‘partitive’ can still mean then. With respect to the reference mass, there is indeed partitivity, but on the other hand, the designated mass – i.e. the amount designated by some – is in itself totally sprayed/packed/etc. The use of the terms ‘partitive’ and ‘holistic’ becomes gratuitous at this point.)

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the prototypical instance of partitive Locatums in the literature concerning the locative alternation. Let us look at the traditional examples again: (63) He sprayed paint on the wall. (64) He loaded the wagon with boxes. The traditional view is that, unlike their definite counterparts, these Locatums do not imply that all the paint and boxes have been relocated. As we have seen, partitivity is understood as not (necessarily) “wholly affected by the action” (Schwartz-Norman 1976:285). But what does, or better, what can ‘wholly’ mean in the case of bare plural and mass nouns? Schwartz-Norman’s own description of ‘wholly affected’ is very enlightening here: she paraphrases it as “all (or most) of the” (1976:285, my italics). Clearly the absolute expression is reinterpreted as a relative one: speaking of all (or most) of the entails the existence of a reference mass. So even though the use of the use of the zero determiner is just aimed at designating a mass, without being specific as to the size, it is assumed that there is a reference mass, of which the group introduced by the bare plural forms a part. This confusion of two different types of quantification may not be completely clear in the paint/hay-sentences, but some corpus-examples may be more revealing. The first two sentences have uncount Locatums, the last two plural count ones: (65) (A Queensland teenager who travelled to Melbourne) to spray graffiti on trains. (CB) (66) The original publicity that you could spread jam on cds and play them normally was a fallacy. (CB) (67) In summer, it's jammed with day-trippers from the Valleys. (CB) (68) They used Tipp-Ex to spray false watermarks on the forgeries. (CB) Here again conclusions pertaining to the totality decidedly sound odd, even more so than in the case of the cardinal numbers. Consider, for example, the following assertion: (69) It is impossible to spread all the jam on cds. As such this statement is perfectly possible and acceptable (with all the quantifying over a contextually limited reference mass), but it clearly cannot be


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taken to refer to (66). This intuition can again be explained by pointing out the absence of a reference mass in (65) and the presupposition of one in (69). In conclusion, the main point that has emerged from the preceding discussion is the inadequacy of the terms ‘holistic’ and ‘partitive’ with regard to cardinally quantified Locatums. A closer look at the mechanisms of quantification reveals how this traditional terminology does not quite capture the semantics of, for instance, the bare plural or mass Locatum, which cannot in the true sense be interpreted partitively. What may blur the picture in the case of the paint/hay-examples and make a partitive interpretation seem plausible for them, is an immediate ontological association with, for instance, a shed with some bales of hay or a heap of hay lying on the farmyard, and a number of cans with paint. These are then interpreted as the reference mass, even though the quantification of the Locatum does not refer to such a mass. As absolutely quantified Locatums lack a clear reference point with respect to which they can be partitive or holistic, the use of the well-entrenched terms ‘partitive’ and ‘holistic’ is thus often beside the point.

3. Conclusion The notion of holicity, which is so frequently cited in the description of NGPrepP variation, has clearly been underresearched. More specifically, the different principles behind holicity for the Location and holicity for the Locatum have never been investigated beyond a purely formal enumeration of factors (being definite, being realized by a NG) that lead to such an interpretation. It is put forward here that holicity for the Location links up with the participant role of the Patient, which as the primary affected in the context of the dispersion and application of substances, is naturally interpreted as being totally covered or filled. Holicity for the Locatum, on the other hand, involves quantification, the involvement of all the particles that make up the Locatum, which explains the importance of determiners and quantifiers. Further, there are some questions as to the terms ‘partitive’ and ‘holistic.’ With regard to the Location, especially the term ‘partitive’ is not felicitous, as it has been shown that the PrepP does not impose any specific reading on the Location. The latter may be only partitively affected, but need not be. Unless there is any further specification, as with for instance the insertion of certain lexical items, the interpretation of the Location in the PrepP is neutral. The term ‘holicity’, is often more felicitous, but here too there is by no means a

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single one-to-one relation between Location and NG. Holicity is in fact only one instantiation of the primary affectedness associated with the Patient. Depending on factors such as the specific verb, the lexical items realizing the roles of Location and Locatum, aspect, etc. the general meaning ‘first affected’ can be contextualized differently. This explains the tension between interpretation and pragmatics as outlined in section 1.1: even if our world knowledge does not make, for instance, a partitive reading likely, as in Jeffries and Willis’s plugs-example, the Patient is still interpreted as more closely involved in the process when realized by a NG. As far as the Locatum is concerned, the terms holicity and partitivity only apply to those with relative quantification, as for Locatums with absolute quantificatin there is no reference mass with which the ‘affected mass’ can be compared. Finally, all the above will have shown that a closer investigation of the various elements – grammatical and lexical – of the whole construction is called for. We have seen, for example, that although the image impression alternation is said not to show holicity, this depends to a large extent on certain features of the Image and the specific verb. Such a thorough description is the aim of the following chapters, where the semantics of processes and participants will be described.

CHAPTER IV PROCESS AND PARTICIPANTS

We will now leave the (beaten) track of the alternations as such – textuality and holicity are part and parcel of descriptions that want to explain differences between alternates – and move on to an account of the patterns as constructions (which of course does not mean that alternation is out of the picture now). The previous chapters have revealed the need for a comprehensive semantic description of the various types of processes and participants that are involved. In a preliminary move, the notion of participanthood will be discussed: it is proposed that the PrepPs in the constructions under investigation are participants, rather than circumstances. In the next two sections, the participants and the process will be described. The roles of Location, Locatum, Image, Material and Product are offered as general participation types, which generalize over the whole construction paradigm associated with the construction type in question. As these participant roles are determined by the semantics of the construction, each role is also characterized by lexical restrictions and typical collocational properties. These will be discussed in section 2. The third section deals with the processes and the polysemous nature of the verbs involved in the alternations. Again, attention will be paid to the relation between the construction and the verb. While a predominantly ‘constructionist’ perspective is assumed, the relation between construction paradigms and its class of lexical verbs will be shown to be one of dialectic interaction.

1. Participants and circumstances A preliminary issue in a lexicogrammatical description of the constructions under investigation is the status of the PrepP. Within the received SFG framework, investigation of this question seems to have foundered on the

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typical realization posited for participants (also referred to as ‘arguments’ or ‘complements’ in more formally oriented literature) and circumstances (or ‘modifiers’/‘adjuncts’). As in some other cognitive/functional approaches (Foley and Van Valin 1984, Dik 1989, Langacker 1991), the difference between participant and circumstance in SFG is correlated with bare nominal versus prepositional coding. The general assumption is that “processes are expressed by verbal groups, participants by nominal groups, and circumstances by adverbial groups – the last often in the form of prepositional phrases” (Halliday 1972:149). There are some traditionally recognized exceptions to this principle; the to-Beneficiary and the by-Agent, for instance, are both considered participants, because of the systematic variation with a NG-realization (Halliday 1994:159): (1) (2)

Who gave this coin to your brother? (CB) He was shot by a sniper the following morning. (CB)

Halliday (1994:144) refers to a participant such as the Beneficiary as an oblique participant – one which “in earlier stages of the language [they] typically required an oblique case and/or a preposition.” However, this reasoning does not extend to PrepPs such as those in the constructions under investigation here: in accordance with the ‘typical’ correlation, the PrepPs in the locative, image impression and material/product constructions are taken to realize circumstances (e.g. Halliday 1994:151), not oblique participants. Typical, perhaps, of this point of view is Foley and Van Valin’s description of locative vs. dative alternation: the dative alternation involves ditransitive verbs, with three core arguments, whereas the locative alternation is characterized by monotransitive verbs with only two core arguments (1985:301). The difference between both for them thus amounts to the following: the dative alternation involves a rearranging of which core argument is the ‘undergoer’, whereas the locative alternation brings about the promotion of a normally peripheral constituent to the core, and, accompanying this, assignment of the undergoer role to this promoted constituent:

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PROCESS AND PARTICIPANTS

(3)

a. He gave her

a present.

core/undergoer

b. He gave a present

core

to

core/undergoer

(4)

a. He sprayed paint

her. core

on

core/undergoer

the wall. peripheral

b. He sprayed the wall core (promoted)/undergoer

with

paint. periphery (demoted)

However, earlier on Halliday did consider some types of PrepP, those which he described as ‘inherent’ in the verb, as participants: these are “participants [that] are as it were dressed up to look like circumstantial elements” (Halliday 1976:160). At that stage he analysed locative examples such as He pelted the dog with stones and He threw stones at the bridge as involving three participants. However, he offered no guiding principles on how to decide on the inherency of a PrepP, and does not return to or elaborate on this notion in later work. An echo, perhaps, can be found in Halliday and Matthiessen (1999), where a rather intuitionist distinction is made between ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ circumstances, a distinction that is posited without much further argumentation as to the criteria nor as to the precise semantic import. Halliday’s earlier idea (1972, 1976) that PrepPs that seemingly realize circumstances can in fact be part of the transitivity structure also figures in the account presented here. The special nature of PrepPs in constructions such as those investigated here is also present in other work. It is, for instance, hinted at by Dik et al. (1990:45), who recognize that PrepPs such as these invite further questions as to the distinction between satellites (our circumstances) and arguments in the predicate frame, but they do not propose a specific ‘solution.’ Within Government and Binding there is a long tradition of analyzing PrepPs in constructions such as locative ones as predicate-internal arguments (e.g. Rappaport and Levin 1988, Pinker 1989, Wunderlich 1997). In an alternative SFG approach, then, Fawcett (1987) posits that constructions such as these define three participant roles. Moreover, he proposes elucidating the semantics of these three-participant constructions in terms of the concept of ‘caused relation’. It is Fawcett’s suggestions that will be picked up on in this and the following section. The structural analysis advocated of process – participant relations here, how-

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ever, is different from that customary in SFG, and takes a more Langackerian perspective: it is one in terms of dependency rather than constituency. 1.1. Formal tests In the literature on argumenthood, and especially in more formally oriented approaches, a whole line of syntactic tests has been reviewed to distinguish participants from circumstances (Lakoff and Ross 1966, Brunson 1992, Schütze 1995, etc.). Unfortunately, most of these tests are less straightforward than they appear. Often they are used to illustrate the analysis of simplified, invented examples. When applied to authentic language material, there is often no clear-cut answer as to acceptability and markedness. Furthermore, two different tests not infrequently yield two different results, as many tests are also susceptible to other factors than the ones they were designed for (e.g. aspect, process type, context). Still, a brief review of some formal diagnostics relevant to the present discussion goes some way in showing that the PrepPs in question are more than “modifiers.” A frequently cited test is optionality: whereas participants are typically obligatory in the process-participant configuration, omission of circumstances does not render a clause ungrammatical (Jackendoff 1977:58). The behaviour of the PrepPs in the locative and material/product constructions leads to a straightforward circumstantial analysis for Location, Locatum and Material: (5) (6)

a. He sprayed the wall (with paint). b. He sprayed paint (on the wall). a. She carved a toy (from the piece of wood). b. ?She carved the piece of wood (into a toy).

Location, Locatum and Material are freely omissible. The optionality of the Product in (5b) is debatable: the sentence runs less smoothly without the PrepP and there are hardly any corpus attestations of this type. Furthermore, in some cases, omission of the Product leads to a meaning change, as in (7):


(7)

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a. They built some cardboard boxes into a robot. b. ≠ They built some carboard boxes.

Following this criterion, the Product is a likely candidate for participant status, whereas Material, Location and Locatum appear to be circumstances. However, the limited applicability of this diagnostic is equally frequently commented upon (Halliday 1972, Jackendoff 1977, Vater 1978). In many cases, participants are also omissible, as illustrated by (8b), (9b) and (10b), where respectively Range, Agent and Beneficiary are absent. (8)

a. Sometimes they were shelling while we were eating dinner. b. Sometimes they were shelling while we were eating. (CB) (9) a. I got hit by other players a couple of times, but that’s rugby. b. I got hit a couple of times, but that’s rugby. (CB) (10) a. When she went to their wedding, she gave an antique vase to the couple. b. When she went to their wedding, she gave an antique vase. Notice how these are all cases in which participant status is less clear-cut: one Range and two pepositionally coded participants. In non-prototypical cases – as our PrepPs arguably are – the test clearly does not function well. Furthermore, acceptability judgements are not always straightforward (as in (6b)), and tend to differ depending on the context. In the following material/product example, for instance, the variant without Product also runs well (as opposed to (6) and (7) above): (11) a. Skilled in the traditional art of weaving palm leaves into mats. (CB) b. Skilled in the traditional art of weaving palm leaves. These two facts, viz. that optionality can also be a characteristic of participants and that especially for the trickier cases acceptability judgements differ, show that additional tests need to be considered. When other tests are applied the clear circumstantial analyses yielded by the optionality test come under attack, and participant status is hinted at. One of the recurring tests in the literature on participanthood is preposing:

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circumstances can but participants cannot easily be preposed (Chomsky 1965). (12) The pope was killed on a Sunday – On a Sunday, the pope was killed. (13) The pope was killed by a sniper – ?By a sniper, the pope was killed. The same reticence to be preposed characterizes Material, Product, Location and Locatum: (14) (15) (16) (17)

?

On the wall, he sprayed the paint. With hay, he loaded the wagon. ? Into a tiny figurine, he carved the piece of marble. ? From steel and glass, he forged a small cage. ?

The question is, however, whether it is (only) the feature of participanthood that influences the acceptability of the preposing. As Schütze points out, there seem to be several interacting factors, such as heaviness of the other constituents, that determine preposability (1995: 119-120). A seemingly straightforward diagnostic is iterativity, i.e. the possibility to add an element carrying the same function again. Circumstances are univariate: they are no part of the process-participant structure but merely embellish around it. Consequently they can be tagged on and on again: (18) Kim met Sandy in Baltimore in the hotel lobby in a corner. (Schütze 1995:102) Participants, on the other hand, are multivariate in nature: as they fill a distinct slot in the process-participant configuration, they cannot be repeated:49 (19) *She baked a cake for her children for her daughters.

49 We are not concerned here with an interpretation of the second occurrence of the same participant as some kind of afterthought or apposition (in which case the sentence is acceptable).


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Again, the behaviour of the PrepPs in locative and material/product construals is more in line with that of participants than that of circumstances. Locatum, Material and Product do not iterate: (20) ?She moulded a figurine from light clay from loess. (21) ?He stuffed his backpack with soft drugs with weed. (22) ?She carved the toy into a small figurine into a unicorn. The Location behaves differently: (23) He stuffed the weed in the hidden pocket in his backpack. The possibility for iterativity suggests that the Location is of a different nature than Locatum, Material and Product. A closer look, however, shows that this potential for repetition does not react to an alleged ‘non-involved’, circumstantial nature. Notice how hidden pocket stands in a meronymic relation to his backpack: the former specifies a part of the latter. Such meronymic specifications, it seems, can also typically be added to location PrepPs that are participants. In the following example, for instance, the nightstand func-tions as a participant (Halliday 1976) and still allows for the addition of in the top drawer: (24) He put the jewelry in the nightstand in the top drawer. Apparently, the acceptability of (23) is no objection to an analysis of the Location as a participant (whether it also is a participant is not clarified by this test). Furthermore, despite the amount of literature on iterativity (Fillmore 1968a, Halliday 1981, Brunson 1992, Schütze 1995) many relevant issues, such as difference between one and two tone groups and the repetition of the same prepositions, have not yet been sufficiently elaborated to make iterativity a foolproof criterion. And, as with the previous tests, acceptability judgements tend to differ. Finally, let us take a brief look at the do so test (Lakoff and Ross 1966, Anderson 1967, Schütze 1995). Do is a substitute that, just like one, relates to the lexical content of the item it substitutes for, not to the instances themselves. The domain of substitution can be described as “the lexical verb together with such other elements in the clause as are not repudiated by

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some contrasting item” (Halliday and Hasan 1976:119). The circumstances in the following two sentences, for instance, can without any problem be repudiated: (25) The prince kissed the princess on the balcony, and his father did so on the roof of the palace. (26) She always leaves the concert hall after the first movement, and he does so after the second movement. Interesting for our purpose is that not all elements can be repudiated. As the unacceptability of the following sentences shows, it is much more difficult to specify another Patient or Beneficiary after the substitute: (27) *He kicked the dog and she did so the cat. (28) *I’ll give a book to John, and he’ll do so to Mary. This suggests that the affected participant slots are typically subsumed under the substitute element. The possibility for an element to be repudiated is thus an indication of its participant or circumstantial status. In the following examples, this diagnostic is applied to locative and material/product construals: (29) *John loaded a sack onto the truck, and I did so onto the wagon. (Lakoff and Ross 1966:106) (30) Did she carve the piece of wood into a toy? – *No, she did so into a figurine. Like the participants in (27) and (28), the PrepPs in these examples appear to be subsumed under do so. They are much more difficult to repudiate than those in (25) to (26). With respect to this test, therefore, Location, Locatum, Material and Product emerge as participants in the action. Again, however, judgements tend to differ a lot with construals of this type. Whereas some people will reject sentences such as (29) – (30), others will only find them slightly marked. In the case of the Locatum and the Image, the borderline between acceptable and not acceptable is particularly close. Are the following examples grammatical, marked or unmarked?


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(31) Does he spray the wall with paint? – No, he does so with weed-repellent. (32) She inscribed the bracelet with his name and he did so with his date of birth. There is even no agreement on the impossibility itself of repudiating the Patient: for some, not including the Patient in the domain of substitution is also acceptable. Halliday and Hasan (1976:119), for instance, embrace examples such as the following in their discussion of substitution: (33) Can lions kill elephants? No but they can do giraffes. Clearly, formal tests such as these do not provide conclusive evidence. Although they suggest that Location, Locatum, Material and Product are more closely involved in the process than circumstances, they are often contradictory or yield uncertain results. In the following section, therefore, the semantics of locative, image impression and material/product constructions will be looked at more closely. This will allow us to formulate and present more tightly focussed arguments for the participant status of the prepositionally realized Location, Locatum, Material and Product. 1.2. Semantic arguments Halliday describes participants as elements that enter into the transitivity structure and are identified in relation to the process (1976:160). Circumstances, on the other hand, are characterized as non-inherent elements that are rather loosely associated with, or attendant on the process. There is a clear incompatibility between this characterization of circumstances and a categorization as such of the PrepPs involved in the constructions we are investigating. The key difference between participants and circumstances is that participants participate in the process and have a specific (basically agentive or patientive) ‘voice’ relation to the verb, whereas circumstances are attendant on the process but do not interact with it. In this way, the nominally realized Ford-owned Jaguar and more British cars are participants in the process, characterized by respectively an agentive and a patientive relation to the

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process, whereas the PrepP in the US does not have a voice relation to the process itself, but functions as a circumstance attendant on it: (34) Ford-owned Jaguar could sell more British-made cars in the US if the trade dispute worsens. (CB) One of the features of the Patient is that it is the participant suffering or undergoing the action, the one “to which the process is extended” (Halliday 1994:110). The latter description is much more in keeping with the PrepPs in the locative, image impression and material/product constructions, which are also characterized by the feature of being a ‘done to.’ Consider, for instance, the Location in the following locative example: (35) Spray Static Guard on your comb or brush. (CB) Not only the Locatum, Static Guard, is affected by the spraying, the action also ‘goes through’ to the Location. The action of spraying extends to the comb or brush, to which a layer of the substance is applied. The Locatum, as the Patient, is the primary affected, but because of the involvement in the locative process, the Location can be analysed as a second affected. The same holds for the prepositionally realized Location, Image, Material and Product: they too can be characterized as a second affected in the process. The Product in (36), for instance, is also a ‘carved’: (36) Stroot sculpts segments of watermelon into whales. (CB) The sculpting extends to both Material and Product: the whales are effected as a result of the action. Rather than embellishing around the action, therefore, these PrepPs specify a second ‘done to’ in the locative, image impression or material/product type of ‘doing.’ This argument for the complement-nature of the PrepPs in the constructions under investigation makes the link with the following chapters. As will be argued there, locative, image impression and material/product constructions can be analysed as ‘caused relations’: the Agent causes a circumstantial, possessive or semiotic relation between the two non-agentive participants, i.e. a relation of being on, being with, being from, etc. For the argument here, it is important to see that bringing about this circumstantial


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relation is the aim of the action, which means that the role realized by the PrepP is also part of the ‘telos’ or ‘goal’ of the process. In an example such as (37), for instance, the telos of the spraying is to bring the olive pate into contact with the slices, to make the slices have pate on them: (37) Spread each slice thinly with black olive pate. (CB) In other examples, such as the following, the goal is to bring about a relation of ‘being from’ between the two non-agentive participants: (38) I built my first motorbike from spare parts. (CB) An analysis of the locative, image impression and material/product constructions as involving caused relations will be argued for in more detail in the next chapters. The point here is that the intention of bringing about a relational contiguity between the two non-agentives is part of the constructional meaning. The argument that the PrepP in construals like the above is a participant can thus be made in two ways: the PrepP stands for a second affected in the process, and is, from the point of view of ‘causing a relation’, part of the goal of the process.50 The difference between oblique participants and circumstances can be illustrated with a comparison of the Location in the locative alternation and the Circumstance of Place, as in the following pair of syntagmatically similar-looking construals:51

50 In this respect, also remember the ‘partitive/holistic’ claim: the description of the participant realized as PrepP as partially affected also highlights that this Oblique is considered to be an affected. Further, in their discussion of the locative alternation, Dowty (1991) and Tenny (1994) see both the Location and the Locatum as ‘internal arguments’, regardless of their realization by a NG or a PrepP. Admittedly, when realized by a PrepP, there is no homomorphic relation with the process (it is the NG that has a one to one relation with the progress of the event). But precisely the fact that they remark on the absence of a total overlap between the change of the prepositionally realized participant and the event, entails that the PrepP is affected – only not in such a way that it measures the event. Tenny’s and Dowty’s accounts thus corroborate that both participants are presupposed by and involved in the development of the action. 51 See also Pike and Pike (1980:47-48).

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(39) We got the press there, packed them in this tiny room, (said we were doing something with Rachel and nothing else). (CB) (40) She used to cook their meals in this tiny room. The PrepP in this tiny room is Location in the first, and Circumstance of Place in the second example. One of the differences between these two is that in (39) the ‘aim’ of the action is to bring about a relation of spatial contiguity between them and this tiny room, whereas the PrepP in (40) merely specifies where the cooking took place, and the action does not involve the kitchen. Consider also the following example, two possible readings of which nicely illustrate the point in question: (41) (Diver's recent forerunners include farmer David Cannon) who sprayed cow manure on a northern bank. (CB) In one possible reading, the final clause is interpreted as follows: the farmer performs a particular activity, viz. spraying manure on a bank. The ‘bank’ in question designates either the building where we deposit our money (as it did in the original corpus-sentence) or the raised area of land around a river. In a second interpretation, the second meaning of bank is, from a practical point of view, the only option: here the farmer is not engaged in spraying manure on a bank, but in spraying manure, and on a northern bank specifies the position of the farmer as he is engaged in the performance of his task. In this reading the information in the PrepP sets the general scene, and agnates with the following (42) The farmer is spraying manure while he is standing/driving on the northern bank. This contrasts with the role of the PrepP in the first reading, where it plays a part that is more than just embellishment, where it further specifies the ‘spraying’. The difference between Location and Circumstance of Place can roughly be represented as follows:


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Figure 7: Direct process-participant relation vs. indirect modifier-process relation.

The Location is an affected in the process, and the contiguity relation between it and the Locatum is the ‘telos’ of the verb. As such, it is represented by a direct line to the process in Figure 7 (a more precise analysis and visualization of the structural relationships involved will be presented in the next section). The Circumstance of Location, on the other hand, modifies the complex Agent-Process-Patient unit. The paraphrase in which the relation of the PrepP to the process is expressed by a second verb in a subordinated clause shows that the relation expressed by the PrepP presupposes the action expressed by the main verb, its Agent and its Patient (to which it further adds specification as to spatial setting). Predictably, only in the Location-reading, when the PrepP has a voice relation to the process, does the spray-clause allow for the alternation. It is impossible to promote on a northern bank to Patient when we interpret it not as the spot on which the manure is sprayed, but as the general setting for the activity, i.e. when the PrepP is ‘merely’ a modifying circumstance. The same difference in voice relation Location and Circumstance of Place holds for the image impression constructions: (43) Later on, I had a look at the words she had written in the cave. This sentence can be taken to mean that the speaker has actually carved words in the walls of the cave, that the aim of the action is to bring about a relation of ‘being on/in.’ In this case, in the cave functions as Location, and has a patientive voice relation to written. Another possibility, however, is that someone has been engaged in writing a book during her stay in the cave, without any implication of a relation between the words and the cave,

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but with in the cave as a circumstance that enhances process and participants with information concerning the place. The difference between circumstances and (oblique) participants can further be illustrated by a comparison between the Locatum and the Circumstance of Instrument. In many linguistic descriptions, the prepositionally realized Locatum is called Instrument (Fillmore 1977, Dik 1980, Foley and Van Valin 1985, Van Hout 1998) or is not fundamentally differentiated from Instrument phrases (Goldberg 2002:340), but there are some strong arguments against an equation between Locatum (44) and Circumstance of Instrument (45):52 (44) Bungling workers sprayed greens with weedkiller. (CB) (45) Bungling workers sprayed greens with a spray can. Both are introduced by the preposition with, but Circumstance of Instrument and Locatum fulfil only a seemingly similar function. In (45), the spray can serves to diffuse the weedkiller over the greens: it is the thing with which the spraying action is performed. The Locatum in (44), on the other hand, is the thing that is being diffused over the Patient: (44) describes an action which results in spatial contiguity between the weedkiller and the greens. The function of a spray can in the semantics of the construction is to enable the Actor to carry out the action; it is not the can that is transferred to the greens (barring, of course, a metonymic reading in which with a spray can refers to the contents of the can). Weed-killer, on the other hand, is not instrumental in the action: it does not serve to spray the greens, but is the entity that is being sprayed out. Besides the fact that the Circumstance of Instrument has no patientive characteristics like the Locatum, there is also a difference in the element they relate to. In the case of the Locatum, there is a direct relation to the process: it is the second affected in the process. But the Circumstance of Instrument also always involves the Agent in its relation to the process.53 The spray can acts on the greens via the Agent, and the preposition reflects this non-direct link to the process here.

52

Note, however, that a few pages on Goldberg (2002:345) describes Locatums as arguments contributed by the verb and Instruments as adjuncts. 53 Notice how this construal does not allow for the locative alternation: the workers sprayed weedkiller on the greens versus *the workers sprayed a can on the greens (unless a can is


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Although in some descriptions they have been analysed as containing an Instrument (Fillmore 1968a, Foley and Van Valin 1984), examples such as the following do not provide a counter-argument against the indirect link between Circumstance of Instrument and Process: (46) A hammer broke the window. (Fillmore 1968a:22) (47) Poison killed Mary. (Davidse 1991:37) A hammer and poison in these examples are directly linked to the process. However, as pointed out by Nishimura (1993), the analysis of a hammer and poison as Instruments is based on the extralinguistic knowledge that hammer has (probably) been thrown or slung by someone or that the poison has been administered by someone. But although the hammer in (46) may have been thrown by someone in the real world, it is not coded as an Instrument, but as the Agent. By contrast, in sentences such as (48), where it is realized prepositionally, a stone is really Circumstance of Instrument: (48) Fred broke the window with a stone. In example (46) above, a hammer is linguistically construed as a participant, viz. the Agent. The direct, agentive voice relation a hammer and poison have to the process in (46) and (47) is thus not a feature of the Circumstance of Instrument, but is simply due to the fact that in those construals they perform the function of Agent. Real circumstances of Instrument, although topologically close to the Agent (Delancey 1984), do not have a direct voice relation to the process, but modify a process-participant unit.

taken to stand metonymically for the contents of the can, in which case it functions as Locatum).

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1.3. The syntagmatic relations: Langacker’s dependence model A treatment of the PrepPs as oblique participants in the process also begs the question of which structural model best captures the relations between these PrepPs and the process. Before we can tackle the question of the structural analysis, however, we first have to indicate which type of units and relations between them we want to analyze. As indicated in the introduction, the systemic functional tradition is a multifunctional approach, in which the structure of contextualized utterances is viewed as resulting from the integration of distinct layers of organization. Categories of processes, participants and circumstances are captured by the ideational organization of the clause, which is concerned with the representation of our experience of the world. The interpersonal organization of the clause construes a situation type as grounded vis-à-vis the speech exchange between speaker and hearer, and is constituted by the categories of Subject – Finite – Predicator – Complement – Adjunct. The textual organization of the clause contextualizes its message in the larger discourse and situational context and is captured in concepts such as Theme – Rheme and Given – New (also see chapter II). As first suggested by Halliday (1979), these different layers of organization do not simply involve analyses into different units of different size, but also syntagmatic relations of a different nature between these units, viz. particulate, prosodic and periodic structures for the ideational, interpersonal and textual organization respectively. McGregor (1997) takes over the notion of a multifunctional analysis, each layer of which has its semantics construed by a distinct type of structural integration. Although he proposes that the interpersonal and textual layer are construed by scopal/framing and linking structures respectively, there is agreement about the ‘particulate’ nature of ideational structures such as Process – Participant – Circumstance configurations (Halliday 1979, Matthiessen 1992, Martin 1996, McGregor 1997). Particulate structures are understood as generalizing over constituency and dependency struc-tures. In each case, parts are being assembled into wholes: with consti-tuency the mother-daughter (whole-part) relation predominates, whereas with dependency the sister-sister (part-part) relation is foregrounded (McGregor 1997). As in all linguistic theories advocating a ‘natural’ relation between meaning and lexico-grammar, the assumption is that meaning is construed


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by form, in which syntagmatic structure is central. The linguist analysing different types of syntagms aims at identifying the relevant component units and at reconstructing the combinations between them that construe the distinct schematic meanings of the syntagms in question. Underlying this is the tenet that conceptual dependencies between elements are “largely responsible, in the final analysis, for their combinatory behaviour” (Langacker 1987: 305). Let us start, therefore, from the semantic observations discussed in the previous section, which have to be reflected in the grammatical structure posited for locative, image impression and material/product clauses. One of the main points was that the entities designated by the PrepP in the constructions we are investigating, are part of the ‘telos’ of the process, and they have a direct voice relation to the process. A comparison of examples such as (37) and (38), here repeated as (49) and (50), shows how this is not true for syntagmatically similar-looking PrepPs that realize circumstances: (49) We got the press there, packed them in this tiny room, ... (CB) (50) She used to cook their meals in this tiny room. The fact that PrepPs such as those in (50) do not participate in the process (of, in this case, cooking) and that they relate to different representational units (see example (51) below) shows that we are looking for two different way of structural modelling. (51) She used to cook their meals while standing in this tiny room. PrepPs which add circumstantial specifications to the whole Agentprocess-Patient unit are modelled as constituents of the clause in Halliday (1994), on a par with the process and its participants, as represented in Figure 8.

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Figure 8: Analysis of circumstances according to Halliday (1985:3, 137ff)

Against this, McGregor (1992, 1997) has argued that they are better conceived of as dependents. His proposal, which is also advocated here, is that such circumstances are modifiers, whose head is the clause nucleus consisting of process and participant(s), as represented in Figure 9.

Figure 9: Analysis of circumstances according to McGregor (1992:140)

This structure captures, he argues (1992:142), the semantic distinction according to which “the process together with the participants engaged in it (i.e. roughly the nuclear predication of Dik’s (1989:56) functional grammar)” can be related “to something external to itself”. As to the modelling of syntagmatic relations obtaining between process and participants within the clause nucleus, Halliday (1985, 1994) and McGregor (1992, 1997) capture these interrelations in terms of constituency, in which verbal group and nominals function as equal parts within a dominating whole (McGregor 1992:142). Such a model does not capture the


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structural relations within the clause nucleus satisfactorily, however. The functional variables of the process-participant configuration do suggest a multivariate structure with the different variables each occurring only once, a structure which is typically captured by a constituency model, but on the other hand the central role of the verb seems to suggest a dependency relation. A more satisfactory model, therefore, is one in which the relation between verb and participants is captured in terms of dependency also. Given these arguments, one of the most workable proposals is that of Langacker (1987:306f), who sees the relation between process and participants as being construed by a different dependency model than modification, viz. complementation. The main advantages of dependency over constituency modelling seem to be that, firstly, it captures the centrality of the verb in the process-participant configuration by assigning head status to it. Secondly, it also enables one to model the crucial fact that the nominals in the configuration undergo a change of semantic profile as a result of their complement-relation to the verb: as will be argued below, direct nominal participants, for instance, designate not simply ‘entities’ but ‘entities V-ing’ or ‘entities being V-ed’, i.e. agentive or patientive entities. According to Langacker (1987:306f), the main difference between a modification and a complementation structure is that the head, which always determines the semantic profile of the whole structure, is conceptually autonomous in a modification structure, but conceptually dependent in a complementation structure. One of the areas to which Langacker (1987:308) applies his distinction between complementation and modification is precisely the difference between a PrepP expressing the destination of an entity being moved in a locative construction, as in (52), and a PrepP specifying the spatial setting of an action, as in (53). (52) I put the sweater in a box. (Langacker 1987:308) (53) We chased squirrels in the park. (Langacker 1987:308) According to this analysis, in the park in (53) is, as in McGregor (1992, 1997), a modifier of the nucleus We chased squirrels, while in a box in (52) is a complement of the verb put. Langacker (1987:306ff) defines a complement as a unit ‘completing’, or elaborating, a ‘conceptually dependent’ head. Two very typical examples of complement-taking heads are verbs and prepositions. They are traditionally

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viewed as having ‘valence’, in the sense of determining all their possible case frames. However, according to Langacker (1987:277f), this view is simplistic in that valence relations are motivated by semantic correspondences between schematic aspects of meaning present in the valence head and the more specific semantic profile of the elements that enter into a valence relation with it. Moreover, even though verb and preposition are head of their respective complementation structures, they are conceptually dependent on the nominals ‘completing’ them. Langacker (1987:304) says their meaning contains schematic elaboration sites which are elaborated by their specific complements. Still, it is verb and preposition which determine the overall semantic profile of the complementation structures in question. Applying this to the internal structure of a PrepP such as in the park in (53) – or, for that matter, in this tiny room in both (49) and (50) – we see that it is a complementation structure motivated by the valence relation between the preposition in with schematic locative meaning and the nominals the park or this tiny room, whose specific ‘entity’ profile corresponds to a schematic elaboration site in the meaning of the preposition. In designates a stative relation, and the park and this tiny room things, but the whole structures in the park and in this tiny room designate a stative relation. The semantic profiles of in the park and in this tiny room are clearly determined by the conceptually dependent head in (Langacker 1987:300). Such a dependence structure can be represented by an arrow going (as in Hudson 1984) from head to complement. To distinguish complementation from modification relations, the units can be marked as head (H) – complement (C), in contrast with head (H) – modifier (M).

Figure 10: Analysis of complementation of the PrepP based on Langacker (1987)

With complementation structures whose head is a verb, the situation is somewhat more complicated in that a verb can take either direct nominal complements or relational complements. According to Langacker (1991:


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359), relational complements of verbs can be of three types: predicatenominative, as in elect Sally treasurer; prepositional phrase, as in put the sweater in a box; or possessive complement, as in give the baby a candy bar. In the last construction, a candy bar can be viewed as a relational complement, formed, like the predicate-nominative in elect Sally treasurer, by zero derivation from a nominal. On this analysis, “a candy bar would actually represent a relational predication semantically equivalent to have a candy bar apart from being construed atemporally” (Langacker 1991: 59). Verbs, like prepositions, have schematic elaboration sites, which can be elaborated either by nominal or relational complements. Thus, the meaning of the verb put includes schematic reference to an agent doing the ‘putting’, an entity ‘being put’ somewhere and the spatial destination of that entity. If these three elaboration sites are elaborated by – bare and prepositional nominals, all three are complements of the verb put, as in (52). When it comes to the assigning of the actual dependence relations in this configuration, Langacker (1991:359) analyzes the relational complement in a box as a dependent of the sweater, whose final destination it specifies. At the same time, to the extent that “in a box elaborates a substructure already prominently introduced by put” (Langacker 1987:300), it is also analyzed as a complement of put.54 The same now holds for locative, image impression and material/product construals. For the following three examples, for instance, the meanings of the verbs also include schematic reference to, respectively, the thing being relocated by the act of spraying (weedkiller), the surface distorted by the scratching (the yellow distempered wall) and the thing effected by the sculpting (whales): (54) Bungling workers sprayed greens with weedkiller. (CB) (55) Each morning he scratched a mark on the yellow distempered wall. (CB)

54

As pointed out by William McGregor (p.c.), Langacker’s relational complements bear a certain resemblance, both structurally and conceptually, to Nichols’ (1978) “secondary predicates”, as in They elected him president, He walked along happy, etc. Using Relational Grammar notation, Nichols also characterizes secondary predicates as depending both on their ‘controller’ and the main verb, in contrast with for instance adnominals which depend on the controller only and manner adverbials, which are related only to the main verb.

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(56) Stroot sculpts segments of watermelon into whales. (CB) Accordingly, the dependence relations in such constructions with a PrepP can be represented as in Figure 11 (taking the spray example as representative):

Figure 11: Dependence analysis based on Langacker (1987)

Conversely, construals with Circumstances of Location, such as (50) and (53) above, can be analysed as in Figure 12:

Figure 12: Analysis of complementation and modification based on Langacker (1987)

In these dependence analyses, the Goal is a complement of the Process, and the oblique participant expressed by the PrepP elaborates both the Process and the Goal. Let us now try to further detail the nature of the integration between participants and process, particularly the way in which the semantic profile of the participants is changed as a result of this structural integration. Nominals as such designate entities, but when they function as direct complements of a verb, they are integrated with the processual profile of that verb and designate either an ‘entity V-ing’, that is, an agentive participant in the process, or an ‘entity being V-ed’, i.e. a patientive participant in the process, like the sweater in Langacker’s example. Crucially for the argu-


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ment here, the relational complement in a box also undergoes a change of semantic profile as a result of its structural integration in the clause. When this locative relation is integrated into the process-participant configuration, the action expressed by the verb comes to apply to it. More specifically, the location participates in the different component states along the temporal axis making up the semantic structure of a process. Thus, the different stages of the sweater being transferred into the box find a counterpart in the box being progressively filled by the sweater. This also goes for the PrepP in the locative, image impression and material/product constructions. Drawing on pair (49) and (50) again, we can see that the destination expressed by in this tiny room is structurally integrated with the patientive participant being put into it in packed them in this tiny room. The progressive affectedness by the process applies not just to the Patient them but also to the prepositionally coded participant in this tiny room (regardless of whether or not the room ends up being ‘completely filled’). In the other construction, however, in this tiny room is not necessary to ‘complete’ the energetic interaction of cooking conducted by the person and the food referred to. The PrepP is a complement in (49) and a circumstantial modifier in (50). As a modifier it does not go into the formation of a ‘whole’ in the way complements are needed to form a whole together with the conceptually dependent head. Neither is the semantic profile of in this tiny room changed by integration in the clause nucleus she cooked dinner the way the relational complement in this tiny room is: it is not affected by the action expressed by the verb, it merely specifies the spatial setting of the instance of ‘cooking’ depicted by the clause nucleus. 1.4. Conclusion In the two previous sections, it has been argued against the received SFG approach, that the PrepP in the constructions under investigation participates obliquely in the process. Semantically, these oblique participants distinguish themselves from syntagmatically similar-looking circumstances in two ways. They specify an affected entity, one that is also ‘V-ed’ in the course of the process. The action not only extends to the Patient, but also to this prepositionally introduced participant. Also from the point of view of the ‘telos’ of the process, these PrepPs are involved, as the aim is to bring them

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in some sort of contiguity or part/whole relation with the nominally realized participant. This proposition to analyse them as a second affected that is inherently associated with the process as part of its ‘telos’ can perfectly be integrated in the SFG theorising around circumstances and participants (Halliday 1972:150). As far as the syntagmatic relations in the clause are concerned, Langacker’s complementation analysis has been adopted. This model captures the centrality of the verb, viz. as a head which is to be completed, and how this affects the semantic profile of direct and oblique participants – which would be lost in a flat ‘all parts in a whole’ constituency model as it is traditionally assumed in SFG. It reflects the direct voice relation that participants have to the process, and which is lacking with circumstances. The latter are analysed in terms of the second dependence model, viz. modification, as dependents of the process and some or all of its participants.

2. The roles In this section, a more detailed overview of the participant roles in the constructions will be presented. As pointed out in the previous section, ‘participant role’ is a concept determined by the construction and the relation between the elements in it: participant roles are labels for ‘ways of participating in the process’, i.e. in an agentive or patientive way, or in specific mixes or modifications of these.55 Moreover, these ‘ways of participating in the process’ remain constant – at a general level – across all constructions of one construction paradigm. For instance, irrespective of whether an Agent is coded as Subject in the active or as by-Adjunct in the passive, it retains the same ‘agentive’ role in the process. Location, Image, Locatum, Material and Product, we have just seen, all stand in a patientive voice relation to the process, whose semantic profile they complete. Therefore, specific lexical selection restrictions on the fillers of the participants are necessary preconditions to allow them to function in the construction (Sinclair 1991, Francis 1993, Goldberg 1995). They reflect the conditions 55 Compare, for instance, the ergative, co-participating Medium in the cat broke the glass, or the conducive-patientive that peach in that peach eats well, as opposed to the inertpatientive the dog in the man kicked the dog.


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for fitting in with this participation type. For instance, Francis (1993) shows, with corpus-based case studies, how elements of grammatical structure are often realized by very specific and restricted lexical sets. This interaction between general grammatical features and specific lexical fillers should be clarified too, and precisely this is lacking in already existing descriptions. Take, for instance, the following alternation type: (57) a. Bees are swarming in the garden. b. The garden is swarming with bees. Salkoff (1983) provides a very detailed account of possible noun classes and restrictions, such as “if it is singular, Nconc [i.e. a concrete noun] must be a collective or a mass noun” (1983:292), but fails to really link these conditions to the semantic roles of the entities he describes. In the following descriptions, therefore, the interlocking nature of the more general grammatical features with the specific collocational properties of the nominals will be brought to the fore. As pointed out above, the general participant roles of Location, Image, Locatum, Material and Product are paradigmatically based: they generalize over the whole construction paradigm. In the following, general characteristics of these roles will thus be provided, irrespective of a nominal or prepositional realization. 2.1. The Location ‘Location’ is the term used for the ‘fixed place’ targeted by the process in both the locative and the image impression constructions. The fact that image impression construals and locatives have been classified as different constructions depends largely on the difference between the Image and the Locatum (see below); the Location functions in much the same way in the image impression and material/product constructions. One of the main differences is that the Location in the image impression alternation is much less likely to receive a holistic interpretation in the NG than the Location in the locative alternation (Levin 1993:67). The Location comes in basically two types, the surface ((58), (59)) and the container (60) type:

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(58) They used Tipp-Ex to spray false watermarks on the forgeries. (CB) (59) Spray Static Guard on the floor around your computer. (CB) (60) The thief crams the money in his pockets and scoots out the window. (CB) The surface type is shared by locative and image impression construals. The container type most commonly occurs with locatives. Most verbs have a particular preference for either a surface-type of Location (spread, smear, decorate, etc.) or a container-type of Location (jam, stuff, fill etc.). In order to be a Location, however, the designatum does not have to be a specific sort of surface or container. The primary requirement to fulfil the function of Location is to have a certain spatial extent, which allows the application or reception of a set of particles (locative alternation) or of some sort of sign (image impression alternation). Whether or not the designate immediately calls to mind a material, surface or container, the construction will light up this subpart of the meaning. We do not normally visualise flowers as surfaces, and yet flowers is the Location in the following sentence: (61) Maggie Bourne […] sprayed flowers with the fungicide Benlate during her pregnancy. (CB) For floors, for instance, as in (59), the importance of the surface area is obvious, as this is a flat surface with some sort of covering. Flowers, on the other hand, at first sight do not qualify as the surface type of Location. Still, this aspect becomes important when we see flowers as the object of an act of spraying: then the stem and leaves, and even the flowerhead itself, are conceptualised as surfaces that need a layer of fungicide or pesticide. The importance of the element ‘surface area’ is related to the function of the Location: the Location is exactly the place to which the substance designated by the Locatum will be applied. Whether the Location is the Location in an image impression or a locative construction is (in part) dependent on the other non-agentive constituent, which in the first case is an Image, in the second a Locatum. These will be described in the following two sections, where we will also return to their impact on a possible ‘holistic’ interpretation.


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2.2. The Locatum The most typical semantic characteristic of the Locatum, as we will see in this and the next section, is dispersiveness. Further, the share of mass nouns is such that a closer examination of the different types that occur is called for. Most of the Locatums in the corpus examples are either liquids or semiliquids, such as pesticides or ointments, or they stand for an amount of ‘stuff’ which is realized by a plural NG. The following list illustrates the type of lexical fillers of the Locatum for a number of locative verbs: cram: heap: jam: rub: salt scatter:

spray:

more passengers, six thousand Albanians, musical instruments, missiles carrots, hammocks, handmade pottery lemons, papers and oil paints my hands, his hands, style, traffic French chalk, the rich lather, 1 teaspoon of the olive oil, and five spice mixture fried pieces of poppadoms, pellets and shrapnel, crispy fried bacon, torn tarragon leaves or a few chopped rosemary needles a small amount of Touch-in spray, a natural herbal formulation, a bit of cooking spray, deodorant

Apart from some exceptions – the verb drape, for instance, occurs with the Locatum a banner – these Locatums designate an entity that consists of (a usually high number of) particles. This quality can be referred to as “dispersive”, a term borrowed from Declerck (1979: 16-17), who uses the term to describe nominals that “are represented as referring to a set of entities rather than a single whole.” The dispersiveness is realized in a number of ways: either a number of entities are referred to (more passengers, hammocks, fried pieces of poppadom), or some mass is designated (traffic, the rich lather, French chalk). The majority of verbs indeed take plural and mass nouns. The group of plural Locatums can be characterized by Declerck’s notion of “externally-dispersive” (1979:17): there are a number of perceptually individuated entities, such as the various people in more passengers. Mass nouns,

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on the other hand, represent an undifferentiated whole: in traffic, for example, the whole mass of cars and trucks is referred to with a mass noun. Instead of referring to every vehicle separately, the whole set is included in the formally singular traffic. The dispersiveness in this case resides in the internal complexity, because even though mass nouns do not highlight the individuality of the different elements, they are still understood to designate a number of qualitatively similar elements. They can therefore be classed under Declerck’s (1979:17) “internally-dispersive”: “the reference to the set does not happen through reference to the entities that make up the set [...] but through naming the set as a whole.” The plural, that is, heightens individuation, whereas mass nouns stress homogeneity, continuity (see also Langacker 1987:205). Clauses with a singular count Locatum are rare. They occur in examples like: (62) One fervent admirer had even draped an enormous banner on the perimeter fencing. (CB) The fact that they are singular, however, does not preclude internal dispersiveness. Singular count nouns can also be characterized as dispersive when their referents have a certain extension, such as length, breadth, depth or volume. In the case of an enormous banner, the length and breadth result in a certain dispersiveness. Singular count nouns that are nondispersive hardly ever occur as Locatum. This not to say that non-dispersive NGs do not at all qualify as Locatums for the locative alternation, but they do lack a typical characteristic. As also discussed in chapter III, sentences such as He loaded a box on the wagon or The art dealer stocked the store with a new Picasso, after the last one had been sold are perfectly possible. The reason for the low frequency of singular count Locatums in general also brings the verbs that instantiate the locative process into the picture. Most of these presuppose more than one entity (e.g. scatter, pile) or an entity that is felt to consist of a number of smaller particles (e.g. spray), i.e. they are compatible only with plural or mass nouns. Mass nouns and plurals are conceptually much closer to each other than to singular count nouns. Although mass nouns are formally singular, other formal features bring to the fore the similarities between plural and mass nouns. Neither (further) pluralizes, they both tolerate the definite, but not the indefinite article, and


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permit quantifiers like most or all, which do not go with singular count nouns (Langacker 1991:77). The main property they share is contractibility, which means that ‘any subpart of an instance is itself a valid instance of the category’ (Langacker 1991:19). Passengers, for example, or hammocks, can mean one hundred of them, or fifty, or ten, or even two; any subpart of, say, ten passengers is still referred to as passenger. Mass nouns too are contractible: French chalk is used for both a lot of French chalk and only a portion of this ‘lot,’ and whether one has a lot or just a little style, style it is.56 Singular count nouns, on the other hand, do not display this property: a piece of a banner is no longer called banner, and a smaller portion of a box will not be referred to as a box: they are not felt to consist of smaller particles of the same nature. A singular count noun is considered to be one whole, so we do not have an image of different particles moving when such a noun is used as Locatum. The singular count Locatum deserves further attention, as we can distinguish between original count nouns and at least two types derived from mass nouns. First compare (63), in which the Locatum is an original count noun, with (64), uncount “ice cream” is used as count an ice cream. (63) She was stuffing her toy bear in her schoolbag. (64) She was stuffing an ice cream in her schoolbag. In general, this type of count usage of mass nouns occurs quite frequently: (65) I'd had a big day and was pleased to arrive home, grab a beer, and slump into a comfortable chair. (CB) (66) The Sheikh […] motioned him to sit on a fur just beside his own small prayer rug. (CB) Mass nouns like beer and fur, as we saw in chapter III, are bounded only in quality space, where their qualitative conformity differentiates them from other substances. In the spatial domain, however, which is the domain of

56

One of the main differences between plurals and mass nouns is that the former stand for a ‘replicate mass’, i.e. constituted of a number of discrete entities, whereas the mass nouns designate a ‘non-replicate mass’ (1991:78).

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instantiation for physical substances, there is no bounding. For the count usages, on the other hand, this primary domain is also the domain of bounding: in (64), (65) and (66) the nouns in question are bounded spatially, as is the original count her teddy bear. An ice cream, a beer and a fur designate objects that are limited in their spatial extension. And like true count nouns, the bounding is not imposed by the quantifiers, but by the nominal predications themselves. Count nouns like these, however, are rare in locative constructions of the type under investigation here; instead, quantifying expressions of the type a small amount of or some of the are preferred. The reason for this could be that the discreteness associated with the count usage is less compatible with the dispersiveness of the locative process. It emphasizes the unity, not the substanceness, the multitude of particles, which is so typical a trait of Locatums. However, there is another type of count noun derived from a mass noun, which is somewhat more frequent in locative construals. It is illustrated by the following sentences: (67) They’ll spray a cold anaesthetic onto the skin. (CB) (68) Preferably smear the ciabattas with an Italian olive paste, rather than the cheaper Turkish or Greek types. (CB) The Locatums in these sentences can be paraphrased as a ‘particular kind’ of anaesthetic, and a ‘specific kind of olive paste. The epithets modifying anaesthetic and olive paste specify which type or subkind the speaker is talking about. Count nouns related to mass nouns are thus of two types: those with what we could call a ‘subkind meaning’ (a cold anaesthetic), and those with a ‘portion meaning’ (a beer) (see also Langacker 1987:206). 57

57

In many cases, both portion and subkind reading are possible, as in next, he stuffs the cabbage with a tomato gravy. Often, albeit not always, the interpretation is clear from the context. With the subkind tpe, often the specification of a brand or type is given as a postmodifier, as in the following sentences: A wine worthy of a very special occasion (CB) A wine which flatters food rather than dominating it (CB) Note, however, that such a description is not necessary for a noun to belong to this category:


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One of the main differences between count nouns with a portion meaning and those with the subkind meaning is the domain of bounding. Since they are both count, they must show bounding in their domain of instantiation. For portion-type nouns, this is space: the portion-nouns differ from their mass counterparts in designating a confined, restricted part of the spatial domain (a beer, for instance, is a glass or a can with some liquid in it), and are hence bounded in space. In contrast, the count subkind-nouns, just like mass nouns, do not occupy such a circumscribed portion of the spatial domain. Quality space, where different brands and types can be distinguished, is their domain of bounding. Mass nouns take up a bounded region in quality space, and subkind nouns a subregion in this region, viz. that limited area that is defined by the values taken up by the subkind in question along the different parameters. The subkind-noun profiles a bounded region within the region occupied by the substance designated by the mass noun, because it further narrows down the specifications for that mass. The region in quality space occupied by anaesthetic, for example, will be defined along parameters such as colour, taste, substance, etc.; the designatum of a cold anaesthetic is situated in this area - otherwise it would no longer be (an) anaesthetic - but there is a further specification that narrows down the region that can be taken up by the subkind-noun. What accounts for the count noun status of the subkind-nouns is that this quality space is also the domain of instantiation. Qualitative factors are more important for distinguishing different brands than spatial distribution, and quality space thus supersedes physical space as the domain of instantiation (Langacker 1987:206). In sum, as count nouns both subkind- and portionnouns have the domain of bounding as their domain of instantiation, with this difference that for the latter the domain of bounding is physical space, and for the former quality space.

In the unlikely event of a wine becoming unavailable, we will supply a substitute of similar style and equal or greater value. (CB) On the other hand, the presence of epithets and the like does not automatically entail the subkind-meaning: sometimes mass nouns can be very specific, without becoming a count noun. An example of this is the following sentence: This is the result of volcanic activity in those regions, not of male homosexuals in Sydney spraying themselves with under-arm deodorant. (CB) Here under-arm indeed specifies the quality of the deodorant, but it is not a count noun of the subkind-type (unlike ‘an underarm deodorant’).

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This difference explains why the concept of holicity is not applicable to construals with a ‘subkind’ Locatum: (69) It means that farmers can spray a whole field crop and weeds, with a simple and environmentally safe weedkiller. (CB) (70) They sprayed the kitchen walls with a thick, yellowish paint, but for the bedroom decided on a less flashy type. The first example is used in a discussion of the benefits of genetically modified vegetables. One of the advantages, the proponents claim, is that harmful and toxic weedkillers (such as DDT) will not have to be used anymore. An environmentally safe weedkiller, therefore, does not refer to a spatial instance (as he sprayed his colleagues with his beer does): an environmentally safe weedkiller simply picks out, specifies the kind of weedkiller. Similarly for (70): the question whether this sentence implies that all the paint has been used or not, does not make sense, because the count Locatum does not refer to a spatially bounded mass, but serves to distinguish in quality space the kind of paint used for the kitchen from the kind used for the bedroom. It seems to be the establishment of a different domain by the verb that is responsible for the absence of a holistic interpretation of subkind-nouns in the locative sentences under investigation. Locative verbs suggest the spatio-temporal domain as the scope for the predication: the action extends through time, and there is a locative component. For subkind-nouns, however, there is no bounding in the spatial domain. Consequently, the concept of holicity is, on the same grounds as for their mass counterparts, not applicable (see chapter III, section 2.3). The spatio-temporally bounded portion-nouns, on the other hand, do allow a holistic reading because their domain of bounding chimes in with that suggested by the verb. By way of conclusion, Table 38 offers an overview of the different uses of the mass nouns that have been outlined in this and the previous chapter.58

58 There is also the possibility of a mass noun preceded by a definite article that is merely used to indicate identifiability (see chapter III, section 0), in which case the latter does not establish bounding as the other examples with the definite article do.


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corpus-example mass noun

But young Titley had already begun the celebrations by spraying his weighing room colleagues with champagne.

spatially bounded mass noun

Wet the bar and roll it around in your hands and rub the rich lather on the hair.

count noun: portion

She stuffed three ice creams in the backpack.

count noun: subkind

They began spraying the walls with a thick, yellowish paint, but for the bedroom decided on a less flashy type.

Table 38: An overview of mass nouns and related count nouns.

The first row represents the ‘normal’ mass Locatum, characterized by a lack of bounding in the spatial or spatio-temporal domain. In the second example, the definite article imposes spatial bounding: the designatum of the mass noun is restricted to a limited region in the spatial domain as a result of a quantifier. The third possibility is mass nouns with a portionmeaning, which are very rare with locative construals. In this count usage, the domain of bounding shifts from quality space to physical space, where the profiled entity takes up a circumscribed portion. The bounding here is not the result of a quantifier: it is the noun itself that profiles a bounded region, the limits are inherent in the description. For the subkind-nouns, finally, the domain of bounding – which coincides with the domain of instantiation – is distinct from the physical space or spatio-temporal domain suggested by the locative verb. 2.3. The Image The main difference between the Image and the Locatum resides in the material existence of the latter and the more abstract nature of the former. It is this characteristic – or at least this characteristic in interaction with the rest of the construction – that is responsible for the distinction between the locative and the image impression alternation.

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Broadly speaking, Images can be subcategorized into four classes. They range from the visual to the verbal. They may be quoted words or letters (71), or terms such as name and word instead of the actual words (72). They may also be symbols, standing for or suggesting something else (73 and 74), or to graphic representations (75 and 76): (71) One of my punks has “I love Princess Katya Galitzine” tattooed on his back in Gothic script. (CB) (72) The cups are between 12 and 14 inches high and have names engraved on the bases. (CB) (73) Our soft hide box is embossed with the VandA's elegant logo. (CB) (74) Behind bars and within the prison walls, the mark of Cain will be imprinted on the forehead of the accused. (CB) (75) The Cairns Regional Art Gallery had navy swimming trunks painted on the internationally celebrated image. (CB) (76) Suns, moons, and scattered stars are embroidered with shining floss on our heavenly vest. (CB) Although the difference between Image and Locatum is a low-level, delicate distinction, the grammar is sensitive to it, as appears from a systematic difference with respect to the following agnate: (77) South Koreans […] sprayed red paint on a road sign pointing to the building. (CB) They sprayed red paint at the road sign. (78) A sign proclaiming Consort the home town of k.d. lang was defaced. “They sprayed EAT BEEF DYKE on it”, Lang says wryly. (CB) *They sprayed EAT BEEF DYKE at it. The locative construction in (77) allows for what Levin (1993:41) characterizes as a ‘conative’ reformulation, whereas this agnate is not available for the image impression construction. The conative construction expresses an “attempted action without specifying whether the action was actually carried out” (Levin 1993:42), and for these locative sentences specifies the ‘direction.’ The Locatum, with its material existence, can be


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transferred in a certain direction, but the Image cannot. The image impression construction expresses how this Image is realized, but the Image does not have an independent existence and hence does not chime in with the meaning of the at-phrase. A sentence like (79), therefore, is ambiguous between two readings: (79) She sprayed it on the wall. Depending on how it is lexicalized, (79) will have different agnates or alternation possibilities, and belong to the locative (80) or image impression (81) alternation. (80) She sprayed paint on the wall (81) She sprayed graffiti on the wall

-

at the wall *at the wall

Sprayed stands for two different processes in these sentences, viz. ‘dispersion of particles’ in (80) and ‘visualization of a sign’ in (81) (see further section 3.1). Finally, also notice how one and the same lexical item can function as both Image and Locatum: (82) A dinner service from Singapore painted with delicate flowers so fine that we barely ever used it. (CB) (83) A grave scattered with delicate flowers. The referents of the NG delicate flowers, however, are quite different in each case. In the locative (83), delicate flowers refers to actual, physical flowers, whereas in (82) it designates the image of flowers as it can be registered on paper or any other material medium. As a Locatum, delicate flowers has a referent that is transferred from one place to another, for instance to the grave, but as an Image, as in (82), the referent is visualized by the process. As far as the partitive/holistic effect is concerned, it is interesting to notice that most Images are also characterized by dispersiveness. The dispersiveness is obvious for plural Images like his words in His words should be engraved in marble, or weather terms in The dials of most barometers

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are inscribed with weather terms, which are externally dispersive. But most singular Ima-ges are also dispersive (84, 85): (84) (Elvis' loyal subjects will be able to buy everything from a replica of his social security card) to socks, shirts, posters bearing his image, pens, key-rings, rings imprinted with his name. (CB) (85) (“Don't let the buggers get you down.”) Such was the motto engraved on the watch that Michael Mates ill-advisedly gave to the disgraced tycoon Asil Nadir. (CB) Images like his name or the motto are dispersive in much the same way as for instance a banner, i.e. they are internally-dispersive. Names, mottos, slogans, etc. are characterized by an internal complexity, as they usually consist of respectively several letters and words. Yet, as we saw in the section on holicity, this dispersiveness does not typically lead to holicity of the Location in the NG. Whereas in a locative construction the Location/Goal is often understood as completely covered by the dispersive Locatum, the dispersiveness of the Image does not guarantee such an interpretation of the Location. The reason, we saw, is that despite the dispersiveness, there is a certain fixedness in Images such as names or a series of words in that they are visualized as forming one line: (86) She inscribed the medallion with the name. (87) She embroidered the towel with the saying ‘home sweet home’. As the image impression verbs are not concerned with the transfer and application of a mass, the nuclear involvement of the Location is less likely to be understood as entailing full coverage of this Location – especially so with Images like the above. Typical Locatums, such as liquids or spreadable entities, do not impose such restrictions on the interpretation. However, it was also shown that given the right characteristics of the Image and in the right context, a holistic interpretation is not excluded for image impression constructions. Images that are more likely to be associated with a holistic interpretation of the Location in the NG can be found in the last two of the four classes distinguished above, i.e. symbols and graphic representations.


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Both of these, but especially the last, are less likely to be interpreted ‘linearly’: (88) a. The druid inscribed holy runes on the stone. b. The druid inscribed the stone with holy runes. (89) a. They embroidered cherubs and cupids on hanging tapestries. (CB) b. They embroidered tapestries with cherubs and cupids. Although the image impression construction (and hence the verb in it) is not concerned with ‘coverage’ the way the locative construction is, the primary affectedness of the Location/Goal is much more likely to be understood as ‘total coverage’ or ‘more completely covered’ with dispersive, non-linear Locatums such as holy runes and cherubs and cupids. In sum, one of the most salient differences between Locatum and Image is the non-material existence of the latter. This difference is reflected in the absence of a conative agnate for the image impression alternation. However, since locative and image impression construals share almost all other agnates, and certainly the wide-ranging ones (also see the Introduction), this can be regarded as a non-criterial agnate that marks out a finer distinction. On a more schematic level, the image impression and locative constructions can both be characterized as constructions involving a caused circumstantial relation of being on/with. 2.4. Material and Product The participants in the material/product constructions are quite different from those of the other two construction types. Although so far we have not paid any attention to this, a closer look at some corpus examples shows that there are actually two types of Material and two types of Product. The Material stands for the entity that in the material/product action is transformed into something (bigger) of a different shape and functionality (90), or that is turned or molded into something else (91): (90) Many of the houses had been built from stones removed from the ruins of the Ma'rib dam. (CB)

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(91) We have built our Party into an inclusive, active, participative, campaigning, modern, democratic, socialist party. (CB) In the former type, the material serves as ‘building blocks’ of some bigger whole, whereas in examples of the latter type the original Material is still there after the ‘building’, but as a result of it is ascribed some new quality. In the existing literature on the material/product alternation, the focus is nearly exclusively on constructions with the first form of Material. The following sentences contain representative corpus examples of this type of Material: (92) They are knitted from hardwearing easycare acrylic that's fully machine washable. (CB) (93) “I built my first motorbike from spare parts when I was only nine.” (CB) (94) Tobor’s head was formed from an old wig-shop dummy with cutouts for eyes. (CB) (95) The harvest had to be carted to the home farm and built into stacks. (CB) In each case the Material stands for the component entity/entities, which make up the Product and thus become part of some larger functioning unit. The yarn, the spare parts, etc. are all transformed in the sense that they become the component parts of something new: they are included in the sweaters, in the motorcycle, etc. in (92) to (95). The Product, that is, replaces the existence of the material it is built from in the sense that the Material itself only functions as a ‘part of’. Correlative with the componentlike nature of the Material, the Product in sentences like these is typically a more encompassing unit than the Material: it is an assembly, consisting of (among others) the various parts encoded by the Material. Whereas this ‘building-block’ Material is usually truly a ‘material’, the second type of Material, a Material that is still ‘there’ after the action, is usually of a different kind. It either refers to institutions, concerns, and the like, which can be turned into something better, more lucrative, etc.:


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(96) Stuart-Harris built the school into one of the country's best teaching and research centres. (CB) (97) (Dr Murphy joined the Centre in 1989) and turned it into a profit-making business. (CB) Alternatively, this type of Material refers to people and their capacities: (98) I'll coach you, and build you into the best businesswoman you can possibly be. (CB) (99) (We truly protect our children from addiction when we embrace and support them as separate individuals and) not try to mold them into objects to enhance our own sagging selfesteem. (CB) These examples also show us that alongside a difference in Material, there is also a substantial difference in the type of Product. A full description of the way in which the participants interact belongs to the discussion of the constructions, but notice already that the Product, in this second type of material/product construction, does not ‘replace’ the Material. One of the country's best teaching and research centres, a profitmaking business, the best businesswoman you can possibly be, etc. do not stand for a larger whole into which the Material is ‘resolved’, but express a new quality, or new characteristic of the Material after the action. The Product indicates the new label under which the original ‘thing’ can be classed. In sum, although there is not always a strict division, two types of Material and Product can be distinguished. Many of the more ‘material’ Materials, such as spare motorcycle parts and stones, belong to a type of Material that functions as the building blocks in a more complex Product. The second type of Material is associated with lexical fillers from the domain of institutions and people, and does not become part of the Product. As will be discussed extensively in chapter VI, the two types of Material and Product correspond to two different types of material/product constructions.

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3. The Process Another issue in a description of the constructions at hand is the lexical status of the verb meaning or meanings in the various alternates. The matter of verb meaning(s) is broached mainly in more lexically-oriented approaches, where it – understandably – is one of the central concerns. For instance, Levin and Rappaport Hovav (1992) categorize spray, load etc. in the in/on-construction under the change-of-location verbs, and in the withconstruction under the change-of-state verbs. Bake, build, etc., are changeof-state verbs in the into-construction, whereas they are creation-verbs in the from-construction. A (more) constructionist point of view, however, can highlight different aspects and complement (and modify some aspects of) a lexicalist approach. Lexicalist approaches tend to attach great importance to the lexical classification. The general semantic features of the verb classes are assumed to predict which verbs alternate and which do not: “the behavior of a verb, particularly with respect to the expression and interpretation of its arguments, is to a large extent determined by its meaning” (Levin 1993:1). One of the more problematic consequences of this approach is to regard uses of verbs not predicted by the semantics of the lexical classification as a sort of ‘errors’. Thus, Pinker (1989:154-160) judges the following attested examples of the locative alternation to be “ungrammatical uses of lexical rules in adult language”: (100) (From a cookbook) Drizzle them [apple slices] with lemon juice. (101) (from recipes in a magazine article) This version is dribbled with a lively Worcestershire-spiked mayonnaise. (102) He squeezed them [fish fillets] with lemon juice. (all from Pinker 1989:157) In a constructionist approach, the construction is viewed as the unit that determines the value of its constituents. The construction is also seen as the locus of language change, both instantially (for one specific instance) and systemically (for a whole group) (Halliday 1975). Therefore, creative uses such as those cited by Pinker are wholly unproblematic: language users are aware of the semantics of a construction and, in the appropriate context,


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lexical verbs ‘new’ to the construction can be given a meaning extension that dovetails with the construction, a process for which Michaelis and Ruppenhofer (2001) use the term “reconciliation procedure”. Verb classification thus derives from the “paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations found in the clause” and “verb classes represent the potentiality on the part of each verb of entering into each of the sets of relations [i.e. paradigmatic and syntagmatic] involved” (Halliday 1967a:52). 3.1. Constructionally determined polysemy Essentially, each individual construction type defines a specific submeaning of the verb. Alternate – or closely agnate – constructions trigger off a closely related sense of the verb. Constructions which are part of a distinct construction paradigm activate more substantially different submeanings. Still, as long as these are governed by one general ‘schematic’ meaning, they are part of a network of polysemously related verb meanings. The main point is that there is a systematic correlation between construction and specific submeaning. As a general rule we can state that with a different variant, different parts of the scene are brought into focus. In the case of the locative alternation, either the relation between Process and Locatum (103) or the one between Process and Location (104) are profiled: (103) Scientists yesterday began spraying wood preservative on the 16th Century warship the Mary Rose. (CB) (104) Fire salvage task force manager Matthew Grant sprays logs with creek water to protect them from the bark beetle. (CB) In the first sentence the Agent and the substance that is relocated – the Locatum – are profiled, in the second the substance is still part of the general scene, but the focus is on the Location on which the substance is spread. These two senses of the verb can therefore be described as ‘dispersion’ and ‘coverage’. These are terms that cover the two submeanings of all the alternating locative spray-verbs: they all express contact between the substance and a certain location, which due to the action is (at least partly) covered with the substance. On the other hand, they also express the dispersion of

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something, either a liquid, or a mass, such as hay, or a number of things, such as raisins in he scattered raisins over the dish. In the case of verbs like stuff, cram, jam, etc. the verb is polysemous between ‘dispersion’ and ‘filling’: (105) The Interior Ministry harasses opposition activists and stuffs the ballot boxes with the votes of those long dead. (CB) Note in passing that although the group of locative verbs is usually referred to as the spray/load-verbs, load is actually not a prototypical example of the group of verbs consisting of stuff etc.: it can act as one of these verbs, as in (106), but on the other hand, load can also behave as one of the spray-verbs (107): (106) Clinoptilolite in a granular form is loaded into vessels. (CB) (107) She loaded another sack on to his saddle. (CB) 'Spray versus stuff' renders the bifurcation in the group of verbs participating in the locative alternation better than 'spray versus load' (Levin 1993:50,117). In any case, we can say that the group of spray-verbs is polysemous between dispersion and coverage, and the stuff-verbs between dispersion and filling. Not surprisingly, a number of verbs also occur in different constructions and participate in other alternations, as part of the agnation network (see further chapter VII). An example is the verb spread, which besides in the locative alternation (108, 109) can also occur in the ergative alternation (cf. Levin 1993:27ff), as in (110)-(115): (108) To assemble, spread a blob of mayonnaise on each toast. (CB) (109) Spread the bread thinly with mayonnaise. (CB) (110) The fire spread. (111) The breeze spread the fire. (112) The infection may spread. (113) Skin-to-skin contact may spread the infection. (114) Rumours spread. (115) Malicious rivals spread rumours.


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The general semantics of the ergative alternation are those of a ‘semiautonomous process’ and the ‘instigation of that process’ (Davidse and Geyskens 1998). From these subsenses derive lexical restrictions on the central argu-ments that can occur with ergatively used verbs. The ergative uses of spread are found mainly with fire and gasses ((110), (111)), infectious diseases ((112), (113)) and ‘catchy’ semiotic constructs ((114), (115)), because these activate constructional senses compatible with the general ergative schemata, such as the ‘expansion’ of fire, disease or gossip, and its being fuelled by external factors. It can be noted that the submeanings within the alternations (dispersion versus coverage, for instance) are semantically closer to each other than those across the alternations (the ‘locative’ versus the ‘ergative’ meanings). Yet, they are all ‘kept together’ by one abstract, superordinate schema such as ‘expan-sion of the particles of a – concrete or abstract – mass’. The verbs of the image impression alternation are systematically polysemous between on the one hand an act of semiosis, and on the other hand distortion of the surface. Verbs like inscribe, etch, embroider, paint, etc. express the creation of a sign in the in/on-variant of the image impres-sion alternation: (116) Joker Keith Woodward's dying wish to have “I told them I was ill” inscribed on his tombstone (was banned by council chiefs in Shrivenham, Oxon). (CB) (117) Indeed, the earliest known trademark is a baker's monogram stamped on a loaf found preserved in volcanic ash at Pompeii. (CB) In construals like these, a material form is given to a certain symbol, (a) word(s), a phrase like “I told them I was ill”, a baker’s monogram, or others like the name, his initials (see section 2.3). In the with-alternate, the relation between the process and the Location is profiled, and the distortion of this surface is expressed: (118) Swiss chocolates imprinted with the 1960s wisdoms of John Giorno are rare collectors items likely to be found under glass in art galleries. (CB)

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(119) Prince Albert's slippers, believed to have been embroidered with a rose and thistle by Queen Victoria nearly 145 years ago, sold for £1,840. (CB) The surface of the Swiss chocolates in (118) becomes impressed in the places where the wisdoms appears, and the surface of the slippers in (119) are slightly raised where they are embroidered. The Locations are thus always distorted in one way or another. The verbs of the material/product alternation, then, have either a construction or a transformation submeaning. Build, knit, bake, forge etc. can be used to express the creation or construction of something, as in the following sentences: (120) The Ethiopians are well-known for carving churches and dwellings from solid rock. (CB) (121) The plan is a compromise forged from several competing proposals. (CB) On the other hand, they can also express the transformation of material as in the following examples: (122) The separate developmental tasks of living with a chronic condition and living the other parts of one’s life must be brought together and forged into one coherent life structure. (CB) (123) I baked the pastry into a pie. (Atkins, Kegl and Levin 1988:104) (124) The birds will strip the willow into small pieces and weave it into a cost [sic] cup-shaped nest within the box. (CB) In these material/product sentences with into, there is a close interaction between the Process and the Material, as a consequence of which the verb expresses a certain change or transformation. Sentence (122) entails that the original developmental tasks have to be altered or transformed. Baking pastry into a cake also entails a substantial change in the Material. The transformation is not always so pronounced, however. In the case of building


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willow twigs into a nest, for instance, the material is altered only in the sense that it is rearranged. Analysing the verb as polysemous in these alternations and linking this to the particular constructions is supported by Langacker’s (1990:193-196) views on the polysemy of lexical verbs. He holds that the lexical meaning of verbs, like all frequently used lexical items, consists of a network of polysemously related senses. He illustrates this with the two closely related examples: (125) She heard the piano. (126) She heard the sound of the piano. Hear has one schematic ‘auditive perception’ meaning, two distinct instantiations of which are involved in (125) and (126). In (125) hear designates the relation between perception and sound, in (126) that between perception and the source of the sound. This is very much in agreement with the above analyses of the meaning of the locative, image impression and material/product verbs. Furthermore, linking the specific verb sense to the type of alternate also reflects Langacker’s (1991:36) tenet that verb meaning is conceptually dependent, that its meaning(s) cannot be conceptualized without reference to its participants. Thus, also from this perspective, the correlation between the semantics of the construction and that of the verb is borne out. By way of conclusion, the verbs of the locative, image impression and material/product alternation exhibit polysemous meaning changes in the alternates. Locative verbs have, among others, a dispersive and a coverage or filling sense, image impression verbs express semiosis or distortion, and material/product verbs can not only express creation, but also transformation. The multiplicity of submeanings, however, is dissolved in specific constructional contexts. The bond between verb meaning and construction is very systematic: not only does the construction activate one meaning, it also always activates the same submeaning. The dispersive sense of locative verbs is associated with the in/on-construction, the coverage sense is systematically tied up with the with-construction. The image impression verbs in the in/on-construction express an act of semiosis, whereas the withconstruction activates the distortion sense. And for the material/product alternation, the creation-submeaning is associated with the from-construction,

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whereas the transformation-sense is singled out when the verb occurs in the into-construction. 3.2. A dialectically motivated relation As shown above, the alternations illustrate the principle of constructionally determined polysemy in the lexical verbs. The patterns of polysemous specialization and/or extension are wholly systematic and predictable from the constructions. Not only does the construction single out one specific lexical meaning of every verb, it also always activates the same sort of subsense in all these verbs. Yet in this primarily constructionist approach, there is also room for attention to the relation between construction and lexical verb. This relation is a dialectic one, in that the semantics of the verb are to a large extent predictive of whether or not a construction is at all possible. Although the construction activates one specific submeaning of the verb, the compatibility or incompatibility of the verb meaning with the construction still decides whether the verb can be used in the construction. This approach provides a natural explanation for the inability of certain verbs to participate in the alternations. Take a verb like ride, which occurs in a syntagm similar to that of the locative on-construction. (127) Don't ride your bike on station platforms or concourses. (CB) (128) He sprayed paint on the wall. Yet unlike (128), (127) does not occur in an alternate frame: (129) *Don’t ride station platforms or concourses with your bike. The reason for this is an inconsistency between verb meaning and constructional meaning. The meaning of the locative with-construction can roughly be described as the causation of a relation of spatial contiguity between the two non-agentive entities, because one entity covers/ fills the other (see chapter V). Verbs like scatter, smear, stuff etc. perfectly fit into the locative with-construction because their meaning chimes in with the constructional meaning. However, none of the meanings of ride, which


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designates a mode of travelling, involves covering a location (there is a temporary spatial contiguity between the tire and the road, but not the more or less stable relation to be found in he sprayed the wall with paint). Lexical and constructional meaning do not agree, hence the impossibility of (129). Unlike for the locative alternation examples, dispersion of particles is not part of the meaning of the sentence in (127): the sentence does not mean that the bike is spread out over the road, and the absence of a dispersive meaning in the verb – the presence of which would imply that there is a location on which the dispersed particles end up – already suggests the absence of a coverage meaning. The verb in (127) does not specify a Location, and the PrepP is simply a Circumstance of place. Despite the locational component, ride and spray do not belong to the same semantic domain, and the lexical meaning of the former is far removed from the constructional meaning; but even for verbs within one semantic domain, the precise lexical meaning is still important in allowing a particular construction or not. Compare ride (on) with dribble (on), which is situated in the same semantic field as spray, and is semantically much closer to it. Unlike ride, spray and dribble both have a dispersive submeaning. The fact that verbs like dribble do not (normally) occur in the alternate frame shows us that the language user does not attribute a ‘coverage’ meaning to dribble, as he does to spray. The reason for the non-participation in the locative alternation, is that the non-alternating verbs lack the polysemy that characterizes the alternating verbs, and that allowed them to occur in the two constructions. It is hard to discover any sort of system behind which verbs are and which are not felt to be polysemous with respect to the pairs of meanings distinguished above: why does scatter express both coverage and dispersion, and dribble only dispersion? There is no obvious reason why engrave has the broader general schema ‘material impression of symbol’, of which either the ‘semiosis’ or the ‘distortion’ sense may be profiled in the corresponding alternates, whereas copy fails to occur in ‘distortion’ alternates and seems to evoke the ‘semiosis’, rather than the ‘distortion’ meaning. And similarly for the material/product verb, where a verb like carve does and a verb like construct does not occur in the alternate construction. As discussed in chapter I, lexicalist approaches have made some creditable but not altogether unproblematic attempts to uncover a certain systematicity in the behaviour of esp. the locative verbs (Rappaport and Levin 1988:26-27, Pinker 1989:124ff., Levin and Rappaport Hovav 1992).

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The alternating ones appear to have a more encompassing schematic meaning, which may be instantiated in either of the alternating subsenses, whereas the non-alternating ones lack the broader general schema and hence also one of the specific subsenses, but the verbs cannot be categorized a priori: we have to observe language and language use, and can only on that basis describe them as being polysemous or not. This does not make the categories of alternating and non-alternating verbs arbitrary ones: for most of the non-alternating verbs, a plausible explanation can be provided. With drip and scrawl, for example, the existence of the morphologically similar nouns a drip and a scrawl may explain why the relation between process and Locatum or Image is so strongly profiled. For material/product verbs like concoct, construct, compose etc., which normally occur only in the ‘creation’ construction with from/out of, the prefixes com- and its assimilated variant con- may be invoked to motivate the non-alternation. In Lakoff’s terms (1987), we can say that the verbs in this non-alternating class are neither predictable nor arbitrary, but motivated.59 So far we have concentrated on how verb meaning determines whether or not a particular construction is possible. However, in certain cases the alternate construction can also be imposed on these verbs, which then take on a meaning appropriate to that construction. Locative dribble, for example, occasionally also occurs in the with-construction: (130) Spoon on wine, dribble peppers with oil. (CB) Also recall examples (100) - (102) cited by Pinker (1989:154) as ‘ungrammatical’, or take a sentence like (131): (131) She would ride bigger ponies, douse all the ketchup she wanted on her hamburgers, and maybe even talk to bears like Goldilocks. (CB)

59 Although for some non-alternating verbs the motivation may seem somewhat meager, it should be borne in mind that a foolproof motivation is not desirable, as most of these verbs do ocasionally occur in the alternate frame. The various motivations keep language users from commonly using non-alternating verbs in the alternate construction, but there is still enough lee-way to allow for these occasional creative usages.


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Due to the semantic closeness between the coverage and the dispersion sense, and probably also due to the association with verbs like spray, scatter etc. that do alternate, dribble, douse and others, can undergo a meaning extension. Such a meaning extension or “reconciliation procedure” (Michaelis and Ruppenhofer 2001) is impossible (or much more difficult) once the lexical meaning of the verb is too far removed from the constructional meaning, which is why ride will not be found in the locative with-construction. The same phenomenon can be observed for the material/product alternation, where certain verbs that normally do not occur in the alternate frame occasionally do: (132) The weight of advertising, films and cartoons she will have seen will already be creating that experience into “tomboy” territory. (CB) (134) On other evenings they drive in the car to an over-priced restaurant nearby, converted from an old barn. (CB) The extremely low frequency (create into occurs only once in the 20 million word Cobuild corpus) shows that the transformation meaning, which create expresses in (132), is not normally part of the semantic make-up of this verb. However, its semantics appear sufficiently elastic and marginally collocatable with a Product as Patient, to allow for this meaning extension which is compatible with the with-construction. As for the image impression alternation, attested examples of similarly ‘marked’ constructions, triggering meaning extensions in the lexical verb unpredicted by Levin’s (1993) classification, are: (135) He requires that bizarre, beautiful, outrageous, bold and exciting creations be designed and adorned on the bodies of willing models. (CB) (136) The pages were scrawled with marginal notes on all four sides. (CB) Adorn, which here occurs with an Image, is classified as one of the nonalternating with-verbs; scrawl as a non-alternating on-verb (Levin 1993:66), yet both occur in the alternate construction. To do Pinker credit, it should be noted that he also recognizes that the ‘non-alternating’ verbs within the

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same broad conflation class (see also chapter I) as the alternating verbs are much more likely to break constraints on lexical rules and thus to occur in the deviant ‘argument structure’ than verbs from a different conflation class. Sentences like those above are described as differing from ‘grammatical’ alternates – which are licensed by a narrow-range rule (operating within the broad conflation class) – in that they are sentences that could be English but don’t happen to be English (Pinker 1989:161). Still, this explanation only invokes broad and narrow conflation classes and rules, which are essentially lexical in nature, and disregards the construction and the meaning it carries. The alternative explanation offered here, therefore, is that language users, who are (consciously or unconsciously) aware of the semantics of a construction, can stretch the constructional properties of a verb: in the appropriate context, lexical verbs ‘new’ to the construction can be given a meaning extension that dovetails with the construction. In this account, seemingly idiosyncratic lexical changes are linked to the system of constructions: in the right context, the constructional potential of a whole group of semantically related verbs can be stretched.

4. Conclusion Locative, image impression and material/product constructions are threeparticipant constructions, with besides the Agent, two patientive participants: the Goal and a second Affected that is part of the telos of the process. The syntagmatic relations between these, it has been argued, can best be modelled in terms of Langacker’s dependency model of complementation. Both the process and the participants, with their own voice relations to the verb, need the appropriate slot fillers, i.e. lexical items with the necessary characteristics to fit in with the construction. In the description of the different characteristics of the participants, special attention was paid to mass noun Locatums, the difference between Image and Locatum, and the two types of Material and Product. The specific characteristics, such as dispersiveness for the Locatum, were echoed in the section on the processes. It has also been argued that the alternating verbs are polysemous: for the locative alternation, they are polysemous between dispersion and coverage, for the image impression alternation between semiosis and distortion, and for the material/product alternation between transformation and creation.


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The relation between process and construction is not a unidirectional one, from a construction that calls for a specific verb, or from a verb that specifies the construction. There is a dialectically motivated relation between verb and construction, between lexical and constructional meaning. Verb meaning is generally predictive to a large extent of whether or not a certain construction is possible, but on the other hand the construction activates a particular meaning in the case of polysemy, and furthermore the construction can, when the meanings are not too divergent, be imposed on the verb, as with dribble peppers with the oil. Hence, the membership of classes of lexical verbs should not be reified and, importantly, they are classes of verb senses, not of verbs as such.

CHAPTER V A RELATIONAL ANALYSIS

In this and the following chapters, the relation of Locatum, Location, Image, Material and Product to the whole construction will be further elucidated. We will turn to the experiential semantics of the constructions themselves, with their agentive and patientive relations, a discussion that will lay the foundations for the analyses presented in the two final chapters. The locative, image impression and material/product verbs realize what Halliday calls ‘material processes’, processes of ‘doing’. It will be argued that the constructions in question should be analysed as a combination of event transitivity and relational transitivity, i.e. as involving caused relations. This proposal does not come completely out of the blue. In earlier systemically inspired work, the complex-transitive and ditransitive construction have already been analysed as involving a caused relational component. More specifically, in the case of the complex-transitives, such as And then they made him a sir (CB) the relation is one of caused being (Halliday 1967a: 62ff. and 74ff., Quirk et al. 1985:741-743), and the ditransitives, such as I gave him a hundred dollar bill (CB), have been characterized as caused having (Fawcett 1987, Davidse 1996a, 1996b). These analyses will now be extended to a new domain, viz. that of caused circumstantial relations. Locative and image impression constructions involve a caused circumstantial component, it will be shown; the standard material/product examples, such as he carved a piece of wood into a toy, can be analysed as caused possessives, whereas construals such as it turned Gibson into an international star belong to a caused semiotic type. This analysis is based on Halliday’s (1994:119ff) overview of the relational domain, but with certain elaborations and modifications. Some adjustments to his classification of relational clauses, and to the models and the associated set of roles in the circumstantial and possessive domains will be proposed. To this

A RELATIONAL ANALYSIS

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end, section 1 reviews Halliday’s non-caused relational model. The extension to the caused relationals will be made in section 2.

1. The relational domain: from semiosis to possession, from identification to attribution In SFG, three main types of process are distinguished: material, mental and relational. Material processes, which in most mainstream approaches are considered prototypical, are those that model outer experience; they are processes of ‘doing’ (e.g. run, catch, hit, work, fly, etc.). Mental processes, on the other hand, are used to express inner experience, the world inside ourselves: they are processes of sensing (e.g. like, fear, believe, see, etc.). The relationals cover the third main area of our experience: that of classifying, identifying, relating one thing to another.60 The relational domain in SFG is quite unique in that it brings together in a unified account three main areas that are traditionally often treated quite differently. More specifically, relationality is interpreted in terms of a semantic space that ranges from ‘being’ over circumstantial relations to ‘having’ (Halliday 1994:119-138; Matthiessen 1995: 297-336). Essentially, the Hallidayan model distinguishes three types of relational clause: intensive, circumstantial and possessive, and each of these comes in two modes, viz. attributive and identifying. The six possibilities are presented in Table 39.

60

For an overview of the grammatical discontinuities between the three main types, see Halliday 1994, chapter 5. The grammatical system distinguishes between these three types, for instance, in that, the unmarked tense for mental and relational processes is the present simple, unlike for material processes; clauses of mental process, unlike material or relational process, always require at least one participant to be [+ conscious]; clauses with a material process can (typically) be probed/substituted by the verb do, etc.

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Intensive

Circumstantial

Attributive Sarah is wise/ John is a teacher My story is about a shepherd boy

Identifying John is the leader The leader is John The best place is on the mat On the mat is the best place

My story concerns a shepherd boy The piano is Peter’s

The bridge spans the river The river is spanned by the bridge The piano is Peter's Peter's is the piano

Possessive Peter owns a piano Peter has a piano/ The piano A piano is owned by Peter belongs to Peter Table 39: Halliday's overview of the relational domain (1994:119).

Intensive clauses are concerned with ‘being’, as in John is a teacher and Tom is the leader. In the attributive clause, a quality – which Halliday (1994:120) labels ‘Attribute’ – is ascribed to the ‘Carrier’, John. Identifying clauses are concerned with assigning an identity to someone or something (a more accurate description will be provided in the next section). One of the main formal differences between identifying and attributive intensives, is that the latter do and the former do not reverse. John is the leader has as a reverse agnate The leader is John, with a switch between Subject and Complement – witness, for example, the change in verb form in you’re the tall one (2nd person) versus the tall one is you (3rd person) (Halliday 1967a:67, Huddleston 1984:457). However, A teacher is John, which is marginally possible as an archaic or literary form, has thematic preposing. A teacher is the marked Theme, the Subject is still John.61 The impossibility of effecting a Subject/Complement switch is a fundamental characteristic of attributives. Further, whereas the postverbal NG in identifying clauses is typically definite, most attributive clauses have either an adjective or a non-referential, typically indefinite NG. It is noteworthy that, unlike other approaches, SFG relates the attributive and identifying constructions to extended verb classes: become, stay, remain,

61

See also Declerck (1988:62-64).


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appear, look, grow into, etc. for the attributive construction, and play, mean, define, represent, imply etc. for the identifying one. For the circumstantial domain, there is a further subdivision, because the circumstantial relationship can be expressed either as a feature of the participants or as a feature of the process. An example of a circumstantial, attributive clause with the circumstance expressed by the participants is my story is about a shepherd boy. The process is one-participant be, and about a shep-herd boy is the circumstantial Attribute. In other cases, it is the process that is circumstantial, as in my story concerns a poor shepherd boy, where both the Carrier and the Attribute are NGs, but where the process expresses the circumstance. The verb can be paraphrased as ‘be+extent in time’, ‘be+matter’, ‘be+measure of price’ etc. The same holds for identifying clauses: in a sentence like the best place is on the mat, the circumstance is expressed by on the mat, in the best way is by train, by train expresses the circumstantial natu-re of the clause. The circumstance is expressed by the process in sentences such as the fair takes up the whole day or the bridge spans the river, where takes up and spans encode the circumstance: they can be paraphrased as ‘be+ for (extent in time)’ and ‘be+ (extent in space).’ As identifying clauses, they reverse: the best place is on the mat – on the mat is the best place, the fair takes up the whole day – the whole day is taken up by the fair. Note here that Halliday has from the beginning interpreted the reversibility in be-clauses as voice reversal. The examples for the intensive domain conceal this when they have be, which does not show voice in its morphology, but the passive perspective associated with a Subject/Complement switch clearly emerges when be is replaced by another verb, such as play or realize: (1) (2)

a. John is the leader. b. The leader is John. a. John plays the leader (in this movie). b. The leader is played by John.

A reversal between Subject and Complement, which shows us that this is an identifying clause, entails a change from active to passive.62 Passives like the

62 Halliday (1994: 125) notes that children use forms like well then the doctor won’t be been by anyone! in the context of playing hospitals, which reveals that they intuit the active/passive distinction behind such relational clauses.

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whole day is taken up by the fair are therefore the reverse agnates for the fair takes up the whole day, just like Hamlet is Mel Gibson is passive for Mel Gibson is Hamlet. The possessive domain is similarly structured, with a primary subdivision in identifying and attributive, and a further one between ‘possession expressed by the participants’ and ‘possession expressed by the process.’ The piano is Peter’s is analysed as possessive attribution expressed by the participants: “the thing possessed is the Carrier and the Possessor is the Attribute” (Halliday 1994:133). The category is ‘things that Peter owns’, and the piano is one instance of those things. Possession is here expressed by the postverbal participant, which is a possessive nominal group. Possession expressed by the process is illustrated by sentences like he has a piano or the piano belongs to him (Halliday 1994:133). On the identifying side, possession is expressed by the process in sentences such as Peter owns the piano or Peter possesses the piano. Notice how the piano is Peter’s is also categorized as an identifying possessive construal. This is because Halliday’s model distinguishes between an interpretation where the piano is an instance of Peter’s things and one where the piano is identified as belonging to Peter (1994:133). In the former case, when the piano has ‘something belonging to Peter’ as an Attribute, the sentence is analysed as attributive; in the latter case, when the relation between them is ‘that which Peter possesses’, it is identifying. Halliday correctly shows how the piano is Peter’s has to be disambiguated, but in section 1.2.2 some further modifications to this will be suggested. 1.1. The intensive subdomain: semiosis The intensive subdomain has, to the neglect of the other domains, been extensively discussed, both in SFG and in other approaches. The most obvious formal difference between attributive and identifying clauses is that attributive clauses have either an adjective or a (typically) indefinite NG postverbally, whereas prototypical identifying clauses have a postverbal participant realized by a definite NG. The recognition of the distinction between identifying and attributive modes is not specific to SFG, and it is also found, with with different cover-terms, in other descriptive traditions. The term ‘identifying’ by and large corresponds to ‘specificational’, ‘identificational’ and ‘equational’; and attributive clauses are


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also referred to as ‘predicational’, ‘property-assigning’, ‘qualifying’, ‘characterizational’ etc. (Declerck 1988:2-3). What is particular to SFG is the semiotic interpretation of these categories.63 Usually, the difference between attributive and identifying clauses is explained in terms of the logical models of class membership or class inclusion and identity. An attributive clause like (3) is then analysed as classifying Jason in terms of the class of ‘cowboys’: (3)

Jason is a cowboy and a damn good one too. (CB)

Identifying clauses, on the other hand, are often described as expressing identity of referents: (4)

However, at the moment, South Africa is the world’s leading gold producer. (CB)

The referent of South Africa is the same as that of the world's leading gold producer, and the latter is used to identify the former. In SFG, this logical analysis is complemented with a semiotic perspective. In general, the manifestation of semiotic relations in the clause is not a much researched area. Cognitive grammar, with its emphasis on instantiation, is one of the theories besides SFG to have drawn attention to the manifestation of semiotic relations in the clause (esp. Langacker 1991). Langacker, however, does not recognize the difference between attributive and identifying clauses, and treats them as one and the same category (1991:67). A semiotic approach overcomes some of the disadvantages that are associated with a purely logical perspective. Attributives, for instance, often contain an element expressing gradability: (5)

There’s myself, Paul McLean who is a bit of a rugby legend, Jeff McLean … (CB)

In the class-membership approach, something either is or is not a member, which makes cases like those in (5) hard to accommodate. Paul McLean seems to be more than an ordinary rugby player, but apparently he is also not so great a star as to be classified unequivocally as a star. 63

The account that will be given in the following paragraphs is based on Davidse 1992.

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As to identifying clauses, one of the problems with the ‘identity of referents’ analysis of identifying clauses is that in clauses like (6), the first NG does not really pick out a referent: (6)

(when the envelope for the Oscars is opened) And the winner is …

Declerck (1988:47) calls NGs like the winner in this example ‘weakly referential’: they are not non-referential, but they also do not allow the hearer to establish the exact referent. A further problem is that, as Declerck (1988) discusses, in an identifying clause the two NGs are not necessarily always definite and freely reversible, and that attributive clauses occasionally also have a definite postverbal NG. From the semiotic angle on the semantics of these clauses, however, all these formal and semantic ‘irregularities’ fall into place. 1.1.1. Intensive identification Halliday (1967a, 1967b, 1994) has always defended the position that identifying clauses also encode a realization dimension, besides an identifying dimension: one entity serves to identify the other by either specifying a more abstract value or giving a more concrete form for the entity to be identified. In other words, identifying clauses are also characterized by a difference in ‘coding abstraction’ between the two NGs. This dimension comes out very clearly when (prototypical) identifying sentences are contrasted with pure identity statements (Declerck 1988:110ff): (7) (8)

The morning star is the evening star. Dr. Jekyll is Mr. Hyde.

Sentences like these only serve to establish a relation of identity between the participants. In identifying sentences other than these equational, pure identity statements, however, the identifying dimension is made possible by a second, realizing dimension:


(9)

Tom

is

Identified / Value

(10) Tom Identified / Token

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the tall one. Identifier / Token

is

the clever one. Identifier / Value

Either the Identifier realizes or represents the Identified (9), or the other way round (10). The realization relation that Halliday posits between the two NGs is thus like the ‘coding relation’ in the Hjelmslevian (1969) sense. Halliday has transferred the concept of realization, which designates the relation between terms on different strata of the semiotic system, different orders of representation, to identifying clauses, as these also contain two terms on different levels of abstraction standing in a semiotic relation. Halliday therefore works with a second set of experiential functions, viz. Token and Value. The Token, on a more concrete stratum, ‘stands for’ or ‘realizes’ the more abstract Value. The linguistic model of realization is perhaps best exemplified by means of an example taken from linguistic discourse: (11) Imperative mood is indicated by the particle ‘as’. The particle ‘as’ functions as the Token, and realizes the Value Imperative mood. There is thus an asymmetrical relation between Token and Value – not in terms of Goal-directedness or causality, but in the ‘betokening’ that is expressed by verbs such as define, be, motivate, express, mean, etc. Token and Value also stand in a transitivity relation to the verb, but not as causer and caused, but as more active ‘betokener’ or ‘representing entity’ and more passive ‘betokened, represented entity’. With some corpus examples: (12) Mr Chernomyrdin is the leading dove, pushing for a peace Identified/Token

Identifier/Value

settlement (CB) (13) The meeting point is the Brisbane Forest Headquarters at The Identified/Value

Identifier/Token

Gap. (CB) Note that it is this asymmetry with respect to coding abstraction that gives rise to the possibility of a reverse agnate, with a passive coding. A clause with

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the more active, betokening Token as Subject is active (just as material clauses have the Actor as Subject in the active); a clause with the Value as Subject encodes the passive perspective, which is also clearly shown by sentences with a verb other than be. The two sets of experiential functions in identifying clauses, Identifier/Identified and Token/Value, are independent of each other, and can thus be mapped onto each other in different ways. The interaction between them leads to a different dynamics for the two ways of patterning: when the Identifier is the Token, as in (13), the more abstract entity is being ‘encoded’ in a more concrete ‘form’: the configuration Id/Vl•Ir/Tk focuses on the more concrete, actual embodiment of something. In sentences like (12), on the other hand, a more concrete entity is ‘decoded’ into a more abstract one, as the Identifier also functions as Value: here the Token is correlated with its more abstract meaning, with what it signifies. As a result, a four-cell paradigm can be drawn up with the active – passive opposition (John is the leader – the leader is John) as one vector cross-classifying with the encoding – decoding distinction as a second vector. 1.1.2. Intensive attribution A similar semiotic approach to attributives, first proposed by Davidse (1991, 1992) and later also adopted by Matthiessen (1995), elucidates the semantics of attributive clauses in terms of the model of instantiation. The problem with gradability in a class-membership approach as described above ceases to be a problem when the relation between Carrier and Attribute, the functions Halliday distinguishes for the two NGs in attributive clauses, is interpreted as a relation between instance and type as per Langacker (1991: ch.2). The basic tenet is that the intensive attributive construction expresses the categorization of a specific instance (the Carrier) in terms of a more general type (the Attribute is always the more general element). As briefly pointed out in chapters II and III, the type only specifies the basis for identifying entities as representatives of the same class. A type constitutes the general schema which has various specific instantiations, as illustrated in Figure 13.


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Type Specification

Instance Domain of Instantiation

Figure 13: Instantiation (based on Langacker 1991:69).

In Jason is a cowboy, the type cowboy is schematic for Jason: it has fewer semantic specifications and is more general. As an instance, Jason has certain correspondences with cowboy, but the categorizing relationship between type and instance does not set a specific limit. As a result, certain instances are more ‘central’ – these are the prototypical ones – whereas others are more marginal. A type, therefore, is associated with a whole range of instances with varying degrees of conformity, and this picture perfectly fits the occurrence of adverbials and adjectives indicating gradability in attributive clauses (as in (9) above). The attributive construction always expresses categorization in terms of a type, but the different coding possibilities of the Attribute show that, on a more delicate level, a number of subtypes can be distinguished. Compare the following three intensive attributives: (14) Jo is smart. (15) Gerald is a terminologist. (16) Mary is queen. In relational clauses with an adjective, such as (14), there is categorization in terms of a quality, a characteristic. As an intensive attributive construal, this sentence also expresses an instantiation relation between more schematic and more specific, but the categorization relation holds between Jo and a property.

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The difference between the second and the third example is a subtle one, dependent on the grammatical class of the postverbal element. In the second example, the Carrier is realized by a NG, in the last example by a bare noun. As a result, the instance in (15) is not compared directly to a type as such: in cases like these, the more schematic element is itself coded as an instance, yet an arbitrary one, to which the first (postverbal) instance is then said to conform. A terminologist stands for an instance of the category ‘terminologist’, but is semantically less specific than the instance Gerald, as it stands for any instance of this category. The categorization thus takes place between two instances, one of which is schematic for the other (Figure 14).

Type Specification

Instance

Instance Domain of Instantiation

Figure 14: Instance-instance categorization (based on Langacker 1991:68).

In (16), on the other hand, the Attribute is realized by a bare noun with its uninstantiated type meaning. As explained before, the difference between nouns and nominals is that the former stand for pure types, the latter for instances. In cases like (16), therefore, which are not common in English, but quite frequent in languages like French (e.g. Alain est professeur), the instance is compared to the type as such (Langacker 1991:69). In conclusion, the constructional semantics of intensive attributives can be characterized as type-instance categorization. The specific instance referred to


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by the Subject is categorized in terms of the general ‘type’ expressed by the Complement. 1.2. Circumstantials and possessives In general, the systemic literature has not paid much attention to the issue of the circumstantial and possessive models. In Notes on Transitivity and Theme, Halliday (1967a, 1967b) is mainly concerned with the intensives, and in Halliday and Martin (1981:342-343) possessives are analysed in terms of the very general Possessor and Possessed, pre-linguistic terms which, as we will see, cannot explain the ambiguities and apparent gaps in the possessive paradigm. Intriguingly, Halliday (1994) has attempted to interpret the whole relational cline in semiotic terms, viz. in terms of ‘realization’ (Token/Value), or ‘ascription’ (Carrier/Attribute). However, this semiotic interpretation of circumstantials and possessives is not substantiated with much further argumentation. In section 1.2.2, it will be shown how circumstantial and possessive clauses encode different models, and because of this, a generalization in semiotic terms such as Token and Value is less interesting. First, however, we will tackle the question whether the opposition between the two modes – identifying and attributive – in the intensive domain also extends to the circumstantial and the possessive subdomains. Halliday (correctly) extends this distinction over the whole relational continuum, but it is interesting to see how the predominant attention for the intensives tends to divert attention from what forms the basis for the distinction between the attributive and the identifying mode, viz. a difference in effectiveness. 1.2.1. Attribution and identification In intensive clauses, which are unquestionably the most studied type of relationals in SFG, the attributive/identifying opposition is accompanied by a number of formal differences. One of the more striking ones is the difference in determiner structure: attributives, as discussed above, typically have indefinite postcopular NGs, and identifying intensives normally have a definite second NG. This default marking by the determiners of the identifying/attributive

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opposition is not present in circumstantials and possessives. Consider the following short list of circumstantial and possessive sentences: Attributive:

Identifying:

My story is about a poor shepherd boy. Fred is with the doctor. Pussy is in the well. Peter has a piano. The piano belongs to Peter. The bridge spans the river. This piece of cloth veils a beautiful picture. Peter owns the piano. Peter possesses an autographed Jimmi Hendrix record.

Circumstantial and possessive attributives, these examples show us, may also have a definite second NG (Fred is with the doctor, The piano belongs to Peter) and identifying ones can also be construed with an indefinite post-verbal participant (This piece of cloth veils a beautiful picture, Peter possesses an autographed Jimmi Hendrix record). Clearly, there is no difference in determiner structure to warrant an attributive/identifying split-up in these domains. Furthermore, whereas circumstantial and possessive Attributes are realized by referential NGs, the intensive Attribute is not only indefinite, but also nonreferential (Declerck 1988:56ff). A cowboy in he is a cowboy does not pick out a discourse referent; it is not even ‘weakly’ referential (Declerck 1988:47, see also section 0). A piano in John has a piano and a poor shepherd boy in this story is about a poor shepherd boy, in contrast, are referential NGs. Thus, the referential properties of the Complements cannot be used to distinguish between an attributive and an identifying mode in the circumstantial and possessive domains. This, however, does not mean that the opposition between attribution and identification cannot be extended. From an SFG perspective, the difference in determiner structure of the Attribute can be related to the difference between intensive, circumstantial and possessive as such; the attributiveness goes back to a constructional matter that they all share. Attributives, whether they be intensive, circumstantial or possessive, are one-participant constructions with a ranged postverbal element, i.e. a pseudo-participant that indicates the scope or


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range of the process (Halliday 1994:146). This is what unifies sentences like John is a teacher, The story is about a poor shepherd boy and John has a piano, and what allows us to call them all attributive. None of these reverses because they are all one-participant construals. Identifying clauses, on the other hand, are effective structures, with two full-fledged participants, which can both become the Subject of a reverse agnate. Even in the intensive domain, attributive and identifying clauses do not merely differ in the type of postverbal constituent, but are two different constructions with different types of be: attributive clauses have intransitive be that has to be elaborated by another relational notion, whereas identifying clauses have transitive, two-participant be (Halliday 1967a, 1967b). The emphasis that is often laid on the definiteness of the identifying participants and the indefiniteness of the Attribute (e.g. Halliday 1994) has tended to obscure the basic constructional difference between identifying and attributive relationals. Once we focus on this difference in effectiveness, the commonalities and differences in the behaviour of circumstantial and possessive identifying and attributive clauses becomes more transparent. The indefiniteness of the intensive Attribute is only indirectly related to the general feature ‘attributive’ because it chimes in with the ‘categorization’ semantics of this domain (see section 1.1), so the fact that circumstantial and possessive attributives have a mixture of definite and indefinite postverbal participants does not detract from their true attributiveness, but already warns us that different semantic models underlie these domains. The non-reversibility of both possessive and circumstantial, and intensive attributives ultimately goes back to the same constructional feature, viz. that they are all one-participant structures. Similarly for the identifying side: what circumstantial construals with span, follow, etc. and possessive construals with verbs like possess, contain etc. have in common with intensive construals with represent, express, etc. is that they are passivizable two-participant structures. The identifying/attributive distinction that characterizes the relational domain, is a constructional one that is primarily related to the number of true participants. A final note concerns the categorization of verbs. As before, we can observe that verbs cannot be strictly classified as a priori instantiating one or the other process type. Consider the following sentence: (17) The fair takes up a whole day.

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Although the difference is a subtle one, a whole day can actually be interpreted in two ways, i.e. either as a referential or as a non-referential NG. In the first case, (17) could be uttered in, for instance, the context of planning a week of activities: we need two days, let’s say Monday and Tuesday, for the sports activities, and then the fair also takes up a whole day, and then on Thursday we can… In this case, the sentence is identifying – the two participants stand in an effective relation to each other – and has as a reverse agnate a whole day is taken up by the fair. In the non-referential reading, (17) could be the answer to something like how long does the Easter fair usually last? Well, usually the fair takes up a whole day. In this case, a whole day has a Rangereading: it functions as a relational element here, restating and elaborating the process, but it does not stand in an effective relationship to the other participant and the clause does not reverse. In this reading, therefore, take up functions as an attributive process. This again shows us that the lexical perspective should always be supplemented with the constructional: one verb, such as take up here, can be used in various constructions because of the ‘stretchability’ of its meaning. In order to ‘classify’ the process we cannot just look at the verb, but need to take into account the rest of the construction in which it occurs. 1.2.2. The semiosis-possession cline With the circumstantials in between the intensives and the possessives, Halliday’s topology of the relational domain suggests that the circumstantial area has links both with the semiotic and the possessive end, but most attention has gone to the intensives, and this point remains undeveloped. This section demonstrates with corpus-examples that there is a whole variety of circumstantial clauses, and it reveals that Halliday’s classification of examples in the relational topology needs to be looked at again, as it is actually based on purport, i.e. the general drift of construals (Hjelmslev 1969:52, see Introduction), rather than coded meaning. Let us start with the circumstantial domain. Circumstantial relationals do not express a relation of ‘be + something more concrete or abstract’ or ‘be + something more general’, but rather of ‘be + circumstantial relation.’ The circumstantial relation can be of various types. Some examples are:


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(18) Presently, the debate concerns a transmission line. (CB) (19) The knighthood is for his charity work. (CB) (20) Their reluctance is despite a lead from the Attorney-General. (CB) (21) The decision followed two days of legal argument. (CB) (22) On average, jury service lasts 10 days. (CB) The circumstantial relations expressed in these sentences are respectively matter (18), cause: reason (19), contingency: concession (20), location: temporal (21) and extent: temporal (22). Very prominent in the relational domain are sentences such as the following, which express a circumstantial relation of spatial location: (23) If your name is on the honor roll, (that means you have already helped the class reach the 14 participation rate.) (CB) (24) The port engine is under the galley. (CB) (25) Bugmeat, prawns and scallops top the grilled salmon steak. (CB) Because of the various types of circumstantial relations, the circumstantial area is semantically very diversified. Whereas the intensive and the possessive domains have a fairly limited, specific semantic core, the circumstantial area is much more variegated. Underlying this variety of circumstantial relations is the common feature of contiguity: despite the different instantiations, the above examples all share the expression of a relation of proximity between the two participants. There is, in a literal or metaphorical way, an aspect of nearness: in (18), for instance, there is contiguity in terms of subject-matter, in (21) in terms of temporal sequence, and in (25) in terms of place. Before moving on to the borderline between circumstantial and possessive relationality, two critical observations on the SFG conception of the circumstantial domain are in place. A first one concerns the traditional Hallidayan interpretation of relationals such as (26) and (27): (26) The best place is on the mat. (27) Tomorrow is the tenth. Halliday (1994:132) classifies these sentences as circumstantial on the basis of the PrepP on the mat and the temporal circumstantial meaning of the tenth.

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It seems to be more accurate, however, to analyse these as intensives, as the exact relation between the two participants in each case is actually not circumstantial, but semiotic (see also McGregor 1997:150fn). Let us for a moment concentrate on the relation between the best place and on the mat: unlike sentences like (28) and (29), the best place is on the mat does not express a locative relation of ‘being on’, but an intensive one of ‘being’. (28) The cat is on the mat. (29) The bugmeat, prawns and scallops top the salmon steak. (CB) The cat is actually sitting on the mat, and the bugmeat is actually on top of the salmon steak, but the best place is not sitting on the last row: the best place is the last row. The same intensive relation characterizes tomorrow is the tenth: the tenth is the more abstract Value that is accorded to the concrete day tomorrow.64 Although this remark concerns only a few sentences, it does lead us to a second, more general point. A comparison of the semantics of (26) and (27) also shows us that the SFG binary division of each of the two circumstantial modes is not completely accurate. As explained in section 1.1, Halliday (1994:119ff) distinguishes two further options: the circumstantial relationship is either a feature of the participants (the bridge is over a railway line) or a feature of the process (the bridge spans the river). It is a misrepresentation, however, to say that the expression of the circumstance is limited to one of these. In a prepositional, attributive construal, for instance, the circumstantial relation is also present in the process. A sentence such as the cat is on the mat, for example, is not based on instantiation, but on a locative schema, viz. the spatial contiguity of the cat and the mat. The form of be in this construal, therefore, is not intensive be, but locative be, which asks for a different elaboration (Langacker 1987:304; see also chapter IV). The circumstance is thus not only present in the two participants, but is likewise a feature of the process. The reverse holds for a sentence such as the fair takes up the whole day: the circum64

The claim that this sentence is circumstantial because both tomorrow and the tenth express something temporal is untenable. It is true that in certain sentences, tomorrow and/or the tenth function as circumstantial elements: I’ll visit her tomorrow and She said she’d come the tenth, but she might also arrive earlier than that. But this does not mean that tomorrow and the tenth function as circumstances in any sentence containing them. A sentence like tomorrow is the tenth encodes a relation of identity between tomorrow and the tenth, not one of temporal location: the model used is that of realization.


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stance expressed by the process is also a feature of the participants, as the participating nature of the fair and the whole day is determined by their relation to the process. We can now move on to the area where circumstantials and possessives meet. Of all the circumstantials discussed so far, examples (23) – (25) above come closest to the possessive domain. They express spatial contiguity between the pre- and the postverbal participants: the name and the honor roll, and the salmon and the bugmeat are in actual contact with each other; the engine is spatially close to the galley. As such, they also allow the following possessive reformulation: (30) The honour roll has your name on it. (31) The galley has the port engine under it. (32) The steak has bugmeat on it. Sentences (30) to (31) are not closely agnate to (23) to (25), but the fact remains that a possessive reformulation is not possible, or at least much more difficult, for semiotic (18) – (22): (33) *The debate has a transmission line in it. (34) *The charity work has a knighthood in/on it. (35) *The lead from the Attorney-General has a reluctance in/on it. The concept that is shared by construals with circumstantial and possessive purport is some sort of spatial contiguity, and construals with a locative schema obscure the border between circumstantial and possessive relationality. In his discussion of possessive relationals, Halliday (1994:134) observes that in some English dialects possession is indicated by means of the expression ‘be along o’someone,’ as in (36): (36) The piano is along o’me. The possessive purport in (36) is construed circumstantially, viz. by means of the locative schema of ‘along of’ (Davidse 2000). Although in English the locative construal is only occasionally used for possession, many other languages rely heavily on this mechanism. From a typological perspective, possession

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is frequently expressed on the basis of the locative schema (Heine 1997, Halliday 1994): (37) isal

on raamat. (Estonian)

faher+ADESS is ‘the book is at father’

(38) sεNkau

kaa

money+Pl is+at ‘money is in my hand’

(39) du

‘a

millet at ‘millet is at my body’

book+NOM Æ ‘father has a book’

n-yee-i. (Kpelle, Niger-Congo) my+hand+ LOC Æ ‘I have money’

vedo. (Gisiga, Afro-Asiatic) body+my Æ ‘I have millet’

(Heine 1997: 51, 68, 52) These clauses deal with the possession of some entity: the purport of (37), for instance, is the same as possessive ‘the book belongs to father.’ The possessive relation, however, is coded by means of a relation of spatial contiguity between the two entities. In contrast, the examples in Halliday’s relational topology (see Table 39) with the verbs have, own, possess and belong to are ‘true’ possessives. These clauses do not code the instantiation/realization model of the intensives, nor the contiguity of the circumstantial domain. Instead, the relation construed between possessor and possessed entity is a part/whole relationship, with the possessor as whole and the possessed as part (Davidse 2000). The two possessive directionalities identified above, i.e. belong to and own, link up with respectively a ‘part to whole’ and a ‘whole to part’ schema. These two directionalities are often clearly present in the lexico-semantics of the possessive verbs.65 The ‘part to whole’ directionality can be found in sentences with constitute, make up, complete, enhance etc.:

65 In this, the possessive verbs differ from intensive identifying verbs such as express, motivate, explain, etc., for which it is much harder to decide which direction (abstract to concrete, or concrete to abstract) they instantiate.


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(40) The history of conquest constitutes much of the history of the human race. (CB) (41) Michelle and partner Debbie Marr make up Queensland's topranked beach volleyball team. (CB) (42) Baked peaches, filled with crumbled amaretti biscuits, complete a relatively guilt-free menu. (CB) (43) Gradually, however, the cliques combine into larger sets Dunphy called crowds. (CB) The other direction, from whole to part, characterizes construals with contain, include, govern, control, constitute, hold, etc.: (44) The ground floor contains a third bedroom, office, rumpus room casual lounge laundry, bathroom, toilet and laundry. (CB) (45) Each pack includes a concert T-shirt (specially designed by Mambo) and two double passes to the Vibes festival. (CB) (46) Labour now controls more councils than ever before. (CB) (47) A spacious laundry has plenty of cupboards and bench space. (CB) The last example for each of the directionalities is attributive (witness its non-effectiveness), the other three are identifying.66 Note, in passing, that the identifying possessives reveal that ‘passive’ is not restricted to ‘by-passives’ as in Hamlet is played by Mel Gibson or the bridge is spanned by the river. (48) Most of the information contained in this booklet relating to jobhunting techniques […] is relevant to the new graduate. (CB) vs. This is the reality contained by the euphemism “nervous breakdown.” (CB) 66

Incidentally, note that for each of the two directionalities in the identifying constructions the possessive verbs further fall into two groups, viz. those that typically have the part as the Identifier (as in The exhibit contains 63 European works) and those that typically have the whole as Identifier, as in These programs constitute the largest theatre outreach program) This is strongly reminiscent of the encoding/decoding difference for the two identifying intensive subparadigms (Davidse 2000:31).

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(49) The great barrier reef is made up of 2900 reefs, 300 cays, 600 islands and numerous submerged reefs and shoals. (CB) vs. A net is made up by a series of knots. (CB) (50) The application must be completed with all household members and income listed. (CB) vs. The syllabus is completed by an integrated programme of courses in the theory and history. (CB) In these relational passives, the more agentive entity is not introduced by by, but by other prepositions such as in, of or with. The pattern is exactly the same as in ‘normal’ by-passives: the more patientive entity occurs clause-initially and assumes the function of Subject, the verb is marked morphologically for the passive and the more agentive entity is introduced by a preposition. Because the agentivity of relational Agents is not concerned with ‘doing’, it is also compatible with prepositions such as in or of. In (48), for instance, the agentive participant is this booklet, the ‘container’, hence the preposition in in the passive. In (50), on the other hand, the part is the agentive entity, so here the passive has with. A more extended study in the prepositions and relational passives may shed further light on this still underresearched domain. The cline-like nature of the three relational domains is further corroborated by the link-up between possession and semiosis, which completes the circle. Indeed, closer study of the constructions Halliday classifies in his possessive domain actually reveals a third way of construing possession. The construction in question is the one with ‘be + X’s’. Before turning to the underlying models, let us first examine Halliday’s analysis of sentences such as the piano is Peter’s. In section 1.1, we saw that, without further context, these are analysed as ambiguous between identifying and attributive possessive (Halliday 1994:33). The attributive analysis is fairly straightforward. Peter’s expresses a quality; it is an Attribute of the piano as Carrier. The genitive, Peter’s, can indeed function rather like an adjective: as a relational notion it inherently refers to something else, some other entity (Langacker 1991:173-174). In other words, the genitive elaborates middle be in much the same way as adjectives do. For the identifying reading, the formal argument used is that the sentence is reversible: the piano is Peter’s – Peter’s is the piano (Halliday 1994:133). However, if one claims that Peter’s is the Subject of Peter’s is the piano, i.e.


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that this is a true reversal with a Subject–Complement switch, the sentence has to be interpreted as something like the piano is Peter’s possession. This is to say that Peter’s can become Subject in a reverse agnate only when it has a nominal interpretation: Peter’s refers to an entity in this reading, not to a relation.67 Otherwise Peter’s specifies a quality of the piano, in which case Peter’s is the piano is simply the thematic preposing of the Attribute, as in wise is Sara or a merry old soul is old king Cole. But whichever way the sentence is interpreted, the underlying model is the same. When Halliday posits an identifying (possessive) analysis of the piano is Peter’s, the relation between the two NGs is not possessive, but semiotic: not a relation of ‘having’, but a relation of ‘being’. The possessive purport in attributive the piano is Peter’s is also coded by an intensive model: possession in this sentence is construed in terms of the instantiation model. It can be concluded, therefore, that irrespective of whether the piano is Peter’s is attributive or identifying, the general possessive purport results from an intensive construal. The potential of the relational continuum for more fine-grained lexicosemantic analysis of relational verbs has not been tapped much so far. Neither has it been exploited to chart metonymic and metaphorical relations between subsenses of relational verbs, either in diachronic or synchronic perspective. To get an idea of these lexicosemantic processes with verbs expressing twoparticipant relations, let us take a look at the diachronic lexical extensions manifested by imply and include on the basis of the historical data provided by the Oxford English Dictionary (henceforth OED). Obviously, these data cannot be expected to locate the emergence of patterns in the right year or even decade, but they do establish a general chronology, reflecting the attestation of patterns within time spans such as centuries or half-centuries. The original meaning of imply and include was one of material ‘enclosing’, illustrated by:

67 In Dutch, there is a clear formal difference between the relational and the nominal reading when the noun (e.g. Peter’s) is subsituted by a pronoun (his/him): De piano is van hem. The piano is of him. versus De piano is de zijne. The piano is the his-infl. In the second example, the pronoun is used substantively.

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(51) 1420 The flouryng tre, the trunke in leed Enclude. (OED) ‘The flowering tree, its trunk in lead encased’ (52) 1374 The wateres … wrappith or implieth many fortunel happis maneres. (OED) ‘The waters wrapped or enfolded many unfortunate and haples men.’ This meaning, in which one participant is a ‘container’ and the other one a ‘contained’, can be viewed as a circumstantial relation – of the same general type as mere contiguity (e.g. span, overhang), but at the same time a distinct semantic subtype. Very quickly, these verbs also began to manifest abstract part-whole meanings, as in (53) 1494 This boke Includyth Storyes fele. (OED) ‘This book includes many stories.’ (54) 1400 Hatyng to be enplihed wiþ seculer bisines … (OED) ‘Hating to be tied up with secular business’ They thus follow a path of meaning extension motivated by the metonymic relation between the container-contained and the whole-part opposition (Rudzka-Ostyn 1994:409), in which the semantic profile shifts from a physical containment relation to an abstract composition relation between parts. The shift from entities embodying contiguity relations (such as container and contained) to the profiling of abstract structures interpreting the relations between entities marks, in the analysis advocated here, the shift from circumstantial to possessive relations (where compositionality is viewed as an inanimate ‘possessive’ arrangement). Both verbs then took at least another century to develop a semiotic meaning, viz. ‘to involve or comprise as a necessary logical consequence’. (55) 1529 Two such thinges as imply contradiction … (OED) (56) 1588 [A proposition] which is contrarie to all reason, and includeth in it selfe a manifest contradiction. (OED) (57) 1660 This trading … is called Barter, derived from Barato, implying an exchange of commodities. (OED)


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Here, the extension is from containment and composition to a relation of association between ‘things’ and a meaning, or between a symbol and its value. This extension involves metaphor: whereas the entities being related in circumstantial and possessive configurations belong to the same order of reality, a representans and its representandum belong to different orders of reality, viz. that of the materiality of the sign and its symbolic meaning (Halliday 1967a). Contiguity, containment and composition are re-interpreted in the symbolic domain as representation. The semantic development of verbs such as imply and include with circumstantial, possessive and semiotic senses thus shows that the relational continuum has to be refined with the container-contained and whole-part distinctions, which form a potentially metonymic transition zone between circumstantial and possessive relations. The extension to semiotic relations is motivated by the metaphorical projection of container-contained and part-whole relations onto the two sides of the symbolic relation. Rudzka-Ostyn (1994) suggests that both metonymic and metaphorical extensions are ultimately motivated by highly schematic shared image-structures. The lexical processes discussed certainly suggest that more thought should be given to the deeper conceptual resemblances, as well as profile shifts, linking the circumstantial, possessive and semiotic ways in which nominals can participate in relational processes. In conclusion, Halliday’s relational topology is divided into three domains: intensive, circumstantial and possessive, and each of these comes in two modes. The difference between identification and attribution is a constructional one: whereas attributive clauses are ranged one-participant construals, identifying ones have two participants. This is the core that attributive and identifying in all three domains share. Further, it has been shown that intensives, circumstantials and possessives are not three well-separated types, but that this classification is a cline with interlocking models. As we will see in the subsequent sections and chapters, the semantic schemata of this relational continuum nicely capture the meaning extensions of, and metonymic and metaphorical relations between, the subsenses of the verbs in the constructions investigated here.

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2. Caused relations We are now in a position to appreciate how relationality figures in the analyses of locative, image impression and material/product construals. In order to arrive at the analyses proposed, we need to take the relational discussion one step further so as to include ‘caused relationality.’ Each of the three relational subdomains finds its counterpart in caused relational structures. The step from intensive and possessive to caused intensive and caused possessive has already been made (Halliday 1967, Quirk et al. 1985, Fawcett 1987, Davidse 1996a and 1996b). The proposal to analyse some of the constructions under investigation as caused circumstantials and to accommodate others in the intensive and possessive area completes the picture (Table 40). intensive John is a sir The door is green circumstantial The paint is on the wall The name is on the ring possessive The toy is from wood John has a car

Æ

Æ

Æ

caused intensive They made John a sir They painted the door green caused circumstantial They sprayed the paint on the wall They inscribed the name on the ring caused possessive They carved a toy from the wood They gave John a car

Table 40: Transfer of non-caused to caused relations.

The following sections deal with respectively caused intensive and possessive structures (2.1) and with the extension of caused relationals to the constructions under investigation here (2.2). In the final two chapters the constructions will be looked at in more detail. The basic tenet underlying the ‘caused relational’ analysis of the constructions is that they involve two types of transitivity. One is the transitive relation between Agent and Patient: the asymmetric relation between the causing participant, which is the source of a certain energy flow, and the caused participant. In this, this ‘event transitivity’ (Davidse 1996a:92) differs from another type of transitivity that is not concerned with the relation between a ‘doer’ and a ‘done to’, but with relations of ‘being’ and ‘having’, and is hence referred to as ‘relational transitivity’. A material sentence such as John hits the


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thief involves event transitivity, a relational sentence such as John is the thief involves relational transitivity. Caused relational constructions, it is claimed here, involve both event transitivity and relational transitivity. 2.1. Caused intensives and possessives There are various types of caused intensives. One that serves as a good starting point for our purposes is illustrated in (58): (58) They painted all the tractors green and gold. (CB) In this example, the Agent performs a process on the Patient – the eventtransitive component – which results in a relation of being between the two final participants. The clause is related to (59): (59) The tractors are green and gold. This opposition between three-term and two-term construals of ‘being’ is a systematic one in the language system; compare the following sets of examples: (60) a. We walk down to the lake, dive in to wash ourselves entirely clean. (CB) b. We are entirely clean. (61) a. The tower is built square, with other rectangular buildings huddled beneath it. (CB) b. The tower is square. The main difference between the middle (i.e. one-participant) and nonmiddle construals lies in the presence or absence of an explicit component of causation: the former construction is the non-caused agnate of the latter construction. This means that besides the obvious event-transitive component in sentences such as they painted the tractors green and gold, the analysis of this construction also involves a relational component, which in this case happens to be caused.

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Another type of caused intensive construction, which is also called the complex-transitive construction (cf. Quirk et al. 1985), is exemplified by examples (62) - (64). This construction too expresses an intensive relation between the two final constituents: (62) a. They made him a sir. (CB) b. He is a sir. (63) a. He had made her happy. (CB) b. She is/was happy. (64) a. Two nights of carousing and smoking until 6 am left Joe illprepared for a steep slope of gruelling crud. (CB) b. Joe is ill-prepared. The similarity between this type and the one with secondary predication discussed above is only partial. The basic difference between them is that whereas they painted the tractors green and gold consists of an event-transitive and a relational-transitive component, the complex-transitive is mainly concerned with relational transitivity. The relation of being between the two final participants is also one of caused being in the complex-transitives, but the process is intensive, rather than material or mental. The him in (62), for instance, is ascribed a property, it is not a ‘done to’ like the tractors in (58). The following example is ambiguous between these two possibilities: (65) She made the tea weak. (Halliday 1967a:77) Parallel to the ‘paint the tractors green’-type, a first possible interpretation is that the Agent prepares tea and does this in such a way as to have weak tea. The process is a material one and depicts the event of her making tea. However, the sentence can also be interpreted as a complex-transitive construal, for instance upon a reading in which the Agent causes the tea to become weak by adding water (Halliday 1967a:77). The sentence then does not depict the event of making tea, just like (63) above does not express that her is ‘made.’ This difference is reflected in the agnates. The complex-transitive structures, which are primarily intensive, are not proportional with a structure without Attribute, whereas the other type of caused intensive construal does have a systematic relation to an Attribute-less structure. He paints the tractors green and gold, for instance, is proportional to he paints the tractors; but he made her happy is


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not proportional to he made her. Similarly for we washed ourselves clean and he built the tower square versus it left him unprepared and they made him a sir: whereas the former are proportional to we washed ourselves and he built the tower, it left him and they made him have a completely different meaning from the complex-transitive sentences with Attribute.68 The ditransitive construction, then, has been described by a number of authors as involving the causation of a ‘have’ relation: “the action is viewed as causing the target person to HAVE something, at least potentially” (Wierzbicka 1988:365). The step from positing a semantic ‘have’ relation to positing a relational component in the transitivity structure is made by Fawcett (1987) and Davidse (1996a, 1996b), who explicitly couple this semantic observation to a grammar of possession. By analogy with the ‘caused intensives’, the ditransitive or dative construction can be reanalysed as involving a relational component, but one of caused having instead of caused being. In (66), there is an Agent – I – who causes the Patient – Dr. Martin Luther King – to have the cup of tea: (66) I gave Dr Martin Luther King a cup of tea. (CB) (67) The sheriff showed him the photograph of the double-bladed knife. (CB) (68) Bertrand taught Carmen Lawrence and Miss Doogue the virtues of honesty. (CB) Dr Martin Luther King and a cup of tea are thus the animate ‘whole’ and the ‘part’ in a possessive relation. Examples (67) and (68) illustrate that possession in the dative construction is concerned with a variety of possessive relations, including abstract and mental possession, and should not be restricted to the literal ‘have’ relation in (66).69 One of the typical characteristics of the di-

68

Another argument for the ascriptive, intensive nature of what we have referred to as complex-transitives, is the greater thematic freedom of the inherent Attribute: Halliday (1967a:64) points out that complex-transitives, but not clauses with a non-inherent Attribute, allow the Attribute to be fronted as marked Theme and to occur in clefts, just like core intensive clauses. This is a less sharp distinction, however, as there is no straightforward pattern of acceptance. 69 Wierzbicka, for instance, interprets the ‘have’ relation only in the literal sense, and objects to a ‘loose’ interpretation of possession (e.g. perception, verbalization), unlike other linguists such as Green (1974), Davidse (1996a, 1996b), Heine (1997), McGregor (1997), etc.

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transitive construction is that it participates in the “dative alternation”, which means that either the Dative or the Patient can occur postverbally: I gave a cup of tea to Dr Martin Luther King, the sheriff showed the photograph to him, etc. The idea of extending a relational analysis from the class of non-caused relational clauses to clauses involving a component of causation is thus not novel. It has been convincingly applied to complex-transitive clauses, clauses with secondary predication and ditransitive clauses. 2.2. A caused relational continuum Locative, image impression and material/product constructions can be analysed along lines parallel to the ditransitive and complex-transitive constructions, as the Agent causes a specific relation between the two non-agentive participants. The main difference lies in the type of relation. With reference to the continuum of intensive, circumstantial and possessive relations, locative and image impression constructions construe caused circumstantial relations involving various forms of typically spatial contiguity. The locative constructions, more particularly, also have some extensions to caused possessive relations. The relations for the material/product constructions can be situated in the (inanimate part/whole section of the) possessive area and the intensive domain. The discussion of the constructions in the previous sections opens up the way for a similar relational analysis of the locative, material/product and image impression constructions: just as they in they painted the tractors green causes a relation of “being” between tractors and green, and I in I gave him a cup of tea causes a relation of “having” between him and a cup of tea, so do the locative, image impression and material/product constructions express how an Agent causes a relation of “being on”, “being from” etc. between the two final participants. The Agent performs an action on the Patient (the event-transitive component), and this results in a relation between the Patient and the other non-agentive participant. As a matter of fact, Fawcett (1987:137,155) already proposed a caused locational analysis for locative constructions such as the following: (69) He was throwing stones at the bridge.


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However, Fawcett views these constructions as purely relational – which clouds the distinction between, for example, types of caused relations with a material process, such as (69), and those with an intensive process, like the complex-transitives discussed in section 2.1. As this shows, the distinction between various types of transitivity (material, mental and verbal) should be preserved. In the analysis of three-participant constructions, this distinction captures the domain in which the process is being ‘carried over’ (Hopper and Thompson 1980:251) from Agent to Affected. The most specific dimension of semantic classification for these three-participant constructions, however, is the relation effected between patient and oblique – and in this, the analysis proposed here is in line with Fawcett’s. With such an analysis, the differences and similarities between a number of constructions with a caused relational component can be brought to the fore in a systematic and economical way. In the last two chapters, we will go into more detail about the exact types of relations involved; suffice it here to say that for the locative and image impression constructions, the circumstantial relation is generally speaking one of being on/in for the construction with the Locatum as Goal, and of being under/with/around something for the construction with the Location as Goal: -

He sprayed paint on the wall: he sprayed paint and paint is ‘on’ the wall. He sprayed the wall with paint: he sprayed the wall and the wall is ‘under’ or with’ paint. He stuffed the pencils in the jar: he stuffed the pencils and the pencils are ‘in’ the jar. He stuffed the jar with the pencils: he stuffed the jar and the jar is ‘around’ or ‘with’ the pencils. He inscribed the name on the ring: he inscribed the name and the name is ‘on’ the ring. He inscribed the ring with the name: he inscribed the ring and the ring is ‘with’ the name.

The precise forms of contiguity epxressed in locatives, as well as the meaning extensions found in certain contruals, will be covered in the last chapter. The material/product constructions, then, typically express a

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possessive relation of being from or being part of or, as will be discussed in the next chapter, one of being: -

He builds a stack from those sheaves: he built a stack and the stack is ‘out of’ those sheaves. He builds those sheaves into a stack: he did something to those sheaves and they make up a stack. He built BU into a national institution: he did something to BU and now it is a national institution.

Just like, for instance, what he does to the paint is spray it is agnate to he sprays the paint, so is he sprays the paint and the paint is on the wall an agnate for he sprays paint on the wall, as the concept of agnation involves all systematically related structures with the same main vocabulary items. Note how Gleason himself (1965:204), in a discussion of the evidence for the grammatical difference between the new house and the school house, explicitly mentions that the house which is new vs. *the house which is school are more than paraphrases of the meaning of the two NGs, but are actually agnate (or non-agnate) constructions that by their presence or absence reveal something about the meaning. In the case of he sprays paint and paint is on the wall and he sprays paint on the wall, the main vocabulary items are the same, and – just as importantly – this is not a “unique relation between isolated pairs of sentences” (Gleason 1965:202), but holds for all sentences that are enate with he sprays paint on the wall. What these agnates show us is that there are indeed two grammatico-semantic components: a ‘doing to’ Agent-Patient unit and a ‘being’ Patient-Oblique unit. In keeping with the particular lexical classes associated with the different slots and the polysemy in the verb as discussed in chapter IV, the labels ‘caused dispersion’ and ‘caused filling/coverage’ will be used for the locatives and ‘caused semiosis’ and ‘caused distortion’ for the image impression constructions. Material/product examples such as he carved a piece of wood into a toy and he carved the toy out of a piece of wood can be called ‘caused transformation’ and ‘caused creation.’ In the following chapter, a finer distinction within the material/product constructions will be made, and ‘caused creation’ / ‘caused transformation’ will be further discussed. A final matter that needs to be addressed in a description of locative, image impression and material/product constructions as involving a caused relational


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component, is the matter of mode. Is it possible to determine whether the relation between the two non-agentive participants is attributive or identifying? The facts seem to suggest that only for caused intensives ‘attribution’ and ‘identification’ can be meaningful, but that for the circumstantials and possessives the distinction is tenuous. From the previous discussion it has become clear that the basic difference between the two modes is connected with effectiveness, which manifests itself in whether or not a Subject/Complement switch is possible. Importantly, however, when we take the step to caused constructions, reversibility no longer works as a formal ‘test.’ Unlike the Subject/Complement switch with non-caused relationals, a reversal of the two relational participants in a caused construction involves a shift in Patient, which means that the potential polysemy of the verb has to be taken into account. Whereas a Subject/Complement switch for Alec Guinness plays Smiley corresponds to a passive and thus has the same Patient (Smiley is played by Alec Guinness), the reversal of he sprayed paint on the wall involves a shift from paint to the wall as Patient. The (material) verb may not be compatible with the other relational participant as Patient, as in the case of dribble. In this case, non-reversibility tells us something about the array of verb-senses rather than about the relation between the two non-agentive participants. Furthermore, the relation between the two non-agentive participants in the caused constructions is not mediated by a process.70 For the non-caused rela-

70 The relation between the two non-agentive participant in the constructions under investigation is somewhere in between static and processual. Relations, which can be coded congruently in both a temporal and an a-temporal way (Davidse 1991:169ff), are commonly realized by both NGs/PrepPs and clauses: president Bush vs. Bush is the president, the boy in the bush vs. the boy lives/is in the bush. Constructions such as he sprays the wall with paint, she inscribes the names in the ring and he carved this statue from marble seem to stand halfway between the two congruent relational codings:

atemporal The paint on the wall The names on the ring The statue of marble

He sprays paint on the wall She inscribes the names on the ring He carved the statue from marble

Temporal The paint is on the wall The names are on the ring The statue is from marble

Unlike in the constructions in the third column, the relational component in the middle column is not expressed by a verb. On the other hand, the relation is also not a static one, as for the constructions in the first column: with paint in the second column, for example, is related to the

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tionals, the ‘ranged’ relation between the relational participants in the attributive and the effectiveness of the identifying construals is partly expressed by the verb. For example, a verb such as own is used in an effective construction, whereas a verb such as have is used in a ranged construction As we saw above, there is an interdependent relation between process and construction, and the particular verb that is chosen (with its constructional potential) plays an important role. In the caused constructions under investigation, however, the relation between the two relational entities is not encoded by means of a verb. It is a feature of the participants and the construction, but there is no verb to reali-ze the process, nor is there a hint of a deleted verb (i.e. no analysis of they made him into a star as ‘based on’ they made that he turned into a star). In other words, there is no formal evidence – nor any descriptive advantage – for positing one construction with an effective and one with a ranged relational component. The only exception is the caused intensives. In the intensive domain, mode is further marked by typical patterns in determiner structure and a difference in referentiality of one of the participants. The non-referentiality of the intensive Attribute is a characteristic that in the caused construction provides a formal clue as to the nature of the relation between the two relational participants. In they made him a sir, for instance, a sir is clearly a non-referential NG. The attributiveness also clearly shows in the semantics: a sir stands for the category of which he was made a member. Although caused attribution seems to be more frequent, identification is also possible, esp. with verbs expressing symbolization: (70) We have called this state of mind “Physical Intelligence.” (CB) (71) Marx had defined primitive accumulation as the process whereby producers are alienated from their means of production. (CB) Rather than providing the type of which the postverbal participant is an instan-ce, the other non-agentive participant provides the symbolic correlate. The above examples also illustrate the encoding-decoding opposition in the caused domain. The second example is a decoding one, where the term primitive accu-mulation is further explained. The Token, the concrete term, is here identified by its Value, by what it means. In the first sentence, on the other continuous series of component states of the spraying, whereas with paint in the first column is not associated with a dimension of time.


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hand, a phenomenon that has just been described is given an appropriate label. Here the Value is identified in terms of the Token. These examples thus provide the caused parallel for what Davidse (1992a:119) labels the ‘explanatory’ definition (realized by decoding clauses) and the ‘terminological’ definition (realized by encoding clauses) for non-caused intensives. Caused identification, however, is less common than caused attribution, as most caused intensives seem to express a recategorization of some kind, a matter that needs to be studied further (see also next chapter). The attributive/identifying opposition thus becomes tenuous in the caused relational domain. For circumstantials and possessives, there is no formal or semantic correlate with the attributive/identifying distinction as there is in the non-caused constructions, so little can be gained by imposing the distinction there as well. Only for caused intensives can the distinction be maintained. Here, some construals express realization (with two referential and typically definite non-agentive participants), but most seem to be concerned with instantiation (with one typically indefinite non-referential participant).

3. Conclusion Let us, by way of conclusion, fit in the various caused constructions in the modified version of Halliday’s relational topology. Some of the constructions under investigation are semantically closer to the semiotic end, with its opposition between instantiation and realization, whereas others involve spatial contiguity and part/whole relations, which brings them to the circumstantialpossessive end. The scheme in Table 41 visualizes the location of the constructions in question within the semantic space of intensive, circumstantial and possessive relations. As emerges from this overview, the locative, image impression and material/product constructions involve all three domains in Halliday’s topology. Both the locative and the image impression constructions express spatial contiguity relations between the ‘applied’ Locatum or Image and the Location, which places them in the circumstantial domain. This picture will actually be fleshed out in the final chapter, where we will see that the actual language data show more variety than this. The situation of the material/product constructions is somewhat more complex, as two subtypes can be distinguished: some express part/whole relations and belong in the possessive end, others express

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caused

semiotic

He is a sir. BU is a national institution. Shell is the number one oil company.

They made him a sir Silber has promised to use the managerial skills, which helped build BU into a national institution. They built Shell into the number one oil company in the world.

The name is in the book. The graphics are on the box. The ashes are all over the land.

I will have your name inscribed in the chapel's book of remembrance. A box decorated with Monty Python-type surreal graphics. We'll scatter Andre's ashes over his ranch and raise a toast to our beloved friend.

The house consists of stones. The sheaves are part of the stack. He has a car. His children own all the silver

Many of the houses had been built from stones removed from the ruins of the Ma'rib dam. They built the sheaves into stacks.

possessive

non-caused

circumstantial

instantiation and involve the semiotic end. In the next chapter, the semantics of these constructions will be discussed in detail, but it will be clear that they can only be done justice by invoking both semiotic and locative/possessive schemata.

They gave him a car. He bequeathed all his silver to his children

Table 41: The constructions in the semantic space of circumstantial relations.

CHAPTER VI THE MATERIAL/PRODUCT CONSTRUCTIONS

The material/product constructions have not been discussed as extensively as the locative alternation, which is quite unjustified in consideration of the grammatico-semantic diversity that characterizes them. Material/product construals generally seem to have been treated uniformly in the literature, although examples like (1) and (2) differ from (3) and (4) in that they instantiate distinct schemas in the relational domain: (1) (2) (3) (4)

Silber has promised to use the managerial skills, which helped build BU into a national institution. (CB) They built Shell into the number one oil company in the world. Many of the houses had been built from stones removed from the ruins of the Ma'rib dam. (CB) They built these stacks from the sheaves we gathered yesterday.

The difference between the two main types links up with the different types of Material noted in chapter IV: on the one hand, the Material that becomes a component part of the Product and on the other, the Material that is ascribed a new quality or identity. After the discussion of the relational domain in the previous chapter, it will be clear that the material/product construction with the ‘part of’ Material is related to the possessive end, whereas the material/product construction with the other type of Material links up with the intensive end, with its instantiation and realization models. In other words, the ‘material/ product construction’ covers two different types: an intensive one, with caused attribution, as in they built BU into a national company, and a caused possessive one that instantiates a part/whole schema, as in they built the stacks from sheaves. This shift involves metaphor, both on the caused relational continuum as such (with the relations between parts and resulting whole being re-interpreted

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as one of instance and (new) type), and in the semantics of the verbs manifesting this shift. Notice how again this offers an interesting backdrop against which to interpret diachronic semantic changes. Turn, for instance, designated abstract transformation, i.e. a caused intensive relation, from the 12th century on, as in (5)

1175 Petrus wes fisxere þene iturnde þe ilcan godes gast to apostle. (OED) ‘Peter was a fisherman whom the Representative of everyone’s God turned into an apostle’.

well before it came to designate the fashioning of objects on a lathe, i.e. a caused part-whole relation, in the 14th century, as in (6)

1305 The pilers of that cloistre alle beth i-turned of cristale. (OED) ‘The pillars of that cloister have all been fashioned from crystal.’

However, it seems likely that some contemporary ‘abstract transformation’ uses of turn are interpreted as metaphorized uses of material/product examples such as (6).

1. The semiotic type: instantiation and realization models Of the construction types discussed in this study, the construction illustrated by examples (1) and (2) is semantically closest to the semiotic end of the relational domain. In the overview at the end of the previous chapter (Table 41), it was placed in the intensive domain. Despite the syntagmatic similarity between this construction and the one illustrated by (3) and (4), they are distinguished by a number of fundamental semantico-grammatical differences. One of the characteristics of the construction-type discussed in this section is that it comes very close to the complex-transitives, with which it can systematically be replaced. For (1) and (2) above: (7)

Silber has promised to use the managerial skills, which helped make BU a national institution.

THE MATERIAL/PRODUCT CONSTRUCTIONS

(8)

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They made Shell the number one oil company in the world.

The reason for this close affinity between the complex-transitive and material/product constructions is that they both express a process of ascription: BU and Shell are attributed the labels ‘a national institution’ and ‘the number one oil company.’ Therefore, this type of material/product sentences has been classed with the intensives rather than with the circumstantials. Although Halliday (1994:130) hesitates between the categories intensive and circumstantial to classify construals such as (9) and (10), the semantics of the sentence clearly link up with the intensives: (9) Caterpillars turn into butterflies. (10) You’ll turn into a real terror. The PrepP into a real terror might suggest a circumstantial analysis, but a real terror, which is non-referential, stands for the type of which you becomes an instance in very much the same way as a teacher in John is/becomes a teacher. The cut-off point between intensives and circumstantials should thus be drawn before this construal type, giving priority to the functional arguments. As a consequence of the ascriptive nature of these material/product sentences, the process involves mostly a metaphorical, less material subsense of the verb in this type of clause. 1.1. Indefinite Products Let us start the discussion with construals like (1), with an indefinite Product. The claim that will be developed over the next paragraphs is that the intensive relational component in sentences like these is of the attributive type. Some further examples: (11) It’s the party’s intention to transform Britain into a land of bliss through transcendental meditation, yogic flying and spirituality. (CB) (12) (The mentality of Barcelona is to attack us and while) I wouldn’t want to be building them into monsters, (there’s no doubt Romario and Stoichkov have proved themselves at the highest level.) (CB)

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(13) (There are numerous health-care proposals backed by different lawmakers.) The challenge is to mold them into one affordable package acceptable to the Democrats in Congress and Clinton. (CB) (14) What turned McVeigh into a homicidal maniac was a combination of disillusionment with military life and the armed assault on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, by federal agents in April 1993. (CB) The reason for using the label ‘attributive’ is that examples like (1) and (11) – (14) express the categorization of one entity in terms of something more schematic. In (1), for instance, BU is construed as an instance of the more schematic category ‘national institution’. Similarly for the other examples: the relation between Britain, them and McVeigh on the one hand, and a land of bliss, monsters and a homicidal maniac is one of instantation. These NGs are all nonreferential, just like the Attributes in non-caused clauses such as he is a cowboy (see chapter V). They are also systematically related to attributive non-caused intensives: (15) (16) (17) (18) (19)

BU is a national institution. Britain is a land of bliss. They are monsters. It is one affordable package. McVeigh is a homicidal maniac.

In keeping with Halliday’s analysis of they found her attractive (1967a:75), the postverbal and clause-final participants can be analysed as follows: (20) They built BU Carrier

into a national institution. Attribute

One of the differences between these material/products and they found her attractive is the type of categorization. In the above sentences, the Product, which is the more schematic element in the categorizing relation, is not an adjective; instead, the instantiation reading is coded by indefinite nominals such as a national institution. This means that the type specified by the head and its non-determining modifiers is instantiated and grounded as ‘not uniquely appa-


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rent to speaker and hearer’: a grounds the type as presumed not known to the hearer (Langacker 1991:103).71 In other words, the instantiation relation is construed in terms of the first instance (BU) conforming to an arbitrary instance of the type specified by the second instance (a national institution). A national institution thus stands for any instance of the type ‘national institution.’ Constructions with a bare noun as Product are also possible: (21) The death of her father turned her into queen of England at age 16. In this case, the specific instance referred to is categorized directly in terms of a type: unlike a national institution, which is an instantiated nominal, queen is just a noun expressing type specification (Langacker 1991:69, see also chapter V). Examples of this type of Attribute are king and queen, pope, president, but also less ‘official’ roles such as sexiest man in Brad, once voted sexiest man alive, split from Sliding Doors star Gwyneth Paltrow last year (CB). Such role specifications are relatively infrequent, and occur mostly in non-caused intensives such as Charles is prince of Wales or, when the attribution of the role is clearly caused, in complex-transitives with verbs like vote or elect. Further, just as generic non-caused attributives can express subkind-kind relations (22), so can these caused attributive constructions (23): (22) Koalas are marsupials. (23) HBO have proved they can build fighters into world stars. (CB) The Carrier is here realized by a generic NG designating a set of non-specific instances (Langacker 1991:70). In the case of non-caused attributives, the subkind this evokes is further categorized in terms of a higher-order kind. Caused attributives are very similar, with the difference that the subkind is made to conform to the schema: in (22) Koalas are categorized in terms of the more general kind marsupials; in (23) the Agent causes fighters to become categorized in terms of the kind world stars. Also, as attributive structures, these configurations can be expected to be gradable: gradability, as we saw in chapter V, is typical of attributive clauses

71 Langacker explains the non-referentiality of indefinite instances such as these by referring to the fact that they are “conjured up” for an immediate purpose, but have no status outside the mental space thereby created (1991:104).

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(Declerck 1988). In the case of the semiotic material/product construction, there is a relation of categorization, or (since we are dealing with caused attribution) a relation of re-categorization of the Carrier in terms of the Attribute, and this re-categorization relation should be presentable as successful or not. In other words, since the conformity between Carrier and Attribute can be presented as total or partial, it should also be possible to construe the Carrier in these caused constructions as becoming either a prototypical or non-prototypical member of its schema. And indeed clauses such as (11) and (12) above can be adapted as follows: (24) They’ve turned Britain into quite a land of bliss. (25) He’s built Romario into something of a monster. The possibility of adding a gradable element in (11) and (12) is further evidence for the attributive nature of these clauses. In short, material/product clauses of the type build BU into a national institution have the fundamental characteristics of an attributive clause: semantically they express the ascription of a general ‘label’ to a more specific participant; formally they are gradable constructions with a non-referential Product/Attribute. 1.2. Definite Products Although less frequently, semiotic material/product sentences also occur with a definite Product. Other examples, besides they built Shell into the number one oil company in the world, are: (26) I’m going to build my company into the biggest fastfood chain in the country. (CB) (27) [The council is anxious to develop Tweed Heads as a family holiday destination and fears] the legislation will transform it into the sex capital of the north. (CB) (28) Former owner Frank Hassy built his Music Centre into the “hippest place” in Liverpool. (CB)


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Quite often, the definite article accompanies a superlative, as in (26) and (28), but a non-superlative NG as in (27) is also possible. From the SFG perspective on relational clauses as set out in the previous chapter, the step to regard these as the identifying counterpart of attributive they built BU into a national institution would seem to be the most natural one. The most typical realization of Attributes, as discussed earlier, is an adjective or an indefinite NG, whereas identifying clauses typically have two definite participants. Semiotic material/products with a definite Product, therefore, at first sight seem to be the caused counterpart of non-caused identifying clauses such as John is the leader, with the definite Product circumscribing a particular portion of the spatio-temporal domain for the identification of the Material (or vice versa). However, none of the corpus attestations of material/products with a definite Product expresses the identification of one participant in terms of a more concrete or abstract other participant. Instead, the analysis proposed here for these is one of caused attribution. A definite realization of the Product does indeed not necessarily lead to a caused identifying analysis of the above material/ product sentences, as there is no straightforward one-to-one relation between definiteness and identification. In the more detailed descriptions of intensive clauses (e.g. Halliday 1967, Higgins 1976, Declerck 1988, Davidse 1991), attribution with a definite Attribute is also recognized as an option for non-caused intensives:72 (29) I am not the king of France. (Declerck 1988:59, 92) (30) My brother is the optimist in the family. Both these examples can receive an attributive reading. The definite postverbal group in these sentences does then not provide identification for the pre-

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Halliday (1967a:68-69) had already noted that John is the leader is actually ambiguous between an identifying (Who’s John? – John’s the leader) and an attributive (Why should we follow John? – Because John’s the leader) reading. In the first contextualization, the leader answers a question about the identity of John, in the second it specifies an quality, an attribute of John. This difference in interpretation is coupled to a difference in referentiality of the postverbal NG: in the first case the leader is referential, in the second it is not. Also notice that in the first, identifying interpretation, the sentence reverses: Who’s John? The leader’s John; whereas there is no reversibility for the second interpretation: Why follow John? *Because the leader is John (Halliday 1967a:68-69).

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verbal one, but specifies a property. The King of France and the optimist in the family do not serve to establish the identity of I or my brother, but predicate something of the preverbal participant (for further discussion, see Declerck 1988:55). Although adjectives and indefinite NGs are more common, examples such as these illustrate that it is certainly also possible for definite NGs to function as Attribute, rather than as elements in an identifying relationship. Declerck (1988) has made an important contribution to the debate on attributives by pointing out that definite Attributes “normally require that the subject NP should refer to the whole set of entities characterized by the property in question” (1988:60). Here we can again refer to the inclusiveness implicature of the definite article, i.e. the implicature that all the relevant entities in the context are included (Declerck 1986:29, see chapter III). For singular Carriers, this means that they make up the one-member class specified in the Attribute NG: for instance, (30) implicates a unique correspondence between the referent of my brother and the type implied by the optimist in the family. It is the notions of one-member class and unique correspondence – rather than identification – that provide the key to a correct understanding of intensive material/product construals with a definite Product. Verbs such as build, transform, carve, etc. express the recategorization of the Material in terms of the Product. The definiteness of the Products the number one oil company and the sex capital of the north in the above material/product examples is a sign of the fact that the Carrier is the only instance that conforms to the property or type expressed by the Attribute. For instance, a clause such as they built Shell into the number one oil company expresses that it is Shell, and not any other company, that can be characterized as the number one oil company. This uniqueness is often concretely visible in the lexis: number one, for example, implies that there is only one instance, and capital also expresses uniqueness in its referent. Furthermore, the context in which the uniqueness holds is quite often explicitly mentioned by means of endophora, as in (the sex capital) of the north, (the biggest fastfood chain) in the country, (the hippest place) in London. The many superlatives can be explained from the same perspective. It was noted in the previous chapter that the instantiation model of attributives accounts for the gradability of the Attribute. Remember in this context examples such as he is a bit of a rugby legend (following the instantiation model, the Carrier/instance can exhibit various degrees of conformity to the type). It is examples such as the following that make the link with superlatives:


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(31) The policy holder can get a price that is a better reflection of the amount invested. (CB) The superlative is the next step – and at the same time the logical endpoint – in the gradability: (32) The policy holder can get the price that is the best reflection of the amount invested. The best reflection of the amount invested stands for a one-member class, as there can only be one entity that complies with this description. By their nature, superlatives code a unique correspondence between the Carrier and the type specified by the Attribute.73 The same holds for superlative Products: (33) They are the ones that have built up British racing into the best in the world. (CB) (34) By the end of two weeks, Autumn had shaped the apartment into the cosiest nest he’d ever seen. These examples express that the only instances that conform to the best in the world and the cosiest nest he’d ever seen are the Materials British racing and the apartment. Superlatives and other definite Products in most material/product construals thus do not serve to establish the identity of one or other participant, but rather to predicate a specific characteristic that is unique to that participant. In this respect, also notice how the question associated with semiotic material/product construals is what, even with Products describing human beings: (35) She is the best businesswoman in Flanders. a. What is she? b. Who is she? (36) He built her into the best businesswoman in Flanders. a. What did he build her into? b. ??Who did he build her into?

73 This is not to say that all intensive relationals with a superlative are attributive; only that an attributive reading is possible for definites like these.

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Declerck (1988:57) describes how what, and not who, is used when we want to describe a property (and not identity). As the comparison above shows, noncaused (35) is ambiguous: it has associated with it both the question related to an identifying (who?) and to an attributive clause (what?). Caused relational (36), on the other hand, only has the question pointing to an attributive construal (what?). As further illustration, consider example (26) again, with more context: (26)’ “What about when this is over? What will you do then? You’re going to be damned lonely.” No, I don’t think so. When this is over, I’m going […] to build my company into the biggest fast food chain in the country. (CB) Rather than being about the identity of my company, the speaker uses this construal to specify how she wants to see her company characterized. The more likely interpretation of the biggest fast food chain in the country is not that of Identifier/Value in an attempt to provide identification for the company, but as an Attribute to the company, because the conversation is more about what will characterize the company – ‘what will it be like’ – than about its identity. Widening the scope by including the possibility of definite Attributes, therefore, is necessary to fully understand and describe the semantics of the material/product clauses in (26) to (28) above. As a reinforcement of this claim, consider the verbs involved in the semiotic material/product type. In the previous chapter, examples of caused identification (such as (37)) were briefly discussed: (37) [When Premier Wayne Goss was asked to name a hibiscus he thought of his mum] - and named it Norma Josephine. (CB) The verbs involved in caused identification are verbs of naming, symbolization and definition. Caused identification means fixing a ‘symbolic’ or ‘realization’ relation. The verbs in material/product construals, however, express some kind of recategorization. Transform, forge, build etc. differ from verbs such as name, define, call etc. in caused construals, in that they do not specify two symbolic correlates, but describe the addition of a quality or characteristic, so that the Material comes to be redescribed by the label expressed by the Pro-


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duct (notice also how the Product often contains property-describing elements such as biggest, hippest or cosiest). Further, these Products are also non-referential, although this is much harder to prove than for the non-caused Attribute, since most of the relevant tests only hold for non-caused, indefinite NGs (see e.g. Declerck 1988 for an extensive overview of possible markers of non-referentiality in relational construals). One important indication is the fact that it is possible to add an attributive nonrestrictive relative clause to the Product, as in the following example: (38) He’s accepted the task of converting the nearby Mockbee Building into the city's most attractive venue, which it certainly is not now. Such relative clauses typically only depend on non-referential antecedents (Declerck 1988:57-58): in the case of a referential NG, adding such an attributive relative clause is impossible/much more difficult: (39) *I saw a (certain) murderer, which you are not. (Declerck 1988:58) Also note the difference in anaphoric potential between a definite semiotic and a definite part/whole material/product construal. In the following part/ whole example, the (referential) Product can be referred to by means of an anaphorically used personal pronoun: (40) They built the sheaves into stacks. They were left to dry on the field. (41) Philip [deftly kindled the fire and] kneaded the barley-meal into two cakes. They looked delicious In the following two examples, however, it can only refer back to Shell in (42) and Tweed Heads in (43), not to the number one oil company and the sex capital of the north in the PrepPs: (42) They built Shell into the number one oil company. It is located on the east bank of the Hudson. (43) They transformed Tweed Heads into “the sex capital of the north”. It is riddled with sex shops and brothels.

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Although the value of relative clauses and anaphoric reference as tests for referentiality is limited, the above observations are again indicative of the attributive nature of definite Products. On the basis of all the previous, consequently, the definite material/product examples quoted above can be considered caused attributives. The possibility of caused identifying construals is not excluded, but is restricted to very specific contexts. Identifying complex-transitives, for instance, can be found in the context of role-casting, which is by nature concerned with representation and ‘standing for.’ (44) They made Gene Wilder Dr. Frankenstein (and Marty Feldman his servant). (45) Who did they make Gene Wilder? / Who did they make Dr. Frankenstein? Identifying material/product construals are even more rare. They occur in contrastive contexts with tonic prominence on the Material, and a referential Product. A – made-up – example of an identifying material/product construal is the following: (46) Who’s the winner? Well, Jones’s disqualification has just turned Gary into the champion in the contest. The Material, Gary, bears a marked, contrastive stress. It serves as Identifier for the champion in the contest: it is the participant whose identity needs to be fixed in order to bring about identification for the champion in the contest. This latter nominal, which links up with the winner, is what Declerck (1988:56) calls ‘weakly referential’, i.e. although the NG does not allow the hearer to pick out the right person, it does refer to someone (see also chapter V). Due to the interplay between the Identifier/Identified and the Token/Value configuration, we can also recognize the two different coding possibilities in these caused relations. In the case of (46), the relational component is of the encoding type, i.e. the more abstract Value “the winner of the contest” is identified by the more concrete Gary. But although some material/product construals can be analysed as caused identifying relations, most of them express caused attribution: the Agent’s ac-


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tion causes a recategorization of the Material in terms of the one-member type specified by the Product. 1.3. Alternation and reversibility Finally, let us take a look at the alternation-possibilities of the semiotic type of material/product sentences, and further also contemplate the relation between this as a characteristic of caused relationals and the reversibility criterion to distinguish non-caused identifying and attributive sentences. Unlike most of the part/whole material/product sentences, the semiotic type does not often occur in the construction with the Product as Patient. In general, clauses with verbs that do not alternate in the part/whole type, such as transform, behave in the same way in the semiotic type and do not alternate. However, also for the verbs that do alternate in the part/whole type (such as build), alternation in the semiotic type is much more restricted and usually very marked. The frequency of semiotic constructions with a nominal Product followed by a prepositional Material in the corpus is almost zero; almost all semiotic material/products occur in the into-form. As we will see in the next section, this is in marked contrast with the part/whole type of material/product clauses. The only exception are material/product construals with make, which alternate much more freely (cf. it made him into a star – it made a star of him), but on the whole make behaves rather differently from the rest of the verbs, as it also occurs in the complex-transitive construction (they made her a star), which is impossible for most of the other material/product verbs (*they build her a star, * they transformed her a star).74 With most material/product construals of the semiotic type, a prerequisite for alternation seems to be that the Product is indefinite: (47) a. They built BU into a national institution. b. They built a national institution of BU. (48) a. He’s accepted the task to build his father’s old paint factory into a financially viable enterprise.

74 The greater alternation potential for construals with make seems to go hand in hand with the greater generality of the lexical semantics of this verb.

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b. He’s accepted the task to build a financially viable enterprise of his father’s old paint factory. (49) a. The skillful blacksmith forged the magic metals into a spear. b. The skillful blacksmith forged a spear from the magic metals. When the Product is definite, alternation seems more difficult: (50) They built Shell into the number one oil company. *They built the number one oil company of Shell. (51) I’ll build my company into the biggest fastfood chain in the country. *I’ll build the biggest fastfood chain in the country of my company. This reluctance to alternate seems to be partly caused by the heaviness of the Product NG,75 which is clause-final in the into-variant, but precedes the shorter, “lighter” Material in the variant with the Product as Patient in (50) and (51). The following sentence, which has an equally heavy Material, is perhaps more acceptable: (52) I’ll build the biggest furniture company in the country of the small wood-manufactory my grandfather left me. Still, examples like (52) are marked and in any case very infrequent. All these observations show us that there is no connection between alternation – which amounts to the reversal of Product and Material – and reversibility as diagnostic for mode (attribution vs. identification). The fact that a material/product clause allows the reverse order of the participants in the alternate does not mean that it is identifying, as we saw in examples such as (47) or (48) above. Another, similar example of a caused attributive with an alternate coding is (53): (53) a. The Graduate (1967), the movie that made Dustin Hofmann into a star.

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Remember that the context for the exclusiveness associated with the definite Product is often explicitly mentioned in this NG, in this way making it a heavy NG.


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b. The Graduate (1967), the movie that made a star of Dustin Hoffman. (CB) The inapplicability of the reversibility-criterion, however, is not wholly surprising. One of the factors that prohibits reversal of Carrier and Attribute in core relationals is the Attribute’s non-referentiality. As non-referential Complement, the Attribute cannot function as Subject, which is required to be referential (Keenan 1976:317).76 Reversing the two relational units in caused relationals, however, does not involve Subject-status: the alternations in the above sentences do not turn the Attribute into a Subject. Both caused and non-caused attributive relations share the non-referentiality criterion, but only in the noncaused attributives does this lead to non-reversibility.77 In sum, for the semiotic material/product type, alternation is restricted. Still, some of the clearly attributive constructions do have an alternate with the Product realized by a nominal or by a PrepP, which shows that alternation and the reversibility criterion cannot be equated. 1.4. Interim conclusion Structures like the one exemplified in build BU into a national institution have all the characteristics of attributive clauses. Just like non-caused attributive structures, they express a uni-directional instantiation relation from a higher level of schematicity (expressed by indefinite or definite, but always non-referential nominals) to a lower one. Caused material/products with a definite Product, such as build Shell into the number one oil company, have also been analysed as caused attributive construals, with the Attribute specifying a one-

76 Keenan (1976) describes from a typological perspective how referentiality is one of the characteristics that all Subjects seem to share. 77 In connection with this, a tentative proposal could be that the greater difficulty that some native speakers seem to have in accepting the Product-as-Patient alternate is partly due to our expectations for the referentiality of the Patient. Two factors are at play here: although there is no requirement for the Patient to be referential, most Patients are; and further, nonreferentiality is much more strongly associated with indefiniteness than with definiteness. When, therefore, a definite Product NG appears, which has the role of Patient, a clash may be experienced between the non-referential meaning it has and the referentiality one expects of a Patient realized as a definite NG.

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member class. Identifying material/products, with the definite Product circumscribing a particular portion of the spatio-temporal domain for the identification of the Material (or vice versa), are very rare.

2. The part/whole type A very different type of relation between Material and Product is expressed by clauses such as (54) – (56), which constitute a construction that differs from the semiotic type with its instantiation semantics. (54) Many of the houses had been built from stones removed from the ruins of the Ma’rib dam. (CB) (55) They built the corn sheaves into stacks. (56) I built my first motorbike from spare parts. (CB) In the semiotic type, where building, forging, turning etc. are used in a metaphorical sense, the Product is a product in the sense that it indicates which quality the Material will have after the ‘building.’ In this type, building is used in its most literal sense, viz. joining things together, fabricating something from material components. The Material is the input in the ‘building’ and the Product the ‘output.’ In other words, the type we will discuss now construes a part/whole schema, in which the Material corresponds to the parts and the Product to the whole: the stones are smaller parts that make up the house, the sheaves are the parts that make up the stack, etc. Whereas the ‘ascription’ in the semiotic type locates it at the intensive end of the cline, the relation between Material and Product in the part/whole type situates it at the possessive end. 2.1. Part/whole semantics: a discussion This section elaborates the part/whole relation between Material and Product, and discusses some of the formal reflexes of the different semantics of the semiotic versus the possessive types of material/product construction. Roughly, material/product sentences such as the ones above can be glossed as ‘the Agent has caused the stones to form the building blocks of the house’


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and ‘the Agent has caused the sheaves to form the constitutive parts of the stacks.’ Not surprisingly, the collocational properties of the Agent in this type are not completely the same as in the semiotic type with its ascriptive verb senses. In the majority of cases, the Agent of caused semiosis is a person or an animate being, but other types of Agent are also possible: (57) Silber has promised to use the managerial skills, which helped build BU into a national institution. (CB) (58) Dedication to quality service has helped build First USA into one of the nation's largest and most respected credit card issuers. (CB) (59) What turned McVeigh into a homicidal maniac was a combination of disillusionment with military life and the armed assault. (CB) (60) His embittered sentiments and shabby surroundings […] transform Luke Haines into one of the blighted, vengeful no-hopers he tends to sing about. (CB) (61) The stored value card (SVC) is the latest banking product threatens to transform Australia into a cashless society. (CB) Abstract qualities ((57) and (58)), emotions ((59) and (60)) and a new gadget (61) are compatible with a meaning of building that does not require physical action on the part of the Agent to replace the Material by the Product. The part/whole type, where such action is expressed by the verb, is much more typically associated with an animate, usually human, being (as in (54) – (56) above). In the rare cases where the Agent is not animate in the part/whole construction, it is still more tangible than emotions or qualities, such as forces of nature ((62) and (63)): (62) The rushing waters have polished the schist to gunmetal, and carved it into the fantastic flutes and chambers you see over there. (63) The continuous beating of the rain had turned the clay figure into a small muddy heap. Another (concomitant) typical characteristic of the part/whole type is that the Material as it were ‘dissolves’ into the whole: the stones in they built the house from the stones of the Ma’rib dam will still be recognized as stones after they have been built into the house, but they do not exist as a separate entity any more, and are part of the larger whole of the house. This is quite in contrast

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to BU in they built BU into a national organization, where BU remains independent of any larger part: it is not being related to a larger whole, but to a more general property. Agnates bring out the difference: (64) a. They built BU into a national institution. b. BU is a national institution. (65) a. Thatcherism may have turned Britain into an economic wasteland. b. Britain is an economic wasteland. (66) a. They built the sheaves into stacks. b. *The sheaves are stacks. (67) a. The traditional art of weaving palm leaves into a mat. b. *The leaves are a mat. The non-semiotic relation between Material and Product in the part/whole type also shows up in the absence of a systematic relation with the complextransitive: (68) *They made the sheaves stacks. (69) *They made the palm leaves mats. (70) *They made the spare parts a motorcycle. The part/whole semantics of the construction discussed in this section do not chime in with the complex-transitives, unlike the instantiation relation of the semiotic type. Illustrative of the part/whole semantics of material/product sentences, on the other hand, is the proportionality they display with the following possessive reformulations with consist of, contain, be part of, etc.: (71) a. The house consists of stones from the dam. b. The stones are part of the house. (72) a. The stacks have sheaves in them. b. The sheaves make up the stack. (73) a. The motorcycle contains spare parts. b. The spare parts are part of the motorcylce. Such a reformulation is impossible for the semiotic type:


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(74) *A national institution has BU in it / *BU is part of a national institution. (75) *Tweed Heads consists of the sex capital of the north. (76) *Britain contains a land of bliss. Part and whole may coincide partly, as in examples (71) and (73), or totally, as in (72). Each corn sheaf by itself is a part of the stack, but the group of sheaves indicated by the sheaves is co-extensive with the stack, not a part of it. This is very clear in examples such as the following two: the one-to-one relation between Material and Product results in a more difficult link with the b.-reformulation, which suggests a partial overlap (as opposed to the c.-agnate, which has no such implication): (77) a. He carved a piece of wood into a toy. b. ?The toy has a piece of wood in it. c. The toy is composed of/consists of a piece of wood. (78) a. He kneaded the dough into a loaf. b. ?The loaf has (the) dough in it. c. The loaf consists of dough. In examples such as the ones in (54) and (56) above, the unboundedness of the Material also prohibits an interpretation of a complete overlap between Material and Product, as the Material does not refer to any circumscribed ‘part.’ But unlike the Material in the semiotic type, the Material in the type under discussion here does stand for the thing out of which the Product is formed: sheaves, the piece of wood, spare parts etc are still the building block(s) of the stacks, the toy and the dough. Notice how, especially in the constructions with a total overlap between Material and Product, the possessive interpretation can shift to a semiotic one: (79) Indeed, her personal boudoir in the Elysee had been turned into the headquarters of the campaign. (CB) Depending on the context, this sentence can be intepreted in two ways. It can be interpreted as an intensive construal, with the headquarters as Attribute specifying what the rooms are like, what their function is. In another interpretation, however, it expresses a real conversion, much as in the witch transform-

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ed the naughty little boy into a mouse. Upon this interpretation, the boudoir has been refurbished and transformed into the headquarters. In this case the sentence does not express ascription, but a material action: the boudoir is no longer the boudoir. In the first case, on the other hand, the boudoir is still the boudoir, but with the additional property of functioning as headquarters. Especially construals with a more general verb meaning, like make or transform, have this potential for ambiguity. Note, finally, that there is not always a binary opposition between the semiotic and the part/whole type, but that examples such as turn McVeigh into a serial killer and build the sheaves into stacks figure as the two poles of a continuum. An example such as (80) is not easy to classify: (80) The efforts to carve this desert into a modern state have still had surprisingly little effect. (CB) This sentence illustrates how there is an area of vagueness between a straight intensive and a straight possessive reading. A modern state looks like a label that can(not) be ascribed to this desert, and the sentence is related to a complex-transitive formulation, as are the semiotic material/product sentences: (81) They made this desert a modern state. On the other hand, whereas in semiotic examples such as they built Britain into a land of bliss the Material is still ‘there’ – after building Britain into a land of bliss, Britain is still Britain – this example expresses how the Material will – hopefully – be ‘replaced’ by the Product. After the carving, the desert is no longer a desert, and with this characteristic, example (80) resembles possessive material/product construals (compare, for instance, he baked the dough into a cake). The physical action specified by the verb also contributes to the simultaneous part/whole reading. Sentences like these represent an in between category that can neither be characterized as simply attribution, nor as construing purely a part/whole schema.


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2.2. Alternation Closer study of alternation potential reveals some further interesting characteristics of the material/product alternation. Apart from further proof for the existence of two distinct types – the semiotic and the part/whole construction differ in the facility with which they alternate – such an investigation can also refine the description of the semantics of the two part/whole alternates. As will have become clear from previous examples, the alternation potential of the two subtypes is quite different. Whereas the semiotic type is characterized by an aversion to alternation (section 1.3), the part/whole type is frequently realized by both the into- and the from-variant: (82) Stroot carves carrots and bell peppers into palm-tree shapes. (CB) (83) They spun cotton, wove it into “khadi cloth,” and clothed their families with it. (CB) (84) A friend told me about a sculptor who weaves tree houses out of hazel and willow to mimic nests of weaverbirds. (CB) (85) While-away the long nights knitting yourself a sweater from 100 % recycled cotton or lambswool and cashmere. (CB) Notice, further, that the semiotic and part/whole types not only differ in alternation potential, but also in the prepositions they use: the part/whole type typically has from or (out) of in the variant with the Product realized as a NG; the semiotic one has of. This is not a black and white distintion, but in any case a very strong tendency: (86) Warhol sculpted this little statuette from/out of a cake of soap. (87) Warhol sculpted this little statuette of a cake of soap. With the use of of in the second sentence, a material/product interpretation as in (86) is less likely; of a cake of soap is more easily read as a postmodifier of this little statuette (i.e. ‘a statue representing a cake of soap’). The preposition, in other words, distinguishes between the two types. An investigation of alternation potential not only reveals differences among the two types, but is also helpful when it comes to a description of the part/ whole type itself. A closer look at the restrictions on alternation, and more specifically the into-variant, enables us to pinpoint some of the more subtle as-

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pects of the part/whole relations between Material and Product in the two variants. Consider the following pairs of examples: (88) a. RTZ was formed in 1962 from two companies that had their origins in the past century. (CB) b. Two companies that had their origins in the past century were formed into RTZ in 1962. (89) a. The Inca women wove blouses from lama wool. b. The Inca women wove lama wool into blouses. (90) a. A canoe, carved by hand from a carefully chosen tree. (CB) b. A carefully chosen tree, carved by hand into a canoe. For each of the a-sentences, there is an alternate counterpart. Compare these three pairs now with the following pairs: (91) a. The […] house has been built from western red cedar. (CB) b. ?Western red cedar has been built into the/an entire house. (92) a. He carved a delicate and laboriously worked figurine from teak. b. ??He carved teak into a delicate and laboriously worked figurine. (93) a. Build it from a holding tank. b. ≠ Build a holding tank into it. (94) a. She suggested that we carve the figurine from the piece of wood. b. ??She suggested that we carve the piece of wood into the figurine. For these examples, an alternate into-variant as in the b-sentences is much more difficult or not proportional. The following paragraphs will show that the the first two examples and the last two examples differ in the reason why alternation is more difficult. Starting with the first two non-alternating sentences, a comparison between the alternating ((88) – (90)) and non-alternating ((91) and (92)) examples reveals no immediate obvious differences: the Product in (92) is realized by a singular count noun, as is the Product in (90), which does have an into-alternate; the Material in (91) is a bare mass noun, as is the Material in (89). So what is the system is behind the restrictions to the into variant? The key to understanding the behaviour of construals such as those in ((88) – (90)) and ((91) – (92)) seems to lie in the interaction between the caused relation expressed by


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the into-construction and the boundedness of the nominals realizing Material and Product. Whereas the from-construction expresses caused creation, the into-construction expresses how causation leads to a transformation of the Material so that it becomes part of the Product. Unlike creation, which expresses that something is made, transformation expresses that something is changed into something else. As a consequence, it is much harder for the Material to specify a large, unbounded mass (as in (91) and (92)) in the into-variant (with its transformation sense) than in the from-variant (which expresses creation). A transformation of the Material into the Product typically entails that the Material ‘dissolves’ completely into the Product, as in (95): (95) He carved the piece of wood into a toy. The piece of wood is transformed into the toy. It is this semantic element that strongly disfavours mass noun or bare plural Materials as Patients. The Material in the from-variant can easily specify a larger mass only part of which is used to create the Product (as in (91a) and (92a)), but the unboundedness that characterizes nominals such as western red cedar and teak is less compatible with the ‘transformation’ expressed by the into-construction, as this presupposes some specific entity that can be transformed. The reason why (88), unlike (91) and (92), does have an alternate is of course that the Material two companies in (88a) is a delimited, bounded set. This is also why from-construals such as the following, alternate much more easily: (96) a. Form a smooth ball from the dough. b. Form the dough into a smooth ball. (CB) c. Form some dough into a smooth ball. The determiner indicates spatial bounding, which in its turn makes it possible to have a transformation from the Product into the Material. The fact that under many circumstances a mass Material is not possible (as in (97)), whereas a mass (or bare plural) Locatum or Location is no problem in the locative alternation ((98) and (99)), is related to the different semantics of the constructions: (97) ??Glass and steel were built into a house. (98) Paint was sprayed on the wall. (99) Walls were sprayed with paint.

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The locative constructions are concerned with dispersion of substances and application on surfaces and containers, so whether Location or Locatum are realized by means of a bare plural or mass noun is of little importance. What makes alternation for examples such as (89) possible is an absence in bounding for both non-agentive participants. Despite the mass noun Material, lama wool, the b-sentence is perfectly acceptable, because the Product, blouses, is also unbounded. This means that there is no conflict between a spatio-temporally delimited endproduct and an unbounded mass as input, as in she wove wool into a blouse, where the spatial bounding of a blouse demands a bounded Material as well (e.g. she wove some old wool into a blouse). When the Product is realized as a bare mass noun or bare plural, in other words, there is no such dislike for unbounded Materials because there is no specified fixed output. Let us now turn to the last two pairs of sentences, (93) and (94), which show us another restriction to the into-alternate: construals with an anaphoric Product alternate much less easily. Compare the forced or non-proportional (93b) and (94b) with the following locative construals: (100) My mother suggested that […] we spray the dustbin liberally with it. (CB) (101) Everyone […] kept spraying this water on her. (CB) Despite the anaphoric PrepPs, neither sentence sounds strained. As we saw in chapter II, both variants of the locative and image impression constructions frequently have the nominal that is highest on the givenness hierarchy in clause-final position. The reason why the material/product construals alternate less easily is related to how the into-construction handles the introduction of discourse participants. The strained b-sentences show us that the into-variant of the material/product alternation typically creates the Product as a discourse participant. The data presented in Table 19 (chapter II, section 2.2) are completely in line with this: the PrepP is more given only in 1.2% of the corpus attestations. Prepositionally realized anaphoric Products hardly ever occur: when the Product is realized by a PrepP, it does not easily refer back to the previous stretch of text. The occurrence of examples like the following may seem to contradict this explanation: (102) A piece of antler carved into the elongated shape of a mole. (CB) (103) Mrs. Loft would bake them into the best pies I’ve ever had. (CB)


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However, although the Product is definite, the definite article does not point backwards to the preceding text: it is not used anaphorically, but esphorically, and the NG is only ‘pseudo-definite’ (Martin 1992:123). In cases like these, the definite article does signal unique identifiability, yet not familiarity from the previous discourse context: the necessary information to retrieve the identity is still to follow in the NG. Just as in examples with an indefinite Product, therefore, the Product is introduced as a discourse participant in the PrepP. Another possibility for prepositionally realized Products to be definite is when they are used exophorically, as in (104): (104) Kitty has managed to knit them into this lovely fluffy sweater. The participant is in this case not recoverable form the verbal, but from the non-verbal context of the situation (Martin 1992). This lovely fluffy sweater, in other words, refers to a sweater in the immediate environment (and does not pick up as an antecedent a lovely fluffy sweater in the previous stretch of text). Typically, sentences with prepositionally realized Products like (104) come from advertisements, with this referring exophorically to an accompanying picture or photograph. In this light we can now explain (93) and (94). As the into-variant normally has an introducing nominal realizing the Product, the b-sentence of the last pair sounds rather strained because the figurine is an anaphoric nominal.78 The asentence, which is under no such constraint, sounds much more natural. Although for example (93) the b-sentence is perfectly acceptable, it should be noted that (93b) is not proportional with the a-sentence, because it does not express the transformation of a Material into a Product. It can be lexicalized as yachts, for example: (105) Would it now be reasonable to […] build holding tanks into yachts? (CB) This is not a material/product construction: it does not stand for a Product that is created. Roughly, (92b) means that the previously existing yacht is

78 One of the contexts in which the definite Product can be used is when perfectivity is stressed, as in evidence suggests that she had already carved the wood into the figurine before the thief came in.

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equipped with a holding tank, not that the yacht is the result of the action of building. Therefore, (92b) cannot be regarded as the alternate to the a-sentence. A true material/product reading is not possible for this sentence with anaphoric PrepP. Consider also the following example: (106) Suddenly it became easy to sew a fastener into the dress. In this case too, the PrepP is definite, but does not realize a Product: the sentence does not express the transformation of a/the Material, but simply the addition of the thing expressed by the NG. In conclusion, the part/whole type expresses how the Material serves as (either all or some of) the constitutive parts for the Product. Although this type alternates much more freely than the semiotic type, there are some restrictions, especially for the into-construction. The latter typically introduces the Product as a discourse participant, and thus has a strong preference for Products realized by introducing nominals. Further, the into-construction expresses transformation, and as a consequence, unless the Product is unbounded as well, the Material is typically realized by a bounded NG.

3. Conclusion In sum, it is amongst others by looking at possible and impossible agnates that finer distinctions can be made in the large group of material/product clauses. The overview in Figure 15 lists the main syntactic differences which we have discussed above and which allow us to distinguish the main types.


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Figure 15: Agnation patterns for material/product construals.

The most extreme ‘opposition’ is that between the semiotic material/product clauses such as they built BU into a national company, and those near the possessive end of the relational space, such as they built the sheaves into stacks. Semiotic material/product clauses have a systematic relation with the complextransitive construction, which typically expresses a relation of being. Construals with an indefinite Product can be analyzed quite unambiguously as caused attributives. Those with two definite postverbal participants, on the other hand, can be read in two ways. All the corpus-examples have been analyzed as

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property-ascribing caused attributives, but in very specific contexts, identifying construals are also possible. In general, construals of caused relations do not seem to be concerned with identification very often, but rather with attributing properties and characteristics. Not surprisingly, the other type, which does not express a relation of being but construes a part/whole schema, does not allow a complex-transitive reformulation and also lacks a non-caused intensive reformulation. The non-caused relational with which the part/whole type has a systematic relation, on the other hand, is of a possessive nature, such as the stacks consists of sheaves or the sheaves are part of the stacks. The split-up between the semiotic and the part/ whole type is also signalled by the difficulty of the former to participate in the material/product alternation. These observations have some important theoretical implications. First, they show us that it is not the verb, but the verb sense that is activated in a particular construction, which is important. A number of the verbs that Levin describes as ‘material/product verbs’ cannot be simply classed as alternating (Levin 1993:56): build in He built the sheaves into stacks alternates much more freely than build with ascriptive meaning in He built BU into a national institution. Further, and directly related to this, it is only by paying attention to the whole construction and the construction paradigm, that we have been able to distinguish the mechanisms at work in the semiotic and the part/whole subtype. One of the main advantages of interpreting these three-participant configurations in terms of the relational continuum is that it allows one to still give a unified treatment to what from the above might seem like disparate phenomena. The relational continuum provides semantic schemata which appear to motivate meaning extensions of a whole range of relational verbs.

CHAPTER VII THE IMAGE IMPRESSION AND LOCATIVE CONSTRUCTIONS

Although locative and image impression constructions have been identified as different alternations (Levin 1993), locative and image impression construals are not clearly separated as different constructions: they are semantically and formally very close, and the difference between them is not a high-level one. In both, the material action expressed by the verb results in a caused relation between the two non-agentive participants, with the caused relation being one of ‘being on/in’ or ‘being with.’ These relations distinguish them from other constructions with a caused relational component. The locatives, which their extra dimension of content (spray on) versus container (stuff in), will be the focus of this chapter. Referring to the relational continuum discussed in chapter V, the subtypes of the locative construction will be characterized in terms of distinct caused circumstantial relations, with some extensions to caused possessive relations. A central distinction, it will be argued, is constituted by the choice between locational and comitative oblique: whereas the former construes specific forms of typically spatial contiguity, the latter is vaguer and more flexible as to the form of contiguity conveyed and is conducive to some metonymic extensions into the expression of possessive relations. We will also turn to the question of the main variants of the locative constructions: the into/onto-variant versus the with-variant on the one hand, and examples with container- versus contentverbs on the other. Interesting but partly divergent claims about the relative markedness of these variants were made by Levin and Rappaport, and Pinker. These are now confronted with two corpus-based neo-Firthian descriptive heuristics: Halliday’s quantitative weighing of the terms in a system, and Sinclair’s collocational analysis of items in grammatical environments.

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1. Locative constructions as caused circumstantial relational configurations The claim that locative constructions are caused circumstantials is not new: Fawcett (1987) already describes them as caused locational processes. While this claim is broadly adhered to, in the analysis proposed here it is also argued that the semantic variety manifested by the data can be given a more fine-grained semantic analysis with reference to distinct areas of the caused relational continuum. 79 Unlike in the GB tradition, the more delicate semantic analysis proposed here does not rely on verb classes only. In the status questionis, for instance, it was shown that Pinker (1989:126) proposes ‘narrow’ classes of alternating locative verbs, some of which are said to construe the transfer of entities to a surface (e.g. smear, spread) and others into a container (e.g. load, pack). While these characterizations hold as defaults, the data also threw up exceptions to them such as ‘surface’ examples with load (see example (9) below) and ‘container’ examples with spread (see (5) below). These ‘exceptions’ drive home particularly clearly that it is the combination of verb meaning, choice of preposition, and features of patientive and oblique nominal which construes distinctions such as layer-surface and contained-container relations. Having gone through historic and synchronic data, the most important constructional distinction affecting the semantics of locative clauses and verbs seems to be simply that between choosing the variant with the Locatum as Patient and locational oblique introduced by on(to)/in(to), etc., and the variant with the Location as Patient and comitative oblique introduced by with.80 The caused relation construed by the former is that between the entity being relocated and its final destination. This destination can be a surface, a container, or another anchorage point. The trajectory towards the destination can be specified by a variety of prepositions, mainly (on)to or (in)to, but also over, around, toward, under, down (in), between, around. In the with-variant, the caused relation is one between surface, container or other anchorage point, with which entities are associated. The relation is not construed locationally but

79 Parts of the material discussed in this and the next section were published in Laffut, A. and K. Davidse (2002). 80 Thanks to William McGregor for suggesting this.

THE IMAGE IMPRESSION AND LOCATIVE CONSTRUCTIONS

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comitatively: locative constructions activate the basic ‘association’/‘accompaniment’ sense (Dirven 1993:80) of the preposition with. The comitative meaning is intrinsically vaguer and more general than the locational ones in the other variant. As we will see, the comitative variant accommodates a greater variety of relations, and gives rise to more meaning extensions, as can be illustrated with historical data of spread and load (in the next section this will be dealt with more systematically on the basis of synchronic data). When we examine the locative uses of spread in the OED data, we see that the comitative variant emerged first, attested from around 1300. (1) (2) (3) (4)

1300 Þai spred þe strete wit cloth and flur. (OED) ‘They covered the street with cloth and fluff.’ 1320 Þe forest was fair and wide, wiþ wilde bestes y-sprad. (OED) ‘The forest was beautiful and large and full of wild beasts.’ 1596 On his head [was] an hood with aglets sprad. (OED) ‘On his head was a hood scattered with spangles.’ 1611 The goldsmith spreadeth it over with golde. (OED)

What strikes one immediately in these data is the common occurrence of the statal ². Statal passives do not express causation: in principle no Agent can be expressed: *a forest spread with beasts by the king. They express mere relations such as the forest being full of beasts in (2). The variant with locational oblique is manifested only from 1394 onwards. It appears to typically describe concrete acts of ‘spreading’ masses into containers or onto surfaces. (5) (6) (7)

1394 Nou han þei … spicerie sprad in her purse. (OED) ‘Now they had scattered spices in her purse.’ 1426 Blak blood he se e-spred Apon the aschelere even. (OED) ‘Black blood he spread out evenly on the masonry.’ 1579 The residue of the … bread … was guven to … children …, whether to spredde their butter… (OED)

All spread examples involve contiguity, and thus remain within the ‘circumstantial’ area of the caused relational cline. The historical data for load reveal a striking general predominance of the comitative variant. This is also true of the first locative sense of load, ‘furnishing with a lading’ (attested around 1500), as in

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(8)

1503 A shyp … with moche spyces rught well lode. (OED) ‘A ship with many spices right well loaded’

A second locative subsense, ‘add weight’ to’, emerges around 1575 and occurs in the with-variant only. (9) 1627 So their trees were more plentifully loaden with fruits. (OED) (10) 1887 If the paper is to be loaded, that is adulterated with clay or cheap fibres. (OED) At the same time another locative sense, also restricted to the with-variant, emerged, whose meanings the OED paraphrases as ‘heavily laden with’, ‘having in abundance’. (11) 1577-87 (12) 1611

The Danes, being loden with riches and spoiles (OED) Blessed be the Lord, who daily loadeth vs with benefits. (OED)

The beginning of the 17th century sees a new use of load, ‘put charge in a fire arm’, which allows for both the into- and the with-variant again, e.g. (13) 1626 To loade a peece. (OED) In the history of load the importance of the statal passive of the comitative variant stands out clearly. In an example such as (9), it expresses the relation of the tree being full of or having a lot of fruit. Though still interpretable as a relation of spatial contiguity, a possessive interpretation is not excluded either. Examples with load often express container-contained relations, particularly in the with-variant. This explains the possibility of metonymic extension to whole-part schemata, as in example (10), which expresses the ‘compositional’ nature of the paper. Moreover, if the Patient with whom things are ‘associated’ is human, then the comitative variant appears to sanction extension to expressions of caused ownership, as in (11) and (12). We thus see that the semantics of locative constructions, and the polysemy and semantic extensions of locative verbs, can profitably be handled in terms of the caused relational continuum. Most locative clauses express caused cir-


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Complex-transitive clauses

Why should we elect him Mayor?

Semiotic material/product clauses Locative clauses: on/intovariant

They will build Great Britain into a land of bliss.

He stuffed a groundbait feeder with tiny pieces of meat.

Part/whole material/product clauses

They built the sheaves into stacks.

Statal locative passives: withvariant

The thicker soups are packed with calorific starch

Ditransitive clauses with oblique

Give that card to the gentleman.

Double object ditransitive

My mother left me a little.

Statal locative passives: withvariant

Bryant is loaded with land.

possessive relations

caused possessive relations

Locative clauses: with-variant

caused part-whole relations

We scattered caraway seeds on it.

part-whole relations

caused circumstantial relations

caused semiotic relations

cumstantial contiguity, construed either locationally by the on/in-variant or comitatively by the with-variant. The comitative variant of container-content configurations is clearly conducive to metonymic extensions into possessive meanings: it can lead either to inanimate composition relations or to ownership relations involving a controlling human.

Table 42: Overview of the relational continuum.

Fleshing out the overview in Table 41 at the end of chapter V, Table 42 repre-sents the main distinctions made in the analysis of locative constructions in terms of the caused relational continuum. At the top and bottom of the continuum are the only three-participant constructions which have a non-oblique re-

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lational complement: the complex transitive and the ‘double object’ ditransitive. The former expresses the causation of instance-type relations, the latter of possessive relations. In between these come all the three-participant constructions with an oblique participant. They include ditransitives with an oblique participant, expressing the causation of possession, but with a link to caused location as well; and material/product constructions which express the causation of part-whole relations, and which link up metaphorically with the semiotic type, construing the causation of instance-type relations. Future research will have to show whether and in what way other three-participant constructions with an oblique can be analyzed with reference to the caused relational continuum.

2. Variants and markedness 2.1 A quantitative approach In the previous section, a general semantic analysis was proposed for the two constructional forms in which locative configurations come, the on/in- and the with-variant. For alternating verbs, which allow either, this raises a question with regard to the markedness of the variants. Within GB, where markedness is correlated with conceptual and formal complexity, specific answers have been formulated to this question. The proposals by Rappaport and Levin (1988) and Pinker (1989), which were outlined in chapter I, will in this section be confronted with the systemic approach to markedness, which takes the most frequent option to be the – synchronically – unmarked one. The results of a quantified analysis of locative corpus data will be discussed, and this will also allow further substantiation of some of the patterns touched on previously, such as the place of statal passives in the locative construction paradigm. Rappaport and Levin (1988) and Levin and Rappaport (1992) have argued that the lexical conceptual structure of the predicate in the on/in-variant is the conceptually simpler one, from which that in the with-variant is derived. For the on/in-variant, e.g. Henry loaded hay onto the wagon, the predicate can be straightforwardly decomposed as ‘X moves Y into/onto Z’. For the with-variant, e.g. Henry loaded the wagon with hay, the lexical conceptual structure is as follows: ‘X causes Y to change its state by means of moving Z to Y’. Here, the location Y changes as the result of Z moving to it and ‘adding’ material to it. Pinker’s (1989) claim was that because there are many verbs with only with-


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or in-variants, it is reasonable to posit two directions of derivation. Non-alternating verbs obviously have either Locatum as Patient (e.g. put, dribble, pour, squeeze) or Location as Patient (e.g. cover, fill, douse, adorn). Which is the natural Patient for alternating verbs, can be deduced from the two-argument forms of the verbs, either because only one two-argument form is possible (e.g. pile books versus *pile the shelf) or because one two-argument form sounds elliptical (load a gun forms a complete thought, but not load bullets). Pinker thus establishes two subclasses of alternating locative verbs: 1) the content-verbs, which take the Locatum as natural Patient, and for which the into/onto-variant is basic; 2) the container-verbs, which take the Location as natural Patient, and for which the with-variant is basic.81 The systemic approach to ‘unmarkedness’ comes in from a different angle – one not intrinsically concerned with conceptual or formal simplicity, but with establishing the most common option. Within SFG, there has been a long tradition (e.g. Halliday 1959, Halliday and James 1993) of assessing the markedness of a dimension of variation. The relative frequency of systemic options can only be established by quantification of an analyzed random sample, displaying the variation in question. The quantitative patterns obtained are interpreted as tending either towards an equal distribution, in which case there is no difference in markedness, or a skewed one, with 90% versus 10% considered the ideal skew for an unmarked versus a marked option. From a systemic point of view, the GB reflection on the on/into- and withvariant suggests the following general research questions, to be checked in terms of quantitative patterns. 1) Which variant is overall more common, the on/in-variant or the withvariant? 2a) Do the two-participant forms of examples with content-verbs more commonly take the Locatum as Patient and those with container-verbs the Location? 2b) Do the three-participant forms of examples with content-verbs more commonly have the Locatum as Patient, i.e. do they prefer the on/in-variant,

81 Note that “container”- and “content”-verbs are used as mnemonic labels by Pinker, and do not imply that the verbs in these classes always construe container-contained relations in the strict sense.

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and do the three-participant forms of examples with container-verbs have the Location as Patient, i.e. do they prefer the with-variant? Given the importance of active – passive variation observed in the historical data, a third question can be added: 3) What proportion of active versus passive do we find for the on/in- and with-variant respectively? In order to investigate these questions in a pilot study, corpus extractions were made on four of Pinker’s ‘container’-verbs, viz. pack, jam, cram, load, and four of his ‘content’-verbs, viz. scatter, sow, smear, spray. The two- and three-participant forms in these concordances were analyzed as to whether they had Locatum or Location as Patient, and quantified as such. In accordance with the questions to be investigated, the results for container- and content-verbs have been tabulated separately.82 For each verb class, three tables are presented: - two-participant forms (active and passive) - active three-participant structures (with Agent, Patient and oblique) - passive three-participant structures (mostly with Patient and oblique only) Container-verbs Locatum/Patient Location/Patient 41% (20) 59% (29) 0% (0) 100% (14) 0% (0) 100% (3) 65% (26) 35% (14) 43,4% (46) 56,6% (60) Table 43: Two-participant locative constructions with container-verbs: active and passive pack jam cram load

Locatum/Patient Location/Patient pack 14% (78) 86% (480) jam 38% (16) 62% (26) cram 34% (67) 65,5% (127) load 22% (56) 78% (209 ) 26% (220) 74% (842) Table 44: Three-participant locative constructions with container-verbs: passive

82

Needless to say, these results should be handled with some care in view of the quirks and distortions that can be associated with a pilot study of this type.


Locatum/Patient Location/Patient 77% (10) 23% (3) 100% (11) 0% (0) 86% (25) 14% (4) 77% (34) 23% (10) 82,5% (80) 17,5% (17) Table 45: Three-participant locative constructions with container-verbs: active

pack jam cram load

Content-verbs Locatum/Patient Location/Patient 96% (67) 4% (3) 100% (53) 0% (0) 37% (7) 63% (12) 49% (28) 51% (29) 78% (155) 22% (44) Table 46: Two participant constructions with content-verbs: active and passive

sow scatter smear spray

Locatum/Patient Location/Patient 68% (15) 32% (7) 73% (46) 27% (17) 22% (5) 78% (18) 21% (8) 79% (30) 50,5% (74) 49,5% (72) Table 47: Three-participant locative constructions with content-verbs: passive


Locatum/Patient Location/Patient sow 85% (11) 15% (2) scatter 93% (28) 7% (2) smear 68,5% (26) 31,5% (12) spray 40% (37) 60% (55) 59% (102) 41% (71) Table 48: Three-participant locative constructions with content-verbs: active

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Firstly, how do Rappaport and Levin’s (1988) and Pinker’s (1989) claims about container- and content-verbs stand up to this quantitative approach to markedness? The quantitative tendencies found in the data seem to broadly support Pinker’s, and not Rappaport and Levin’s, claims. Generalizing over two- and three-participant constructions, we find that examples with containerverbs more often have the Location as Patient, and examples with contentverbs the Locatum. If we add up the results in Tables 43 to 45, then we see that the choice for a container-verb leads in 919 out of 1265 examples, i.e. in 73% of the cases, to a construal with Location as Patient. Adding up the results in Tables 46 to 48, we find that the choice for a content-verb leads in 331 out of 518 examples, i.e. 64% of the cases, to a construal with the Locatum as Patient. Pinker’s specific claims about two-participant constructions are also confirmed: with container-verbs, the form with Patient/Location is more common (57%) and with content-verbs that with Patient/Locatum (78%). However, some individual verbs thwart expectations: container-verb load has more Patient/Locatums (65%) and smear more Patient/Locations (63%). For the three-participant constructions, the picture is more complicated. If we add up the figures for actives and passives of container-verbs (Tables 44 and 45), and content-verbs (Tables 47 and 48), then these overall percentages support Pinker’s markedness judgements, if only weakly for content-verbs. For the container-verbs, the with-variant wins from the into-variant with a relative proportion of 74% (842 tokens) versus 26% (300 tokens). For the contentverbs, the onto-variant outnumbers the with-variant with a proportion of 55% (176 tokens) versus 45% (143 tokens) only. But if we break down these general results into separate figures and percentages for active and passive, as displayed in Tables 44-45 and 47-48, we then see that in the active not only the content-verbs (59%) but also, very strongly, the container-verbs (82.5%) have the into/onto-variant as unmarked option. This clearly goes against Pinker’s predictions. It is only because the passives of container-verbs have an overwhelming number of with-forms (842 tokens) that the with-variant dominates so strongly in the container-verb data. With the content-verbs, by contrast, passives are as such less numerous and display an equi-distribution for with- and into-variant such that the latter retains its overall, weak, dominance. There is a further problem with the role played by the passives in these quantitative results. The passive data include a number of statal passives which are purely two-participant relational configurations and which do not depict the sorts of ‘locative’ events Pinker and Rappaport and Levin are concerned with,


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viz. actions or events in which entities are relocated. To verify Pinker’s hypothesis in a strict sense, these statal passives have to be substracted from the figures about the passives in Tables 44 and 47. Therefore, the passive data have been re-analyzed and re-quantified, to set apart those statal passives that cannot be related to causal events in which entities are relocated. To this end, the passive data have been sorted in three different categories: - event-passives (14) The boxes at Kensington palace are being packed with non essential imtes in readiness for the princess’s departure. (CB) - statal passives depicting a state resulting from a locative causal event (15) Kelly passed away surrounded in her bed by her family, stuffed animals, and a suitcase packed with jeans, dresses and toys. (CB) - statal passives in which the passive participle has undergone a meaning extension (16) Persil Power […] is packed with caustic chemicals. (CB) Tables 49 and 50 represent the relative proportions of event-passives (Epass), ordinary statal passives (S-pass), and statal passives with meaning extension (S-pass ext), displayed by the container- and content-verb data.

pack jam cram load

Locatum/Patient (into) Location/Patient (with) E-pass S-pass S-pass E-pass S-pass S-pass ext ext 25 41 12 9 102 369 2 13 1 2 6 18 19 43 5 1 36 90 59 / / 8 92 109 105 97 18 20 236 586 Table 49: Distribution of types of passives in container-verb data

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Locatum/Patient (into) Location/Patient (with) E-pass S-pass S-pass E-pass S-pass S-pass ext ext 11 4 / 4 3 / 15 9 22 3 1 13 2 3 / 3 8 7 6 1 1 28 1 1 34 17 23 38 13 21 Table 50: Distribution of types of passives in content-verb data

The category that has to be substracted from the figures in Tables 44 and 47 is that of the statal passives with meaning extension, as these do not fall within the hypotheses proposed by Rappaport and Levin (1988) and Pinker (1989). The semantics discussed by them clearly pertain to locative events – that is, they cover three-participant actives, event-passives and statal passives depicting the result of a locative event. Adding up the figures for these three construal types in the data leads to the following results. For construals of locative causal events with container-verbs, the relative proportion of on/in- versus with-variants now scores 282 versus 273 tokens, or 50.5% versus 49.5%, an almost perfect equi-distribution. With content-verbs, the into-variants rate 153 tokens, or 56%, and the with-variants 122 tokens. These results do not offer support for Pinker’s hypothesis that locative events expressed by container-verbs have the with-variant as unmarked choice and only weak evidence for the claim that content-verbs have the on/in-variant as unmarked choice. Neither do they offer support for Rappaport and Levin’s hypothesis that the on/in-variant is the unmarked one overall with locative clauses depicting actions and events, irrespective of the distinction between container- and content-verbs. The only reasonable conclusion seems to be that there is hardly any difference as to the markedness of the on/in- versus the with-variant between examples in which locative causal events are construed by container-verbs or by content-verbs. Regarding the passives with meaning extension, it is clear that they have to be given a semantic treatment in their own right, but in the approach taken here they can also be naturally related to the core locative data by plotting meaning


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extensions of relational verbs along the abstract semantic schemata of SFG’s relational continuum. With the comitative variant of content-verbs, the ordinary statal passives depict entities or particles lying on a surface as the result of a relocation act: (17) Smeared with banana, the contestants must remain on a small board while hungry oran-outangs attack. (CB) (18) …pellets smeared with a polymer coating… (CB) The typical extension mechanism operating on this removes any notion of a prior relocation act; what is depicted is simply a surface with a substance on it, as in (19), or a surface on which things are arranged piecemeal, as in (20) and (21): (19) An unidentified man lying twisted on the pavement, his face and chest smeared with blood. (CB) (20) The whole geographical region termed ‘Beer-Sheva shoulders’ was scattered with water canals, dams, terraces, stone mounds, and underground man-dug water cisterns… (CB) (21) The rest of the room was scattered with bodies. (CB) As this extended type of statal passive still construes the spatial contiguity of entities, it remains within the circumstantial area of the relational continuum. With the comitative variant of container-verbs, the ordinary statal passive typically depicts a container full of particles or entities, as the result of an act of filling, as in: (22) the U.N. sent trucks to Srebenica last night packed with food and medicine. (CB) In one type of extension, a location (room, building, square, etc.) is depicted as being full of people, but not as a result of an external agent causing them to be there: (23) The courtroom was packed with reporters and spectators. (CB)

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The type of relation expressed here is again a circumstantial one. A particularly productive extension scheme found with the comitative variant of all four container-verbs in the data is that of the ‘composition’ of entities. This sort of statal passive expresses that certain components or ingredients are found in abundance in an entity: (24) Shampoos, conditioners and styling products packed with plant extracts such as guava, avocado and white ginger keep hair silky smooth. (CB) (25) … runny omelets crammed with mysterious flavors… (CB) This semantic schema extends to something having an abstract property in abundance: (26) It is jammed with style. (27) … a game packed with controversy… (CB) The container-schema can also be applied metaphorically to humans to express that people have knowledge, charm, wealth, etc. galore: (28) Houston was a man crammed with guilty knowledge. (CB) (29) North Carolina born, he was a southern gentleman of the old school and loaded with charm. (CB) If we interpret statal passives (24) - (29) in terms of the SFG relational continuum, then they can all be seen as forms of semantic extensions into possessive relations, both inanimate part-whole relations and relations involving an animate possessor. In conclusion, the markedness question of the on/in- versus with-variant turned out, on confrontation with a quantified sample, to be multidimensional. The most important extra distinction imposed by the data and overlooked in some other approaches was that of locative causal events versus statal passives which due to meaning extensions depict purely two-participant circumstantial or possessive relations. These statal passives with meaning extension are not depicted as the result of a prior (locative) causal event, but they can be related to the ordinary statal passives by invoking the abstract schemata of metonymic extension, such as the relation between container-contained and part-whole


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relations. Generalizing over all the data - construals of relocations as well as extended statal passives - we find that examples with container-verbs overall prefer the with-variant, whereas examples with content-verbs prefer the on/invariant, and, by a small margin, action and event construals. Methodologically, the dialogue between more lexicalist and systemic approaches to markedness is a productive one. The descriptive hypotheses provided by GB have proved amenable to a data-driven, quantitative approach. For the systemic approach it could be interesting to join the theoretical debate about markedness. Van Langendonck (1994), for instance, describes how the unmarked option is not necessarily the semantically simpler one, but the semantically more general one, which often lends itself to semantic extension; a theory that fits well the findings with locative examples discussed here. 2.2. Collocations and lexical selection restrictions In the previous section the main locative variants were approached in terms of a central grammatical feature: is it the Location or Locatum which is construed as Patient? This feature turned out to correlate with some but not all of the constructional variation in question. In particular, it did not correlate with the distinction between container-verbs versus content-verbs in action and event construals. In this section, the focus will be on just that distinction, but this time it will be approached in terms of lexical collocations. Picking up on chapter IV, where lexical restrictions on the slot fillers were discussed, we will now try to find out if any determining role is played in it by collocation and the semantic relations it expresses. When Firth (1957:12) introduced the concept of collocation as “mutual expectancy” between lexical items, he stressed that collocation is realized – and hence investigatable – by frequency of occurrence. Sinclair (1966, Jones and Sinclair 1973) operationalized the quantitative study of collocation, but he (1991) also came to emphasize more and more its strong semantic motivation. Sinclair and his associates also went on to investigate the interaction between collocation and lexical selection restrictions, and grammatical structure (e.g. Francis 1993). The insight that these restrictions reveal and tie in with crucial aspects of the semantics of the whole construction has already been explored in the previous chapters; now it will be applied to probe the syntactic variants of the locative and image impression alternation.

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Let us first look at the sets of nouns associated with Locatum and Location in examples with container-verbs. Action and event construals of containerverbs seem to be strongly oriented on the Location: not in a grammatical way – as established in section 2.1, Locatum/Patients are more frequent than Location/Patients – but in a lexical, collocational way. The relation between process and Location yields a restricted set of lexical items, more so than between process and Locatum. For instance, with pack, an overwhelming amount of Locations designate cases, boxes, bags and other containers. Quoting from the data: a mysterious blue suitcase, in their suitcases, in their knapsacks, into 30 mail sacks, into a metal box, into wooden crates, into natural casings, into the rear of the van, into three cars. A specific subset is formed by rooms and enclosures into which someone or something packs people: the place, into a given space, into the convent walls, into Chinook helicopters, etc. A quick search for pack in WordSmith (Scott 1998) reveals that the first lexically full item in the list of collocates is boxes; for pack the first lexically full word that is not a verb form, is the word room. There is much greater freedom as to which entities can be transferred into these containers. For instance, into the ‘cases’ go such various things as: the stuff, an item, a team gold medal, the ashes, pornographic magazines, and into ‘boxes’: your wastes, four interconnected computers, hash cakes, the ingredients, inflatables, etc. With action and event construals of content-verbs we find a very similar, but reverse picture. The Locatums are, as proposed in Chapter IV, typically dispersive: the NG realizing a Locatum normally refers to a set of entities or an entity consisting of a lot of particles. With spray, for instance, fluids (water, chemicals, pesticide, paint, deodorant, champagne) are typical Locatums; with smear Locatums are often semi-liquids, like cream, paste, glue, butter, ointment. Some of the Locatums found for scatter are ashes, seeds, parsley, parmesan, flowers, petals, all of which are made up of compound particles. All these Locatums are dispersive, either internally or externally. There are no comparable restrictions on the Locations. For instance, the combination of spray with paint yields the following variety of Locations: shoes, judge, road sign, porcupine. A lot of objects or entities can ‘receive’ a layer, spray, or scatter of particles. Locations with content-verbs, for instance, are not only surfaces; they can also be containers, e.g. spray fragrance in a room, spray tonnes of water into the building. These findings suggest that the key issue for the lexical sets associated with Locatum and Location is that of the distinction between construals with con-


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tent- and container-verbs, not the choice between locational or comitative oblique, or between active and (event) passive. It is the general semantics of locative configurations with content-verbs or container-verbs as such which explain these lexical sets. The semantics of contruals with container-verbs requires the Location to be container-like because it has to be capable of containing a set of relocated particles. There are no comparable restrictions on their Locatums: very many entities are capable of being relocated into a container. In locative clauses with content-verbs, on the other hand, it is process and Locatum that trigger off most collocations. Fundamentally, container-verbs and their Locations share a general semantic feature (Bublitz 1996), which relates to the ‘containers’ receiving the transferred entities. Container-verbs make schematic reference to this feature while the Locations designate the specific containers. For content-verbs, process and Locatum share a general semantic feature, viz. dispersiveness. These observations lead us to restate Pinker’s (1989) grammatical predictions for content- and container verbs as collocational predictions. Containerverbs do not predict the Location as unmarked Patient, but they predict and require container-like Locations. As a matter of fact, Pinker already hints at this in his lexical description of the locative verbs. He shows that for containerverbs, such as cram, jam, stuff, wad etc., the physical boundaries of the Location are of some importance, as the feature ‘limits of a container’s capacity’ is often present in the verb’s meaning (1989:126-127). Cram, for instance, entails that a receptacle is being loaded beyond its capacity, that the sides of a container-like entity bulge out. As a consequence, there is a strong collocational and conceptual tie between process and the Location in these construals. And conversely for content-verbs: they impose a ‘dispersiveness’ restriction on their Locatum. For these verbs too, Pinker already hints at this collocational pattern when he points out that content-verbs specify manners of motion such as ‘move as a mist’, ‘distribution of a mass’ (1989:77), which of course harmonize with the dispersiveness of the Locatum. On the basis of lexical feature sharing, we can thus say that locative clauses with content-verbs have a process and Locatum which form a conceptually closer bond than process and Location. Comparison with Dutch, which is more overt in its verb morphology than English, provides some interesting contrastive material to support the assumption of a close tie between process and Locatum for content-verbs. As noted in Chapter I, Dutch has an alternation similar to the spray-part of the locative al-

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ternation in English (see also Dik 1980, Hoekstra, Lansu and Westerduin 1987): (30) a. Jan sproeide verf op de muur. ‘John sprayed paint on the wall.’ b. Jan besproeide de muur met verf. ‘John sprayed the wall with paint.’ When the Locatum is realized as a NG, the verb is formally unmarked (30a), but with the Location as Patient, the verb is prefixed with be- (30b). Note that in earlier stages, English also used to employ this device to mark the variant with the Location as Patient: although the examples given so far show that English, in contrast with Dutch, does not morphologically mark the alternate constructions, this is only true for Late Modern English. In Middle English and Early Modern English examples of the locative alternation, exactly the same prefix crops up as in Dutch. The Oxford English Dictionary mentions, among others, the following verbs under the entry be-: bedaub, bedrape, befleck, besew, besow and bespatter. English in its older stages resembled Dutch in that the variant with the Location realized by a bare nominal took a verbal prefix: (31) 1683. They all bedawbed their faces with mire and dirt. (OED) (32) 1567. Why with vermilion taint beflecke your cheekes? (OED) (33) 1844. They ... were even bespattered with mud. (OED) The practice of prefixing be-, however, gradually declined, and many of the spray-verbs which once took the prefix now no longer occur in that form. Still, the contemporary language has many relics, such as beguile, bemoan, besmear, besmirch, and so forth. 83 Considering the close affinity between the two languages, it is no surprise that the prefix be- in these English examples goes back to the same root as that of Dutch. Different meanings and origins have been suggested for be-, the most common suggestion being that it goes back to the unstressed form of Old Germanic bi (which derives from Indo-Germanic abhi) and that it indicates a location, position or direction (Jespersen 1974: 518,

83 Note in passing that all the works consulted agree that be- is still productive in producing adjectives from nouns, such as bediamonded, bewinged, bewired, etc., indicating that a person or thing is covered with the thing in question.


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Oxford English Dictionary). The prefix developed into different directions, but interestingly most accounts in one way or another refer to an applicative meaning (see, for example, Gronemeyer 1995, Van Veen and Van der Sijs 1997, Maylor 2002). 84 The use of this prefix in Dutch and older stages of English shows that the content-verbs sometimes need extra marking to enable the variant with the Location as Patient. Possibly the prefix is needed to make the bond between Patient and Process explicit, since the correlation here is not as strong as the one between Locatum and Process. Dutch now, and English earlier, use be- to emphasise the element Location and Process have in common: the prefix draws attention to the applicative component in the verb, which is apparently less prominently present. The reason for selecting exactly the prefix be- is the applicative meaning referred to above. The form with the Locatum as Patient does not need be- to this purpose, which ties in neatly with the claim that the collocational link is much stronger here: no extra marker is necessary. To conclude, in this section, the formal basis of Pinker’s distinction between content- and container-verbs has been reformulated as a matter of lexical, rather than grammatical, syntagmatic structure. In action and event construals, content-verbs have a primary collocational bond with the dispersive Locatum and container-verbs with the container-Location. Further corpus-based research will have to establish the role played by grammatical and collocational features in statal passives with content- and container-verbs.

3. The locative alternation and agnation In this last section some agnation-related issues will be further pursued. We will do this by looking at the other paradigmatic variants in the network surrounding locative constructions, but the conclusions that will be arrived at hold at a more general level. In the study of the locative and image impression alternation, the presence or absence of a with or in/on-variant has traditionally functioned as the central agnate. In this section, we will go beyond this binary alter-

84

For the current prefix be-, most descriptions of its use with the verbs under consideration also posit a completive element (Oxford English Dictionary, Jespersen 1974, Booij 1990 (for Dutch)), a characterization that ties in nicely with the primary affectedness - and hence often the holicity – of the Location in with-constructions.

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nation: the scope will be further broadened so as to lay bare a larger portion of the agnation network. It will be shown that laying bare (part of) an agnation network does not automatically lead to a straightforward classification. In fact, various types of classifications can be arrived at from an investigation of agnation networks. While looking into this matter, we will also see that Gleason’s concept of ‘partial enation’ needs to be further refined.


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Locative with

locative in/on

relational

ergative

She fills my head with the hot rasp of her voice.

*She fills the hot rasp of her voice in my head.

The hot rasp of her voice fills my head.

My head fills with the hot rasp of her voice. (CB)

Known as the “Wigmen”, they adorn their heads with wigs made of flowers and feathers. (CB)

*They adorn wigs made of flowers and feathers on their heads.

Wigs made of flowers and feathers adorn their heads.

*Their heads adorn with wigs made of flowers

Blood splattered her mouth.

Sharon screamed, and the blood splattered onto her open mouth. (CB)

* The rich lather rubs your hair.

*Your hair rubs with the lather *The lather rubs on your hair.

The gashing wound The gashing wound splattered blood splattered her open into her open mouth with blood. mouth.

?

Rub the hair with the rich lather.

Wet the bar and … rub the rich lather on the hair. (CB)

Spray your fingertips with a small amount of Touch-in Spray.

Spray a small *A small amount *Her fingers sprayed with amount of Touch-in of Touch-in Spray Touch-in Spray. Spray onto your sprayed her *?Touch-in Spray sprayed on her fingers fingertips. (CB) fingertips.

Cram the overcrowded perennial border with the new ones.

Cram the new ones into the overcrowded perennial border. (CB)

The new ones cram the overcrowded perennial border.

*The border crams with the new ones *The new ones cram into the overcrowded perennial border

Mrs. Madrigal heaped Michael's plate with more carrots.

Mrs. Madrigal heaped more carrots onto Michael's plate. (CB)

*The carrots heaped his plate.

*His plate heaped with more carrots. *More carrots heaped on his plate.

*He slopped the table with a little liquid.

He slopped a little liquid on the table.

*?A little liquid slopped the table.

A little liquid slopped on the table. (CB)

* I ladled the garden with pine needles and leaf mold.

I brought back pine needles and leaf mold and all sorts of things and just ladled it onto the garden. (CB)

* Pine needles and * Pine needles and leaf leaf mold ladle the mold ladle on the garden garden.

Table 51: Locative construals and their ergative/relational variants.

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From the overview of some of the agnates of locative sentences in Table 51, a very diversified picture emerges. The third column shows how some locatives have a circumstantial relational agnate with the same lexical verb – not the reformulation with be on, be with etc. (as in the paint is on the wall), but with the same verb as in the locative variant now used as a relational process: (34) The hot rasp of her voice fills my head. (35) Wigs made of flowers and feathers adorn their heads. Similarly, the last column shows that some locative examples are agnate to an ergative construal with either Location (36) or Locatum (37) as Subject: (36) The three main bearings can clog with sand and general muck. (CB) (37) The blood splattered onto her mouth. (CB) Table 51, in other words, suggests that the group of locative construals can be subcategorized further still. The distribution of ergative and relational agnates suggests more and finer distinctions. This observation invites a reflection on what Gleason calls ‘partial enation’ (1965:205ff). Partial enation means that two construals are enate to a certain degree, but are not completely the same (see Introduction). In other words, they share many but not all agnates. Gleason himself distinguished two major types of partial enation, i.e. two ways in which the absolute dichotomy of ‘enate or non-enate’ has to be modified. On the one hand, partial enation can be concerned with internal complexity, as with, for example, brick red and very old as opposed to simply red and old. In cases like these, agnation can serve as a “means of recognizing intermediate constituents of sentences” and is “particularly useful in delineating nesting of constructions within constructions” (Gleason 1965:206). The other type of partial enation relates to subclassification, i.e. the fact that two elements can belong to the same class but different subclasses. Partial enation of this type, in other words, is concerned with delicacy. Taking into account the presence or absence of an alternate variant, for instance, is a way to subcategorize the locative domain at a more delicate level. However, the seemingly random distribution of ergative and relational agnates over the locative with and in/on construals suggests that, besides the ‘internal complexity’ and the ‘subclassification’ type of agnation, at least one


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other type needs to be recognized, viz. one that does not subclassify, but that cross-classifies. The ergative/non-ergative distinction, for instance, is more general than the locative category, and the verb classes involved are more extensive. Instead of further subclassifying the subclasses (alternating versus non-alternating), they cut across them and single out other groups. Consider, for instance, the following examples. Some non-alternating in/on-construals have an ergative agnate (38), whereas others do not (39), which seems to lead to a further subclassification of this non-alternating group: (38) a. It is a miserable and unacceptable excuse for continuing to pour contaminated waste into the local waterway. (CB) b. Contaminated water is pouring into the local waterway. (39) a. They veiled the statue with a white blanket. b. *The statue veiled with a blanket. Furthermore, the ergative variant with the Locatum as Subject is not limited to the non-alternating in/on-group; it also crops up in the alternating construals: (40) a. She splashed a wave of it over the edge onto the saucer. b. A wave of it splashed over the edge onto the saucer. (CB) (41) a. We suggest you then pack the inflated goods in this normal cardboard box. (CB) b. *The inflated goods pack this normal cardboard box. Rather than dividing the non-alternating in/on subclass of the locatives into two further subclasses, the ergative agnate singles out other groups, which cross the boundaries of the classes set up by the locative alternation. The same holds for the relational agnate. At first sight, the presence or absence of this agnate seems to coincide with the two non-alternating groups. Construals of the non-alternating with-type are systematically related to a relational construal, whereas non-alternating in/on-construals are characterized by the systematic absence of such an agnate: (42) a. Known as the "Wigmen", they adorn their heads with wigs made of flowers and feathers. (CB) b. Wigs made of flowers and feathers adorn their heads.

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(43) a. These madmen have stained this prosperous city with blood. (CB) b. Blood stains this prosperous city. (44) a. One of my clients [...] surrounded her vegetable garden with a brick honeycomb wall. (CB) b. A brick honeycomb wall surrounds her vegetable garden. (45) a. She veiled her face with a black scarf. (CB) b. A black scarf veils her face. Versus (46) a. Use a brush to flick or drip washable paint on to paper. (CB) b. *Washable paint drips the paper. (47) a. Ladle the liquid into this measuring cup. (CB) b. *The liquid ladles the measuring cup. (48) a. Celebrity advertising exhorting us to slosh HP sauce on our chips. (CB) b. *HP sauce sloshes our chips. (49) a. After the child is named, the priest pours water on to the baby's head. (CB) b. *Water pours the baby’s head. The partially enate character of the two non-alternating classes thus seems to be confirmed by this further difference in agnation possibilities. But when the relation between relational agnate and alternating locatives is investigated, the picture is less clear-cut. Some alternating construals do and others do not have a relational paradigmatic variant:

(50) a. The two boxers spattered the screaming ringside crowd with a shower of sweat. b. A shower of sweat spattered the screaming ringside crowd. (CB) (51) a. It was obligatory to smear your face with glittery blusher. (CB) b. *Glittery blusher smears your face. Again, the presence or absence of the agnate does not coincide with the three groups that are established on the basis of their (locative) alternation po-


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tential. Although the relational agnate dovetails with the classification of the locatives in non-alternating in/on and with, the alternating group behaves rather erratically. As a consequence, a subclassification of the whole locative domain based on the absence or presence of a relational agnate yields a different classification from the one based on the “locative alternation”-potential. This leaves us with three different classifications of the same group of construals. The question which one is ‘right’ does not apply here: the classification on the basis of participation in the locative alternation, on the basis of the presence of a relational agnate, or on the basis of an ergative agnate present three equally valid possibilities. Depending on which aspect one wants to turn the searchlights on, different groups (of different sizes) can be formed.85 Which sets of construals are singled out for further investigation is determined by the object of one’s study. Interesting for research into ergativity, for instance, is that locative construals with the same verb do not necessarily both have an ergative agnate: (52) a. The wind heaped the snow on the sidewalk. b. Snow heaped on the sidewalk. (53) a. She heaped carrots on his plate. b. *Carrots heaped on his plate. One of the preconditions for an ergative agnate – which is rather infrequent in the locative group anyway – is that the designatum of the Locatum has a certain ‘mobility’ of its own. The lexical properties of the participants are very important and interact with the constructional plane: a Locatum such as snow, which refers to a group of flakes that whirl around as if by themselves, can function as Subject of an ergative one-participant construal, whereas a Locatum such as carrots does not have the right features to be conceived of as a self-instigating participant. These examples also clearly show that the Agent

85 As already noted above, ergativity and relationality are more general categories than the locative category, which means that classifications on the basis of ergativity or relationality will also bring in other construals in the investigation. Suppose, for instance, that one would ‘enter’ the paradigmatic network via the third column in Table 66, in order to investigate relational construals and their agnates: in this case, many of the locative construals would not even enter the picture, but on the other hand, other construals, such as she turned into a wonderful person – he turned her into a wonderful person, would be included in the investigation.

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functions as an Instigator of the action, rather than as a real Actor, in clauses with an ergative agnate: the wind causes the snow to heap on the sidewalk, but the snow itself does the ‘heaping.’ In the transitive sentence, on the other hand, she is the Actor: she does the heaping, not the carrots. However, in our case the research domain is focussed on the semantics of and the motivation behind the choice for either in/on- or the with-variant as a means of coding a scene, not on ergativity.

4. Conclusion In this chapter, we have turned to the question which schematic semantics are being construed by English locative constructions. The ‘caused relational’ analysis proposed in chapter V has been further elaborated. It has been proposed that locatives typically express caused circumstantial relations of the locational or comitative sort, but that they can also express caused possessive relations. Added support for this type of analysis was shown to come from the diachronic and synchronic productivity of metonymic and metaphorical meaning extensions of relational verbs along SFG’s relational continuum. Historical locative data showed that the comitative with-variant and statal passives have motivated meaning extensions in the locative domain in English from the beginning. Having established a semantic description of the locative construction, we then turned to the relative quantitative instantiation of the locative variants, and the collocational patterns found in these variants. An investigation of issues like these require, as pointed out by Stubbs (1993) corpus-based descriptive heuristics. The influential GB work of Levin and Rappaport and Pinker provided valuable starting hypotheses, which were confronted with two usage-based neo-Firthian descriptive heuristics: Halliday’s quantitative weighing of the terms in a system, and Sinclair’s lexical and collocational investigation of items in grammatical environments. As a result, the starting hypotheses from the GB tradition were partly confirmed and partly modified. The most important dimension of variation overlooked in that tradition but strongly imposed by the corpus data was that between action and event construals and statal passives with meaning extensions. Generalizing over all the data, comitative variants with container-verbs turned out to be the unmarked option overall. As they contain a great number of statal passives, which are also the main locus of me-


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tonymic extensions into the possessive domain, they can be regarded as the most general semantic option in English. Pinker’s (1989) interesting claims about container- and content-verbs, then, had, on the strength of corpus evidence, to be reformulated from grammatical to collocational orientation on Location and Locatum respectively. Besides revealing general default patterns, this study has also revealed deviant grammatical behaviour found with individual verbs Finally, the observations on the partially enate character of the alternating and non-alternating groups force a last reflection on the existence of verb classes as they are proposed in lexicalist approaches. Despite the different focus, there are important similarities between these lexicalist and more construction-oriented approaches: as we saw before, Levin’s impressive 1993 overview of English verb classes champions alternation potential as the methodology par excellence for determining clusters of verbs that behave in the same way. But although paradigmatic variants occupy a major place in this theory as well, the question arises where the line has been drawn as to which alternations – or agnates – distinguish verb classes. With regard to further subclassification of verbs on the basis of what we have called subcategorizing agnates, Levin (1993) goes quite some way. The non-alternating in/on-verbs, for instance, are further divided into smaller groups on the basis of other ‘diathesis alternations’ they participate in; and the locative and image impression verbs, which can be seen as constituting one larger class together, are also distinguished as two separate classes. The problem with the rather tight delineation of classes becomes evident when cross-classifying agnates are brought into the picture. Take, for instance, splatter, which is classified as one of the spray/load-verbs. Splatter has the potential to occur in relational construals (blood splattered the wall). On the other hand, smear, which is listed as part of the same class (Levin 1993:51), does not participate in the relational alternation. From this perspective, splatter and smear do not belong to the same verb class. How is the choice to see one alternation as decisive and another as non-decisive in the delineation of verb classes justified? This is not to say that setting up a classification of verbs is a fruitless and uninformative enterprise, as it is true that only a particular group of verbs, which share common features, chimes in with the meaning of the construction and that all the other verbs are not – or less – compatible with this construction. Rather, the above goes to show that it is possible to distinguish groups of verbs, but that such classifications are always only one of a number of possible ways

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of grouping the verbs, depending on the feature one wants to highlight, which is always a feature of the construction in which the verb is used. And this brings us again to the tenet that has informed this whole study, viz. the intrinsic connection and interdependency between the lexical and the constructional plane.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION The approach taken in this examination of the locative, image impression and material/product constructions is a multi-layered one which combines textual analysis with a description of the representational semantics. Some approaches focus on only one aspect, such as topicality, holicity, or meaning-components in the verb, but it has been shown here that these can at most provide partial descriptions of the constructions. Further, this investigation is also permeated by the idea of interaction between lexis and construction. The different lexical fillers of process and participant slots need to be described in detail, but without losing sight of their place in the construction: the construction is the functional unit which defines the semantic value of its elements, and not the other way round. Whereas the description provided in this book has tended to concentrate on the difference in the semantics of the alternate constructions, some of the other literature has been concerned mainly with alternation potential and the choice between the two alternates. Although they cannot strictly be separated, three main motivations can be distinguished. Firstly, there is the textual approach, which aims to explain the choice of alternate by appealing to the ‘pragmatic’ factor that the newer part comes later, i.e. in the PrepP rather than the postverbal NG (Givón 1979, Halliday 1994). The meaning of ‘the newer part’, however, differs among the proponents of a textual approach: the terms ‘given’ and ‘new’ are used to denote quite different phenomena in the literature. In chapter II, two possible interpretations of ‘givenness’ were discussed: identifiability of nominals on the one hand, and information distribution in the clause as message on the other. Identifiability of nominals is concerned with the recoverability of their referents for speaker and hearer. Different classifications for the types of (non-) recoverability have been proposed in the literature, with varying degrees of specificity. The approach opted for here was Gundel et al.’s (1993), because it takes the form of a hierarchy, which allows a comparison between the two postverbal nominals in the construction. A quantified analysis of corpus attes-

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tations clearly shows the importance of corpus-based research, as – counter to expectation – there is not always a very high correlation between ‘more easily recoverable’ and realization as (clause-final) PrepP. An interesting side-result of this analysis was the link that emerged between semantic roles and identifiability: some roles, such as the Location, are often recoverable, whereas other, such as the Product, are more typically not retrievable. This can be linked to factors such as ‘effectedness’ or being a persistent or more ephemeral discourse participant. Unlike the Locatum, for instance, the Location can often be related to elements that have previously set the scene, hence its typical recoverability. The second type of ‘givenness’ analysis carried out was concerned with the way in which information is distributed over the information unit. The main concern here is with the information focus, i.e. the most noteworthy part of the New. The hypothesis that choice of alternate is linked to information distribution makes for a much better generalization. In more than ninety percent of the attestations, the PrepP realizes (part of) the focal part of the message. With regard to textual factors, this is where we hit on a very important factor in the alternation. Chapter III focuses on a second frequently cited factor in descriptions that seek to explain the choice in alternate, viz. the partitive/holistic effect (Anderson 1971, Schwartz-Norman 1976, Sgall 1980, Jeffries and Willis 1984, Dowty 1991). This factor has been brought into the picture mainly with respect to the locative alternation. Generally speaking, the idea is that the choice between the two alternates depends on which participant the speaker wants to present as being totally affected by the action: a nominal realization expresses holistic involvement, prepositional realization only partitive affectedness. The principle of holicity, it has been argued, is actually (one of) the instantiation(s) in the locative constructions of the ‘total involvement’ principle that is generally associated with the Patient. If a Location is construed as the Patient, its close interaction with a verb expressing the affectedness of a surface by some substance easily leads to the primary affectedness (associated with Patienthood) being interpreted as ‘total coverage’. The so-called partitive interpretation – which is more accurately described as ‘not necessarily holistic’ – results from the absence of this close direct interaction. It has also been shown, however, that for the Locatum nominal realization is of lesser importance: holicity because of direct interaction with the process only holds for the Location. For the Locatum, the determiner structure is more important: definite deter-


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miners enforce a holistic reading, also for the prepositionally realized Locatum, whereas indefinite ones may cause a partitive meaning: (1) a. He sprayed the paint on the wall. b. He sprayed the wall with the paint. This differential behaviour is related to the role of Locatum itself: it is (typically) the mass of particles to be transferred to a particular location. Holicity, this entails, means that all the particles have been transferred. Therefore – unlike for the Location, for which holicity is a matter of being wholly covered – quantity is important for the Locatum. As definite determiners not only express identifiability, but also implicate that all the relevant entities are included, whereas indefinite determiners have an ‘exclusiveness implicature’ (Declerck 1986), the link between definiteness and holicity on the one hand, and indefiniteness and partitivity on the other, can be made. An important restriction to all this, however, is that the terms ‘partitive’ and ‘holistic’ interpretation apply only to relatively quantified nominal groups, i.e. nominals where size is measured by comparing it with a ‘reference-mass.’ In example (1) above, the definite article in the paint, for instance, quantifies the Locatum in a relative way: it makes inherent reference to a mass of paint, and specifies that the designated mass coincides with this reference mass, which results in a holistic interpretation. Nominals with absolute quantification, which give a direct indication of the magnitude, cannot be interpreted as either holistic or partitive, as there is nothing they can be weighed off against. The often made claim that the Locatum in a sentence such as he sprayed the wall with paint is partitive, for instance, does not make sense: to say that ‘not (necessarily) all the paint has been sprayed’ is vacuous, as the bare mass noun paint does not invoke the notion of a reference mass, all of which or part of which could be sprayed out. As many Locatums are realized by bare mass nouns, the frequently used term ‘partitive interpretation’ is thus something of a misnomer in many cases. Alternations of the kind investigated here occupy an important place in lexicalist-inspired work, because alternations as such are part of their research methodology. But despite the shared interest in systematically related structures, the aim is different. The lexicalist focus is on the contribution of one lexical item, the verb; to identify verb classes (cf. Levin’s 1993 invaluable overview of English verb classes and alternations) and isolate meaning components in the verb. The basic tenet is that syntactic behaviour is determined by

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verb meaning, so the alternation potential of a verb can be used as a probe into its meaning. In this book, on the other hand, the interaction and interdependency between the lexical and the constructional level has always been stressed. The advantage of working with a constructionist approach is that it is possible to incorporate the lexico-semantic descriptions of the verb while at the same time not losing sight of the larger unit it is part of, viz. the construction. Lexicalist approaches typically consider the polysemy manifested by the alternating verbs from a restricted perspective, not linking it to the semantics of the construction and a lexical description of the participants. And despite praiseworthy attempts (e.g. Pinker 1989), no satisfying account of the relevant meaning components in alternating verbs has so far been given. This may be because for its elucidation verb meaning requires study of the semantics of the (alternate) constructions, which is not part of the lexicalists’ research programme. The construction, it was argued in chapter V, can activate a specific verb sense, leading to polysemy. Because one construction systematically activates one specific type of verb sense, the term constructionally determined polysemy has been used, following Davidse 1998. The locative verbs that are used in the in/on-construction collocate with substances and particles with a ‘dispersive’ quality, and express dispersion, whereas in the other alternate the verbs express ‘coverage’, in line with the with-construction. The alternating material/product verbs are systematically polysemous between ‘construction’ of something (in the from/out of-variant) and ‘transformation’ (in the into-construction). And the verbs in the image impression constructions either express how a surface is distorted, or how some kind of ‘sign’ is made visible. Verbs that occur in only one variant generally lack this polysemy, but can occasionally be given a meaning extension that dovetails with the alternate construction. Such an investigation thus takes the reverse perspective from the lexicalist point of view: rather than working from parts to larger units, the stance taken here is that the construction is the unit determining the functional relations between process and participants. Although lexically-oriented linguists also speak of constructions, such as ‘the middle construction’ or ‘the conative construction’, the construction is purely seen as a corollary of the verb’s meaning. In this study, on the other hand, a top-down approach is taken: it is the construction that motivates lexical restrictions on its nominal slot fillers and that activates the verb sense realizing the process. The need to recognize con-


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structional meaning emerges from examples such as the following, where the verb is used in a construction it normally does not occur in: (2)

(All through his first years she kicked and hit the child, and in this way) she smacked Jonathan into a timid, vulnerable teenager.

Smack, ‘in the sense of ‘hit’, is here used in the semiotic type of material/ product construction, which expresses a caused relation of being. The verb’s typical lexical coverage is here extended under the influence of the construction in which it is used. As a result, a strict classification of verbs as alternating or non-alternating as in lexicalist descriptions is not always justified. Corpus research has shown that quite a lot of the ‘non-alternating’ verbs do occasionally occur in the alternate construction: (3)

(4)

The weight of advertising, films and cartoons she will have seen will already be creating that experience into “tomboy” territory. (CB) He requires that bizarre, beautiful, outrageous, bold and exciting creations be designed and adorned on the bodies of willing models. (CB)

Create is classified as ‘non-alternating ‘from’ only’, adorn as ‘non-alternating ‘with’ only’ (Levin 1993:56, 66). Deviations from the classification, such as those in (3) and (4), have also been noticed in lexically-oriented work, but are disposed of as ‘syntactic errors.’ In the approach taken here, it is the closeness between the semantics of the so-called non-alternating verbs on the one hand and the constructional meaning on the other, that allows for the meaning extension in the verb that makes it possible to use the alternate construction. Rather than being mistakes, these construals show how a verb’s constructional potential can be stretched. In conclusion, the top-down approach taken here also incorporates a lexical perspective: the relation between verb and construction has been referred to as dialectic. On the one hand, the requirement that verbal meaning has to chime in with constructional meaning entails that verb meaning is to a large extent predictive of the constructional potential. The verb meaning imposes certain limits on the possibilities of extension. On the other hand, constructional meaning can, as it were, be imposed on the verb, as in (2) - (4) above. Some verbs are

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likely to take on meaning extensions to fit in with constructions “unfamiliar” to the verb, for others it is virtually impossible to be extended. Primarily focussing on verb classifications and meaning components of the verb, as in lexically oriented approaches, is not justified from either a theoretical or descriptive point of view. It is only by viewing the construction as the locus of instantial and systemic language change, that ‘creative’ verb meanings such as those in the examples above can be explained. In general, accurate characterization of verb meaning is impossible without prior description of the semantics of the whole construction; and alternating verbs require characterization of the semantics of these alternate constructions. In a constructionist approach, the lexico-semantic characteristics of the participants also deserve further attention. Just as there are restrictions on which verb can occur in which construction, the nominals realizing the participants also need to possess certain specific characteristics. In order to be integrated in the locative constructions as a Locatum, for instance, a nominal has to possess dispersive characteristics, i.e. it needs to refer to a set of entities or to a mass that consists of a number of particles. The Location, on the other hand, is realized by nominals designating an entity with surface- or container-like qualities, and these are highlighted in the construction. Lexical characteristics of the participants help to clarify the relation between locative and image impression constructions. One of the main reasons for Levin (1993:67) to distinguish these two alternations is that the image impression verbs form a coherent subset of verbs that differs from the set of locative verbs. However, many of the verbs she lists as ‘locative’ also occur in image impression construals, and vice versa: (5) (6)

A few days earlier, graffiti had been sprayed on the church and on a nearby Maori monument. (CB) Prince William has been warned not to decorate his study walls with saucy pin-ups. (CB)

Spray is listed as a locative verb, decorate as an image impression verb (Levin 1993:50, 66). Furthermore, the claim that the partitive/holistic effect is only associated with the locative alternation also does not hold good. Admittedly, the with-alternate often does not imply ‘total coverage’ of the Location. But given the right lexical characteristics, viz. external dispersiveness of the Image, the image impression construction can also display the partitive/holistic effect (chapters III and IV). Where the two do differ, however, is in the lexical


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characteristics of the Image. Whereas Location and Agent are very much comparable in the two types, it is the third participant that allows us to tell locative from image impression construals. The Image differs from the Locatum in that its referent typically has no prior material existence; the most typical lexical fillers are words, symbols or images in the process of being ‘impressed’. Therefore, although the similarities suggest that locative and image impression are not really two separate, unrelated construction types, they still can be distinguished at a more delicate level. With respect to the material/product alternation, the choice of lexical fillers for the non-agentive participants reflects the two subtypes that have been discriminated. Although there is an area of overlap, the part/whole type typically takes as Material lexical items denoting a ‘raw material’, such as types of wood, rock or wool, whereas the semiotic type prevalently takes human beings, institutions, and the like. A corresponding division is recognizable in the items realizing the Product: words referring to handiwork or the endproduct of physical labour for the part/whole type, and descriptions such as one of the best businessmen or the number one company for the semiotic type. In sum, as the semantic roles have a fairly specific meaning associated with them, they can only be realized by certain lexical classes. Important though a study of verbal meaning may be in a description of the alternations, it should be complemented by an investigation into the lexical characteristics of the participants. The last three chapters contain a descriptive analysis of the constructions. One of the main issues dealt with was the status of the PrepP. In an analysis that departs from the received SFG one, the prepositionally realized Location, Locatum, Image, etc. have been analysed as oblique participants in the process, whose semantics and distinct combinatory behaviour contrast with that of, for instance, PrepPs specifying the spatial setting of or instrument used in a processual interaction. The preposition does not introduce a circumstance that is “attendant on the process” (Halliday 1994:150) via some complex process-participant unit, but establishes a link with the process itself. Rather than embellishing around the clause, these PrepPs realize participants that are affected by the process. In terms of structure, this led us to a dependency analysis in terms of Langacker’s (1989, 1991) complementation model, which analyzes the PrepP in locative constructions as a relational complement elaborating the patient nominal. Levin (1993:45) expresses a similar view on the participant

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status of the PrepP when she treats the three alternations under the heading ‘alternations involving arguments within the VP.’ The constructions themselves are, in essence, described as three-place constructions that involve a caused relation. Parallel to other three-place constructions such as the complex-transitive and the ditransitive, the constructions investigated here have been analysed as involving an event transitive and relational transitive component. In line with the verb meanings set out, the constructions have been labelled caused dispersion and caused coverage for the locative alternation, caused transformation and caused construction for the material/product constructions, and caused semiosis and caused distortion for the image impression alternation. The final two chapters flesh out this general description. As to the material/product constructions, two (not always clearly separable) further subtypes can be distinguished (chapter VI). The first is the type that is usually considered when the material/product alternation is described, and is exemplified by the following pair: (7)

a. The birds will weave the willow pieces into a cosy cup-shaped nest. b. The birds will weave a cosy cup-shaped nest out of the willow pieces.

The Agent’s action causes a possessive part/whole relation between the two non-agentive participants: the Material stands for the parts that make up the Product as a whole. Hence, on the caused relational continuum, they can be situated in the inanimate part-whole section of the possessive area. Material/ product construals of this type are typically related to a part/whole reformulation, such as the cup-shaped nest has willow pieces in it. It is also this type that takes ‘raw materials’ and ‘products of physical labour’ as lexical fillers for the non-agentive participants (see above). Although there are certain grammatical restrictions, the part/whole type reverses quite freely: there are numerous attestations of both variants. The other subtype, which has been referred to as the semiotic type, is much more restricted in its alternation potential, and practically only occurs in the into-construction: (8)

a. They built Shell into the number one oil company. b. ??They built the number one oil company of Shell.


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The relation between Material and Product is not possessive, but intensive: these construals express a (future) relation of ‘being’ between the two nonagentive participants. Construals like these involve ‘caused recategorization.’ Unlike the part/whole type, the semiotic type is systematically related to a complex-transitive reformulation (they made Shell the number one company), which reveals the intensive nature of the relation between Material and Product. This relation is typically of the attributive type, with the Material as an instance (e.g. this desert) of the more general type specified by the Product (e.g. a modern state). (9)

The efforts to carve this desert into a modern state have still had surprisingly little effect. (CB)

In textually unmarked environments, the semiotic construals with a definite Product (such as they built Shell into the number one oil company) are also attributive. The Product stands for a one-member class and the Material is the unique instance corresponding to it. With marked textual conditions (contrastive stress on the Identifier and anaphoric definite reference for the Identified), an identifying reading is possible. Typically, however, Material/product constructions and the verbs involved express the recategorization of the Material, and the main difference between definite and indefinite Products is that the former signal a one-to-one correspondence between the type specified by the Product and the instance expressed by the Material. The locative and image impression constructions involve a different type of caused relation, viz. the circumstantial relation of ‘being with’ or ‘being in/on.’ On a more delicate level, the locative and image impression constructions can be further distinguished: image impression construals are concerned with caused semiosis and caused distortion, whereas locatives typically express caused circumstantial relations of the locational or comitative sort, caused coverage and caused dispersion. Locatives have also been shown to extend into the possessive domain: upon closer investigation, a large number of locative construals turn out to be statal passives, some of which had meaning extension into the possessive area. (10) He is a man crammed with guilty knowledge. (11) This film is jammed with style.

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These two examples express possessive relations: (9) with an animate possessor, (10) with an inanimate part/whole relation. Statal passives also turned out to be important in the quantitative approach to markedness. In a pilot study, the relative frequencies of the two variants in the alternation were established. Upon a first and general confrontation with quantified corpus material, container-verbs seemed to have the form with the Location as Patient is the unmarked one, whereas with content-verbs the form with the Locatum as Patient emerged as the basic one. However, not ony did certain individual verbs (e.g. load) not conform to the expected pattern, once a difference between strict ‘action and event’ construals and statal passives with a meaning extension was made, there turned out to be an equi-distribution between the into- and the with-variant. The only generalization that could be made in terms of markedness, hence, was that sentences with container-verbs overall prefer statal passives and the withvariant, while examples with content-verbs have a slight preference for the on/in-variant and action and event construals. What cross-classifies this dimension of variation is the semantic opposition between examples with contentverbs and examples with container-verbs. The former are characterized by collocational orientation on the Locatum; the latter have a primary collocational bond with the container-Location. In conclusion, with regard to the locative, image impression and material/ product constructions, a careful study of the paradigmatic variants has revealed that these are constructions involving caused intensive, circumstantial or possessive relations. As to alternation, there is no single underlying motivation. Various factors play a role, such as information distribution, holicity properly understood, construal type, inherency, etc. Further, only polysemous verbs that are collocatable with both non-agentive participants as Patients, participate in the alternation. It will be interesting to see whether some of the other threeparticipant constructions, which have hitherto been neglected within the cognitive-functional domain, will also prove amenable to an analysis in terms of the caused relational continuum.

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INDEX

affectedness, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 116 Agent, 108, 111, 180, 185, 188, 211, 225, 248 agnation, 11, 12, 14, 119, 142, 148, 149, 190, 242, 245 alternation, 1, 2, 13, 17, 38, 46, 71, 81, 119, 148, 149, 155, 207, 215, 242 non-alternation, 2 attribution. See relational bounding, 94, 96, 136, 217 caused relations, 15, 117, 183, 227 circumstance, 108 of Instrument, 120 of Place, 118, 119 circumstantial. See relational collocation, 13, 14, 15, 132, 237, 239 complementation, 125 conative alternation, 81, 141 constituency, 123, 125 constructionist approach, 13, 147, 153, 172, 174 dative alternation, 24, 71, 108, 187 definite article, 22, 39, 77, 87, 90, 100, 164, 201, 219 delicacy, 8, 10, 141, 245 dependency, 123, 125, 152 diachronic perspective, 181, 196, 225, 240 dispersiveness, 133, 142, 238, 240 enation, 11, 12, 245, 247 ergative construction, 149, 244 experiential, 6, 7, 25, 159 focal / non-focal, 47, 64, 66, 71 Given / New, 7, 27, 45, 62, 63, 64, 65 givenness, 45, 46, 47 givenness hierarchy, 49, 56, 64, 90 grounding, 91, 199

holicity, 15, 18, 19, 85, 87, 88 image impression alternation, 23, 85 Location, 18, 78, 89, 92, 143 Locatum, 19, 78, 87, 104 material/product alternation, 22 partitive/holistic, 15, 17, 18, 26, 39, 76, 96, 142 ideational, 6, 122 identifiability, 47, 49, 55, 57, 62, 63, 64, 71, 90 identification. See relational Image, 2, 23, 60, 69, 72, 74, 86, 140, 143 image impression constructions, 1, 35, 58, 59, 68, 85, 120, 132, 133, 150, 156, 157, 188, 258 information distribution, 26, 45, 62, 63, 64, 71 information focus, 62, 63, 68, See also focal / non-focal instantiation, 52, 168, 198 domain of instantiation, 94, 95, 136 intensive relational. See relational interpersonal, 6, 122 lexicalist approaches, 3, 13, 17, 28, 147, 174, 237 lexicogrammar, 5, 8, 10 Location, 1, 2, 18, 23, 34, 57, 60, 68, 69, 72, 73, 77, 78, 85, 88, 110, 118, 132, 189, 218, 224, 229, 232, 238 locative constructions, 1, 17, 19, 34, 35, 38, 56, 66, 76, 81, 148, 155, 188, 223 Locatum, 57, 68, 72, 77, 78, 88, 97, 104, 110, 120, 133, 143, 189, 218, 224, 229, 232, 238 logical, 6, 7 manner component, 32, 33, 36

268


mass noun, 94, 135, 217 Material, 2, 23, 70, 75, 110, 144, 210, 211, 217 material/product constructions, 2, 22, 27, 60, 69, 74, 151, 152, 156, 188, 195, 257, 258 meaning extension, 31, 156, 181, 182, 225, 233, 235 multivariate, 7, 113 oblique, 108, 118, 120, 122, 189, 224, 225, 228 paradigmatic, 10, 11, 12, 13, 132, 148 part/whole relation, 178, 182, 210, 216, 226 participant, 15, 108 partitive. See holicity passive, 9, 12, 162, 179, 191, 230, 232 statal, 15, 225, 233, 235 Patient, 81, 83, 85, 114, 116, 119, 185, 224, 232 Range, 81, 111 phoricity, 46, 93, 202, 205, 218, 219 plural noun, 94, 135 polysemy, 148, 151, 154, 190, 227 possessive, 15, 226 possessive relational. See relational pragmatic, 79 Product, 2, 70, 72, 74, 111, 146, 198, 200, 207, 210, 211, 217 quantifiers absolute, 97 cardinal, 97, 102, 103

relative, 97 referentiality, 51, 165, 172, 192, 198, 205, 209 relational, 13, 160, 181, 246, See also SFG, See also caused relations attribution, 161, 162, 163, 164, 167, 171, 180, 191, 197, 201 circumstantial, 160, 162, 170, 174, 197, 236, 244 identification, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 171, 180, 191, 204, 206 intensive, 160, 161, 163, 165, 167, 174, 185, 192, 196 passive, 167 possessive, 160, 163, 170, 174, 187, 236 semantic profile, 126 semiotic, 15, 164, 174, 196, 207, 212, 213 SFG, 4, 8 metafunction, 6, 7, 11 relational, 3, 15, 160, 235 syntagmatic, 10, 11, 13, 123, 148 textual, 7, 11, 14, 122 Theme, 7, 45 three-participant, 13, 109, 157, 228, 234 topicality, 25, 27, 42, 44, 46, 62, 71 univariate, 7, 112 verb class, 13, 31, 173, 224, 245 conflation class, 34, 35, 36, 39, 157 voice, 116, 119, 162 agentive, 13 patientive, 13, 131

In the series Studies in Language Companion Series the following titles have been published thus far or are scheduled for publication: 81 PEETERS, Bert (ed.): Semantic Primes and Universal Grammar. Emprical evidence from the Romance languages. xvi, 362 pp. + index. Expected October 2006 80 BIRNER, Betty J. and Gregory WARD (eds.): Drawing the Boundaries of Meaning. Neo-Gricean studies in pragmatics and semantics in honor of Laurence R. Horn. vi, 348 pp. + index. Expected September 2006 79 LAFFUT, An: Three-Participant Constructions in English. A functional-cognitive approach to caused relations. 2006. ix, 268 pp. 78 YAMAMOTO, Mutsumi: Agency and Impersonality. Their Linguistic and Cultural Manifestations. xii, 144 pp. + index. Expected August 2006 77 KULIKOV, Leonid, Andrej MALCHUKOV and Peter de SWART (eds.): Case, Valency and Transitivity. xix, 493 pp. + index. Expected September 2006 76 NEVALAINEN, Terttu, Juhani KLEMOLA and Mikko LAITINEN (eds.): Types of Variation. Diachronic, dialectal and typological interfaces. viii, 378 pp. Expected June 2006 75 HOLE, Daniel, André MEINUNGER and Werner ABRAHAM (eds.): Datives and Other Cases. Between argument structure and event structure. 2006. viii, 385 pp. 74 PIETRANDREA, Paola: Epistemic Modality. Functional properties and the Italian system. 2005. xii, 232 pp. 73 XIAO, Richard and Tony McENERY: Aspect in Mandarin Chinese. A corpus-based study. 2004. x, 305 pp. 72 FRAJZYNGIER, Zygmunt, Adam HODGES and David S. ROOD (eds.): Linguistic Diversity and Language Theories. 2005. xii, 432 pp. 71 DAHL, Östen: The Growth and Maintenance of Linguistic Complexity. 2004. x, 336 pp. 70 LEFEBVRE, Claire: Issues in the Study of Pidgin and Creole Languages. 2004. xvi, 358 pp. 69 TANAKA, Lidia: Gender, Language and Culture. A study of Japanese television interview discourse. 2004. xvii, 233 pp. 68 MODER, Carol Lynn and Aida MARTINOVIC-ZIC (eds.): Discourse Across Languages and Cultures. 2004. vi, 366 pp. 67 LURAGHI, Silvia: On the Meaning of Prepositions and Cases. The expression of semantic roles in Ancient Greek. 2003. xii, 366 pp. 66 NARIYAMA, Shigeko: Ellipsis and Reference Tracking in Japanese. 2003. xvi, 400 pp. 65 MATSUMOTO, Kazuko: Intonation Units in Japanese Conversation. Syntactic, informational and functional structures. 2003. xviii, 215 pp. 64 BUTLER, Christopher S.: Structure and Function – A Guide to Three Major Structural-Functional Theories. Part 2: From clause to discourse and beyond. 2003. xiv, 579 pp. 63 BUTLER, Christopher S.: Structure and Function – A Guide to Three Major Structural-Functional Theories. Part 1: Approaches to the simplex clause. 2003. xx, 573 pp. 62 FIELD, Fredric W.: Linguistic Borrowing in Bilingual Contexts. With a foreword by Bernard Comrie. 2002. xviii, 255 pp. 61 GODDARD, Cliff and Anna WIERZBICKA (eds.): Meaning and Universal Grammar. Theory and empirical findings. Volume 2. 2002. xvi, 337 pp. 60 GODDARD, Cliff and Anna WIERZBICKA (eds.): Meaning and Universal Grammar. Theory and empirical findings. Volume 1. 2002. xvi, 337 pp. 59 SHI, Yuzhi: The Establishment of Modern Chinese Grammar. The formation of the resultative construction and its effects. 2002. xiv, 262 pp. 58 MAYLOR, B. Roger: Lexical Template Morphology. Change of state and the verbal prefixes in German. 2002. x, 273 pp. 57 MEL’ČUK, Igor A.: Communicative Organization in Natural Language. The semantic-communicative structure of sentences. 2001. xii, 393 pp. 56 FAARLUND, Jan Terje (ed.): Grammatical Relations in Change. 2001. viii, 326 pp. 55 DAHL, Östen and Maria KOPTJEVSKAJA-TAMM (eds.): Circum-Baltic Languages. Volume 2: Grammar and Typology. 2001. xx, 423 pp. 54 DAHL, Östen and Maria KOPTJEVSKAJA-TAMM (eds.): Circum-Baltic Languages. Volume 1: Past and Present. 2001. xx, 382 pp. 53 FISCHER, Olga, Anette ROSENBACH and Dieter STEIN (eds.): Pathways of Change. Grammaticalization in English. 2000. x, 391 pp. 52 TORRES CACOULLOS, Rena: Grammaticization, Synchronic Variation, and Language Contact. A study of Spanish progressive -ndo constructions. 2000. xvi, 255 pp.

51 ZIEGELER, Debra: Hypothetical Modality. Grammaticalisation in an L2 dialect. 2000. xx, 290 pp. 50 ABRAHAM, Werner and Leonid KULIKOV (eds.): Tense-Aspect, Transitivity and Causativity. Essays in honour of Vladimir Nedjalkov. 1999. xxxiv, 359 pp. 49 BHAT, D.N.S.: The Prominence of Tense, Aspect and Mood. 1999. xii, 198 pp. 48 MANNEY, Linda Joyce: Middle Voice in Modern Greek. Meaning and function of an inflectional category. 2000. xiii, 262 pp. 47 BRINTON, Laurel J. and Minoji AKIMOTO (eds.): Collocational and Idiomatic Aspects of Composite Predicates in the History of English. 1999. xiv, 283 pp. 46 YAMAMOTO, Mutsumi: Animacy and Reference. A cognitive approach to corpus linguistics. 1999. xviii, 278 pp. 45 COLLINS, Peter C. and David LEE (eds.): The Clause in English. In honour of Rodney Huddleston. 1999. xv, 342 pp. 44 HANNAY, Mike and A. Machtelt BOLKESTEIN (eds.): Functional Grammar and Verbal Interaction. 1998. xii, 304 pp. 43 OLBERTZ, Hella, Kees HENGEVELD and Jesús SÁNCHEZ GARCÍA (eds.): The Structure of the Lexicon in Functional Grammar. 1998. xii, 312 pp. 42 DARNELL, Michael, Edith MORAVSCIK, Michael NOONAN, Frederick J. NEWMEYER and Kathleen M. WHEATLEY (eds.): Functionalism and Formalism in Linguistics. Volume II: Case studies. 1999. vi, 407 pp. 41 DARNELL, Michael, Edith MORAVSCIK, Michael NOONAN, Frederick J. NEWMEYER and Kathleen M. WHEATLEY (eds.): Functionalism and Formalism in Linguistics. Volume I: General papers. 1999. vi, 486 pp. 40 BIRNER, Betty J. and Gregory WARD: Information Status and Noncanonical Word Order in English. 1998. xiv, 314 pp. 39 WANNER, Leo (ed.): Recent Trends in Meaning–Text Theory. 1997. xx, 202 pp. 38 HACKING, Jane F.: Coding the Hypothetical. A comparative typology of Russian and Macedonian conditionals. 1998. vi, 156 pp. 37 HARVEY, Mark and Nicholas REID (eds.): Nominal Classification in Aboriginal Australia. 1997. x, 296 pp. 36 KAMIO, Akio (ed.): Directions in Functional Linguistics. 1997. xiii, 259 pp. 35 MATSUMOTO, Yoshiko: Noun-Modifying Constructions in Japanese. A frame semantic approach. 1997. viii, 204 pp. 34 HATAV, Galia: The Semantics of Aspect and Modality. Evidence from English and Biblical Hebrew. 1997. x, 224 pp. 33 VELÁZQUEZ-CASTILLO, Maura: The Grammar of Possession. Inalienability, incorporation and possessor ascension in Guaraní. 1996. xvi, 274 pp. 32 FRAJZYNGIER, Zygmunt: Grammaticalization of the Complex Sentence. A case study in Chadic. 1996. xviii, 501 pp. 31 WANNER, Leo (ed.): Lexical Functions in Lexicography and Natural Language Processing. 1996. xx, 355 pp. 30 HUFFMAN, Alan: The Categories of Grammar. French lui and le. 1997. xiv, 379 pp. 29 ENGBERG-PEDERSEN, Elisabeth, Michael FORTESCUE, Peter HARDER, Lars HELTOFT and Lisbeth Falster JAKOBSEN (eds.): Content, Expression and Structure. Studies in Danish functional grammar. 1996. xvi, 510 pp. 28 HERMAN, József (ed.): Linguistic Studies on Latin. Selected papers from the 6th International Colloquium on Latin Linguistics (Budapest, 23–27 March 1991). 1994. ix, 421 pp. 27 ABRAHAM, Werner, T. GIVÓN and Sandra A. THOMPSON (eds.): Discourse, Grammar and Typology. Papers in honor of John W.M. Verhaar. 1995. xx, 352 pp. 26 LIMA, Susan D., Roberta L. CORRIGAN and Gregory K. IVERSON: The Reality of Linguistic Rules. 1994. xxiii, 480 pp. 25 GODDARD, Cliff and Anna WIERZBICKA (eds.): Semantic and Lexical Universals. Theory and empirical findings. 1994. viii, 510 pp. 24 BHAT, D.N.S.: The Adjectival Category. Criteria for differentiation and identification. 1994. xii, 295 pp. 23 COMRIE, Bernard and Maria POLINSKY (eds.): Causatives and Transitivity. 1993. x, 399 pp. 22 McGREGOR, William B.: A Functional Grammar of Gooniyandi. 1990. xx, 618 pp. 21 COLEMAN, Robert (ed.): New Studies in Latin Linguistics. Proceedings of the 4th International Colloquium on Latin Linguistics, Cambridge, April 1987. 1990. x, 480 pp. 20 VERHAAR, John W.M. (ed.): Melanesian Pidgin and Tok Pisin. Proceedings of the First International Conference on Pidgins and Creoles in Melanesia. 1990. xiv, 409 pp. 19 BLUST, Robert A.: Austronesian Root Theory. An essay on the limits of morphology. 1988. xi, 190 pp. 18 WIERZBICKA, Anna: The Semantics of Grammar. 1988. vii, 581 pp.

A complete list of titles in this series can be found on the publishers’ website, www.benjamins.com

Three-participant Constructions in English: A functional-cognitive approach to caused relations (Studies in Language Companion Series)

Grammatical Relations in Change (Studies in Language Companion Series)

Studies on German-Language Islands (Studies in Language Companion Series)

Coordinating Constructions (Typological Studies in Language)

Pathways of Change: Grammaticalization in English (Studies in Language Companion)

Coordinating Constructions (Typological Studies in Language)

A Functional Grammar of Gooniyandi (Studies in Language Companion Series)

Linguistic Diversity And Language Theories (Studies in Language Companion Series)

Language Complexity: Typology, contact, change (Studies in Language Companion Series)

Linguistic Diversity And Language Theories (Studies in Language Companion Series)

i> in Slavic (Studies in Language Companion Series)

Varieties of English (Studies in English Language)

Stretched Verb Constructions in English

Information Status and Noncanonical Word Order in English (Studies in Language Companion Series)

Adjunct Adverbials in English (Studies in English Language)

English in the Southern United States (Studies in English Language)

Apposition in Contemporary English (Studies in English Language)

Cross-Linguistic Semantics (Studies in Language Companion Series)

Experiential Constructions in Yucatec Maya: A typologically based analysis of a functional domain in a Mayan language (Studies in Language Companion Series)

The Routledge Companion to English Language Studies (Routledge Companions)

Structural-functional Studies in English Grammar: In honour of Lachlan Mackenzie (Studies in Language Companion Series, SLCS 83)

An Intercultural Approach to English Language Teaching

A Linguistic Guide to English Poetry (English Language Series)

Language Work in English

Biographical Companion to Literature in English

Anaphors in Text: Cognitive, formal and applied approaches to anaphoric reference (Studies in Language Companion Series)

Gender, Language and Culture: A Study of Japanese Television Interview Discourse (Studies in Language Companion Series)

A Companion to Cultural Studies (Blackwell Companions in Cultural Studies)

Grammaticalization of the Complex Sentence: A Case Study in Chadic (Studies in Language Companion Series)

'Subordination' versus 'Coordination' in Sentence and Text: A Cross-linguistic Perspective (Studies in Language Companion Series)

Aspect In Mandarin Chinese: A Corpus-based Study (Studies in Language Companion Series)

Three-participant Constructions in English: A functional-cognitive approach to caused relations (Studies in Language Companion Series)

Grammatical Relations in Change (Studies in Language Companion Series)

Studies on German-Language Islands (Studies in Language Companion Series)

Coordinating Constructions (Typological Studies in Language)

Pathways of Change: Grammaticalization in English (Studies in Language Companion)

Coordinating Constructions (Typological Studies in Language)

A Functional Grammar of Gooniyandi (Studies in Language Companion Series)

Linguistic Diversity And Language Theories (Studies in Language Companion Series)

Language Complexity: Typology, contact, change (Studies in Language Companion Series)

Linguistic Diversity And Language Theories (Studies in Language Companion Series)

i> in Slavic (Studies in Language Companion Series)

Varieties of English (Studies in English Language)

Stretched Verb Constructions in English

Information Status and Noncanonical Word Order in English (Studies in Language Companion Series)

Adjunct Adverbials in English (Studies in English Language)

English in the Southern United States (Studies in English Language)

Apposition in Contemporary English (Studies in English Language)

Cross-Linguistic Semantics (Studies in Language Companion Series)

Experiential Constructions in Yucatec Maya: A typologically based analysis of a functional domain in a Mayan language (Studies in Language Companion Series)

The Routledge Companion to English Language Studies (Routledge Companions)

Structural-functional Studies in English Grammar: In honour of Lachlan Mackenzie (Studies in Language Companion Series, SLCS 83)

An Intercultural Approach to English Language Teaching

A Linguistic Guide to English Poetry (English Language Series)

Language Work in English

Biographical Companion to Literature in English

Anaphors in Text: Cognitive, formal and applied approaches to anaphoric reference (Studies in Language Companion Series)

Gender, Language and Culture: A Study of Japanese Television Interview Discourse (Studies in Language Companion Series)

A Companion to Cultural Studies (Blackwell Companions in Cultural Studies)

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