Subjectification, syntax, and communication (original) (raw)
The title of this book clearly places it within the field of discourse-analytic studies. On the other hand, its subtitle orients towards a cognitive linguistic account, as the issue of subjectivity has of late (after metaphor) acquired a very prominent position in research in the field. As the focus within cognitive linguistics has been, however, on lexical semantics and analysis of single sentences rather than larger units of discourse, the reader is interposed between two purportedly irreconcilable approaches. But as Knot et al. (2001: 197) have noted, ''at the discourse level, the dividing line between cognitive linguistic approaches and traditional approaches seems less clear-cut than at the sentence level''; moreover, ''for research on discourse structure, there is considerable scope for the integration of work in cognitive linguistics with that from other traditions within linguistics'' (ibid: 198), as both Dutchphone and Anglophone research in relational coherence has shown.
Linguistics, 2011
In this paper, we focus on the diachronic development of causal connectives and investigate whether subjectification occurs. We present the results of ongoing and previous corpus-based analyses of the diachronic development of Dutch want and omdat, and French car and parce que, all four causal connectives roughly meaning 'because'. In addition, we try to show that "grammaticalization studies can gain from the systematic and principled use of large computerized corpora and the methods which have been developed within corpus linguistics" (Lindquist and Mair 2004: x). That's why we have combined two historical and two comparative corpus methods to chart the diachronic development of these four causals. Our study reveals that subjectification is not an integral part of the diachronic development of these causals: subjectification does occur in the rise of these connectives, but in the later stages of their development only parce que undergoes subjectification. Our analyses show that the four methods all have their own merits and limitations, but they are most effective when combined.
Journal of Pragmatics, 1994
The majority of this collection of 17 contributions originates in papers presented at a symposium on language universals held in Antwerp in 1988. This is what gives the volume coherence and where its strengths lie, viz. in the often original, partly even exemplary explorations of as yet uncharted territories in typological research. The volume offers fresh looks at the whys and hows of the study of language universals, at the nature of universals and their explanations, and at some syntactic, semantic and pragmatic theories and what they can contribute to a better understanding of individual linguistic phenomena if viewed from a cross-linguistic perspective. The dominant approach in the volume is a functional one (functional typology, Dik-style Functional Grammar), while the generative-comparative approach is mostly reacted to critically, if at all. This, however, should not be misunderstood as reflecting a generally hostile attitude of the (overwhelmingly European) contributors to this volume towards generative theorizing. Quite to the contrary, as Georg Bossong immediately makes clear in his opening reflections (pp. 3-16) on the Verb-Noun distinction in theories of parts of speech in Western Europe from the early Middle Ages to the early 19th century. The lesson to be learnt from the "dialectic alternation of periods oriented towards language and of periods oriented towards languages" (p. 3) is that empirical research of (the limits of) typological diversity, on the one hand, and more theory-based postulation of properties of the human language faculty, on the other hand, can only be fruitful if they are viewed as necessarily cross-fertilizing research endeavours serving the same ultimate goal. The carefully edited and produced volume is organized into three parts (Part I 'General considerations', Part II 'Syntactic categories and constructions', Part III 'Morphemes and lexical items'), followed by indexes of quoted authors, mentioned languages, and dealt-with subjects. In this review, however, the individual contributions will be discussed independently of their arrangement in the volume. The truly typological studies represent the backbone of this book, both from the point of view of their number and size and their quality. Roughly, they fall into two groups: (i) studies based on the analysis of a wide range of languages illustrating in an exemplary way functional-typological methodology and rationalizing; (ii) less ambitious studies which, on the basis of observations on just a few languages, out
The Pragmatics of Subjectification: The Emergence and Grammaticalization of Allative Futures
In this paper, we argue that an expanded conception of the distinction between speaker-oriented and subject-oriented inferences is crucial for understanding the motivations and mechanisms of semantic change in grammaticalization and subjectification, on the one hand, and for clarifying the links between semantic change and reductive formal changes. Speaker-oriented inferences have significant consequences, leading to the relaxation of selectional restrictions on a construction. In turn, the relaxation of selectional restrictions can create conditions in which the type- and token-frequency of a construction can rise considerably. Furthermore, changes in the selectional restrictions on a construction can themselves catalyze semantic change by coercing listeners into new form-function pairings. This framework is applied to the grammaticalization of allative futures, a typological comparative concept developed in order to compare structurally diverse future tenses. A small typological study allows us to reconsider some problematic pathways of grammaticalization and to suggest some alternative analyses. Following the typological discussion, a detailed diachronic case study of a verbless allative future in Ancient Egyptian is presented.
The Structural and the Semantic: Subject-Object and Referential-Predicative Asymmetries
"A semantic picture (Aristotle, Mill, direct reference) analyzes the logical structure of sentences in terms of reference –the subject denoting an object—and predication –the predicate ascribing a property to that object. Frege brought attention to puzzling dimensions of that view, concluding that proper names themselves had not only a reference, but a predicative sense (while Russell did away with reference altogether). (Correcting Russell,) Donnellan showed that not just proper names but definite descriptions had both a referential use and a predicative (attributive) use. The understanding of logical structure in terms of semantic function has by and large been ejected from linguistic theorizing, replaced in GB by structural, syntactic, analyses (although categorial grammars retain some of this understanding through rules of functional application.) Various facts detailed in this talk suggest that the referential-predicative distinction is psychologically real. A closer look at how this distinction operates deeply in our linguistic judgments sheds light on subtleties affecting belief attributions, derogation inheritance, and other presuppositional facts. First, we review subject-object asymmetries in syntax, which are legion and well-studied. Then, we observe much less studied metalinguistic subject-object asymmetries: we show that proper names are referential in subject position, but receive predicative interpretation in object position. However, we show that the relevant subject-object asymmetries are not amenable to structural explanations: they cannot be cashed out in structural or syntactic terms, but in semantic (or functional or logical or ontological) terms: the first denotes an object, the second a property. We show that interestingly (although predictably, by our analysis), the metalinguistic referential-predicative effects discussed in the talk also appear in derogation inheritance: they explain when a speaker uttering “that bastard Kaplan” will inherit, or not the, the negative presupposition. The same analysis also solves (part of) the “projection problem,” or how to compute the presuppositions of a complex sentence. "
2006
In this paper, I intend to focus on the distribution and interpretation of subjunctive relative clauses. My aim is then twofold: (i) to explain what are the contexts that allow (and that ban) the occurrence of subjunctive mood, focusing here mainly in the domain of relative clauses (even if the definition I will propose is meant to cover also the other cases of subjunctive mood clauses); (ii) to derive the different interpretations that subjunctive mood relative clauses get with respect to their indicative mood counterparts.
Studying the Semantic Context of two Dutch Causal Connectives
2016
We aim to study the difference of usage between two causal connectives in their semantic context. We present an ongo-ing study of two Dutch backward causal connectives omdat and want. Previous lin-guistic research has shown that causal con-structions with want are more subjective and often express an opinion. Our hy-pothesis is that the left and right context surrounding the connectives are more se-mantically similar in sentences with om-dat than sentences with want. To test this hypothesis we apply two techniques, La-tent Semantic Analysis and n-gram over-lap. We show that both methods indeed in-dicate a substantial difference between the two connectives but opposite to what we had expected. 1