Subjecthood and the notion of instantiation (original) (raw)

Subjecthood and the notion of instantiation [Taverniers 2005]

Language Sciences, 2005

This paper deals with the concept of grammatical subjecthood, and focuses on different perspectives from which this grammatical function has been defined and described in a number of linguistic schools. Properties that have been assigned to the Subject function are grouped into four dimensions (i.e. predication, mood, voice/diathesis, and theme), and it is argued that each of these Subject dimensions can be explained on the basis of the notion of instantiation, as understood in cognitive grammar. The cornerstone of this argument is Davidse’s cognitive-functional definition of the Subject as Instantiator. By realigning Davidse’s interpersonal characterization of the Instantiator with Halliday’s triad of interpersonal, ideational and textual metafunctions of language, I argue that the Subject/Instantiator is the primary syntagm-forming element for realizing processual meanings.

Intensionality, grammar, and the sententialist hypothesis

Intensionality, the apparent failure of a normal referential interpretation of nominals in embedded positions, is a phenomenon that is pervasive in hu man language. It has been a foundational problem for semantics, defining a significant part of its agenda. Here we address the explanatory question of why it exists. Distinguishing lexical aspects of meaning from those that depend on grammatical patterning, we argue that intensionality is mainly grammatical in nature and origin: intensionality is an architectural consequence of the design of human grammar, although, in language use, lexical and pragmatic factors also play a role in the genesis of intuitions of nonsubstitutability salva veritate. Over the course of this paper, we offer a sequence of ten empirical arguments for this conclusion. A particular account of recursive structurebuilding in grammar is also offered, which predicts intensionality effects from constraints that govern how nominals of different grammatical types are embedded as arguments in larger units. Crucially, our account requires no appeal to a traditionally postu lated semantic ontology of 'senses' or 'thoughts' as entities 'denoted' by embed ded clauses, which, we argue, are explanatorily inert. It also covers intensionality characteristics in apparently nonsentential complements of verbs, which we further argue, against the claims of the recent 'Sententialist Hypothesis' , not to be sentential complements in disguise.

(Inter)subjectivity and (inter)subjectification: a reassessment

Kristin Davidse, Lieven Vandelanotte , and Hubert Cuyckens, eds.,Subjectification, Intersubjectification and grammaticalization , 2010

The topic of subjectivity has been discussed in semantics at least since Bréal ([1900] 1964). Benveniste's ([1958] 1971) landmark paper distinguished subjectivity and intersubjectivity. These are synchronic notions, and can be theorized in many ways, from cognitive construal (Langacker, e.g. 1990, 2003 and references therein) to the basis of human interaction and the procedures for producing and understanding talk (Schiffrin 1990). One branch of my own work over the twenty-five years since the publication of Traugott (1982), has been to study the semanticization over time of subjectivity, understood as relationship to the speaker and the speaker's beliefs and attitudes, 2 and of intersubjectivity, understood as relationship to the addressee and addressee's face. I have called the diachronic process of semanticization "(inter)subjectification", assuming that an important (though not rigid) distinction is to be made between-ity (synchronic state) and-ation (diachronic process) (see also De Smet and Verstraete 2006). I have also attempted to understand what the relationship between subjectification and intersubjectification is. In this research endeavor I have drawn extensively on neoGricean pragmatics (see e.g. Horn 1984, Levinson 2000) and on discourse analysis (see e.g. Schiffrin 1987, Prince 1988). Another branch of my work has been grammaticalization (e.g. Traugott and Heine (eds.) 1991, Hopper and Traugott [1993] 2003). In the (1982) paper, and in others since then, I have sought to see where and why (inter)subjectification and grammaticalization intersect. The work has been based in historical texts and the evidence we can draw from them, assuming that language change is change in use (see Croft 2000), and that there is a distinction between semantics and pragmatics. 3 My purpose in the present paper is to outline my current thinking on the relationship between (inter)subjectivity, (inter)subjectification, and grammaticalization (see also Traugott 2007 on the first two topics). I start with discussion of (inter)subjectivity and (inter)subjectification (section 2), and then of grammaticality and grammaticalization (section 3).

The interaction of components in a Functional Discourse Grammar account of grammaticalization

This paper is a draft of a chapter published in Kees Hengeveld, Heiko Narrog and Hella Olbertz (eds.) 2017, "The Grammaticalization of Tense, Aspect, Modality and Evidentiality - A Functional Perspective" (De Gruyter Mouton). Please do not cite without the author's permission. The main goal of this paper is to show how the usage-based nature and pragmatic motivations of grammaticalization can be felicitously accommodated within the framework of Functional Discourse Grammar (Hengeveld and Mackenzie 2008), a typologically-based theory of language structure that conceives the grammar as one component of a wider model of verbal communication, constantly interacting with a Conceptual and a Contextual Component. Starting from the idea that grammatical meaning diachronically results from the gradual conventionalization of an invited inference (Traugott and Dasher 2002; Heine 2002), the paper suggests that the successive stages into which this process can be broken down differ from each other as to the role played by each component in the selection and interpretation of the grammaticalizing construction. Taken together with Functional Discourse Grammar’s capacity to formulate separate clines of grammaticalization for each grammatical level (pragmatics, semantics, morphosyntax, phonology), the proposed model offers a systematic and formalized account of the entire grammaticalization process: from the synchronic inferential mechanisms that trigger it to the ultimate outcomes of the functional and formal evolution of the grammaticalized item. The workings of the model are illustrated through the analysis of concrete cases of grammaticalization, with special focus on TAM markers.