Introduction

In the previous chapter we presented a system of lexical representation for verbs and other predicating elements and their arguments; the logical structures form the basis of the semantic representation for clauses and whole sentences. In this chapter we will fill in the remaining pieces that are needed for semantic representations, in particular the semantic representation of noun phrases and of clausal and NP operators. We will also discuss the lexicon, focusing on what kind of information needs to be represented in lexical entries and in lexical rules. We begin by continuing the discussion of the kinds of semantic relations that an argument can bear to its predicate.

Semantic macroroles

In this book we are presenting a framework for syntactic analysis which directly links the syntactic representation of a sentence, as developed in chapter 2, to the semantic representation, which was developed in chapter 3 (see figure 2.2). The aspects of grammar where these two interact is known as the syntax-semantics interface. The full linking system for simple and complex sentences will be the primary focus of chapters 7 and 9, but we need to introduce an important component of the linking system at this point, since it is tied in with important issues of lexical representation, argument structure and the content of lexical entries for verbs in the lexicon. This is the notion of semantic macroroles. Macroroles are generalizations across the argument-types found with particular verbs which have significant grammatical consequences; it is they, rather than specific arguments in logical structure, that grammatical rules refer to primarily.

Introduction

This book is about some of the devices users of human languages employ to put meaningful elements together to form words, words together to form phrases, phrases together to form clauses, clauses together to form sentences, and sentences together to form texts. The emphasis here will be on the construction of units larger than words, in particular clauses and sentences. This has often been viewed primarily as the domain of syntax. ‘The term “syntax” is from the Ancient Greek sýntaxis, a verbal noun which literally means “arrangement” or “setting out together”. Traditionally, it refers to the branch of grammar dealing with the ways in which words, with or without appropriate inflections, are arranged to show connections of meaning within the sentence.’ (Matthews 1982:1). The expressions of a language involve a relationship between a sequence of sounds and a meaning, and this relationship is mediated by grammar, a core component of which is syntax. In English and many other languages, the arrangement of words is a vital factor in determining the meaning of an utterance, as illustrated in (1.1).

1. (1.1) a. The man saw the woman.

2. b. The woman saw the man.

In Dyirbal (Australia; Dixon 1972) and many other languages, however, the order of words is irrelevant to the determination of the meaning of a sentence; it is, rather, the inflectional form of a phrase which is the crucial factor determining the interpretation of the sentence, as shown in (1.2). (The base forms of each noun are italicized.)

The task in this book was to present a theory of syntax from the communication-andcognition perspective. As stated in section 1.4, the general skeleton of the theory is drawn from RRG, and many parts of the theory are elaborations on basic RRG concepts, e.g. the layered structure of the clause, semantic macroroles, potential focus domain, pragmatic pivots, juncture and nexus. But the content of many of the analyses integrate ideas from a variety of theories and individuals, e.g. Rijkhoff's theory of noun phrase structure from FG, the notion of constructional template adapted from ConG, Lambrecht's theory of information structure, Pustejovsky's theory of nominal qualia, the pragmatic analysis of pronominalization of Kuno, Bolinger and Bickerton, and Jackendoff's ideas about reflexivization, to name a few.

Of the issues raised in chapter 1, one of the most important issues, and for some linguists, the most important issue, is language acquisition. In section 1.3.2 we briefly mentioned work by a number of linguists, psycholinguists and psychologists on this topic from the communication-and-cognition perspective, and in this final section, we will look at the implications of the syntactic analyses we have presented for theoretical questions in acquisition and child language.

The first step is to clarify the foundational issue, namely, assumptions about the nature of the human cognitive endowment regarding language. Chomsky has always been very clear that for him the essential features of the grammars of human languages are part of a species-specific, genetically determined biological organ of language; indeed, he now claims (Chomsky 1995) that the basic syntax of all languages is the same and that all cross-linguistic variation is due to lexical differences.

Introduction

In this chapter we will investigate how semantic representations and syntactic representations are linked in complex sentences. We will start from the syntactic representations developed in chapter 8 and from the linking algorithms in chapter 7. An important question to be investigated is the extent to which the linking algorithms proposed in chapter 7 for simple sentences must be modified to deal with complex sentences. We will proceed as follows. In section 9.1 we look at linking in the different juncture–nexus types discussed in chapter 8. This includes discussion of a number of issues that have been important in theoretical debates over the past three decades: control constructions (a.k.a. ‘equi-NP-deletion’), matrix-coding constructions (a.k.a. ‘raising to subject’, ‘raising to object’, ‘exceptional case-marking’) and causative constructions. We investigate case marking in complex constructions in section 9.2. The next section focuses on linking in complex NP constructions, primarily relative clause constructions. In section 9.4 we investigate reflexivization in complex constructions, and again the question arises as to the extent to which the principles proposed in section 7.5.2 will have to be modified to deal with these new phenomena. In section 9.5 we propose an account of the restrictions on so-called ‘long-distance dependencies’ involved in WH-question formation, topicalization and relativization. These restrictions, which fall under the principle known as ‘subjacency’ in the generative literature, are significant for linguistic theory, for theories of language acquisition and for related theories of cognitive organization (see section 1.3.1).

The claim made in this work is that the structure of grammatical categories is predictable to a large extent once we know the range of possible cognitive structures from which they are derived. This claim is tested here with reference to one example, viz. the structure of predicative possession. It would seem that most of the possessive constructions to be found in the languages of the world can be traced back to a small set of basic conceptual patterns. These patterns are identified in this work and the way each of them affects the word order and morphosyntax of the resulting ‘have’-construction is described within the framework of grammaticalization theory (see Heine, Claudi, and Hünnemeyer 1991, Hopper and Traugott 1993, Bybee, Perkins, and Pagliuca 1994 for references). It is argued that much of the typological diversity that characterizes ‘have’-constructions in the languages of the world can be explained with reference to the principles of grammaticalization proposed in those works.

The present work has profited greatly from the assistance and co-operation of a number of colleagues. Most of all, my gratitude is due to Ulrike Claudi who, in addition to accompanying my research with constructive criticism, also gave me access to her unpublished paper on ‘To have or not to have: on the conceptual base of predicative possession in some African languages’ (Claudi 1986), which already contains a number of the basic notions to be discussed below.

Possessive constructions frequently resemble constructions serving the expression of other semantic contents. This may be coincidental in a given case; usually, however, it is not: as we saw in the preceding chapters, there are some conceptual domains that appear to be systematically related to possession. The present chapter provides a number of additional examples, though of a different kind.

Once a source schema has given rise to an expression for predicative possession, the latter itself may be the source of more abstract concepts, in particular of grammatial functions such as (a) markers of conditional protasis, (b) markers of deontic modality, (c) aspect markers, (d) tense markers, especially future tense markers (Fleischman 1982a, 1982b), (e) existential markers and copulas. In addition, ‘have’-verbs also occur as ‘links for addition’ in cardinal numerals, as e.g. in Quechua or the Nilo-Saharan language Mountain Nubian, which both have a construction of the type ‘ten one-having’ to denote ‘eleven’ (Greenberg 1978c:265). Furthermore, a number of authors (e.g. Locker 1954; Allen 1964; Benveniste 1960; Isačenko 1974b) have drawn attention to structural parallels that can be observed across languages between the morphosyntax of predicative possession on the one hand, and that of perfect aspects and other grammatical categories on the other.

A discussion of all these developments would exceed the scope of this book; the reader is referred to the relevant works (especially Bybee and Pagliuca 1985:73ff.; Bybee, Perkins, and Pagliuca 1994; Claudi 1994; Heine 1993, 1994c; Heine et al. 1993).

Introduction

Possession is a universal domain, that is, any human language can be expected to have conventionalized expressions for it. Nevertheless, when working on the linguistic expression of possession one is likely to be confronted with a number of problems.

One of these problems relates to the cognitive nature of possession. Possession belongs to the kind of concepts that tend to be described as being inherently vague or fuzzy. The English verb have has been called ‘colorless’ (Buck 1949:740) and the possessive concepts expressed by it are said to be indeterminate; have has even been described as an ‘unsuitable lexical item’:

In a similar fashion, possession has occasionally been described as a concept that is neither conceptually nor linguistically basic, or that is not of universal significance.

The main claim made in this work is that possession, as it is manifested in language structure, can be traced back to other domains of human experience. This observation is not new, as we will see in the first section of this chapter, where a number of alternative approaches are briefly discussed. Some implications of the approaches used and the findings arrived at in previous chapters are reviewed and summarized in the remainder of this chapter.

Alternative approaches

The study of possession has been approached from a number of different perspectives. In the present section, the framework used in the preceding chapters is related to alternative views on the relevant subject-matter. To this end, a few salient studies that have contributed to the analysis of predicative possession in some way are briefly looked at. Selection is highly restricted; possession has been a popular topic in linguistics, and to do justice to all the studies that have been devoted to this topic in the course of this century would require a separate, book-length treatment. Priority is given to works that in some way or other contribute to solving the problems discussed in the introductory chapter (section 1.4).

That there are systematic correlations in case marking between possessive constructions, on the one hand, and the morphosyntax of transitivity, perfect or perfective forms on the other, has been demonstrated first by Allen (1964). Allen does not attempt to account for these correlations; accordingly, it remains unclear, for example, whether they are synchronic or diachronic in nature, or what they mean with reference to linguistic categorization. Ten years earlier, pioneering work on possession was published by Locker (1954).

Predicative possession belongs to the most complex phenomena in the grammar of many languages; we therefore decided to make it the main topic of this book. Compared to it, attributive possession (or nominal, or phrasal possession) appears to present a relatively simple structure: it consists essentially of two noun phrases linked to one another in a specific way. Accordingly, work on attributive possession has focussed mostly on the way the two noun phrases are linked, e.g. whether the possessee (=the head) precedes or follows the possessor (=the dependent, or genitive, or modifier), or whether the link is marked on the possessee (=head-marking), on the possessor (=dependent-marking), on both, or on neither (cf. Ultan 1978; Nichols 1988; 1992).

A detailed treatment of attributive possession would be beyond the scope of this work; nevertheless, in the paragraphs to follow we shall try to relate the findings made in the course of the preceding chapter to the structure of attributive possession, that is, we will attempt to determine how constructions of the type Peter has a new car differ from constructions having the form Peter's new car. The issue is a popular one, and it is an old one; quite a number of studies have been devoted to it in the course of recent decades.

Predicative and attributive possession resemble one another in a number of ways; some of the similarities were pointed out in Chapter 1 (section 1.2.3).