Grammatical Relations: A Functionalist Perspective

359 Pages·1997·24.46 MB·English

by  Talmy Givón (Ed.)

GRAMMATICAL RELATIONS:
A FUNCTIONALIST PERSPECTIVE
TYPOLOGICAL STUDIES IN LANGUAGE (TSL)
A companion series to the journal "STUDIES IN LANGUAGE"
Honorary Editor: Joseph H. Greenberg
General Editor: Michael Noonan
Assistant Editors: Spike Gildea, Suzanne Kemmer
Editorial Board:
Wallace Chafe (Santa Barbara) Ronald Langacker (San Diego)
Bernard Comrie (Los Angeles) Charles Li (Santa Barbara)
R.M.W. Dixon (Canberra) Andrew Pawley (Canberra)
Matthew Dryer (Buffalo) Doris Payne (Oregon)
John Haiman (St Paul) Frans Plank (Konstanz)
Kenneth Hale (Cambridge, Mass.) Jerrold Sadock (Chicago)
Bernd Heine (Köln) Dan Slobin (Berkeley)
Paul Hopper (Pittsburgh) Sandra Thompson (Santa Barbara)
Andrej Kibrik (Moscow)
Volumes in this series will be functionally and typologically oriented, covering specific
topics in language by collecting together data from a wide variety of languages and language
typologies. The orientation of the volumes will be substantive rather than formal, with the
aim of investigating universals of human language via as broadly defined a data base as
possible, leaning toward cross-linguistic, diachronic, developmental and live-discourse data.
The series is, in spirit as well as in fact, a continuation of the tradition initiated by C. Li {Word
Order and Word Order Change, Subject and Topic, Mechanisms for Syntactic Change) and
continued by T. Givón {Discourse and Syntax) and P. Hopper {Tense-Aspect: Between
Semantics and Pragmatics).
Volume 35
T. Givón (ed.)
Grammatical Relations: A Functionalist Perspective
GRAMMATICAL
RELATIONS
A FUNCTIONALIST PERSPECTIVE
Edited by
T. GIVÓN
University of Oregon
JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY
AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of
Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Grammatical relations : a functionalist perspective / edited by T. Givón.
p. cm. -- (Typological studies in language, ISSN 0167-7373; v. 35)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents: Ergativity and grammatical relations in Karao / Sherri Brainard — Evolution of
grammatical relations in Cariban / Spike Gildea -- Grammaticalization. clause union, and
grammatical relations in Ecuadorian Highland Spanish / Marleen Haboud -- The direct object
in bi-transitive clauses in Indonesian / Bambang Kaswanti Purwo ~ Serial verbs and
grammatical relations in Akan / E.K. Osam -- Zero anaphora and grammatical relations in
Mandarin / Ming-Ming Pu - Dative shifting and double objects in Sahaptin / Noel Rude.
1. Grammar, Comparative and general-Grammatical categories. 2. Grammar, Compara­
tive and general-Grammaticalization. 3. Functionalism (Linguistics) I. Givón, Talmy,
1936-. II. Series.
P240.5.G73 1997
415-dc21 97-23075
ISBN 90 272 2931 7 (hb.) / 90 272 2932 5 (pb.) (European; alk. paper) CIP
ISBN 1-55619-645-8 (hb.) / 1-55619-646-6 (pb.) (U.S.; alk. paper)
© Copyright 1997 - John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any
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John Benjamins Publishing Co. • P.O.Box 75577 • 1070 AN Amsterdam • The Netherlands
John Benjamins North America • P.O.Box 27519 • Philadelphia PA 19118-0519 • USA
Contents
Editor's Preface vii
Grammatical Relations: An Introduction 1
T. Givón
Ergativity and Grammatical Relations in Karao 85
Sherri Brainard
Evolution of Grammatical Relations in Cariban: How Functional
Motivation Precedes Syntactic Change 155
Spike Gildea
Grammaticalization, Clause Union and Grammatical Relations
in Ecuadorian Highland Spanish 199
Marleen Haboud
The Direct Object in Bi-transitive Clauses in Indonesian 233
Ba
mbang Kaswanti Purwo
Serial Verbs and Grammatical Relations in Akan 253
EK. Osam
Zero Anaphora and Grammatical Relations in Mandarin 281
Ming-Ming Pu
Dative Shifting and Double Objects in Sahaptin 323
Noel Rude

Editor's Preface
Ever since the 1970s, the discussion of grammatical relations by function­
ally-oriented grammarians has focused primarily the functional correlates of
GRs, such as cognitive accessibility or discourse topicality. Functionalists
have thus, with some interesting exceptions, ceded the discussion of the
structural aspects of GRs to the various formal schools, such as Relational
Grammar, Lexical Functional Grammar, Role Reference Grammar or GB.
While certainly divergent in many interesting ways, the formal approaches
to GRs share one comon assumption — the discreteness and non-graduality
of categories, and thus of grammatical relations.
As elsewhere in the study of natural categories, however, discretenes
can only be achieved by selecting few — usually one — necessary-and-
sufficient feature(s) out of all properties of subjects or objects, and then
making binary, either/or decisions on subjecthood and objecthood based on
such feature(s). The resulting description invariably ignores the evidence
that points toward gradation of subjecthood and objecthood and degree of
grammaticalization, both within the same language and cross-linguistically.
Ever since Edward Keenan's seminal work (1975, 1976), it has been ap­
parent that subjecthood and objecthood can only be characterized adequately
by a basket of properties, some functional (reference, topicality), others
overt (word order, verb agreement, nominal case-marking), others involving
the control of grammatical processes (rule-governed behavior). Keenan's
work, it turns out, is fully consonant with a prototype approach to categories,
whereby natural types, including grammatical categories, can be firm and
distinct in the main without losing residual gradation and flexibility.
This volume presents a functionalist perspective on grammatical relations
without neglecting their structural correlates. Building on Keenan's pioneer­
ing work, we try to apply this double-barrel, commonsensical approach to
a number of typological phenomena that have frustrated relational analysis
over the years: serial verbs, ergativity, promotion and demotion, clause
union, diachronic change, and degree of grammaticalization. In addition to
viii Editor's Preface
the theoretical introduction by the editor, the volume includes papers on
Karao (Philippine), Carib languages, Ecuadorian Highlands Spanish, Indo­
nesian, Akan (Niger-Congo), Mandarin Chinese and Sahaptin (Macro-
Penutian).
GRAMMATICAL RELATIONS:
An Introduction
T. Givón
Linguistics Department
University of Oregon
1. Preamble
Grammatical roles occupy a privileged position at the very hub of clausal
syntax. They form the matrix not only of the grammar of simple clauses,
but also of the major grammatical processes1 associated with syntactic com­
plexity — promotion to direct object, de-transitivization, complementation
and causativization, nominalization, relativization, raising, and various
types of anaphoric reference and agreement. The bulk of functionalist work
on grammatical relations proper has tended to center on documenting and
explaining the functional correlates of subjecthood and direct objecthood
(see eg. Zubin 1972, 1979; Hawkinson and Hyman 1974; Givón 1976,
1983, 1984a, 1984b, 1992; Cooreman 1982, 1985, 1988; Rude 1985, 1987;
inter alia). One important early functionalist volume, Li (ed. 1976), con­
tained a number of papers dealing with more formal aspects of subjecthood.
But since then, functionalists have contended themselves for the most part
with the comforting observation that:
a. There was a strong ('iconic') correlation between being the sub­
ject and being the main clausal topic.
b. There was likewise a strong ('iconic') correlation between being
the direct object and being the secondary topic.
c. One could thus safely ignore grammatical relations, since they
mapped so reliably onto pragmatic function(s).