Language usage and language structure PDF
Preview Language usage and language structure
Language Usage and Language Structure Trends in Linguistics Studies and Monographs 213 Editors Walter Bisang (main editor for this volume) Hans Henrich Hock Werner Winter De Gruyter Mouton Language Usage and Language Structure Edited by Kasper Boye Elisabeth Engberg-Pedersen De Gruyter Mouton ISBN 978-3-11-021917-3 e-ISBN 978-3-11-021918-0 ISSN 1861-4302 LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData Language usage and language structure / edited by Kasper Boye, ElisabethEngberg-Pedersen. p.cm.(cid:2)(Trendsinlinguistics:Studiesandmonographs;v.213) Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex. ISBN978-3-11-021917-3(hardcover:alk.paper) 1. Structural linguistics. 2. Language and languages (cid:2) Usage. I.Boye,Kasper,1972(cid:2) II.Engberg-Pedersen,Elisabeth,1952(cid:2) P146.L368 2010 410.118(cid:2)dc22 2009051323 BibliographicinformationpublishedbytheDeutscheNationalbibliothek TheDeutscheNationalbibliothekliststhispublicationintheDeutscheNationalbibliografie; detailedbibliographicdataareavailableintheInternetathttp://dnb.d-nb.de. ”2010WalterdeGruyterGmbH&Co.KG,Berlin/NewYork Printing:Hubert&Co.GmbH&Co.KG,Göttingen (cid:3)Printedonacid-freepaper PrintedinGermany www.degruyter.com Table of Contents Introduction vii Usageandstructure:Thecaseofclausalcomplementation What conversational English tells us about the nature of grammar: A critique of Thompson’s analysis of object complements Frederick J. Newmeyer 3 Usage, structure, scientific explanation, and the role of abstraction, by linguists and by language users ArieVerhagen 45 Raising verbs and auxiliaries in a functional theory of grammatical status Kasper Boye 73 Theriseofstructure How not to disagree: The emergence of structure from usage Ronald W. Langacker 107 Paradigmatic structure in a usage-based theory of grammaticalisation Lars Heltoft 145 Where do simple clauses come from? T. Givo´n 167 Structure,usageandvariation Alternative agreement controllers in Danish: Usage or structure? Elisabeth Engberg-Pedersen and Mads Poulsen 205 vi TableofContents Schmidt redux: How systematic is the linguistic system if variation is rampant? Dirk Geeraerts 237 More tiles on the roof: Further thoughts on incremental language production J. Lachlan Mackenzie 263 Reconciling structure and usage: On the advantages of a dynamic, dialogic conception of the linguistic sign Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen 295 Methodology Ten unwarranted assumptions in syntactic argumentation William Croft 313 Subject index 351 Introduction During most of the 20th century, the classical Saussurean distinction between languageuseandlanguagestructureremaineduntranscendableinmuchlinguis- tictheory.Thedominantview,propagatedinparticularbygenerativegrammar, wasthattherearestructuralfactsandusagefacts,andthatinprinciplethefor- merare independent of, and can be described in complete isolation from, the latter. With the appearance of functional-cognitive approaches on the scene, this view has been challenged. Language must be understood basically as a communicativeandcognitivephenomenon,itisargued,andlanguagestructure can thus only be understood in terms of cognitive and social-communicative restrictionsonlanguageuse.Thatis,structurecanonlybeunderstoodasusage- based. Fortwo reasons time is ripe for afocused study of the interaction between usageandstructure.Within thegenerativecamptheviewofstructureasusage basedhasinspiredamoreexplicitandprecisedescriptionofthestatusofusage (Newmeyer1998, 2003, this volume).Within the functional-cognitive campit has blurred the status of structure. Perhaps because functionalists and cogni- tivistshavehadtoposition themselvesinrelationtogenerativegrammar,some have emphasized the role of usage facts to the extent that structure is largely ignored.Theyhavefavouredattestedinstancesofactuallinguisticcommunica- tionastheirempiricalsource,andtheyhavepaidspecialattentiontophenomena inwhichthe roleoflanguageuse cannotsoeasilybedismissed. Butmoreim- portantly,agroupofscholars,withP.J.HopperandS.A.Thompsonascentral figures,havestressedonatheoreticalleveltheontologicalprimacyofusageto a degree where at least under one interpretation it seems that structure is dis- cardedasanepiphenomen(e.g.Hopper1998,Thompson2002; cf.Langacker, thisvolume,fordetaileddiscussion).Structure,theyclaim,isnotaprerequisite for linguistic communication, but rather a constantly emerging by-product of thenegotiation offormandmeaningincommunicativeinteraction. However, accounts of language use, language acquisition and language change are impossible without an assumption about what it is that is being used, acquired, or subjected to change.And moremoderatefunctionalists and cognitive functionalists recognizeboth structural facts andusagefacts asgen- uinefactscentraltotheunderstandingoflanguage.Still,thelinguisticliterature thatsharesthispositiondoesnotaboundwithexplicit,precisecharacterizations of the relationship between usage and structure. Indeed, it seems fair to say thatthevisibility ofHopperandThompson’sextremepositioninthelinguistics landscapeis aresultofthefactthatmostfunctionally andcognitively oriented viii Introduction linguists haveprioritizedotherissuesoverandbeyondtherelationshipbetween usageandstructure. PeterHarderisamongthefewwhohaveplacedtheissuehighontheagenda (e.g.Harder1996, 2003, 2008).While he takesausage-basedapproach tothe study of language, he does not do so in the sense that he conceives of usage factsastheonlyimportantfacts.Heconceivesofusagefactsastheontologically and hence theoretically, methodologically and analytically basic level. But he also emphasizes that linguistic structure is a phenomenon in its own right. In hisview,structureisusage-basedinthesensethatitisdistilled outofprevious actsofusage,but unlikeepiphenomenait hascausalforceinthat it constrains subsequent actsofusage. The present volume is dedicated to Peter Harder on the occasion of his 60th birthday. It brings scholars together fromdifferent theoretical positions to ad- dress theoretical and methodological aspects ofthe relation between language useandlinguisticstructure.Thecontributorsdifferwithrespecttohowtheycon- ceiveofthis relationand, morebasically, with respectto howthey conceiveof linguisticstructure.Whattheyhaveincommon,however,isthattheyrecognize structure and usage as non-reducible linguistic phenomena and take seriously thechallengetodescribetherelationbetweenthem. The first part of the volume is concerned with one of the central topics in the recent discussion of the relationship between usage and structure: clausal complementation. Two papers deal with the use and structural properties of complement- takingpredicatessuchasthink.F.J.NewmeyeraddressesS.A.Thompson’s2002 analysis accordingto whichcomplement-taking predicatesarenotsubordinat- ing predicatesbut ratherpartof epistemic/evidential/evaluative fragmentsthat must beunderstood as combining with mainclauses ratherthan with subordi- nate clauses. In a study of conversational data comparable to those on which Thompson bases her analysis, Newmeyer first criticizes Thompson’s analysis andarguesthatsuchdatainfactstronglysupporttheconceptionofcomplement clauses as subordinate. Subsequently, he presents arguments against Thomp- son’sandothers’viewofgrammarasconsisting entirelyofformulasandfrag- ments.NewmeyerendorsestheanalysisproposedinBoyeandHarder2007that complement-taking predicates like think have two structurally distinguishable variants:alexicalandagrammaticalone.HealsoagreeswithBoyeandHarder that the diachronic relation between the two variants can only be understood if the discourse prominence of I think in actual communication is taken into account.Buthemaintainsthatwhilegrammaticalstructureisshapedbyusage Introduction ix phenomena, usage-based generalizations cannot play any direct role in gram- maticalanalysis. A.VerhageninturnaddressesNewmeyer’sstudyinthepresentvolume.Af- tergivinganoverviewofrecentcontributionstothestudyofcomplementation, Verhagensetsout todemonstratethatfullcommitmenttosomeformofgram- maticalautonomyiscompatiblewithaviewofusageasontologicallybasic.Ina critiqueofNewmeyer’sposition,hearguesthatdistributional testscannotstand aloneingrammaticalanalysis,andthatNewmeyerinhiscritiqueofThompson (2002),aswellasinhisargumentationinsupportoftheanalysisofcomplement- taking predicates as subordinating, jumps to unwarranted abstractions. Rather thanananalysisintermsofsharedabstractstructures,Verhagenemphasises,the factspertainingtocomplementationsuggestausage-basedanalysisintermsof ahierarchically organized network of structures in which some cases of com- plementation figure on levels of relatively concrete, idiosyncratic constructs. Whetherornotdifferentconcreteconstructsgiverisetoanabstractioninterms ofa shared structural template is conditioned by usage.While structure is au- tonomous in the sense that it has properties that are not found in usage, these structuresmuststillultimately beexplainedintermsofusage. K.Boye’scontribution is relatedto bothNewmeyer’sandVerhagen’s.Boye deals with the usage and structural properties of raising verbs and auxiliaries. Hefirstpointsoutthatthedistinctionbetweenraisingverbsandauxiliariesisnot clearintheliterature,andthenpresentsevidencethatthereisastructuralsimi- laritybetweentheconstructions inwhichthetwo classesofexpressions occur. Hethengoesontoshow,however,thatthissimilaritynotwithstanding,adistinc- tioncanbemadewhichmirrorsthedistinctionbetweenlexicalandgrammatical complement-takingpredicatesproposedinBoyeandHarder2007.Bothdistri- butionalfactsandfactspertainingtodiscourseprominencesupportadistinction betweenraisingverbsaslexicalexpressionsandauxiliariesasgrammaticalex- pressions.InananalysisintendedtocapturebothsetsoffactsBoyearguesthat whileraisingverbsarecodedaspotentiallydiscursivelyprimary,auxiliariesare coded as necessarily secondary.The analysis goes with a functional theory of grammatical status which manifests the view that structure is distilled out of usage,butstill,assoonasithasappeared,isalinguisticphenomenoninitsown right. Thechaptersinthesecondpartofthevolumeareallconcernedwiththerise ofstructure. R.W. Langacker takes his point of departure in pervasive conceptions of usage and structure.These conceptions lead to a conflict between approaches to language which focus on usage and approaches which focus on structure – roughly,theconflictbetweenfunctionalandformalapproaches.Fromausage- x Introduction based perspective Langacker suggests an account that reconciles usage with structure,aswellascognitivewithsocialaspectsoflanguage.Acentralpointis thatstructureisconceivedofasadynamicphenomenon.Itconsists inpatterns of processing activity that are established and maintained through abstraction frominstancesoflinguistic activityoccurringinsocialinteractions.Langacker characterizeshisaccountassteeringamiddlecoursebetweengenerativegram- mar’sviewofstructureasastable,enduringanddiscretelyboundedobject,and thefullrejectionofthisview.Itallowshimtodescribeinaprecisewayinwhich senseonecanappropriatelytalkabout‘thestructureoflinguistic expressions’, ‘a language’, ‘the structure of a language’, and ‘the emergence of structure throughusage’. L.Heltoftdealswithlanguagechangeasreanalyses.Heemphasizesthatlin- guisticusagepresupposestheexistenceofanorganisedsigninventorysharedby those participating in using the language. Hence usage-based grammarsmust include levels of structure to account for what a linguistic community has in common. Language changes are initiated in usage as (faulty) hypotheses that becomeadoptedby(partsof)alinguistic communityashypothesesaboutwhat theactualutteranceisaninstanceof,i.e.structure.Heltoftclaimsthatgrammat- icalstructureisorganisedaccordingtosimilarprinciples acrossthetraditional divisionsofmorphology,syntaxandsemantics,andhesuggestsarevivalofthe conceptofaparadigmonasemanticbasis.Notonlymorphology,butalsoword order and constructional syntax can be approached in terms of content-based paradigms.Manyinstancesofchangesinthedistributionandrangeofconstruc- tions:extensions, restrictionsandeventheirwitheringaway,canbeunderstood asadaptations tocontentchangesatthestructurallevel. InhiscontributionT.Givo´nfocusesontheontogeneticandpossibly phylo- genetictransitionfromsingle-wordutterancestomulti-wordclauses.Heinves- tigateswhathecallsverb-less–orscattered–clauses,i.e.nominalconstructions outsidetheintonationcontourofaverb.Suchconstructionsareaswell-governed asnominalzeroanaphora.Thephenomenonisshowntobefrequentinoralnar- rative,secondlanguagepidgin,Broca’saphasicspeechandearlychildlanguage. Analysis of these types of language use gives rise to the claim that languages have two processing modes, one – the grammatical mode corresponding to Chomsky’scompetence–withnominal’sunderthesameintonation contouras the licensing verb, and one – the pre-grammatical mode – with the nominal argumentsplacedundertheirownseparateintonation contour.Inthecourseof childhood thelatterturnsintotheformerbycombinationorsynthesis inapro- cessoftransferringinformationfromtheadjacentcontexttoanexplicitlycoded verbalclause,possibly reflectingthedevelopmentfromsingle-word utterances tomulti-wordclausesinphylogeny.
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