The Story of Zero

432 Pages·2017·1.805 MB·English

by  Talmy Givón

The Story
of Zero
T. Givón
John Benjamins Publishing Company
The Story of Zero

The Story of Zero
T. Givón
University of Oregon
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Amsterdam / Philadelphia
TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
8
the American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence
of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.
doi 10.1075/z.204
Cataloging-in-Publication Data available from Library of Congress:
lccn 2016029687 (print) / 2016049670 (e-book)
isbn 978 90 272 1239 9 (Hb)
isbn 978 90 272 6646 0 (e-book)
© 2017 – T.Givón
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any
other means, without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Company · https://benjamins.com
Table of contents
Preface xiii
Part I. Natural zero
chapter 1
The communicative ecology of zero anaphora 3
1. Introduction 3
2. Discourse structure and referential coherence 4
2.1 Overview 4
2.2 High-continuity devices 7
2.3 Low continuity – discontinuity – devices 10
3. Quantitative distribution of major referent-coding devices 12
3.1 Preliminaries 12
3.2 English 13
3.3 Ute 13
3.4 Biblical Hebrew 14
3.5 Spoken Spanish 15
3.6 Japanese 16
3.7 Mandarin Chinese 17
3.8 Word order and referential continuity 18
4. Summary: From typology to diachrony 24
chapter 2
The grammar of referential coherence as mental processing instructions 27
1. Grammar, text and mind 27
2. The structure of coherent discourse 28
2.1 Propositions, clauses and information 28
2.2 Coherent discourse 29
2.3 The grounding of information 30
vi The Story of Zero
3. Topicality 33
3.1 Preamble 33
3.2 Topicality and grammar 34
3.3 Measuring topicality in discourse 34
3.4 The discourse-pragmatics of topicality 35
3.5 Quantified measures of topicality 39
3.6 Is topicality scalar? 43
4. A cognitive interpretation of the grammar of reference 46
4.1 Overview 46
4.2 Major attentional activation options 48
4.3 The cognitive status of definite referents 54
4.4 Determining the antecedent source of definite reference 57
4.5 Searches for culture-based reference 58
4.6 Mental processing of text-based definite referents 60
5. Discussion 64
5.1 Summary 64
5.2 Referent processing and attentional activation 66
5.3 Mental representation 66
5.4 The working-memory buffer 67
chapter 3
Zero and the rise of pronominal agreement 69
1. Introduction 69
2. From demonstrative to independent pronouns
to anaphoric pronouns 70
3. Recapitulation: Discourse structure and referential coherence 76
3.1 Overview 76
3.2 High continuity devices 78
3.3 Maximal referential discontinuity devices 80
4. From stressed independent pronoun to unstressed
anaphoric pronoun 82
5. The topicality hierarchies 90
6. Subject agreement in presentative clauses 96
7. Grammatical agreement in ‘be’-based possessive clauses 98
8. Summary 99
Table of contents vii
chapter 4
The early diachrony of pronominal agreement: A case study in Ute 101
1. Introduction 101
2. Demonstratives and definite articles 102
2.1 Demonstrative, modifiers or pronouns 103
2.2 Demonstratives as definite articles 105
2.3 Demonstratives as pronouns 106
3. Pronouns 107
3.1 Independent personal pronouns: Discontinuity and contrast 107
3.2 Clitic anaphoric pronouns and zero anaphora 112
3.3 Subject vs. object clitics: In search of a general principle 115
4. Pronominal agreement 120
5. Cliticization locus: Second-position clitics? 122
6. Discussion 124
chapter 5
Is zero anaphora a typological exotica? 129
1. Zero anaphora, flexible word-order, and the great
non-configurationality caper 129
2. Oral vs. written grammar 131
3. Methodology 135
3.1 Text production 135
3.2 Notational conventions 135
3.3 The grammar of subject and direct-object arguments
in intonation units containing a verb 136
3.4 Text-distribution results 140
4. Discussion 155
chapter 6
Verbal zero anaphora: Verbless clauses 157
1. Introduction 157
2. Verbless clauses in spoken Ute narrative 159
2.1 Flexible word-order 159
2.2 Verbless constituents under separate intonation contours 161
2.3 Text distribution of verbal vs. verbless clauses in Ute 163
3. Verbless clauses in spoken English 166
viii The Story of Zero
4. Are verbless clauses well-governed? 169
4.1 Government of verbless clauses in English conversation 169
4.2 Government of verbless clauses in spoken Ute narratives 172
5. Verbless clauses in early child language 173
6. Verbless clauses in 2nd language pidgin 178
7. Verbless clauses in Broca’s aphasic speech 181
8. Summary 182
9. Discussion 183
9.1 Indexing verbless constituents to adjacent verbal clauses 183
9.2 The cognitive status of verbless clauses 184
9.3 Are verbless clauses a product of ‘performance’
or ‘competence’? 185
chapter 7
Cataphoric zero: Passive and antipassive voice 187
1. Introduction 187
2. The functional domain of pragmatic voice 188
3. Cataphoric zero in passive clauses 190
3.1 Typology and functional domains 190
3.2 Diachrony of the zeroed-out agents
in non-promotional passives 191
3.3 The diachrony of the zeroed-out agents
in promotional passives 194
4. Cataphoric zero in antipassive clauses 197
4.1 Functional definition of antipassive voice 197
4.2 Flying under the radar: Plain zero 198
4.3 Still under the radar: Incorporated objects 198
4.4 Zero, incorporation, and the rise of antipassive morphology 199
4.5 The diachronic accrual of antipassive morphology 203
5. Closure 204
Table of contents ix
Part II. Structural zero
Preamble 209
chapter 8
Co-reference in relative clauses 211
1. Preliminaries: The functional domain of relative clauses 211
1.1 Anaphoric grounding: Restrictive REL-clauses
with definite head nouns 211
1.2 Cataphoric grounding: Restrictive REL clause
with indefinite head nouns 212
1.3 Non-restrictive relative clauses 213
2. The typology of co-reference in REL-clauses 214
2.1 Zero and the case-recoverability problem 214
2.2 Pure zero and the gap strategy: Japanese 214
2.3 Clause chaining and anaphoric pronouns:
Bambara and Hittite 217
2.4 The anaphoric pronoun or pronominal agreement strategy: 
Hebrew 220
2.5 Nominalized REL-clauses: Ute 222
2.6 Case-marked demonstrative pronouns and Y-movement: 
German 226
3. Closure 229
chapter 9
Co-reference in verb complements 231
1. Preliminaries 231
2. Modal-aspectual verbs 232
2.1 Semantic and syntactic prototypes 232
2.2 Languages with nominalized verb complements 233
2.3 Languages with finite complements 235
3. Manipulation verbs 237
3.1 Semantic and syntactic prototypes 237
3.2 Languages with nominalized complements 237
3.3 Languages with finite complements 239
4. P-C-U verbs 240
4.1 Semantic and syntactic prototypes 240
4.2 Languages with nominalized complements 241
4.3 Languages with finite complements 242