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ŁÓDŹ
STUDIES IN LANGUAGE Edited by Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk and Łukasz Bogucki
40 Małgorzata Fabiszak / Karolina Krawczak / Katarzyna Rokoszewska (eds.)
Categorization in Discourse and Grammar
This collection of papers addresses new trends in Cognitive Linguistics. Three parts of the book focus on Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Integration Network Analysis. Both the theoretical contributions and the empirical case studies stress the importance of contextual factors in the meaning making processes. They employ qualitative methods to analyze the use of metaphor in political discourse and in the conceptualization of emotions. The data sets include multimodal data, sign languages and co-speech gestures. The fourth part of the book contains two corpus-based studies. The fifth part concentrates on the grammatical categories of passive voice and aspect. One contribution discusses the problem of categorization in phonology.
Małgorzata Fabiszak is a University Professor and Karolina Krawczak is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of English, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. Katarzyna Rokoszewska is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Philology and History, Jan Długosz University in Częstochowa.
Categorization in Discourse and Grammar
ŁÓDŹ
STUDIES IN LANGUAGE Edited by Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk and Łukasz Bogucki
Editorial Board Piotr Cap (University of Łódź, Poland) Jorge Díaz-Cintas (University College, London, England) Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kołaczyk (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland) Wolfgang Lörscher (Universität Leipzig, Germany) Anthony McEnery (Lancaster University, England) John Newman (University of Alberta, Canada) Hans Sauer (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany) Piotr Stalmaszczyk (University of Łódź, Poland) Elżbieta Tabakowska (Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland) Marcel Thelen (Zuyd University, Maastricht, The Netherlands) Gideon Toury (Tel Aviv University, Israel)
Vol. 40
Małgorzata Fabiszak / Karolina Krawczak / Katarzyna Rokoszewska (eds.)
Categorization in Discourse and Grammar
Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.
This publication was financially supported by the Jan Długosz University in Częstochowa (Poland).
ISSN 1437-5281 ISBN 978-3-631-66424-7 (Print) E-ISBN 978-3-653-05578-8 (E-Book) DOI 10.3726/978-3-653-05578-8 © Peter Lang GmbH Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften Frankfurt am Main 2016 All rights reserved. Peter Lang Edition is an Imprint of Peter Lang GmbH. Peter Lang – Frankfurt am Main · Bern · Bruxelles · New York · Oxford · Warszawa · Wien All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems. This publication has been peer reviewed. www.peterlang.com
Contents Małgorzata Fabiszak and Karolina Krawczak Categorization in Discourse and Grammar...............................................................9 Part 1: Figurative Processes in Context Zoltán Kövecses Contextual Factors in Metaphor Creation in Discourse........................................21 Danuta Pluta-Wojciechowska Metaphors in the Speech of Children with Language Impairment......................33 Wojciech Wachowski A Few Remarks on the Distinction between Metaphor, Metonymy, and Synecdoche.......................................................................................43 Jarosław Wiliński Frame, Metaphor and Metonymy in Onomasiological Lexicography..................65 Part 2: Metaphor, Conceptual Integration Networks and Political Discourse Orsolya Putz Ideology as a Contextual Factor in Metaphor Production....................................83 Ewa Gieroń-Czepczor Politicians-are-Animals Metaphor in Scenarios of Breeding and Hunting in Polish Political Discourse.......................................................................99 Agnieszka Mierzwińska-Hajnos Rats Can’t Swim: How Brandt and Brandt’s Model of Conceptual Integration Operates Behind Selected American Political Cartoons................ 123 Anna Wyrwa Worldview, Metaphor, and Politics. The Translator’s Perspective...................... 143
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Part 3: Metaphor, Conceptual Integration Networks and the Conceptualization of Emotions Anna Rewiś-Łętkowska Degrees of Metaphoricity: A Dynamic View on Fear Metaphors...................... 161 Krzysztof Kosecki Metaphors and Metonymies of Emotions in THree Unrelated Signed Languages..................................................................................................... 175 Kamila Midor Loss for Words & Words for Loss. How Americans Talk About Loss When THey Grieve: Metaphor and Blend..................................................... 193 Part 4: Categories and Categorization Maria Libura, Agnieszka Libura, and Paweł Bechler On Some Peculiarities of the Semantics of Non-Prototypical Members of disease Category: A Corpus-Based Analysis.................................................. 215 Przemysław Wilk On the Polysemy of the Lexical Item Europe: An Approach from Access Semantics ................................................................... 239 Part 5: Cognitive Linguistic Accounts of Grammar Joanna Podhorodecka The Role of Constructional Factors in Passivization. Infinitival Passives of Perception Verbs................................................................................... 253 Agnieszka Kaleta The English get-Passive Revisited........................................................................... 267 Katarzyna Kwapisz-Osadnik Perceptual Structures and Grammatical Constructions on the Basis of Aspectual Opposition in French.............................................................. 285
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Józef Marcinkiewicz Verb Transfer in L2 Acquisition vs. Stage Model of Figure/Ground A Case Study with Evidence from Lithuanian and German.............................. 297 Kamila Turewicz Towards More Radical Solutions for Categorization Problem in Phonology. A Cognitive Grammar Perspective............................................... 313
Małgorzata Fabiszak and Karolina Krawczak Faculty of English, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań
Categorization in Discourse and Grammar 1. Cognitive Linguistics: Basic Assumptions and New Trends Cognitive Linguistics emerged from the dissatisfaction with how generative grammar dealt with meaning. During the Linguistics Wars (Harris 1995), the modularity of language, i.e. its special status vis a vis other cognitive abilities, and its innateness have been questioned and a new theory of language as originating in use through general cognitive processes such as categorization, generalization, and abstraction has been proposed. Unlike in generative grammar, in Cognitive Linguistics, the focus is on meaning construction and language in use. Lakoff and Johnson (1999: 6), in their philosophical manifest stress that “there is no Chomskyan person, for whom language is pure syntax, pure form insulated from and independent of all meaning, context, perception, emotion, memory, attention, action, and the dynamic nature of communication.” Thus, they reject the generative approach, which abstracted from linguistic performance and focused on the competence of the ideal native speaker, the competence viewed as a generator of acceptable grammatical structures independent of meaning. In Cognitive Linguistics, language is embodied, usage-based and sensitive to its context of use. This change in the research scope has been nicely summarized by Bernardez (2007: 33f.). He traces the approach to cognition as a subject of linguistic research and shows that it is characterized by a move away from autonomous cognition based on the brain is a computer metaphor and towards an ever-expanding understanding of cognition in context. The expansion starts with cognition in the context of our own bodies – embodied cognition, through socio-cultural context – situated cognition, the context of interaction with other minds and tools – distributed cognition to, finally – synergic cognition, which expands the context beyond the here and now and into the historical dimension of the socio-cultural context. This last stage of expansion resulted in the interbreeding of cognitive linguistics and discourse analysis as evidenced in the multitude of studies into metaphorical construction of ideologies (e.g., in immigration discourse Hart 2010, in political speeches Charteris-Black 2013, in anti-Semitic discourse Musolff 2010). For Lakoff and his collaborators (Lakoff & Johnson 1980, 1999; Lakoff 1987, 1996; Lakoff & Turner 1989; Johnson 1987), analysis of linguistic expressions leads to the uncovering of conceptual categories. The basic findings of this research
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project are that meaning is embodied and abstract concepts are metaphorically built on more concrete concepts. Universal trends in language structure are not a result of genetic endowment, but evolve as a result of commonalities in human bodies and brains. Language-specific differences arise from the differences in the environment, understood both as an ecological niche and a socio-historical and cultural construct. Universality and culture-specificity of metaphors and conceptualization has been discussed in much detail with respect to the categorization of emotions (e.g. Kövecses 1990, 2005; Krawczak 2014, 2015; Mikołajczuk 2004). In Cognitive Linguistics, grammatical and lexical categories form a continuum, hence the boundaries between phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics are fuzzy. Linguistic categories are similar to all other categories, in that they are prototypically structured with central and peripheral members of the category. Naturally, the degree of prototypicality of any given member is context-dependent, which is to say that, on any occasion of use, the relevant aspects of a given category are contextually activated. In general terms, conceptual prototypicality is often operationalized in terms of frequency: the more frequent a given usage is, the more entrenched it becomes in our cognition (cf. Geeraerts 2015: 239f.). Cognitive entrenchment, in turn, which is central to language acquisition, use and change, is a process whereby frequently recurrent units or usage-features are abstracted across communicative events and reinforced for the individual (Langacker 1987). In fact, this ultimately means that grammar is emergent (Hopper 1987; Bybee 2007) and contextual. At the level of individual use, grammar emerges from context, which determines the presentation of conceptual information, i.e., construal (Langacker 1987). At the level of the cognitive system, grammar emerges from many instances of usage through entrenchment (for the individual) and conventionalization (for the community) of frequently encountered features. The present collection of articles entitled Categorization in Discourse and Grammar reflects the trends and assumptions of Cognitive Linguistics described above. It is divided into 5 parts addressing different aspects in current categorization research. Part 1: Figurative Processes in Context considers certain new theoretical developments: the role of contextual factors in metaphor production and the delimitation of the categories of metaphor, metonymy and synecdoche. It also looks into new contexts of application: language acquisition/language disorders and lexicography. Part 2: Metaphor, Conceptual Integration Networks and Political Discourse consists of four contributions. The first is closely linked with the theoretical investigation from part 1 and focuses on ideology as a contextual factor in metaphor
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construction. The second article offers new insights into how the Great Chain of Beings metaphor politicians are animals is deployed in political discourse. The third presents a multimodal analysis of political cartoons within the current version of integration networks theory. The final contribution in this section is a pilot study attempting to operationalize Underwood’s model of worldview. Part 3: Metaphor, Conceptual Integration Networks and the Conceptualization of Emotions continues with the application of Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Integration Networks Theory in various empirical studies, this time focusing on the categorization of emotions. In this part, the first study focuses on the conceptualization of fear, but goes beyond mere description and reflects on the notion of degrees of metaphoricity. The second contribution offers a cross-linguistic comparison of emotion terms in three unrelated sign languages pointing to some universal tendencies among them. The third and last contribution of this section concentrates on grief and offers an integration network analysis of meaning construction in a number of individual interviews. Part 4: Categories and Categorization consists of only two contributions. One is a corpus-based analysis of the category of disease, while the other investigates the polysemy of the lexeme Europe. Part 5: Cognitive Linguistic Accounts of Grammar offers three studies focusing on various aspects of meaning construciton through the use of grammatical structure, in particular looking into infinitival passives of perception verbs, get passives, and aspectual oppositions. The other two chapters address issues of lexical transfer and the problem of categorization in phonology. A more detailed account of the particular chapters is offered below.
2. Figurative Processes in Context In the first contribution to this volume, Zoltán Kövecses further elaborates Conceptual Metaphor Theory by considering the role of context in metaphorical meaning making. He incorporates findings from language acquisition and language evolution, such as joint attention and joint action and stresses the role of the communicative scene for the creation of metaphors in discourse. He proposes a classification of contextual factors into situational, linguistic, conceptual-cognitive, and bodily. They operate along a continuum from local to global context. Danuta Pluta-Wojciechowska investigates the comprehension and production of metaphors in children between 6–10 years of age with a language impairment of cleft lip and palate. Her results unambiguously show that these children obtain poorer results in metaphor comprehension and production tests than their healthy peers. Thus, she posits that speech therapy for these patients should be expanded
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beyond pure pronunciation practice and should involve higher-level language skills as well. It is particularly important in the case of metaphors, as their skillful use and understanding is necessary for the general cognitive development. The theory-oriented contribution by Wojciech Wachowski considers the question of how to delimit the boundaries between metaphor, metonymy and synecdoche. It starts with a comprehensive overview of literature on the topic. Then the author concentrates on two issues. One is the inherent personal variation in the delimitation and structure of conceptual domains. The other is the frequent intertwining of the three figurative processes. These two observations lead Wachowski to believe that classifying a particular use as one or the other can only be done for each instance of use in a given context on a one-by-one basis. The article by Jarosław Wiliński is an applied Cognitive Linguistics study. It shows how the lexical entries in onomasiological dictionaries could be constructed in order to reflect our knowledge about semantic frames, metonymies and metaphors. Whether such construction of dictionary entries would facilitate comprehension and retention of new vocabulary items remains to be seen.
3. Metaphor, Conceptual Integration Networks and Political Discourse Orsolya Putz in her paper presents a case study illustrating how one of the contextual factors proposed by Kövecses (2015 and this volume) can influence metaphor production in political discourse. The focus of investigation is the role of ideology and embodiment in the discursive metaphorical representation of the treaty of Trianon in Hungarian inter-war period. The author emphasizes the mutual interaction between metaphor and ideology as metaphor is constitutive of and constituted by ideology. The next article by Ewa Gieroń-Czepczor continues the investigation of the use of metaphor in political discourse. It concentrates on the politicians are animals metaphor in the Polish media and analyzes both verbal and multimodal data. The study looks into the particular mappings and entailments construing the image of the political opponent. It finishes with a discussion of the conceptual dimension of intertextuality. The study by Agnieszka Mierzwińska-Hajnos is another contribution focusing on multimodal data. Political cartoons are analyzed with the use of the revized model of conceptual integration (Brandt & Brandt 2005). The analysis shows the importance of global context and the communicative situation for the construction and comprehension of meaning.
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Anna Wyrwa’s work is a pilot study attempting to operationalize Underhill’s (2011) model of worldview. As a test case for her proposal she selects three metaphors from a speech of a Polish MEP and their English translations. The proposed analytic tool allows her to point out how differences in the linguistic choices can result in the construction of different worldviews.
4. Metaphor, Conceptual Integration Networks and The Conceptualization of Emotions Anna Rewiś-Łętkowska’s article is a third contribution analyzing multimodal data. Her data consist of a collection of textual fragments, a cartoon and a commercial. The focus of analysis is the conceptualization of fear and how verbal and visual factors contribute to the reawakening (Müller 2008) of the metaphors in particular contexts of use. The next contribution of this section, by Krzysztof Kosecki, looks at a number of expressions for feeling and emotions from a cross-linguistic perspective. It analyzes signs for emotions in three unrelated sign languages: American Sign Language, British Sign Language and Polish Sign Language. Metaphor, metonymy and metaphtonymy are identified as motivating the use of hand shape, motion, orientation and localization in body space. Certain universal trends are observed between the three analyzed languages as well as between sign languages and phonic languages (Kövecses 1986, 1990). Kamila Midor in her paper analyzes the conceptualization of grief and loss. This empirical study uses the transcription of 5 interviews with American English speakers and analyzes their talk within the conceptual integration model. This allows the author not only to carefully examine non-conventional ways of expressing grief, but also to point to certain advantages of using the model of online processing as opposed to the static CMT model. The interpretation of the verbal expressions is often supported with an analysis of co-speech gestures and offers an insightful image of the conceptualization of grief and loss.
5. Categories and Categorization The two papers comprising this section both adopt a corpus-based perspective to investigate the conceptualization of two different abstract categories in English. The first article, by Maria Libura, Agnieszka Libura, and Paweł Bechler, deals with the concept of disease and addresses two questions. Firstly, it considers the prototypical structure of the category and draws analogy between the frequency of occurrence in the corpus and the centrality of its specific members. Secondly,
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it compares folk and expert conceptualizations of a selected range of the category members. The findings demonstrate that less prototypical diseases exhibit a less complex semantic structure and manifest more striking differences in the two types of conceptualizations. The second paper in this section, by Przemysław Wilk, focuses on the lexical category europe and its conceptualization in the press discourse. Through the analysis of a large sample of contextualized examples of the lexical items associated with the lemma, the author reveals its conceptual polysemy. This is attained within the framework of the Lexical Concepts and Cognitive Models Theory (Evans 2006, 2009). What is particularly important in this regard is the process of contextual activation of relevant aspects in the semantic structure of the category, which draws on a rich body of general non-linguistic knowledge.
6. Cognitive Linguistic Accounts of Grammar The first two contributions in this section deal with passive constructions in English from a corpus-based quantitative perspective. More specifically, the first study, by Joanna Podhorodecka, focuses on the passivization of three perception verbs, i.e., hear, see and feel. The data were annotated for formal and semantic factors (e.g., infinitive form, Aktionsart, boundedness or type of complement verb) and analyzed quantitatively through multiple correspondence analysis (Glynn 2014) to establish what determines the choice between the passive and active uses of the verbs under investigation. The results demonstrate that the choice between the passive and active construal is the most flexible for see, with the two other verbs having more distinct preferences marked by statistically significant associations. The second article examining the passive voice, by Agnieszka Kaleta, revisits the get-passive constructions in English and, in so doing, it employs the method of distinctive collexeme analysis (Stefanowitsch & Gries 2003; Gries & Stefanowitsch 2004). It seeks to establish the prototypically-organized polysemous network of senses related to the passive construction [get + past participle], which is compared to the more wide-spread passive construction [be + past participle]. The findings show that the get-passives exhibit a radial category structure with a number of related meanings. Importantly, the construal imposed by this construction is found to be more dynamic than that linked to the be-passive, which the author attributes to the semantic properties of the passivizing verb get. Katarzyna Kwapisz-Osadnik’s study is devoted to the interaction between tense and aspect in French. More precisely, it addresses the influence of perception upon conceptualization and the choice of a specific construal in conveying the same temporal information. The author points out that French is interesting in
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this regard because the grammatical aspect is conveyed through tense marking and French tenses exhibit plasticity with respect to expressing temporal and aspectual information. In the spirit of Cognitive Linguistics, Kwapisz-Osadnik also emphasizes the importance of contextual, socio-cultural and situational factors in the choice of specific construals in general, and those bearing upon temporality, in particular. Józef Marcinkiewicz, in his contribution concerning verb transfer in L2 acquisition, adopts the stage model of figure/ground, as developed within Cognitive Grammar (Langacker 1987). This study employs the analytic tools provided by Langacker’s (1987) view on conceptualization to examine the cognitive motivations behind L2 errors. Actual examples of language errors are analyzed to demonstrate the applicability of the model. The author expects that the approach he adopts and his findings may provide valuable insights for language teaching methodology. The last article of the volume, by Kamila Turewicz, addresses the problem of categorization of phonological units and proposes a novel solution that integrates two radically different perspectives. The first of the perspectives considered by Turewicz comes from within the framework of Cognitive Grammar, where the profile/base alignment in conceptualization is particularly relevant. The other perspective that forms the basis of the proposed model is neurophysiological and is linked to Wickelgren’s (1969) discussion of context-sensitive allophones and associative memory.
References Bybee, J. 2007. Frequency of Use and the Organization of Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bernardez, E. 2007. Synergy in the construction of meaning. In M. Fabiszak (ed.), Language and Meaning. Cognitive and functional perspectives. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Brandt, L. & P. A. Brandt. 2005. Making sense of a blend. A cognitive-semiotic approach to metaphor. Annual Review of Cognitive Linguistics 3: 216–249. Charteris-Black, J. 2013. Analysing Political Speeches. Rhetoric, discourse and metaphor. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Evans, V. 2006. Lexical concepts, cognitive models and meaning construction. Cognitive Linguistics 17: 491–534. Evans, V. 2009. How Words Mean: Lexical concept, cognitive models and meaning construction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Geeraerts, D. 2015. Sense individuation. In N. Riemer (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Semantics, 233–247. London: Routledge. Glynn, D. 2014. Correspondence analysis: Exploring data and identifying patterns. In D. Glynn & J. Robinson (eds.), Corpus Methods for Semantics. Quantitative studies in polysemy and synonymy, 443–486. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Gries, St. Th. & A. Stefanowitsch. 2004. Extending collostructional analysis: A corpus-based perspective on alternations. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 9: 97–129. Harris, R. A. 1995. The Linguistics Wars. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hart, Ch. 2010. Critical Discourse Analysis and Cognitive Science: New perspectives on immigration discourse. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Hopper, P. 1987. Emergent grammar. Berkeley Linguistics Society 13: 139–157. Johnson, M. 1987. The Body in the Mind: The bodily basis of meaning, imagination, and reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kövecses, Z. 1986. Metaphors of Anger, Pride, and Love: A lexical approach to the structure of concepts. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Kövecses, Z. 1990. Emotion Concepts. New York: Springer. Kövecses, Z. 2005. Metaphor in Culture. Universality and variation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kövecses, Z. 2015. Where do Metaphors Come from? Reconsidering context in metaphor. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kövecses, Z. this volume. Contextual factors in metaphor creation in discourse. Krawczak K. 2014. Shame, embarrassment and guilt: Corpus evidence for the cross-cultural structure of social emotions. Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics 50(4): 441–475. Krawczak K. 2015. Negative self-evaluative emotions from a cross-cultural perspective: A case of ‘shame’ and ‘guilt’ in English and Polish. In K. Kosecki & J. Badio (eds.) Empirical Methods in Language Studies, 117–136. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Lakoff, G. 1987. Women, Fire and Dangerous Things. What categories reveal about the mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, G. 1996. Moral Politics: What conservatives know that liberals don’t. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, G. & M. Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live by. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, G. & M. Johnson. 1999. Philosophy in the Flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to Western thought. New York: Basic Books.
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Lakoff, G. & M. Turner. 1989. More than Cool Reason. A field guide to poetic metaphor. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Langacker, R. 1987. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Mikołajczuk, A. 2004. anger in Polish and English: A semantic comparison with some historical context. In Ch. J. Kay & J. J. Smith (eds.), Categorization in the History of English, 159–178. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Müller, C. 2008. Metaphors Dead and Alive, Sleeping and Waking. A dynamic view. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Musolff, A. 2010. Metaphor, Nation and the Holocaust: The concept of the body politic. New York: Routledge. Stefanowitsch, A. & St. Th. Gries. 2003. Collostructions: Investigating the interaction between words and constructions. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 8: 209–243. Underhill, J. 2011. Creating Worldviews: Metaphor, ideology and language. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Wickelgren, W. A. 1969. Context-sensitive coding, associative memory, and serial order in (speech) behavior. Psychological Review 76(1): 1–15.
Part 1: Figurative Processes in Context
Zoltán Kövecses Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest
Contextual Factors in Metaphor Creation in Discourse A missing element of metaphor production and metaphorical meaning making in general in cognitive linguistics is context. I suggest that an account of metaphor production in context must begin with a general characterization of communication and, within that, metaphorical communication. The crucial elements of this include the notions of relevant context, referential scene, joint attention, joint action, and common ground, as proposed by a number of scholars in the past decade or so. I will point out the significance of these notions for a theory of metaphor creation in context. In addition, I will propose a dozen or so commonly occurring contextual factors that seem to play a role in the creation of metaphors in real discourse. These contextual factors can be grouped into four larger types: situational, linguistic, conceptual-cognitive, and bodily factors. The contextual factors can be arranged along a gradient: the local to global context. The reconceptualization of the nature and role of context in metaphor creation is intended to improve and enrich existing versions of conceptual metaphor theory.
1. Introduction Conceptual metaphors are defined as sets of mappings between a concrete source domain and an abstract target domain. The mappings are conceptual correspondences between elements of the source and those of the target. Linguistic expressions make these correspondences manifest in language, and the meaning of the expressions is based on the particular mappings. By their nature, the systematic mappings form a part of the conceptual system. The central cases of these metaphors arise, according to the standard version of the theory, from correlations in experience between abstract and sensorimotor concepts. If we accept this view as our only or complete account of metaphor, it becomes very difficult to explain the use of many metaphors – both conceptual and linguistic – in particular situations of discourse. Metaphor production and comprehension is highly context-sensitive, as we full well know, and yet conceptual metaphor theory lacks a coherent, fully worked-out contextual component. This paper is an attempt to identify and outline some of the most important elements that should be part of such a contextual theory.
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I propose that a contextualist version of conceptual metaphor theory requires the characterization of at least three large issues that center around the following three questions: (1) What is needed for (metaphorical) meaning making?; (2) What are the most common contextual factors that play a role in the use and creation of metaphors?; and (3) What is the cognitive mechanism by means of which the contextual factors actually produce metaphors in natural discourse? In the present paper, I will be concerned with the first two questions (for a more comprehensive treatment, see Kövecses 2015).
2. What is Needed for Meaning Making? Metaphorical meaning making and communication is an aspect of meaning making and communication in general. General principles and theories of meaning making and communication developed by linguists, psychologists, philosophers, and others, working along the same or similar lines as I do (i.e., cognitive linguistic ones) also apply to metaphorical meaning making and communication. In order to be able to see how context affects the creation and comprehension of metaphorical meaning, let us briefly review some relevant theories of meaning making in context. I briefly discuss several such theories. All of these assume that human meaning making is best characterized as occurring in face-to-face communicative situations; it is the prototype of how humans communicate and from which many and different kinds of deviations can be found.
2.1 Relevant Context A crucial issue in the enterprise of metaphorical meaning making is finding the appropriate context in which the use of a particular metaphor can be interpreted, and can be interpreted correctly. One can phrase the issue from the perspective of the hearer (conceptualizer 2), as most philosophers and psychologists do, or from the perspective of the speaker (conceptualizer 1). In the latter case the question is: What is it in the present context that I can make use of to create the appropriate metaphor that the hearer can understand and will interpret correctly? This is the perspective that I am taking in the paper. An elaborate account of finding the appropriate context for comprehending (metaphorical) utterances is that provided by Sperber & Wilson (1986/1995), who, by contrast, phrase the issue from the hearer’s perspective. Sperber & Wilson (2008) offer a theory that can explain metaphor interpretation without recognizing the independent ontological status of metaphor as such. Debate is going on whether their account of metaphorical meaning making is viable as a cognitively
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real process (see Gibbs & Tendahl 2011). However, Sperber and Wilson introduce the notion of “mutual cognitive environment,” which seems to be compatible with the idea of context as I use it here. I will outline the most common components of such a cognitive environment (i.e., context) in a later section.
2.2 Referential Scene and Joint Attention In a communicative situation, a speaker performs three actions by means of one (Sinha (2007): (1) The speaker makes use of a set of linguistic (or other) symbols that represent a referential situation. (2) By the use of symbols, the speaker expresses the communicative intention. And (3) Through the symbols the speaker “appeal[s] to the hearer to direct their own intentional processes toward the referential situation” (Sinha 2007: 1282). Thus, the use of the symbols creates a sphere of joint attention between the speaker and the hearer. In the case of metaphorical meaning making, the symbolic representation of a referential situation is provided by metaphorical means.
2.3 Joint Action and Common Ground Using symbols with another in a communicative situation is a form of “joint action” (Clark 1996). Using symbols (making utterances) assumes a large amount of shared knowledge between speaker and hearer, which Clark (1996) refers to as “common ground.” The common ground must have a shared basis. The shared basis serves as evidence for the common ground. He mentions two kinds: “communal common ground” and “personal common ground.” In discourse that employs metaphors, the use of metaphorical language functions as joint action, and it also requires common ground between speaker and hearer. As regards the bases for common ground, Clark argues that if we know that someone belongs to a particular group, this is enough evidence for us to make certain assumptions about this person. A “cultural community” is a group of people who share a great deal of information that others don’t (Clark 1996: 101). The mental representation of this kind of information is like an encyclopedia composed of a variety of different conceptual frames, or models, that can be thought of as defining a culture (or subcultures). In such groups, people share most of the distinctive frames that are based on conceptual metaphors. Personal common ground derives from shared perceptual experience and joint action. Both of these can be used as metaphorical source domains in the course of metaphorical communication. Semino (2008) discusses an example that, in my view, can be taken to be a metaphorical example of shared perceptual experience. A commentator on the 2005 G8 summit made a remark that was turned into a statement by a journalist
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reporting on the event: “Dr Kumi Naidoo, from the anti-poverty lobby group G-Cap, said after “the roar” produced by Live 8, the G8 had uttered “a whisper”.” The loud noise produced by a rock band at the Live 8 series of concerts was conceived of as a “roar,” as opposed to what was described as a “whisper,” indicating the faint-heartedness of the summit to handle poverty. The shared perceptual experience made it possible to create a novel metaphor that was understood easily by the journalist and the readers of the newspaper article; they had the same perceptual experience either directly or indirectly.
3. Types of Context and Kinds of Contextual Factors The in-depth study of discourse shows that the use of metaphors in discourse seems to be influenced by a large variety of contextual factors. The specific contextual factors can be grouped into four large categories: situational context, discourse context, conceptual-cognitive context, and bodily context. All four of these context types can be broken down into various kinds of specific contextual factors. However, before I discuss the various context types and the contextual factors, I need to introduce two general constraints on metaphors use. The use of metaphors in discourse is extremely variable. This is because context plays a crucial role in which metaphor is used in which situation. Each and every communicative situation is different, and this results in variation in metaphorical conceptualization. In my book Metaphor in Culture (Kövecses 2005), I distinguish two large sets of factors that seem to play a role in metaphor variation: those that have to do with differential experience and those that have to do with differential “cognitive styles.” The contextual factors that I will summarize below have to do with differential experience. The factors subsumed under differential experience consist of some contentful knowledge (i.e., one that has conceptual content) that reflects (direct or indirect) experiences of the world. These reflect experiences that can trigger the use of particular metaphors. In order for conceptualizers to produce and comprehend metaphors they need to be able to resort to the experiences that are utilized in the metaphors. These experiences provide the common ground that allow conceptualizers to produce and comprehend contextually induced, or generated, metaphors in discourse. The factors under cognitive styles, by contrast, reflect particular ways in which experiences of the world need to be presented, given the prevalent cognitive conventions and preferences of a language community. Such issues as at which level a metaphorical idea is presented (schematicity), how it should be framed (framing), to what degree it should be conventionalized (conventionalization), which aspect of the body it should involve or profile (experiential focus), and others,
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are presentational in nature. In general, the former set of factors respond to the question of “what” can prompt or prime the use of certain metaphors, whereas the latter set to the question of “how” metaphorical conceptualization needs to be presented in a language community. The factors listed under differential cognitive style function as constraints on the speaker-conceptualizer only, who is to follow the cognitive conventions of the language community. The hearer (comprehender) is not constrained in this way. Now we can turn to our inventory of types of context and the kinds of specific contextual factors that belong to them.
3.1 Situational Context The situational context comprises a variety of different contextual factors. Most commonly it can be thought of as the physical environment, the social situation, and the cultural context.
3.1.1 Physical Environment The physical environment can shape metaphorical meaning making. The physical environment includes the flora, the fauna, the landscape, the temperature, the weather, perceptual properties of the situation, and so on. For example, it is a common observation that American English metaphors relating to the physical environment are characteristically different from those of other English-speaking countries (see, e.g., Kövecses 2000). The small-scale, local environment, such as the visible events in or the perceptual properties of a situation, can also make their influence felt in shaping metaphors. One example that was considered in this category was the “whisper” metaphor we saw in the previous section.
3.1.2 Social Situation The social situation consists of social aspects of life that typically center around notions such as gender, class, politeness, work, education, social organizations, social structure, and others. All of these can play a role in metaphorical conceptualization. For example, Kolodny (1975, 1984) shows that American men and women developed very different metaphorical images for what they conceived of as the frontier in America. While the women commonly thought of America as a “garden to be cultivated,” men conceptualized it as “virgin land to be taken.” (For several more examples, see Kövecses 2005.)
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3.1.3 Cultural Context The cultural context involves both the global context (the shared knowledge represented in the conceptual system) and the local context (the specific knowledge in a given communicative situation) (see also Section 4). An example of how the global context can affect metaphorical conceptualization can be seen in the way different concepts can produce differential metaphors in different cultures and languages, such as the metaphors for anger: anger is heat (of fluid or solid) in a large number of languages such as English and Hungarian, whereas in Chinese the metaphor can also involve gas as its source domain – as a result of the influence of Yin and Yang theory (see Yu 1998). The more immediate local context can play a similar role in the production of metaphors (see Kövecses 2010).
3.2 Discourse Context The discourse context involves the surrounding discourse, the previous discourses on the same topic, and the dominant forms of discourse related to a particular subject matter.
3.2.1 Surrounding Discourse The surrounding discourse is simply the linguistic context – often referred to as “cotext.” Viewed from the perspective of the producer of discourse, the speaker, elements of the preceding discourse (either by the speaker / conceptualizer 1 or the hearer / conceptualizer 2) can influence the choice of metaphors, as was shown in an example taken from The Times by Kövecses (2010): “which helped to tilt the balance – and Mr Hain – over the edge.” In this case, the contextually-induced metaphor arises from the elliptical use of the verb tilt in the phrase tilt Mr Hain over the edge. It is the presence of tilt in the immediate cotext that leads to the second use of the metaphor.
3.2.2 Previous Discourses on the Same Topic The metaphors used in previous discourses on the same topic as the current discourse can also introduce new metaphors into the discourse. This can take a variety of forms ranging from elaborating, extending, questioning, negating, reflecting on, ridiculing, to otherwise taking advantage of a metaphor previously introduced. For example, an MP in the British Parliament responded to the then Prime Minister Tony Blair, who said that he does not have a reverse gear (i.e., he can only go forward), by means of making the following statement: “but when you’re on the edge of a cliff it is good to have a reverse gear” (example taken from
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Semino 2008). This was a humorous twist induced by the prior discourse on the progress is motion forward conceptual metaphor.
3.2.3 Dominant Forms of Discourse and Intertextuality Certain form of discourse can acquire dominant status in a community. When this happens, the metaphor used in or based on this discourse can become widespread both temporally (historically) and spatially (cross-culturally). For example, the discourse of Christianity commonly gives rise to the use of metaphors in the Christian world.
3.3 Conceptual-Cognitive Context This type of context consists of a variety of different kinds, including the following: the metaphorical conceptual system, knowledge about the elements of discourse, ideology, knowledge about past events, interests and concerns.
3.3.1 Metaphorical Conceptual System Concepts can stand in a metaphorical relationship with one another (e.g., life is a journey, argument is war) in long-term memory. Given such metaphorical relationships between concepts, their presence or absence in the metaphorical conceptual system may lead to the production and comprehension of particular metaphors. A metaphorical conceptual system can function as context in this sense. Given an intended metaphorical meaning, we can search the conventional metaphorical conceptual system for the best choice of metaphor. This happens in cases where a conventionalized metaphorical meaning is expressed via a conventional linguistic metaphor, with a matching target element activating the corresponding mapping in an existing conceptual metaphor (e.g., the meaning “supporting an argument” by means of the word defend in the argument is war conceptual metaphor).
3.3.2 Knowledge About Elements of the Discourse Conceptualizers often rely on the knowledge they have about the main elements of the discourse: about the speaker, hearer, and topic. For example, I have noticed that in many newspaper articles knowledge about the topic as a contextual factor can lead to the creation of new metaphors (Kövecses 2010). An example of this involved David Beckham in an article in which the journalist remarked: “Los Angeles Galaxy are sardines not sharks in the ocean of footy” (Kövecses 2010). Here the relevant knowledge includes that Beckham played for the Los Angeles
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Galaxy soccer team and that Los Angeles is located on the ocean with all kinds of fish in it.
3.3.3 Ideology Ideology can also be a formative factor in the use of metaphors in discourse. One’s ideology concerning major social and political issues may govern the choice of metaphors (as work by, for instance, Goatly 2007, shows). A good example of this is Lakoff ’s (1996) study of American politics, where conservatives tend to use the nation is a strict father family metaphor, while liberals prefer the nation is a nurturant parent family version of the generic metaphor the nation is a family. Goatly (2007) is a major exploration into the metaphor-based ideology of capitalism.
3.3.4 Knowledge About Past Events Being aware of past events and states (i.e., items both in short-term and long-term memory) shared by the conceptualizers may also lead to the emergence of specific metaphors in discourse. A special case of this involves a situation in which the speaker assumes that the hearer has a particular mental state. Such memories of events can belong to the life of a community or an individual. It has been often observed that the memory of historical events can lead to the production (and comprehension) of certain metaphors (see, e.g., Deignan 2003; Kövecses 2005). Different historical contexts can create differential preferences for particular life metaphors among Hungarians and Americans (see Kövecses 2005). The particular events in a specific communicative situation preceding an act of metaphorical conceptualization may also produce similar effects.
3.3.5 Interests and Concerns People are commonly prompted to use particular metaphors (more precisely, metaphorical source domains) in real communicative situations relative to their interests and concerns about the world (see Kövecses 2005). Entire groups and individuals can be said to have certain characteristic interests or concerns that may affect the way they make meaning metaphorically. For example, since Americans are claimed to be dynamically-oriented, rather than passive, in their attitude to life, and, relatedly, are sports-loving in general, it is not surprising that they use a large number of sports metaphors. Similarly, if a person has some kind of professional interest, that person is likely to draw metaphors from his or her sphere of interest (see Kövecses 2005).
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3.4 Bodily Context A particular state of the body can produce particular metaphorical conceptualizations in specific cases, such as a poet’s or writer’s illness. Elsewhere, I showed how Dickinson’s choice of metaphors may have been influenced by her optical illness (see Kövecses 2010). Moreover, individual bodily specificities can have an influence on which metaphors are used by particular people. For example, Casasanto (2009) found that left-handers prefer to use the moral is left, as opposed to the moral is right. Such metaphors contrast with the metaphors that evolve on the basis of the general (universal) properties of the human body (i.e., the primary metaphors). Instead of regarding the body as one of the two major “pressures of coherence” in the (metaphorical) conceptual system (i.e., embodiment and context), as I have done in previous work (Kövecses 2005), we can take the body as a further aspect of the context – among the several others listed above. On this view, the body – especially those aspects of it that are activated in the ongoing situation – can influence the choice of metaphors. The body is not only responsible for the production of hundreds of conceptual metaphors through the many correlations in subjective and sensory-motor experience (cf. Grady 1997a, b; Lakoff & Johnson 1999), but it can also prime the use of particular metaphors in more immediate, local contexts (see, e.g., Gibbs 2006; Gibbs & Colston 2012; Boroditsky 2001; Boroditsky & Ramscar 2002). In other words, it can lead to the production of metaphors in discourse in the same way as the other contextual factors previously mentioned can. This change in our view of the status of the body would imply that the idea according to which the body and context that were seen as being in diametrical opposition would have to be abandoned and that it would have to be recognized that the body can produce metaphors locally as well, not only globally and universally.
4. Local and Global Context As we have seen, within the varied set of contextual factors that I briefly introduced above, two general types of context can be distinguished: local and global. The local context involves the specific knowledge conceptualizers have about some aspect of the immediate communicative situation. Thus, the local context implies specific knowledge that attaches to the conceptualizers in a specific communicative situation. It corresponds, at least roughly, to Clark’s personal common ground. By contrast, the global context consists of the conceptualizers’ general knowledge concerning the nonimmediate situation that characterizes a community. It implies
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knowledge shared by an entire community of conceptualizers. Thus, the notion is close to Clark’s communal common ground. The distinction is mostly of theoretical nature. In many actual communicative situations, there is no sharp dividing line between the two types of context. The diagram below summarizes the various kinds and types of contextual factors, as discussed above: Figure 1: Summary of contextual factors.
The diagram is somewhat misleading in that it presents the four major context types as having rigid boundaries. In reality, the context types overlap and metaphorical conceptualization in particular communicative situations commonly involves more than one context type.
5. Conclusions I argued in the paper that in actual communicative situations speakers / conceptualizers derive their metaphors from four large types of experience: the situational,
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discourse, conceptual-cognitive, and bodily contexts. This goes against the traditional view of metaphor that most of our metaphors are simply conventionalized linguistic expressions that have a certain meaning, and we use the metaphors when we wish to express those meanings. It also goes against a commonly-held view in cognitive linguistics that the metaphors we use are simply based on conceptual metaphors in our heads. The four context types and the contextual factors belonging to them prime conceptualizers to choose their metaphors in discourse. I find this view of metaphor preferable to other views within cognitive linguistics because it extends the study of metaphor beyond the cases that are body-based in the usual sense in conceptual metaphor theory (i.e., correlations between sensorimotor experience and abstract ideas). The metaphors based on the situational, the discourse, the conceptual-cognitive context, together with the bodily one that involves unique features of individual bodies, may far outnumber correlationbased metaphors. In addition, we get a fairly straightforward account of why particular novel, and often isolated, metaphorical expressions are used in naturally occurring discourse.
References Boroditsky, L. 2001. Does language shape thought? Mandarin and English speakers’ conception of time. Cognitive Psychology 43: 1–22. Boroditsky, L. & M. Ramscar. 2002. The roles of body and mind in abstract thought. Psychological Science 13(2): 185–189. Casasanto, D. 2009. Embodiment of Abstract Concepts: Good and bad in right and left handers. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 138(3): 351–367. Clark, H. 1996. Using Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Deignan, A. 2003. Metaphorical expressions and culture: An indirect link. Metaphor and Symbol 18(4): 255–271. Gibbs, R. W. & H. Colston. 2012. Interpreting Figurative Meaning. New York: Cambridge University Press. Gibbs, R. W. & M. Tendahl. 2011. Coupling of metaphoric cognition and communication: A reply to Deirdre Wilson. Intercultural Pragmatics 8(4): 601–609. Gibbs, R W. 2006. Embodiment and Cognitive Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Goatly, A. 2007. Washing the Brain. Metaphor and Ideology. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Grady, J. 1997a. theories are building revisited. Cognitive Linguistics 8: 267–290.
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Grady, J. 1997b. Foundations of Meaning: Primary metaphors and primary scenes. Ph.D. Thesis, Department of Linguistics, University of California at Berkeley. Kolodny, A. 1975. The Lay of the Land: Metaphor as experience and history in American life and letters. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. Kolodny, A. 1984. The Land Before Her: Fantasy and experience of the American Frontiers, 1630–1860. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. Kövecses, Z. 2000. American English. An introduction. Peterborough, CA: Broadview Press. Kövecses, Z. 2005. Metaphor in Culture. Universality and variation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kövecses, Z. 2010. A new look at metaphorical creativity in cognitive linguistics. Cognitive Linguistics 21(4): 663–697. Kövecses, Z. 2015. Where Metaphors Come from. Reconsidering context in metaphor. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lakoff, G. & M. Johnson, 1999. Philosophy in the Flesh. New York: Basic Books. Lakoff, G. 1996. Moral Politics. What conservatives know that liberals don’t. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Semino, E. 2008. Metaphor in Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sinha, C. 2007. Cognitive Linguistics, psychology, and cognitive science. In D. Geeraerts & H. Cuyckens (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics, 1266–1294. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sperber, D. & D. Wilson. 1986/1995. Relevance: Communication and cognition. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Sperber, D. & D. Wilson. 2008. A deflationary account of metaphor. In R. Gibbs (ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor and Thought, 84–105. New York: Cambridge University Press. Yu, N. 1998. The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor in Chinese: A perspective from Chinese. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Danuta Pluta-Wojciechowska University of Silesia
Metaphors in the Speech of Children with Language Impairment The author reports the results of her research into the way in which children with cleft lip and cleft palate as well as children without any developmental disorder use metaphors. The study deals with the ways the young participants understand and create metaphors. This was assessed with the use of an original research tool created for the sake of the study. The analysis proved that children at the age of 6–7 and 9–10 with language impairment displayed worse linguistic performance than the control group. The obtained results may suggest additional aims in the speech therapy of children with cleft lip and palate.
1. Introduction Using metaphors (i.e. creating and understanding them) is an important aspect of language performance. Whenever it is not possible to render the intended meaning in the communication by means of language, one may take advantage of this extraordinary tool to interpret the world. The issue of the meaning of metaphors (here understood not as rhetorical terms but tools serving to learn more about the world) was addressed by many authors (Lakoff & Johnson 1988; Lakoff & Turner 1989; Jäkel 2003). Taking into consideration the process of the emergence of a metaphor, the internalization of linguistic symbols seems to be vital, as only internalized symbols may be compared, juxtaposed, manipulated, and transformed, which in result provides a new view on phenomena and objects reflected by metaphors. Lakoff and Johnson, the creators of the concept of the metaphorical structure of the human conceptual system, define metaphor in the following way: “The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another” (Lakoff & Johnson 1988: 26).1 One may conclude that Lakoff and Johnson (1988) claim that metaphors play an important role in understanding the world and understanding oneself. That is the reason why they classify the metaphor as a sense (similar to hearing, sight, smell, etc.).
1 The author used Polish translation of the cited paper, however the quote comes from the original work of Lakoff & Johnson (1980: 5).
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When writing about metaphors Lakoff and Turner (1989: 1) indicate that metaphor is a common phenomenon and due to its frequent occurrence people tend not to notice its presence. On the other hand, Jäkel (2003: 21) states that using, understanding and creating metaphors must be perceived as an element of general linguistic competence; and thus, it should be considered an object of linguistic semantics. He discusses nine central tenets of the cognitive theory of metaphor, pointing out creativity as one of them. Using metaphors allows a language user to construct a unique interpretation of the world. This is why the metaphor may serve as a significant means in learning more about the world. Language is often defined as a tool used to discover the world in the area of speech therapy. One may refer to the definition of speech provided by Grabias (1997: 10) where he describes speech as “a set of activities which are performed by a human being with the use of a language, while getting to know the reality and providing other participants of social life with his/her own interpretation thereof.” 2 On the other hand, using metaphors requires internalization of linguistic symbols, complex cognitive processing, the capability of abstract thinking, as well as comparing and associating different notions. According to the researchers’ observations, each metaphor allows to accentuate one feature and exclude the ones which play the secondary role. The classical typology of metaphors mentions three types of metaphors, namely orientational metaphors, structural metaphors, and ontological metaphors (Lakoff & Johnson 1988: 35–52). Each of them enables people to understand some notions in the categories of other notions in a different and specific way. This usually involves understanding abstract notions by means of concrete ones. It should be emphasized that there is a significant difference between defining notions in the classical perspective and learning about phenomena by means of a metaphor: while defining usually involves searching for the features of a given notion that make it different from other notions, using metaphors is more like finding a key to a notion (Lakoff & Johnson 1988: 143). This difference is, therefore, meaningful in the context of understanding and describing things and phenomena in the external and the internal world of the human being. Using metaphors (which involves understanding metaphors and the ability to create them) requires manipulation of formed and internalized linguistic units. This means that while using metaphors, one has to be able to compare and contrast the linguistic units, juxtapose them, think by analogy, use relational mapping, treat events as objects and objects as events, manipulate cognitive constructs, abstract irrelevant features and find the ones which are similar in some aspects
2 Translated by the author.
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(Lakoff & Johnson 1988; Langacker 2003; Tomasello 2002). These mental phenomena are extraordinarily complex. Young language users are not born with such skills. However, the proper development in language usage prepares them for the encounters with metaphors. Therefore, how do children understand and create metaphors? And particularly those whose language development faces certain complications? This issue will be addressed in the following paper. The data used in the following research were obtained by the author in 2011 and published in a book (Pluta-Wojciechowska 2011). This paper, however, uses them for a different type of analysis which provides new interpretation of the obtained data.
2. Participants The study involved children aged 6–7 and 9–10 with language impairment (39 participants) and a control group of children of the same age displaying no such disorders (41 participants). The participants with language impairment suffered from a developmental disorder of the middle part of the facial skeleton, namely the cleft lip and palate. All the participants with the developmental disorder have undergone surgical procedure of closing the cleft. The study encompassed 22 participants with cleft lip and palate aged 6–7, 17 participants with cleft lip and palate aged 9–10, 22 participants aged 6–7 in the control group and 19 participants aged 9–10 in the control group. Generally, children with the disorder in the middle part of the facial skeleton are considered to have various speech disorders. The author’s previous research has showed that these children display a linguistic usus which differs from the usus of other children not only in terms of the phonetic/phonological system. This paper presents the result of the study on the use of metaphor in children with cleft lip and palate (Pluta-Wojciechowska 2011). The research shows that the development of language skills in the group of children with congenital disorders co-occurs with problems conditioned by biological, psychological and social factors. Traditionally, the assessment of speech in children with cleft lip and palate focuses on phoneme realization, which has been mentioned above. The research into the usage of metaphors in children with language impairment shows that not only do the pathological factors connected with biological, psychological and social conditions affect the realization of phonemes, but also have impact on other linguistic skills, including the ability to use metaphors correctly. Those language skills do not develop in isolation: they are related to various features of the human body. As Lakoff (1987: 14) claims, the mind is embodied, and, therefore, strictly related to the body and shaped by human experience.
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3. Research on the Understanding of Metaphors (Comprehension Test) 3.1 Research Method The comprehension of metaphors was examined with an original research tool created by the author (Pluta-Wojciechowska 2011). It involved an interview based on the questions presented below: Instructions: Explain what the following utterances mean: (1) Marek is a tiger when he’s fighting with Olek. (2) Ania is 8 now but she’s still a baby. (3) There’s a word fight between the boys. (4) Kuba took part in the sports competition and was the king of the running race. (5) Dad got stuck in the traffic jam. (6) Time is money. The children’s statements referring to their understanding of metaphors were qualified as correct only if there was an unambiguous indication of the essence of the particular metaphor. The most frequent ways of explaining the metaphors were as follows (the explanations match the metaphors listed above): (1) he is as threatening and dangerous as a tiger, (2) she behaves like a baby, (3) they are calling each other names, they say “you are stupid”, they swear, (4) he has won the competition, (5) he’s staying in the car and cannot continue his trip, there are many cars, (6) it is important. Grasping the meaning of metaphor (6) appeared to be the most difficult. Nevertheless, some children made an attempt to solve this problem. The interview was connected with an attempt to help the children to comprehend the meaning of this extraordinary linguistic means. The children were very content when they grasped the essence of the metaphor with the help of the author conducting the interview. Nevertheless, the correct answers obtained by means of guiding questions and hints provided by the person conducting the interview were not included in the results. The results include only the utterances which were formulated independently by the participants, i.e. without anyone’s help.
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3.2 The Results of the Comprehension Test The participants’ responses were analyzed and grouped into three categories, namely: a) the lack of answer, b) the correct answer, and c) the wrong answer (see Table 1). The results obtained in the group of children with language impairment were contrasted with the results obtained in the control group. Chi-square test with Yates’s correction for continuity and strata weight test were used to test the codependence of data. The results with probability p = 5, and the chi-square test value must be > = 3,841 (Pęzik 2012).
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5.2 Results: The Frequency of Selected Disease Names in NCP As it will be shown, popularity of a disease in various communication channels is not related to its prevalence in the population. The disease numbers in Poland are estimated to be as follows: • • • • • • •
Patients diagnosed with HIV (since 1985) Patients with Aids (since 1985) Leukemia morbidity (new cases/annually) HCV prevalence Rheumatic diseases prevalence Rheumatic arthritis prevalence Psoriasis prevalence including acute psoriasis • Diabetes prevalence
18 646 3 200
(Accessed 9 Nov 2014.) Wierzbicka, A. 1999. Emotions across Languages and Cultures. Diversity and universals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Wiland, P., A. Filipowicz-Sosnowska, P. Głuszko, E. J. Kucharz, W. Maśliński, W. Samborski, J. Szechiński, W. Tłustochowicz & M. Brzosko. 2008. Standardy leczenia. Rekomendacje w postępowaniu diagnostycznym i terapeutycznym u chorych na zesztywniające zapalenie stawów kręgosłupa. Opracowane przez Zespół Konsultanta Krajowego z dziedziny Reumatologii. Reumatologia 46: 191–197. Wittgenstein, L. 1953. Philosophical Investigations. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Wright, H. G. 2007. Means, Ends and Medical Care. Springer: Dordrecht.
Przemysław Wilk Opole University
On the Polysemy of the Lexical Item Europe: An Approach from Access Semantics This paper argues for the polysemous nature of the lexical item Europe as manifest in the Guardian press discourse. Specifically, analyzing a thousand occurrences of the lexical item Europe and its various conceptions, that is, utterance-level units of meaning, the paper demonstrates that the lexical item Europe exhibits conceptual polysemy as defined within the Lexical Concepts and Cognitive Models (LCCM) Theory, a theory of lexical representation and semantic composition developed by Evans (2006, 2009, 2013).
1. Introduction Traditionally, polysemy has been described and defined as a situation in which a linguistic vehicle is associated with a set of semantically related senses (or meanings). The phenomenon of polysemy has always engendered much controversy predominantly among semanticists of different persuasions as it is one of the most fundamental features of human language, most notably of the lexicon. Interestingly, polysemy has also received a lot of attention in other disciplines, such as psycholinguistics, computational linguistics but also in psychology or Artificial Intelligence. The study of polysemy has received relatively little attention in the structuralist and the generative paradigms as it posed some fundamental problems for the study of meaning in both approaches, and hence it gave way to the phenomena of monosemy and homonymy (cf. Cuyckens & Zawada 1997). Only with the advent of the Cognitive Linguistics paradigm and its prototype-based approach to categorization did the study of polysemy gain new impetus. It has also turned out that the phenomenon of polysemy is easily accommodated within the theories of cognitive semantics, which posit that meaning is not contained in a linguistic vehicle per se but is a function of the interaction between the linguistic and the conceptual systems, whereby lexical items obtain distinct readings due to the activation of different multimodal resources in the human conceptual system. A semantic theory that seems to be particularly well-suited to address the issues raised in the present paper is LCCM Theory, a theory of lexical concepts and cognitive models developed by Evans (e.g., 2006, 2009, 2013). In the early version of his LCCM Theory, providing a painstaking analysis of the state lexical concepts of English prepositions, Evans (2009) proposes that
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polysemy be perceived as a phenomenon whereby a single vehicle (the phonological pole of Langacker’s symbolic assembly) is conventionally associated with various, yet semantically related, lexical concepts (a fundamental construct in LCCM Theory). As we can see, the early operationalization of the phenomenon of polysemy within the LCCM Theory framework bears a close resemblance to the traditional conception of polysemy presented in the preceding paragraph of this article. Most recently, however, Evans (2015a, 2015b) has proposed a unified account of polysemy where he distinguishes three various linguistic phenomena pertaining to broadly understood semantic relatedness, namely, conceptual polysemy, lexical polysemy and inter-lexical polysemy. The present article focuses on the conceptual polysemy of the lexical item Europe as manifest in press discourse. The findings offered in the present article constitute a preliminary report on a larger project aimed at the reconstruction and description of the cognitive model of Europe in press discourse.
2. Conceptual Polysemy in LCCM Theory In his unified account of polysemy, Evans (2015a, 2015b) distinguishes three different types of polysemy, namely, conceptual, lexical and inter-lexical. Both lexical and inter-lexical types of polysemy are founded on the traditional assumption that polysemy is “the association of two or more related senses with a single linguistic form” (Taylor 1995: 99), where the different senses of a linguistic form are operationalized in LCCM Theory in terms of lexical concepts, that is, conventionalized sense-units (see, e.g., Evans 2009, 2013). Hence, it is clear that polysemy in the two above cases has its roots in the linguistic system. However, as far as conceptual polysemy is concerned, the polysemous nature of a lexical item stems directly from the vast multimodal body of non-linguistic knowledge specific to the conceptual system. More specifically, while in the case of lexical and interlexical polysemy, different readings of the same linguistic form arise due to the context-dependent selection of a given lexical concept, in the case of conceptual polysemy, “linguistic context can serve to differentially highlight different aspects of the non-linguistic or encyclopaedic knowledge to which a word form facilitates access” (Evans 2015b: 1). Hence, it follows that although conceptual polysemy is a function of the conceptual system, linguistic context does have some crucial bearing on which parts of the non-linguistic knowledge get activated for a lexical item to obtain different situated meanings. It needs to be clearly stated that the phenomenon of conceptual polysemy is not a brand new idea in Cognitive Linguistics for, as Evans (2015a, 2015b) himself admits, it bears resemblance to Croft and Cruise’s notion of purport or Langacker’s
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concept of domain matrix. LCCM Theory does, however, provide the most fullyfledged methodological account of the structure and the nature of access to the non-linguistic knowledge specific to the conceptual system. What makes it possible to pin down the complex and multilayered structure of the human conceptual system are the theoretical constructs of cognitive model and cognitive model profile. The former constitutes a large-scale structured body of multimodal (hence nonlinguistic) knowledge which derives from human sensory-motor, proprioceptive and subjective experiences (cf. Evans 2013). The latter is the range of cognitive models that a lexical concept affords both direct and indirect access to. Hence, a cognitive model profile constitutes a semantic potential of a given lexical concept. To illustrate how linguistic context influences the differential activation of the non-linguistic knowledge to arrive at different readings of a single lexical item, let us focus on the example of the lexical item book discussed in Evans (2015a). For reasons of space, I will reproduce only part of his discussion here. Let us consider two utterances: (a) That’s a heavy book and (b) The antiquarian book is illegible. In the two above examples the lexical item book obtains two distinct readings, namely, ‘tome’, that is, the physical artifact, and ‘text’, that is, the physical text the reader interacts with, respectively. It happens so as the linguistic context determines the activation of the relevant portion of the conceptual knowledge related to the lexical item book. Technically speaking, the linguistic context activates different region of the cognitive model profile the lexical concept [book] affords access to. Specifically, both the readings that the lexical item book obtains in utterances (a) and (b) arise due to the activation of the ‘physical structure’ cognitive model accessed directly by the lexical concept [book]. The difference lies, however, in the differential highlighting (see Evans 2009) of the attributes associated with this cognitive model, namely ‘tome’ in the case of utterance (a) and ‘text’ in the case of utterance (b). The following section discusses the conceptual polysemy of the lexical item Europe as manifest in the press discourse subject to analysis. Additionally, to demonstrate how the linguistic context determines the activation of the appropriate area of the semantic potential of the lexical concept [europe], a partial cognitive model profile of the lexical concept [europe] is constructed.
3. Analysis and Discussion The source of the language data is a manually compiled 930,000-word corpus of news articles, retrieved from the Guardian, a liberal British daily quality newspaper, from May 2004 through December 2009. The articles are available in the Guardian’s online archive at www.guardian.co.uk. The key to the selection and
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retrieval of the language data was the occurrence of the lexical item EU in the headline of an article. The choice of this particular lexical item as a key word allowed me to include in the search results such lexical items as the nouns EU, Europe and European or the adjective European. The first part of this section documents all the different senses of the lexical item Europe identified in the data. The seven most frequent conceptions with relevant examples are discussed in order to give the reader an idea of what kind of knowledge constitutes each particular conception. Finally, a partial cognitive model profile which captures the complex conceptual knowledge structure constituting the semantic potential of the lexical concept [europe] is drawn up. In the language data under analysis, that is, a thousand occurrences of the lexical item Europe in the corpus, fourteen different conceptions of the lexical item Europe were identified. It is worth noting that the glosses used below to identify a particular conception correspond to the labels devised in order to tag the corpus and hence they recur in the examples provided. The fourteen conceptions of the lexical item Europe are presented in Table 1. Table 1: Conceptions of the lexical item Europe Conception
Frequency
(1)
EU politico-economic entity (EU for short)
598 occurences
(2)
EU authorities
118 occurences
(3)
EU member states
97 occurences
(4)
Geopolitical region
73 occurences
(5)
EU institutions
47 occurences
(6)
EU citizens
20 occurences
(7)
EU member states governments
18 occurences
(8)
Geographical region
10 occurences
(9)
Ambiguous
10 occurences
(10)
Collectivity of nations
4 occurences
(11)
Collectivity of nation states
2 occurences
(12)
EU polling
1 occurrence
(13)
EU constitution
1 occurence
(14)
European Championships
1 occurence
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The most frequent conception of the lexical item Europe identified in the language data is the EU_politico_economic_entity conception. The idea behind this gloss is that the meaning of the EU evoked here pertains to the European Union as an established institution with its hierarchy, political, economic and social systems, as well as its populace. Hence, it is the most schematic (in terms of the level of specificity of the concept EU) and general conception of the EU. Excerpts (1) and (2) provide illustrative examples thereof. (1) “To make globalisation work, people need active government on their side. In Europe [EU], the primary responsibility rests with our member states. But at the commission, we will do our best to contribute where we can.” (A1) (2) Since the abortive June summit and the launch of the UK presidency, Tony Blair has made EU reform his call to arms. But recent studies have shown that Europe [EU]’s economic performance is by no means as far behind the US as some would have us believe, and that the UK’s market-oriented reform model, based as it is on a buoyant property market, is not so sustainable after all. (A2)
In (1), we can clearly see that the lexical item Europe obtains the reading of the EU as there is a direct reference to the member states in the second sentence. The excerpt is a quote from the European trade commissioner, Peter Mandelson, who places the responsibility for making globalization work on the governments of the EU member states. Hence, the lexical item Europe receives the most general meaning of the EU as a politico-economic institution comprised of its member states. In example (2), the EU meaning of the lexical item Europe is arrived upon in a similar vein, that is, thanks to the context of the previous sentence, which features the noun phrase EU reform. The noun phrase Europe’s economic performance gives rise to the EU as a politico-economic entity conception as it is obvious that the phrase refers to the economic situation not only of the individual member states but, more importantly, of the EU as one institutional body. The second most common meaning of the lexical item Europe as manifested in the corpus is the EU_authorities conception. The meaning is constituted by the conventional knowledge that any institution or organization necessarily has people managing it. In the case of the EU, which is multifaceted and has a clear structure and hierarchy, there are many institutional bodies that together comprise the legislative and executive mechanism of the EU. As I understand it, however, the EU_authorities conception is concerned with the representative and widely recognized authorities of the European Parliament, the European Council and the Council of the EU, which constitute the core of the EU legislative and executive system, as well as the European Commission, the agenda-setting body, who on a regular basis speak on behalf of the EU as a whole. These four institutions are the four main pillars of the EU as compared with other institutional bodies of lesser
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importance, such as the Committee of Regions or the European Ombudsman, for example. Excerpts (3) and (4) neatly illustrate this point. (3) “The lesson of the last four years is that when Europe [EU authorities] is divided its views can be ignored and when Europe [EU authorities] is weak its values can be undermined. The world needs a strong Europe [EU authorities] arguing with one clear voice for respect for international law”. (A3) (4) Europe [EU authorities] badly wanted John Kerry to win the US presidential election, hoping for a fresh start that would turn the bitter disagreements of the Iraq war into a thing of the past, even if it was always widely acknowledged that achieving it would be far from easy. (A4)
Example (3) is a quote from Robin Cook, the then former Labour Foreign Secretary, who assigns Europe such characteristically human features as views, values as well as the ability to argue with one clear voice that there is no doubt that he unequivocally refers to people, yet not to any people, but the authorities who represent Europe and are allowed to speak on its behalf. The fact that Europe in fact obtains the EU reading can be clearly established on the basis of the headline of the news article, which reads as follows: Cook says strong EU is the way to resist ‘missionary’ US. In excerpt (4), the lexical item Europe prompts for the EU_authorities conception as the talks concerning joint military activity in Iraq undertaken by the USA and the EU definitely are executed by authorities at the institutional level and hence have nothing to do with ordinary citizens. In terms of the linguistic context, it is the past form of the verb want that clearly activates the EU authorities reading. The EU_member_states is the third most frequent conception of the lexical item Europe identified in the corpus. The conception draws on the conventional knowledge that the EU consists of member states (28 members by the year 2015). What distinguishes this conception from the EU_politico_economic_entity conception is the fact that while the latter is based on the idea of the EU as one homogeneous whole, that is, the EU as an institutional body, the former relies upon the concept of the EU as being composed of separate and individual member states, which underlies its heterogeneity. This understanding of the EU_member_states conception is illustrated by examples (5) and (6). (5) Tony Blair yesterday defended plans to offer a £1bn a year cut in Britain’s EU rebate, saying compromise was necessary to secure prosperity in eastern Europe [EU member states] and an overall budget deal at the EU summit in a fortnight. (A5) (6) The Home Office said that between May and September the newly registered workers had contributed £120m to the UK’s GDP and paid around £20m in tax and national insurance. “Our commonsense approach to EU enlargement has put us at a clear advantage compared with the rest of Europe [EU member states],” he [David Blunkett] told a TUC conference on migrant working in central London. (A6)
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In (5), this heterogeneous nature of the EU is contextually evoked in the following way: first, from the context of the excerpt it is perfectly clear that Britain’s EU rebate to be agreed upon during the EU summit may be of any concern only to the members of the EU and not to any non-EU members; second, the adjective eastern delineates a clear boundary between the east and the west. Since it is logical to claim that the ontological status of such concepts as eastern or western European Union is dubious, to say the least, it needs to be concluded that the conception that is prompted for in this context concerns the EU as a collection of member states. It follows then that what eastern Europe stands for here is the EU member states from eastern Europe, which is based on the long established divide between the east and the west of Europe present in the collective consciousness/memory of most Europeans since the times of the Iron Curtain. Similarly, in example (6), the context activates the reading of the EU as a collection of member states because we can see that Britain, as set against the rest of Europe, due to its commonsense approach to EU enlargement, has immensely benefited from the tax money and other financial obligations of the migrant workers in Britain. What paves the way for the EU_member_states conception here is the noun phrase the rest of Europe, which again is founded on the heterogeneous nature of the EU as a collectivity of individual member states. The geopolitical_region conception, already hinted at in the discussion of the EU_member_states conception in the previous paragraph, is founded upon the knowledge that Europe is one of the continents populated by different nations who inhabit clearly delimited areas of land, generally referred to as nation states, with their particular political, economic, social, cultural etc. systems. It follows that this conception is not related to the European Union but concerns Europe, the continent, as a geopolitical region of the world. Examples (7) and (8) are illustrations of this fact. (7) Mr Verheugen acknowledged that Belarus, often described as Europe [geopolitical region]’s last dictatorship, was especially problematic. Relations between Brussels and Minsk have been frozen for seven years. (A7) (8) The facilities – referred to as “black sites” in classified White House and CIA documents – allow the US agency to hold terror suspects for as long as it likes, but virtually nothing is known about who is kept in them. Poland and Romania are thought the most likely locations in Europe [geopolitical region], according to the New York-based Human Rights Watch and Polish press reports. (A8)
In (7), Europe is unequivocally defined as an entity which Belarus is part of. Clearly, Belarus does not belong to the EU. One reason of such a state of affairs, hinted at in the excerpt, is that it does not conform to democratic standards set by the EU. Hence, the noun phrase Europe’s last dictatorship invites the reading
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of Europe as a geopolitical part of the world. Excerpt (8) constitutes a little more complex case in terms of how it evokes the geopolitical_region conception. The headline of the article, which reads EU to investigate secret CIA jails, helps to establish the topic of the whole news report. Hence, “black sites” referred to in (8) stand for the secret CIA prisons located somewhere in Europe, most probably in Poland and Romania. To arrive upon the correct interpretation of the lexical item Europe in (8), it is necessary to know that the excerpt comes from an article published on November 3, 2005. Equally important here is the knowledge that Romania joined the EU on January 1, 2007. Equipped with this knowledge, we can conclude that the lexical item Europe prompts for the reading of Europe as a geopolitical region for, although Poland had already been a member of the EU at that time, Romania joined the EU over a year later. The next conception is glossed EU_institutions. The motivation for this conception is relatively straightforward and consists in the fact that the EU is a hierarchically structured organization which is composed of a number of constituent institutional bodies whose joint cooperation guarantees the success of the EU as a whole. Excerpts (9) and (10) provide examples thereof. (9) Catherine Colonna, the French Europe [EU institutions] minister who is a close ally of President Jacques Chirac, said: “If one thing is certain, it is that the FrenchGerman relationship will not be affected by what happens in Berlin. (A9) (10) But the strongly pro-European Mr Blair will make clear that he is not afraid of standing his ground in Europe [EU institutions]. One Labour source said: “Tony Blair will warn that there is no question of him agreeing to the EU constitution unless there is satisfactory wording on tax and fiscal issues and all the red-line areas.” (A10)
The noun phrase the French Europe minister in (9) evokes the EU_institutions reading of the lexical item Europe because it seems logical that the only viable interpretation of the noun phrase is that Catherine Colonna is a French minister affiliated with one of the, here unspecified, institutional bodies of the EU. Similarly, in excerpt (10), we learn that Tony Blair is determined to fight for his convictions in Europe, which clearly stands for one of the EU’s institutions. Another conception of the lexical item Europe identified in the corpus is the EU_citizens conception. It is constituted by the conventional knowledge that in the EU there live over 500 million people who identify themselves, to a greater or lesser extent, with the EU community. Examples (11) and (12) illustrate how this conception arises in the context.
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(11) But this is the nub of the problem – vast swaths of Europe [EU citizens] don’t buy it. Either they don’t believe a peaceful accommodation with Muslims is possible or they fear it requires such a dilution of European identity that they don’t want it. (A11) (12) Researchers, doctors, scientists and campaigners attended a conference in Warsaw last week to discuss the emerging drink problem of the new Europe [EU citizens]. Tony Blair acknowledged recently that binge drinking in Britain’s town centres had got out of hand. (A12)
In (11), we can see that a peaceful accommodation with Muslims does not sit easily with the majority of Europe’s inhabitants. Interestingly, although the noun phrase vast swaths of Europe could imply, at first glance, a kind of europe-as-land interpretation of the lexical item Europe, the EU_citizens reading is established here due to the verb phrase don’t buy it, which is an informal way of saying that people do not believe or agree with what others are trying to talk them into. Hence, it is reasonable to draw a conclusion that in this peculiar conceptual blend it is the EU_citizens conception that ultimately informs the unique structure of the blend. Excerpt (12) seems relatively simple compared to (11): the reading of the lexical item Europe is almost self-evident as it seems logical to conclude that it is only people, the inhabitants of the EU in the present context, that may have a problem with binge drinking. Needless to say, such a problem may have some bearing on the EU as an institution in terms of, for example, additional health care expenditures necessary to treat alcohol-related medical complications, yet the core of the problem lies in the people. Therefore, the lexical item Europe obtains the EU_citizens reading. The final sense of the lexical item Europe to be discussed in the paper is the EU_member_states_governments conception. It is founded upon one of the basic tenets of the UE, namely, the fact that each EU member is unique and is represented by its own government, whose responsibility is to look after the best interest of its citizens and the nation state within the EU. This translates into the fact that not infrequently some dissonance between the member states with respect to some burning issues of relevance to the whole EU occurs, which is exactly what excerpts (13) and (14) illustrate. (13) On the continent, the Blair government lost the sympathy of much of western Europe [EU member states governments] over Iraq; now it risks losing the sympathy of central and eastern Europe [EU member states governments] over the budget. (A13) (14) Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, the Polish prime minister, underlined the deep unease in eastern Europe [EU member states governments] at Britain’s plan to slash their structural funds by £9.3bn. “The proposal is not based on solidarity,” he said. “In this form it is unacceptable.” (A14)
In both excerpts, we can see that the contexts prompt for the EU_member_states_ governments conception in a similar vein. In (13), we learn that Tony Blair has
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lost a number of allies in Western Europe over the Iraq issue and risks losing some in eastern Europe as well. Since the verb phrase to lose sympathy of selects for a human complement, it coerces a human conception of the noun phrases western Europe and eastern Europe. Additionally, the fact that the EU is not conceived of here as one coherent body capable of any unanimous decision on the issue favors the EU_member_states_governments reading. Obviously, the support for the Iraq intervention is either won or lost at the EU level, yet in order to secure a desired voting result in any of the EU institutional bodies, it is first necessary to convince the EU representatives of particular national governments as to the legitimacy of one’s convictions. In excerpt (14), we can observe a similar situation with the exception that this time it is the noun phrase deep unease that gives rise to the EU_member_states_governments conception. Having exemplified and discussed the seven most frequent conceptions of the lexical item Europe identified in the corpus, let us now turn to the task of accounting for the conceptual structure the lexical concept [europe], conventionally associated with the lexical item Europe, affords access to. To reiterate, conceptual structure in LCCM Theory is operationalized in terms of cognitive model and cognitive model profile. A partial cognitive model profile for the lexical concept [europe] is diagrammatically represented in Figure 1. Figure 1: A partial cognitive model profile for [europe]. EU authorities
EU institutions
EU constitution
EU citizens
EU member states
collectivity of
governments
nations
EU politico-economic
EU member
collectivity of
entity
states
nation states
geographical region
European Union
geopolitical region
[EUROPE]
As can be inferred from the diagram, the lexical concept [europe] affords direct access to at least three cognitive models, namely, the geographical region cognitive model, the geopolitical region cognitive model and the EU cognitive model. The three cognitive models make up the primary cognitive model profile for
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[europe]. There is also a range of secondary cognitive models, which are chained to the primary ones, such as the eu member states cognitive model, for example. It will be remembered that conceptual polysemy arises due to the differential activation of the semantic potential of a given lexical concept. It can be easily inferred from Figure 1 that the context-dependent activation of different cognitive models associated directly or indirectly with the lexical concept [europe] relies entirely upon different access paths established for different sense of the lexical item Europe. While the geographical_region conception triggered in examples (7) and (8), for instance, is accessed directly by the lexical concept [europe], the EU_member_states reading enforced in examples (5) and (6) requires a longer access path to be established through the cognitive model profile. If we compare the EU_citizens conception (see examples (11) and (12)) with the EU_authorities conception (see examples (3) and (4)), for example, we can clearly observe that both activate the European Union cognitive model in the first step of the interpretation process, yet they obtain their different readings via different secondary cognitive models, namely, the EU_member_states cognitive model and the EU_politico_economic_entity cognitive model.
4. Conclusion As has been demonstrated in the present paper, the lexical item Europe, as manifest in the press discourse examined in this study, is polysemous in nature. In the analysis, I have advocated an access semantics approach to polysemy, specifically to its one type dubbed by Evans conceptual polysemy. Such a conception of polysemy is quite innovative in that it gives primacy to non-linguistic rather than linguistic knowledge, that is, it is our conceptual system rather than the linguistic system that gives rise to this type of polysemy. Specifically, conceptual polysemy arises not as a function of different sense-units stored in our semantic memory but as a result of differential highlighting of the vast multimodal body of encyclopedic (hence non-linguistic) knowledge specific to one such sense-unit, that is, a lexical concept in LCCM Theory. As evidenced by the analysis, conceptual polysemy, as operationalized within the LCCM Theory framework, elegantly accounts for and explains the polysemous nature of the lexical item Europe. I have shown that the lexical concept [europe] conventionally associated with the lexical item Europe affords access to a vast repertoire of non-linguistic knowledge, which constitutes the lexical concept’s semantic potential. To explain how the polysemy of the lexical item Europe arises, I have drawn up a partial cognitive model profile for the concept [europe], which enabled me to show how the different context-dependent
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readings of the lexical item Europe coerce a differential activation of the semantic potential of the lexical concept [europe].
References Cuyckens, H. & B. E. Zawada. 1997. Polysemy in Cognitive Linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Evans, V. 2006. Lexical concepts, cognitive models and meaning construction. Cognitive Linguistics 17: 491–534. Evans, V. 2009. How Words Mean: Lexical concept, cognitive models and meaning construction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Evans, V. 2013. Language and Time: A cognitive linguistics approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Evans, V. 2015a. Conceptual vs. inter-lexical polysemy: An LCCM Theory account. In A. A. Kibrik, A. D. Koshelev, A. V. Kravchenko, Ju. V. Mazurova & O. V. Fedorova (eds.), Language and Thought: Contemporary cognitive linguistics, 350–387. Moscow: Language of Slavic Culture. Evans, V. 2015b. A unified account of polysemy within LCCM Theory. Lingua 157: 100–123. Geeraerts, D. 2010. Theories of Lexical Semantics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Langacker, R.W. 1987. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar. Vol. 1. Theoretical prerequisites. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Taylor, J. R. 1995. Linguistic Categorization: Prototypes in linguistic theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Taylor, J. R. 2003. Cognitive models of polysemy. In B. Nerlich, Z. Todd, V. Herman & D. D. Clarke (eds.), Polysemy: Flexible patterns of meaning in mind and language, 31–47. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Part 5: Cognitive Linguistic Accounts of Grammar
Joanna Podhorodecka Pedagogical University of Cracow
The Role of Constructional Factors in Passivization: Infinitival Passives of Perception Verbs This study explores the interconnections between a verb’s complementation pattern and the frequency and collocational preferences of its passive uses. It is based on the infinitival passives of three perception verbs: see, hear and feel. First, distinctive collexeme analysis is used to determine the strength of association of the infinitive complement construction with voice, as well as the association of specific types of complement verbs with the active and the passive version of the pattern. Subsequently, multiple correspondence analysis of a data sample is conducted in order to investigate the differences and similarities between the individual perception verbs. The results indicate that the verbs are characterized by different degrees of resemblance between the active and passive versions of their infinitival complement construction.
1. Introduction English verbs of perception passivize relatively easily, yet the frequency of their passive usage varies between particular senses of the verbs and their different complementation patterns. The passive of the verb see, for instance, is characterized by an increase in the number of non-finite complement constructions and is more likely to describe mental rather than visual perception (Podhorodecka, forth.). Similarly, Noël (2003: 20) observes that for the verb see complemented by the NP + to-infinitve pattern, the passive uses vastly outnumber the active ones and show a greater distributional potential. Such tendencies indicate that the differences between the active and passive of perception verbs go beyond the basic difference in the information structure and emphasis, which is yet another argument for describing the passive not in terms of a transformation, but as a separate construction, as understood by Goldberg (1995, 2006). Such a separate passive construction may or may not share various characteristics of its active counterpart. The aim of this study is to investigate the infinitival passives of the three basic perception verbs – see, hear and feel – and to establish, on the basis of corpus material, what syntactic, semantic and pragmatic features characterize the construction, what its relationship is with the corresponding active constructions and finally what differences can be observed between the individual verbs.
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2. Perception Verb Complements: Bare Infinitive and To-Infinitive Perception verbs complemented by bare infinitives, as in (1) below, describe acts of direct perception, with the emphasis on the perceived event rather than the perceptual process. (1) I saw the kid snatch up those shoes.1
Obviously, each act of perception entails some degree of categorization, since all seeing is necessarily ‘seeing as’, but the bare infinitive construction focuses on the event itself rather than the perceptual process and relies on “the interpretation that the perceiver assigns immediately and largely unconsciously” (Declerk 1983: 36). The perceiver and the perceptual process melt into the event itself. As a result, the perception is co-extensive with the event, so the construction does not allow aspectual infinitives as in (2a.) and it describes events rather than states, which are by definition more extensive (2b.). (2) a. *I saw the kid have snatched up those shoes. b. *I saw the kid be small.
Additionally, since the construction does not profile the perceiver’s interpretative process, the event is viewed objectively and it is usually factive, i.e. the construction entails the truth of its complement: if the speaker saw the child snatch up the shoes, by default we assume, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, that the event did in fact take place. This is not necessarily the case with to-infinitive complements, which profile the perceiver’s interpretation of perceptual data: (3) Then they get to know me and I’m not exactly everything they see me to be.
The basic difference between the bare infinitive and the to-infinitive complement lies in the length of the interpretative process: the bare infinitive denotes interpretation which is immediate and almost instinctive, whereas the to-infinitive profiles “a conclusion that is more consciously arrived at” (Declerk 1983: 36, emphasis added). The metaphor of spatial motion is not accidental, as the to-infinitive inherits the path-goal sense from the preposition to (Egan 2008: 95) and just as in many other constructions, it represents “movement leading up to a point” (Duffley 2006: 26). In this case, the motion is realized in the epistemic
1 All examples, except for the invented faulty ones marked *, come from the COCA corpus. Emphasis and comments added.
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domain and it corresponds to the perceiver’s passing from pure perception to a logical conclusion, as exemplified below: (4) a I see other things to be more important than just basketball… like life. b. All watching close, we saw the blood to be from claw scratches.
The to-infinitive construction is usually described in terms of “indirect perception” (Noël 2003: 12) as it may denote either purely mental perception (4a.) or refer to situations which do not exclude physical perception, but they go beyond it, as the perceiver forms conclusions or generalizations over the available perceptual data (4b.). As the interpretative process is in focus, the construction is characterized by a certain degree of subjectivity. Since it construes the event as perceived indirectly, the to-infinitive has a “distancing function” (Verspoor 1999: 505), which in this case introduces epistemic distance: by profiling the interpretative process, the to-infinitive distances the perceiver from the act of perception. As a result, the sameness of time between the main verb and the complement is not required, so to-infinitive complements may describe states (5a.), and they can combine with aspectual infinitives (5b.): (5) a. I have seen you to be a studious, scholarly person. b. I have not felt myself to have rejected my upbringing.
The distinction between the two sets of construals associated with the two types of the infinitive is relatively clearly visible in active sentences. In the passive, however, the situation becomes more complex.
3. Infinitival Passives of Perception Verbs One of the most characteristic features of perception verbs is that there is no strict correspondence between the active and passive constructions, as the basic bare infinitive complement does not have an exact passive counterpart: (6)
a. I saw the kid snatch up those shoes. b. *The kid was seen snatch up those shoes. c. *The kid snatch up those shoes was seen. d. The kid was seen to snatch up those shoes.
Could the sentence in (6d.) be treated as a passive counterpart of (6a.), simply for lack of a viable alternative? The to-infinitive complement constructions, both active and passive, are generally considered to be distinct from the bare infinitive construction, on the grounds that they describe indirect, mental perception, as opposed to direct physical perception (Declerk 1983: 36). Several studies, however, argue that the difference lies not so much in the type of perception, as in the
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intrinsic properties of the complement event. What is claimed to be more crucial is the distinction between states and events (Noël 2003) or that between bounded or unbounded situations (Kirsner & Thompson 1976). Both factors proved to be significant in the analysis of the data and will be discussed more fully later on. The corpus evidence examined in this study indicates that there is a certain degree of correspondence between the active and the passive constructions, but it is by no means straightforward and varies considerably between individual verbs.
4. Infinitival Passives in Corpus Data The analysis of the corpus data in the present study follows the procedures and techniques of corpus-driven Cognitive Linguistic research: collostructional analysis (Stefanowitsch & Gries 2003; Hilpert 2014), behavioural profile analysis (Gries & Divjak 2009) and multiple correspondence analysis (Glynn 2014).
4.1 To-Infinitive Constructions in the Active and the Passive – Quantitative Analysis The behaviour of perception verb passives, in terms of their frequency and complement verb choice, bears a striking resemblance to a specific group of mental attitude verbs taking to-infinitive complements, which Noël (1998, 2003) calls believe-type verbs. They are characterized by a set of specific semantic and pragmatic properties. Firstly, the verbs are more frequent in the passive; for instance, the structure be reported to occurs more frequently than report sb/sth to be, be said to is frequently attested, while *say sb/sth to be is not. Secondly, believe-type verbs show more selectional variation in their passive uses, where they combine with a variety of complement verbs, while in the active they are complemented almost exclusively by the verb to be. The verb see is among top ten verbs that pattern in this way (Noël 2003: 20f.). The three perception verbs examined in this study share the above-mentioned features, though to varying degrees. The first stage of the present study focuses on the quantitative analysis of the usage of perception verbs with to-infinitive complements, in the active and in the passive. The raw frequencies obtained from the COCA corpus are presented in Figure 1:
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Figure 1: Active and passive perception verbs with to-infinitive complements: Frequencies in COCA.
Several differences can be observed between the frequencies of particular verbs. First of all, the verb hear shows the greatest disproportion between the active and passive uses: the construction occurs only marginally in the active, with merely 3 tokens in the data. The verb see is significantly more numerous than the other two, with its passive over 20 times more frequent than the active. Surprisingly, the verb feel shows the opposite tendency, though less pronounced: its active uses are slightly more frequent than the passive ones. The raw frequencies presented above cannot, however, provide conclusive evidence of the verb’s correlation with a specific construction, since they do not take into consideration the lexical item’s overall frequency in the corpus. Collostructional analysis uses relative frequencies to determine whether a particular lexical item occurs in a construction more often than could be expected by chance (Hilpert 2014: 392). The subtype of collostructional analysis used in this study is distinctive collexeme analysis, which reveals the lexemes that are characteristic of one of the two alternative constructions. It is used here in a slightly atypical way: instead of showing the correlation between an individual lexeme and one of the two alternative constructions, it is applied to determine the connection of a smaller, more specific construction (perception verb + to-infinitive complement) with one of the two larger, more generic constructions (active and passive). Table 1 shows the results, supplemented with the p-values obtained from the Fisher’s exact test.
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Table 1: Distinctiveness of see+inf, hear+inf and feel+inf for the passive construction Verb
Distinctiveness for the passive
p-value
see + inf
Infinite
0
hear + inf
241.22
6.001346e-242
feel + inf
97,9
1.255479e-98
All the three verbs, when followed by infinitive complements, are distinctive for the passive and show a highly significant preference for the construction. The corpus data generally confirm that the behaviour of the analysed verbs is similar to that of believe-type verbs, as described by Noël (1998). This is further substantiated by the choice of complements associated with the verbs. Figure 2 shows the proportion of to be and lexical verbs as complements of active and passive hear, see and feel in the examined sample. Figure 2: Infinitival complements of perception verbs: to be vs. lexical verbs.
Both see and feel follow the pattern characteristic of believe-type verbs: they allow for more selectional variation in the passive, taking a range of lexical verbs as their complements, while in the active their complementation is limited to the verb to be. Even though the verb feel is uncharacteristically more frequent in the active, it is subject to the same combinatorial restrictions as the more typical verb see. The
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verb hear is somewhat different form the others because both in the active and in the passive it combines with various lexical verbs, quite predictably utterance verbs, such as say, mutter or remark. In distinctive collexeme analysis, the verb to be as the complement proved distinctive for the active versions of the three constructions. The correlation is highly significant for see and feel, but only marginally so for the verb hear: Table 2: Distinctiveness of the verb to be as the infinitival complement of the active construction Verb + complement
Distinctiveness for the active
p-value
see NP to-infinitive
27.3709
4.256708e-28
feel NP to-infinitive
17.6223
2.386079e-18
hear NP to-infinitive
1.7634
0.01724138
The most typical active and passive uses of the verbs are exemplified in (7a.) – (7e.) below: (7)
a. I believe you have since seen it to be a failure, is that right? b. The journalists were seen to pursue a higher calling as ‘tribunes of the people’. c. He felt himself to be at something of a disadvantage. d. The power of this deathly figure is felt to reach in all directions within the frame and without. e. Someone was heard to mutter, «Halfwit nitwit.»
In the active voice, perception verbs followed by to-infinitive complements are markedly less frequent (with the exception of the verb feel) and more restricted in the choice of their complement verbs. They denote mental perception, such as acts of categorization (8a.) or evaluation (8b.). (8) a. If you see a lie to be a lie, you have already dealt it its mortal blow. b. Many felt their enjoyments to be trivial rather than ennobling.
If the situations described involve physical perception, they do so indirectly, by either relying on second-hand knowledge (9a.), the interpretation going beyond the actual data, in a way ‘reading between the lines’ (9b.) or questioning the validity of the perceptual input (9c.). (9) a. There’s a possibility for an acquittal if these tapes come in and they are as we hear them to be, or we understand them to be. b. Suzy talks of her work in interior decorating. She is adept with design, but not with billing. She underbids jobs. Harry hears Suzy to be saying that her flaws are genial ones. c. They [holes in a wall] were not all as neatly round as I had first seen them to be.
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As can be seen form the examples above, the infinitive construction in the active predominantly combines with the verb to be, describing an unbounded state. The very infrequent lexical complement verbs usually occur in the passive or perfective infinitive, which in itself has a stativizing function (Langacker 1991: 265). The more frequent passive uses of the to-infinitive complement construction may describe purely mental perception, but many of the tokens crucially involve direct physical perception of both states and events: (10) a. A spray of blood is seen to come from JP’s wounded finger. b. “God had to be asleep,” he’d been heard to say. “Otherwise how could one account for the twentieth century?” c. If a ghost was felt to be in the vicinity, an Antiguan woman would throw her skirt over her head, stoop, and, uttering curse words, show the spirit her bloomered backside.
The infinitival passives of perception verbs have a larger semantic scope than the to-infinitive construction in the active: they can describe both physical and mental perception of either states or events. The infinitival passive construction shares certain features of both the bare infinitive and the to-infinitive active construction, but the degree of resemblance to either of them is different for the individual perception verbs.
4.2 Characteristics of the Individual verbs – Multiple Correspondence Analysis This section presents a further and more detailed analysis which focuses on the differences between the infinitival passives of the three verbs. It is based on all the instances of be heard to and be felt to yielded by the COCA corpus (respectively 150 and 122 tokens). For be seen to, a corresponding random sample of 150 tokens was constructed. The data were coded for a number of semantic and syntactic factors and submitted to multiple correspondence analysis, a technique that visualizes correlations in the data in order to establish which of the features co-vary and which are the most characteristic of particular verbs. This was followed by logistic regression to determine the statistical significance of individual factors. The crucial factor turned out to be whether the construction describes physical or mental perception. The other features that proved significant are all related to the complement verb: its semantic domain, the form of the infinitive, lexical aspect and boundedness. The biplot graph in Figure 3 shows the results of the multiple correspondence analysis for the perception type (physical vs. mental perception) and the first two features related to the complement verb: the semantic domain and the infinitive
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form. The relative position of specific data points in the graph represents how closely the features are correlated, so the features that systematically co-vary in the data will form clusters in the graph. Figure 3: Infinitival passives of hear, see and feel – multiple correspondence analysis. Factors: perception type, infinitive type and semantic domain of the complement verb.
The correlation which is the most clearly observable in the graph and also the most significant statistically (p-value 4.13e-05 in logistic regression) is that between the individual verbs and the perception type: the verb hear is associated with physical perception, feel with mental perception, whereas see can freely combine with both. In terms of the semantic domain of the verb and the infinitive type, the verb see shows the greatest variety, probably due to the fact that it is also the most frequent in the corpus. It can combine with complement verbs describing action and motion as well as with cognition verbs, which seems to be connected with the fact that it can express both physical and mental perception. Complex infinitive forms, such as passive, progressive or perfective infinitives, are connected with see more closely than hear or feel, whereas the simple infinitive is equally characteristic of all the verbs, as it is situated at an almost equal distance from all of them. Features associated with both hear and feel form tight clusters: hear is connected with physical perception and utterance verbs, while feel combines with mental perception and verbs of state and relationship.
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The features that distinguish between the bare infinitive and the to-infinitive in the active are boundedness and the opposition between events and states. Both of these can be captured by a set of distinctions referred to as lexical aspect or Aktionsart, originally introduced by Vendler (1967). It divides verbs into four basic categories on the basis of their dynamicity, telicity and duration: states (stative, atelic, durative), activities (dynamic, atelic, durative), accomplishments (dynamic, telic, durative) and achievements (dynamic, telic, punctual) (Croft 2012: 44). The distinction between bounded and unbounded events intersects with lexical aspect: accomplishments and achievements are bounded, while states and activities are unbounded. The infinitival passives with complement verbs belonging to the four groups are exemplified respectively in (11a.)–(11d.) below: (11)
a. Yet not all honors are felt to be alike. (state) b. …you have to be seen to be doing something. (activity) c. They want to be seen to have done everything they could to avoid that possibility. (accomplishment) d. …a man who has never been heard to utter an unkind word. (achievement)
Some regularities can be noticed in the distribution of lexical aspect over the infinitival complements of the passive hear, see and feel: Figure 4: Lexical aspect of the complement verb in infinitival passives of perception verbs.
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The verb hear predominantly takes as its complements verbs denoting achievements (punctual and dynamic), feel combines with states (durative and stative), while see again shows the greatest variety: approximately half of its complement are states, while the other half divide between activities, accomplishments and achievements. Still, the majority of the verb’s complements are unbounded, since the most numerous groups are constituted by states and activities, together making up 76% of the examined sample. Figure 5 shows the results of the multiple correspondence analysis conducted for the boundedness and the lexical aspect of the complement verb. The perception type is again included in the analysis, due to its high statistical significance. Figure 5: Infinitival passives of hear, see and feel – multiple correspondence analysis. Factors: perception type, lexical aspect and boundedness of the complement verb.
In the previous set of factors analysed in Figure 3, the most observable difference was that between fairly uniform hear and feel and more varied see. This time, it is the verb hear that emerges as the most clearly distinct from the others: it closely correlates with physical perception and bounded events, most specifically
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achievements (dynamic and punctual). The verbs feel and see share the preference for mental perception of unbounded events, but they differ in the lexical aspect of their complements. The most characteristic complements of feel are states. The verb see, as demonstrated in Figure 4, does have a large number of stative complement verbs, but as opposed to feel and hear, it also combines with accomplishments and achievements, i.e. dynamic and telic verbs.
5. Conclusion A number of syntactic and semantic features correlate with the infinitival passives of the three perception verbs. Factors which turned out to be significant statistically, with p-value below 0.01, are the following: physical perception, utterance verbs, bounded events and achievements, typical of the be heard to construction, as well as states and verbs of state and relationship, characterising the be felt to pattern. For ease of presentation, they are highlighted in boldface in Table 3. Table 3: Features characterizing the infinitival passive of hear, see and feel. A summary Be heard to
Be seen to
Be felt to
Physical perception Utterance verbs Bounded events Achievements (dynamic & punctual)
Physical and mental Mental perception perception Verbs of state & relationship Verbs of action and motion States Activities & accomplishments Complex infinitive forms
The verbs hear and feel emerge as the most uniform in usage as they are characterized by the largest number of statistically significant features. The verb see turns out to be the most flexible, probably due to its high frequency. Examples of the combinations of features most characteristic of particular verbs are provided below: (12) a. ‘’Pervert!’’ a mother was heard to remark. (hear: physical perception, utterance verb, achievement) b. The legend is that on one occasion the king was seen to rise in his canoe at the very brink of the Falls (…) (see: physical perception, motion verb, accomplishment) c. (…) governments which have an insatiable desire to be seen to be doing something. (see: mental perception, action verb, activity, complex infinitive) d. You can create the atmosphere where greed is felt to be at least acceptable. (feel: mental perception, state)
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Close analysis of the actual usage of infinitival passives of perception verbs leads to the conclusion that the boundary between physical and mental perception is fuzzy and the three analysed verbs form a continuum along this scale, hear – see – feel, with hear being the closest to physical perception and feel to mental perception. The differences seem to be conditioned by the unique semantic content of the verbs. A certain degree of correspondence can be postulated between the to-infinitival passive and the two alternative active constructions, which is to be understood not in terms of transformation, but shared semantic features and preferences in the selection of complement verbs. The infinitival passive of hear is the most similar to the bare infinitive complement construction, due to its preference for bounded complement events and physical perception. The passive of feel resembles the active to-infinitive construction, as both tend to describe mental perception and combine with stative complement verbs. The verb see is the most flexible of the set, lending itself to both types of construal, and thus, depending on the context, it can be paraphrased by either of the two active constructions.
References Croft, W. 2012. Verbs: Aspect and causal structure. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Declerk, R. 1983. On the passive of infinitival perception verb complements. Journal of English Linguistics 16: 27–46. Duffley, P. 2006. The English Gerund-Participle. A comparison with the infinitive. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Egan, Th. 2008. Non-finite Complementation. A usage-based study of infinitive and -ing clauses in English. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Goldberg, A. 1995. Constructions: A construction grammar approach to argument structure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Goldberg, A. 2006. Constructions at Work: The nature of generalization in language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Glynn, D. 2014. Correspondence analysis: Exploring data and identifying patterns. In D. Glynn & J. A. Robinson (eds.), Corpus Methods for Semantics. Quantitative studies in polysemy and synonymy, 443–486. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Gries, S. & D. Divjak. 2009. Behavioral profiles: A corpus-based approach to cognitive semantic analysis. In V. Evans & S. Pourcel (eds.), New Directions in Cognitive Linguistics 57–76. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
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Hilpert, M. 2014. Collostructional analysis. Measuring associations between constructions and lexical elements. In D. Glynn & J. A. Robinson (eds.), Corpus Methods for Semantics. Quantitative studies in polysemy and synonymy, 391–404. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Hopper, P. J. & S. A. Thompson. 1980. Transitivity in grammar and discourse. Language 56: 251–299. Kirsner, R. & S. Thompson. 1976. The role of pragmatic inference in semantics: A study of sensory verb complements in English. Glossa 10: 200–240. Langacker, R. 1991. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, Volume 2, Descriptive applications. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Noël, D. 1998. Infinitival copular complement clauses in English: Explaining the predominance of passive matrix clauses. Linguistics 36: 1045–1063. Noël, D. 2003. Revisiting the passive of infinitival perception verb complements. Studia Neophilologica 75: 12–29. Podhorodecka, J. Forthcoming. The passive of the verb see: A usage-based study. Annales Universitatis Paedagogicae Cracoviensis: Studia Anglica IV. Stefanowitsch, A. & S. Gries. 2003. Collostructions: Investigating the interaction between words and constructions. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 8: 209–243. Vendler, Z. 1967. Verbs and times. In Z. Vendler (ed.), Linguistics in Philosophy, 97–121. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Verspoor, M. 1999. To infinitives. In L. de Stadler & Ch. Eyrich (eds.), Issues in Cognitive Linguistics: Proceedings of the International Cognitive Linguistics Conference, 505–526. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Data Sources and Tools Davies, M. (2008-) The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA): 410+ million words, 1990-present. http://www.americancorpus.org Gries, S. Th. 2014. Coll.analysis 3.5. A script for R to compute collostructional analyses. Husson, F., J. Josse, S. Le & J. Mazet. 2007. FactoMineR: Factor Analysis and Data Mining with R. R package version 1.04. http://factominer.free.fr/ R Development Core Team (2008). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. ISBN 3–900051–07–0,
Agnieszka Kaleta Jan Kochanowski University, Piotrków Trybunalski
The English Get-Passive Revisited The present paper is concerned with the semantic characteristics of the English get-passive construction. The paper takes a Cognitive Linguistic approach to syntactic structure, arguing that get-passives represent a radial network of interrelated senses centered around the prototypical use, which represents action chain in the sense of Langacker (2008: 35f.). The main goal of this study is to elucidate this network, i.e. to account for the range of meanings conveyed by the get + past participle construction and the links holding between them. Furthermore, using the corpus-based method of distinctive collexeme analysis, the paper provides empirical evidence in favour of the thesis that the get-passive represents a construction in its own right, which is syntactically and semantically distinct from the bepassive construction. As argued here, the semantic distinctiveness of the two constructions resides in alternative construals they tend to impose on scenes being described.
1. Introduction The English so called get-passive, and especially its syntactic, semantic and pragmatic distinctiveness from the be-passive, has received considerable attention from researchers of various methodological and theoretical persuasions (cf. Alexiadou 2005; Carter & McCarthy 1999; Chappell 1980; Collins 2005; Downing 1996; Fleisher 2008; Haegeman 1985; Hatcher 1949; Reed 2011; Sussex 1982; Vanrespaille 1991). Interesting and informative as these studies might be, they leave unresolved many fundamental issues. One of them is the question of what actually should count as the get-passive, that is whether such divergent uses as get married, get involved, get frustrated, or get killed can all be classified as instances of the passive voice construction. Most of the previous studies (cf. Alexiadou 2005; Carter & McCarthy 1999; Collins 2005) do not take a clear stance on this issue: they assume implicitly that all instances of get + past participle are passive but concentrate only on the central cases with an external argument (e.g. Tom got hit by Susan), with no attention being given to how these uses relate to the ones that do not accept by phrases (e.g., *He got married by a priest, *She got frustrated by Tom). Another approach is that of assuming that the latter do not qualify as passive constructions, which results in excluding them from any consideration (cf. Wanner 2009). This study takes a different position, which is inspired by the Cognitive Linguistics view of syntactic structure. Specifically, it argues that the
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get + past participle construction represents a radial category or a network of interrelated senses with central (prototypical) meanings and their more peripheral extensions, which accommodate all its diverse uses. The main goal of this study is to elucidate this network, i.e. the range of meanings conveyed by the get + past participle construction and the links holding between them. Underlying this goal is the assumption that meaning construction is largely a matter of construal, which plays a fundamental role in linguistic coding in that different construals of what may appear to be the same scene (in the sense of truth-conditional semantics) are conveyed with different linguistic means. The get-passive and the be-passive appear to be a representative example of alternative construals in this sense. The contrastive behavior of these two constructions will be subjected to empirical scrutiny in the discussion to follow. The paper is structured as follows. Section 2 deals briefly with the general characteristics of the passive voice construction (i.e. the passive vs. active voice contrast, active vs. adjectival passives) and then concentrates on the characteristics of the get-passives, as discussed in the previous literature. Section 3 provides a corpus-based analysis of the get- passive, with the distinction being made between central get-passives (i.e. those with an expressed or unexpressed external argument) and what I call reflexive get-passive, reciprocal get-passives and autocausative get-passives. This analysis aims at extracting the schematic meaning of the getpassive, i.e. the common semantic core present in its different uses. In section 4, the usage patterns of the get-passive, as delineated in section 3, are contrasted with the usage patterns typical of the be-passive. This part of the study employs the so called distinctive collexeme analysis – a method aimed at investigating semantic contrasts between functionally related constructions through the analysis of their distinctive collexemes, that is the collocates which are significantly more strongly attracted by one construction than the other one (cf. Gries & Stefanowitsch 2004; Stefanowitsch & Gries 2003). The paper finishes with a brief summary of research findings and concluding remarks.
2. The Passive Voice: General Remarks Cognitive Linguistics argues that the passive voice represents a construction in its own right, which is semantically distinct from active constructions. According to Langacker, passive clauses represent an instance of trajector (TR) and landmark (LM) reversal, as illustrated below: (1) a. He (TR) broke the glass (LM). b. The glass (LM) was broken by him (TR).
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More specifically, the TR/LM reversal is effected by the Past Participle, which designates an atemporal relation and combines with the auxiliary verb ‘be’, whose function is that of imposing a processual profile on the atemporal process (cf. Langacker 2002: 138). On this view, the two constituents of the passive construction, i.e. the Past Participle and the auxiliary ‘be’ constitute meaningful categories – they figure actively in the semantic structure of passive constructions contributing to their semantic distinctness from active constructions. It is usual to distinguish between verbal (eventive) passives and stative or adjectival passives. While verbal passives describe an action that the subject referent undergoes, stative passives designate the final (resultant) state that comes about through the process denoted by the verb stem. Langacker (2002) distinguishes two types of adjectival participles. The first type refers to single participant processes whose TR undergoes a change of state, e.g.: The plate is broken, His leg is swollen, She is gone. The second variant is slightly more complex in that it designates twoparticipant processes whose trajector exerts some force that induces a change in the landmark, e.g.: That bicycle of his is stolen, The road is completely ruined (Langacker 2002: 129f.). While the Past Participle is a stable component of the passive constructions, i.e. it cannot be omitted or replaced by any other constituents, the ‘be’ is neither obligatory nor irreplaceable. It can be omitted, which results in the so-called reduced passives (e.g., The book written by him in 1989 became a bestseller) or it can be replaced by ‘get’, which is our primary concern in this study. Unlike the passive ‘be’ which is an auxiliary par excellence, ‘get’ does not pass any of the tests for auxiliary status (cf. NICE: Inversion, Negation, Code, Emphasis test, as discussed by Huddleston & Pullum 2002). Instead, it requires the support of the auxiliary ‘do’ in the context of questions and negations and for anaphoric reference in VP deletion contexts. (2) (3) (4)
a. Did Katy get injured in? b. *Got Katy injured? a. Perry did not get injured in the accident. b. *Katy gotn’t injured in the accident. a. Perry got injured in the accident and Sam did too. b. *Katy got injured in the accident and Sam got too.
Thus, based on the syntactic criteria, it may be argued that the passive ‘get’ is a full lexical verb, as in its other uses (cf. Haegeman 1985). Below, I list some other claims made about how get-passives are distinct from be-passives:
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a. get-passives occur less frequently than be-passives (cf. Biber et al. 1999); b. get-passives have a dynamic meaning and cannot occur with stative verbs (Quirk et al. 2005; Taranto 2002); c. get-passives place more emphasis on the subject than the agent and what happens to the subject as a result of an event (Quirk et al. 1985); d. get-passives often have adversative reading, that is they portray the subject referent as the one who is unfavorably affected by an event. (Carter & McCarthy 1999; Givón & Yang 1994; Hatcher 1949; Siewierska 1984). However, it has been also observed that the get-passive can describe actions that are beneficial for the subjects (Chappell 1980; Hübler 1991); e. get-passives usually occur with human subjects, who are construed as sharing the responsibility for an event. (Givón & Yang 1994; Huddleston & Pullum 2002; Vanrespaille 1991). As argued by Vanrespaille (1991), the subject of getpassives is not a typical patient but is assigned a certain degree of agentivity which coincides with the responsibility for what happens to him/her. This interpretation is known as a ‘secondary subject’ reading (Roeper 1987). For example, a sentence Andy got killed may imply that Andy, although he is not the agent, in a sense contributed to his own death by some actions of his. In what follows I revisit the above claims in the light of corpus data. The study is based on the data extracted from the British National Corpus and employs collocation-based methods of semantic analysis.1 The analyses were carried out using the collocation function of the Sketch Engine software (cf. Kilgarriff et al. 2014).
3. Get + Past Participle Construction and Its Radial Structure Table 1 gives the 30 top collocates of the participial slot of the get + past participle construction (sorted by the log-likelihood test value), which are listed in the descending order of their significance.
1 The British National Corpus, version 3 (BNC XML Edition). 2007. Distributed by Oxford University Computing Services on behalf of the BNC Consortium. URL: http:// www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/.
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Table 1: The top 30 collocates of get + past participle Lexeme
Frequency
loglikelihood
Lexeme
Frequency
loglikelihood
married
1,063
12,926.552
divorced
50
534.469
paid
429
3,992.148
hooked
43
482.284
caught
325
3,244.687
thrown
56
475.178
dressed
240
2,678.858
trapped
47
442.497
started
249
1,986.285
sent
71
421.471
involved
234
1,760.692
blown
41
396.077
done
199
1,214.918
arrested
50
395.970
mixed
108
988.498
hit
56
343.653
carried
136
978.651
elected
48
334.909
changed
104
732.240
kicked
37
330.827
left
142
708.164
promoted
34
297.529
knocked
66
618.336
sucked
28
288.975
killed
85
610.921
washed
33
268.841
bogged
42
597.729
settled
38
268.819
shot
79
567.251
told
67
262.605
As can be seen, get + past participle significantly attracts a variety of lexemes, among which one can find a substantial set of predicates referring to acts of violent behavior (e.g. knocked, killed, shot, hit), with the subject referent being portrayed as the one who has been adversely affected by the actions of others. Another significant set of collexemes consists of predicates assigning agentive properties to the subject referent (e.g. get dressed, get married, get involved). However, these uses, referred to as reflexive passives, retain a passive component through the duality of the subject’s role. The two sections to follow take a more detailed look at these two diverse elaborations of the get + past participle construction.
3.1 Adverse Events The distributional data presented in Table 1 confirm the strong association of the get + past participle construction with verbs denoting actions that have an adverse effect on the subject referent (e.g. knocked, killed, shot, blown, hit, kicked). Among these negatively charged collocates, one can find a set of verbs referring to acts of violent behavior with the subject referent being construed as the one
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who is physically affected by the action denoted by the participial passive. Most commonly, these are human subjects, who experience or suffer some physical harm and, less commonly, non-human subjects, which undergo physical damage or destruction. Let us consider some corpus examples: (5) Our friend who got knocked down by a car, Mr Nowak, has fallen into a bad coma and he’s on the critical list. (6) Then Freddy got blown up and drowned in a shell crater, and all the time Margery was in a hotel two hundred miles away, putting Woolley to bed, dead drunk after a promotion. (7) What if this tree gets hit by lightning?’ she asked, peering up and up through the twisted branches.
This distribution indicates that get-passives are preferentially used to code twoparticipant action chains which involve a transmission of energy from the agent (who typically remains implicit or unexpressed linguistically) to the subject referent. In this energy flow, the subject represents the energy sink, that is the entity that absorbs the energy as a result of which it undergoes an internal change of state (cf. Langacker 2008: 355f.). This pattern has a less prototypical realization, which extends to the non-physical domain of psychological harm or distress, where the affectedness of the subject referent appears to have a mental rather than physical character (e.g. get accused, get discouraged, get criticized).
3.2 Reflexive Passives I use the term reflexive passives to refer to those uses of get + past participle which do not accept oblique by phrases and occur with subjects that have agentive properties. For example: (8) And as soon as we’ve read a story we’ll get washed and dressed. (9) That’s one of the reasons why I decided to get involved in the project in the first place when it was first broached to me. (10) Why don’t you get acquainted with that nice lady teacher!
Constructions of this type represent a departure from the pattern of energy flow typical of central passives, as discussed in the section above, where the subject slot is occupied by the energy sink absorbing the energy generated by an energy source (agent). In reflexive passives, the subject acts, as it were, upon himself and is thus both the energy source and the energy sink, i.e. the doer and the ‘undergoer’ of an action. It is this latter function that provides the point of access to prototypical passives. Reflexive passives in themselves are a prototype-based category, with bodily actions associated with everyday routine such as get dressed/ washed/ shaved representing the
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central members. Constructions such as get involved or get acquainted depart from this prototype in that they extend to the domain of generic action and the results of the actions performed by the subject are not strictly physical or visible. For example, get acquainted implies cognitive (mental) affectedness of the subject referent and get involved evokes a self-directed action with an inchoative nuance. Get married and get divorced are reflexive in yet a different way. Unlike get washed or get dressed, which involve only one participant, they evoke a reciprocal scenario with two participants, each of them having a dual function: that of an agent and that of a patient. Thus, getting married involves a reciprocal act of taking a marriage vow, which results in marrying someone and being married by someone. Get divorced follows a similar pattern, with two persons engaging in a mutual act of renouncing their marriage and thus having the dual function of an actor and the affected. Yet another extension of the reflexive passive are the constructions with human subjects who undergo a change of state, e.g. get excited/ frustrated/ depressed. Uses of this type can be put under the heading of auto-causative passives, as the cause of the subject’s transition into a new state is located within the subject himself. It follows from the foregoing discussion that there is a substantial overlap between what I call reflexive passives and regular reflexive constructions. As has been argued in this section, reflexive passives like regular reflexives involve the coreferentiality of the agent and the patient. The question that arises at this point is thus how the two constructions can be distinguished on semantic grounds. The difference appears to lie in the relative salience of the two roles of the subject referent. In the passive constructions, the patient gains more prominence and thus what comes to the foreground is the action itself and the subject’s affectedness, as in canonical passives. The regular reflexive constructions, on the other hand, appear to place more emphasis on the agentive factor, with the subject’s affectedness being of secondary importance. Thus, the contrast between get dressed or get washed and their purely reflexive counterparts dress oneself and wash oneself seems to be that the former highlight the results of the action being described, while the latter give more import to the action itself. Of course, verbs designating everyday routines such as dress, shave or wash are used without the reflexive particle, which appears to be related to their prototypicality in conveying reflexive meanings (i.e., we much more frequently wash, shave or dress ourselves than someone else) and the resultant entrenchment of the reflexive construal conveyed by these predicates. The reservation to make at this juncture is that the distinction between the passive and agentive interpretation is not fixed or clear-cut but rather fuzzy around the edges. This can be seen even more clearly if we contrast the two constructions with be dressed, which designates a purely static configuration. Thus, the constructions
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dress (oneself), get dressed and be dressed can be placed on a cline of decreasing agentivity, with the passive reflexive occupying the middle ground between the canonical reflexives and prototypical statives. Reflexive passives are quite a productive category. Apart from the constructions mentioned above, the reflexive meaning is conveyed by other top collocates, including get caught, get carried, get mixed, get hooked, get settled. Consider the following examples: (11) Many children and young people get caught up in crime. (12) Charles wondered how many naïve young girls had got caught in messy affairs with older men from the belief that they could bring new love into their lives and ‘make them blossom’ (…). (13) `You just got caught in the crossfire. I’m sorry.’ (14) He wouldn’t have got mixed up in all this if he wasn’t young and fit. (15) If you get carried away with your shopping and turn up late, I won’t hang around, I’ll just leave without you. (16) I first got hooked on scuba diving when I was 12 years old (…).
In the examples above, one can observe the duality of the subject’s role. Specifically, get caught up portrays the subject referent both as the doer and the victim of his/her own deeds. What is noteworthy is that although the subject has agentive properties, his/her responsibility for the actions performed is partial or limited. That is s/he either acts unintentionally, as in (13), which entails that the subject referent got into the crossfire accidentally, possibly due to someone’s fault, or that there are some other factors that are responsible for the situation being described apart from the subject’s decision to act in a particular way. For example, (11) and (12) imply that it is the young age and immaturity that make people susceptible to committing crimes, or getting involved in irresponsible relationships. Thus, one can speak here of the subject’s reduced responsibility for the action being described. The idiomatic expressions: get mixed up, be carried away, get hooked (cf. examples 14–16) represent a similar blend of inchoative and causative usage combined with profiling the subject’s affectedness. It follows from the foregoing discussion that the notion of subject affectedness plays a major role in the distribution of the get + past participle construction: the affectedness can be physical (e.g. get hit) mental (e.g. get hooked on something), social (e.g. get married/ divorced) or a mixture thereof. We have also seen that the subject referent is typically portrayed as being adversely affected by the actions of others or his/her own. This, however, is only a prototypical feature, as get + past participle is also filled with neutral verbs (cf. the body care verbs), or, less commonly, it also designates positively valued situations, with the subject referent being construed as a beneficiary of an action (e.g. get promoted or get elected).
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In the section to follow, I present a contrastive analysis of get-passives and bepassives based on the distinctive collexemes of these two constructions. Before presenting the results of the distinctive collexeme analysis, a look is taken at the type and token frequencies of the constructions in question, as they occur in the BNC database.
4. Get-Passives and Be-Passives Compared 4.1 Token and Type Frequencies Consider the following table:2 Table 2: Token and type frequencies of get- and be-passives in the BNC Construction
Token frequency
Type frequency
get-passive
6999
941856
be-passive
328
4428
As can be seen, get-passives are greatly outnumbered by be-passives. This striking disproportion is partly due to the inclusion of stative passives in the count of be-passives. However, even if the stative passives are subtracted from the total occurrence of the be-passives, we still get a total of about half a million occurrences. Thus, judging by these numbers, get-passives can be regarded as a marked construction, with be-passives representing its unmarked counterpart. The marked status of the get-passive is also reflected in the limited range of verb types it accepts. While all the verb types found in the get-passive do occur in the be-passive, the reverse is not the case. That is, the be-passive contains a much wider selection of verb types including state verbs, which do not occur in get-passives (cf. be seen/ *get seen; be heard/ *get heard; be understood/ * get understood). The restriction the get + past participle puts on canonical statives appears to have its sources in the lexical semantics of ‘get’, which is an action verb. As we have established in the preceding section, ‘get’ is a full lexical verb, unlike ‘be’, which has an auxiliary status. This difference is crucial here in that auxiliaries are semantically more vacuous than lexical verbs and this appears to make them less restrictive with respect to the semantic types they combine with. Thus, unlike get-passives, be-passives do not discriminate between active and stative construal.
2 Both ‘active’ and ‘stative’ (‘adjectival’) passives have been included in the count.
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Let us now take a more detailed look at the distributional properties of the two constructions under consideration. Tables 4 and 5 present the 25 most distinctive collexemes of the get-passive and the be-passive, respectively, in the descending order of their significance (the smaller the p-value of the Fisher exact test, the stronger the association between the construction and its lexical ‘filler’). Table 3: Top 25 collexemes of the get-passive get-passive
be-passive
P-Fisher Exact
married
1063
2105
0
started
249
420
0
dressed
240
554
3,7237E-306
caught
325
1864
5,6613E-305
Collexeme
paid
429
4946
3,7555E-288
involved
234
1980
1,2939E-184
carried
136
556
1,6901E-145
mixed
108
471
3,2208E-113
bogged
42
20
1,98447E-74
knocked
66
493
2,85613E-56
changed
104
1843
1,0096E-53
put
69
637
3,79374E-53
hooked
43
120
3,8194E-53
divorced
50
259
4,99839E-50
shot
79
1434
1,67116E-40
kicked
37
226
4,0789E-35
done
199
10296
1,24041E-31
hit
56
944
1,03317E-30
left
142
6092
1,75104E-30
trapped
47
629
4,36444E-30 1,67558E-28
stuffed
26
113
blown
41
493
4,1116E-28
sucked
28
186
4,64124E-26
pissed
19
43
9,5297E-26
tangled
14
10
2,5509E-24
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Table 4: Top 25 collexemes of the be-passive get-passive
be-passive
P-Fisher Exact
32
29097
4,40799E-56
seen
3
13859
2,4603E-40
used
33
23273
2,89675E-39
given
14
16785
1,14769E-36
found
12
13247
2,69805E-28
set
0
7492
6,52694E-25
said
3
8265
8,28273E-23
required
0
6767
1,45729E-22
based
0
6735
1,85002E-22
allowed
0
5708
3,90128E-19
needed
0
4816
2,98775E-16
described
0
4321
1,18759E-14
provided
0
4215
2,61239E-14
designed
0
4035
9,96176E-14
achieved
0
3821
4,88978E-13
regarded
0
3754
8,04608E-13
determined
0
3734
9,33569E-13
thought
0
3671
1,49111E-12
shown
7
6139
1,50027E-12
placed
0
3384
1,25825E-11
born
6
5431
2,13437E-11
held
24
9626
6,35384E-11
obtained
0
3156
6,84558E-11
brought
6
5057
2,27491E-10
produced
0
2992
2,31444E-10
developed
0
2955
3,04642E-10
Collexeme made
As can be seen, the distinctive collexemes of the get-passive overlap considerably with the most significant collocates of this construction, as discussed in the preceding section, with reflexive passives representing the most salient use. This appears to suggest that the main function of get-passives is that of disambiguating between stative and dynamic interpretation of the situations being described. For
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example, the agentive semantics of get married, get dressed or get involved clearly contrasts with the stative semantics of be married, be dressed or be involved. For example: (17) `I’m going to get dressed in the twins’ room, and I suggest you do the same in here, as quickly as possible. (18) Fenella was dressed entirely in black, a black sweater over a black skirt, black stockings and on top of the outfit a black hat covering all her hair.
Both examples evoke the same reflexive scenario with the subject referent being construed as the one who performs the action of dressing himself/herself. The difference between these two is in profiling: while get dressed profiles the action leading to a particular result, be dressed de-focuses the action entirely and zooms in on the end result, which gives rise to the so-called resultative passives, as mentioned in section 2. Of course, the distinctiveness of get-passives is not limited to reflexive uses, but extends to passives with external arguments (usually implicit ones). The distinctive collexeme analysis confirms the distinguishing role of verbs designating actions having an adverse effect on the subject referent, with verbs of violent physical action ranking highest on this list. Thus, the subject affectedness comes as the next most important factor distinguishing the get-passives from the be-passives. A comparison with the most distinctive agentive collexemes of the be-passive makes this point even more lucid. The top agentive constructions include: be made, be used, be given, be described, be provided, be designed, be shown, be brought, be produced, be developed. Let us consider some examples: (19) The decision was made by senior managers and Health Authority members, none of whom now have any local accountability. (21) Eventually the script was used for Marty Feldman’s own show later on. (22) Contradictory messages are given on diet, fitness and health in general (…). (23) The decision was described by Friends of the Earth as “an appalling example of official complacency”. (24) Priority should be given within the science/technology strategy to regional centres for technology strategy.
In none of the examples above, can the subject referent be described as being (adversely or favorably) ‘affected’ by the actions of others, which effectively precludes the use of the get- passive. Instead, be-passives tend to place emphasis on the action itself rather than the subject referent. They often profile something (physical or abstract) arising or coming into existence as a result of one’s action (cf. be made, be designed, be produced, be developed).
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It should also be noted that be-passives tend to be used to denote generic or non-physical actions, which contrasts with the prototypical pattern of energy flow, as encoded by get-passives. That is, in get-passives, the patient and the agent (which tends to be implicit) represent two distinct, independently existing entities (most commonly human beings), with the latter transmitting some energy towards the former and thereby affecting him/her in one way or another. In the case of be-passives, the subject referent does not necessarily represent an independently existing entity but arises, as it were, in the course of the action being carried out by the agent. Thus, what comes into focus here is not the agent acting on the patient but rather the agent’s actions resulting in a particular (new) state of affairs (e.g., the decision/ progress/effort being made). Seen from this perspective, it can be argued that be-passives have a more general reference, with get-passives constituting the more specialized alternative. Thus, in some cases, the get-passives can be replaced with the be-passives with only a subtle shift in meaning. For example: (25) Tom got hit by Mary. (26) Tom was hit by Mary.
Example (25) implies that Tom suffered some injuries or was otherwise hurt by Mary’s action. Differently put, Tom is construed as the recipient of Mary’s action, through analogy to the basic meaning of ‘get’, which is ‘to obtain’ something. In (26), the focus is not so much on Tom’s affectedness but on Mary’s action itself, with Tom being construed merely as the one who undergoes the action being described. Thus, in get-passives the subject appears to have a more salient role to play, which is probably the reason that has led some researchers (cf. Roeper 1987) to have put forward the thesis about the subject’s responsibility for an action. However, the corpus data do not provide any clear evidence in favor of this thesis. It should be observed that the notion of affectedness ties in better with human than non-animate subjects, with the latter being more likely to be interpreted as pure patients (undergoers of an action). Thus, while get-passives preferentially select human subjects, be- passives occur mainly with non-human subjects. Also, a mention should be made at this juncture of the double object verb ‘pay’, which occurs as one of the most distinctive collexemes of the get-passive where it invariably profiles the recipient of the payment, as illustrated in the examples below: (27) Right so we get paid the extra fifteen or whatever If you’re entitled you will know exactly you will keep a record don’t worry. (28) If teachers only got paid for pupils passing their exams, there are some pupils who’d never get any education at all.
Be paid, on the other hand, preferentially selects non-human subjects:
280
Agnieszka Kaleta (29) When all the death duties have been paid, there will be about three thousand pounds left and that is left to you, Sara, unreservedly. (30) A fee will be paid by Newco for each appointment.
Thus, while in get paid, the focus is on the subject referent coming into the possession of a sum of money, be paid tends to highlight the more general notion of a transfer of money from one location to another, with the recipient and agent (payer) being de-focused and quite often also unexpressed linguistically.3
5. Summary and Concluding Remarks This paper has shed light on the radial nature of the get + past participle construction showing that its different uses have a passive component, which manifests itself in different ways, with the most central cases approximating the canonical passives. The less central ones, on the other hand, evoke a reflexive scenario with the subject referent being construed as both the actor and the one acted upon. Furthermore, it has been argued that the distinctiveness of the getpassive from the be-passive resides in the more dynamic construal the former imposes on the conceived scene, which can be traced back to the contrast between the lexical semantics of ‘get’ and ‘be’. Specifically, get-passives which accept the external argument (e.g. John got hit) appear to draw on the basic ‘obtain’ meaning of ‘get’, with the subject referent being conceptualized as ‘the recipient’ of an action. The reflexive uses, on the other hand, seem to make use of both the ‘obtain’ and the causative ‘get’, which manifests itself in the subject’s dual role as the actor and ‘the undergoer’. Thus, what these two uses have in common is that the subject referent is construed as being affected in one way or another by the action being described, either that of an external agent or of his own. In other words, the subject’s affectedness appears to constitute the invariant semantic core of the get + past participle construction, motivating its different uses and distinguishing it from the be-passive. Prototypically, the get-passive designates physical affectedness, with the agent causing physical harm to the subject referent. However, we have also seen that this prototypical scenario can extend to the domain of mental/ cognitive or social affectedness. This major function of profiling the subject’s affectedness coincides with the disambiguating function of the get-passive, which serves to distinguish between active and stative construal (e.g. He was involved in something vs. He got involved in something; He was frustrated vs. He got frustrated).
3 This, however, is only a tendency as ‘be paid’ can also occur with human subjects (which accounts for circ. 30% of the ‘be paid’ hits returned by the BNC).
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The greater semantic scope of the be-passive, which covers both dynamic and stative meanings (sometimes leading to ambiguities), has been described as the result of the semantic indeterminacy of the auxiliary ‘be’, which contrasts with the lexical nature of ‘get’. It clearly follows from the foregoing discussion that the get-passive is a construction in its own right, with a set of features and peculiarities of use which distinguish it significantly and systematically from the be-passive. It seems that a more detailed consideration of the semantic range of the be-passive, which has not been possible here due to the space limitations of this paper, is in order to further enhance our understanding of the semantic distinctiveness of these two constructions.4
References Alexiadou, A. 2005. A note on non-canonical passives: the case of the get-passive. In H. Broekhuis, et al. (eds.), Organizing Grammar: Linguistic studies in honor of Henk van Riemsdijk. 13–21. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Alexiadou, A. & F. Schafer. (eds.). 2013. Non-Canonical Passives. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Biber, D., S. Johansson, G. Leech, S. Conrad & E. Finegan. 1999. Longman Grammar of spoken and Written English. London: Longman. Carter, R. & M. McCarthy. 1999. The English get-passive in spoken discourse: Description and implications for an interpersonal grammar. English Language and Linguistics 3: 41–58. Chappell, H. 1980. Is the get-passive adversative? Research on Language & Social Interaction 13(3): 411–452. Collins, P. 1996. Get-passives in English. World Englishes 15: 43–56. Collins, Ch. 2005. A smuggling approach to the Passive in English. Syntax 8(2): 81–120. Downing, A. 1996. The semantics of get-passives. In R. Hasan, C. Cloran & D. Butt (eds.), Functional Descriptions: Theory in practice, 179–205. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Fleisher, N. 2008. Passive get, Causative get, and the Phrasehood of Passive vP. Proceedings of Chicago Linguistic Society 41: 59–67.
4 Also, due to the space limitations, I have been unable to support this discussion with notational representations of the semantic distinctions coded by the get + past participle construction.
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Givón, T. & L. Yang. 1994. The Rise of the English get-passive. In B. Fox & P. Hopper (eds.), Voice: Form and function, 119–149. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Gries, St. Th. & A. Stefanowitsch. 2004. Extending collostructional analysis: A corpus-based perspective on ‘alternations. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 9: 97–129. Haegeman, L. 1985. The get-passive and Burzio’s Generalization. Lingua 66: 53–77. Hatcher, A. G. 1949. To get/be invited. Modern Language Notes: 433–446. Huddleston, R. & G. Pullum. 2002. The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hübler, A. 1992. On the get-passive. In W. H. Busse, (ed.). Anglistentag 1991 Proceedings. 89–101. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Johansson, S. & S. S. Oksefjell. 1996. Towards a unified account of the syntax and semantics of get. In J. Thomas & M. Short (eds.), Using Corpora for Language Research: Studies in honour of Geoffrey Leech, 57–75. London: Longman. Kilgarriff, A., V. Baisa, J. Bušta, M. Jakubíček, V. Kovář, J. Michelfeit, P. Rychlý & V. Suchomel. 2014. The Sketch Engine: Ten years on. Lexicography. Journal of ASIALEX 1: 7–36. Langacker, R. 2002. Concept, Image and Symbol. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Langacker, R 2008. Cognitive Grammar. A basic introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McIntyre, A. 2005. The semantic and syntactic decomposition of get: An interaction between verb meaning and particle placement. Journal of Semantics 22(4): 401–438. Quirk, R., S. Greenbaum, G. Leech & J. Svartvik. 1985. A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London: Longman. Reed, L. A.2011. Get-Passives. The Linguistic Review 28(1): 41–78. Roeper, T. 1987. Implicit arguments and the head-complement relation. Linguistic Inquiry 18: 267–310. Sasaki, K. 1999. The semantics of get-passives. Journal of the Faculty of International Studies, Utsunomiya: 117–126. Sawasaki, K. 2000. On adversity in English get-passives. Journal of Hokkaido Linguistics 1: 15–28. Siewierska, A. 1984. The Passive: A comparative linguistic analysis. London: Croom Helm. Stefanowitsch, A. & St. Th. Gries. 2003. Collostructions: Investigating the interaction between words and constructions. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 8: 209–243.
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Sussex, R. 1982. A note on the get-passive Construction. Australian Journal of Linguistics 2: 83–95. Taranto, G. 2002. Causative and Passive get – An event-structure analysis. Ms., University of California San Diego, Available online at: http://ling.ucsd. edu/~taranto/taranto_GET_0302.pdf (access 29 March 2015). Vanrespaille, M. 1991. A semantic analysis of the English get-passive. Interface 5(2): 95–112. Wanner, A. 2009. Deconstruction of the English Passive. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Weiner, E. J. & W. Labov. 1983. Constraints on the agentless passive. Journal of Linguistics 19(1): 29–58.
Katarzyna Kwapisz-Osadnik University of Silesia
Perceptual Structures and Grammatical Constructions on the Basis of Aspectual Opposition in French The present article discusses the problem of perception structures, which determine the choice of tenses in French. French is one of those languages in which the aspect is expressed in the form of the tense. The relation between tense and aspect with regard to perception is discussed here in the context of Cognitive Linguistics. The aim of the article is to address the following hypotheses: 1) Perception influences conceptualization and the construction of an utterance, that is, the choice of its grammatical and lexical elements. 2) Perception, as a universal phenomenon, depends upon the culture and linguistic tradition of the users of a given language. 3) The functioning of grammatical categories, as for example French verb tenses, is the effect of conceptualization.
1. Introduction One of the principal assumptions in Cognitive Linguistics concerns the relation between the way in which we experience the world and the way in which we speak about it. That is, at the basis of conceptualization lies perception, and language is one of the resources that contribute to the processing of data, which is evident in the choice of grammatical constructions and the selection of lexical items from the language in which communication is taking place. In Indo-European languages, sentence structure is based upon the verb, inasmuch as its semantic and syntactic properties determine the type and the saturation of argument positions being argued, and its morphology conveys information about the tense and aspect of the situation as well as the stance of the speaker regarding the content of the words used to describe it. Therefore, in the present article, we will try to look at the categories of tense and aspect in French in order to address the following hypotheses: 1) Perception influences the construction of an utterance, that is, the choice of its grammatical and lexical elements, which means its conceptualization. Conceptualization is understood, after Langacker (1987, 2003) both cognitively and linguistically, wherein language comprises only an element of so-called linguistic resources, which become activated at the time of conceptualization. 2) Perception, as a universal phenomenon, depends upon the culture and linguistic tradition of the users of a given language. Let us bear in
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mind that the perception of time, and therewith of temporal aspect, is different in Arab and Asian cultures: in Arab cultures the flow of time is presented as moving from right to left, while in Asian cultures it proceeds from higher to lower or else in a cyclical fashion. 3) The functioning of grammatical categories, as for example French verb tenses, is the effect of conceptualization, while the establishment of norms is related to frequency of use found. The choice of the French language in this study is not accidental – French is one of those languages in which the aspect is expressed in the form of the tense. A second point is the “plasticity” of French grammatical tenses in the conveyance of temporal and aspectual information. To put it another way, the possibility of choosing various moods and tenses in the formation of an expression that refers to a single aspect of reality testifies to the distinctness of the conceptualization. For example, when deciding to play “cops and robbers,” French children might say any of the following (Grevisse 1980: 843; Wilmet 1997: 408): (1) Moi, j’étais le gendarme, et toi, tu avais volé une voiture. ‘I was the cop, and you had stolen a car.’ (2) Moi, j’étais le gendarme, et toi, tu étais le voleur. ‘I was the cop, and you were the robber.’ (3) Toi, tu avais été le gendarme et moi le voleur. ‘You had been the cop and I the robber.’ (4) Moi, je suis le gendarme et toi, tu es le voleur. ‘I’m the cop and you’re the robber.’ (5) Tu serais le voleur et moi, je t’arrêterais. ‘You would be the robber and I would arrest you.’
The above examples will be discussed later in the text.
2. Categories of Tense, Time and Aspect The concepts of tense and aspect have been the subjects of numerous philosophical works and studies in the field of linguistics. In the case of tense and its linguistic interpretation, the following issues can be identified: 1) the distinction between objective and subjective time; 2) the distinction between extralinguistic time and linguistic tense; 3) the time of discourse; 4) time as a phenomenon specifying points of time or intervals of time; and 5) the functioning, and especially the “atemporal” functioning, of grammatical tenses. Aspect is an exceedingly complicated phenomenon, which is manifested on many levels: conceptual, lexicalized, grammatical, syntactic, and discursive. Researchers disagree on whether the phases of a given situation are to be included in the category of aspect. Koschmieder (1929) stresses the inseparability
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of tense and aspect as simultaneous dimensions of the same reality. In a similar vein, Guillaume (1970: 17) considers aspect to be an internal time reflecting the development of the situation contained in the form of the verb, because verbs are most susceptible to the expression of progression. Tense, time and aspect do not necessarily correspond to a real situation. From the Cognitive Linguistics perspective, we may say that the question of compatibility with reality depends on the manner in which a given situation is conceptualized by the user of a certain language. Conceptualization, that is, the construction of a scene, takes place in accordance with the position that the speaker assumes with regard to a given aspect of reality: it is accordingly possible to imagine oneself in the role of a participant in, a witness to, or a narrator of an event. The position that is chosen has an influence upon the choice of grammatical tense, or, to be more precise, upon the form of the verb, if we accept that the point of departure is the form, and not the grammatical tense, taking into consideration the whole set of information contained in the form, including the aspectual data. Thus, the choice of the grammatical tense, which is reflected in the form of the verb, is an effect of the processing data, and this operation has, in the first place, a cognitive basis: assuming an appropriate stance, the language user conceptualizes the (real or fictitious) situation as a state, process or event, calculates its time, possible changes, the presence of participants, its forces, causes, singularity or repeatability, and termination or continuation. This constructed scene is thereupon “inserted” in a predicative-argumentative structure. At the level of the structure’s actualization, the saturation of the argument positions takes place by means of expressions that contain lexical information. Additionally, accommodation can be observed, which takes place in accordance with the grammar rules specific to the language in which the speech event is being recounted. However, the perception of the world, or, in other words, our experience, and, as a result, the knowledge to which we refer at the moment of conceptualization also has a social basis. Our upbringing within a certain culture, religion, and language has a decisive influence on the way in which we perceive reality (see Introduction, point 2). Let us sum up this section with the following observations: 1) Perception is conditioned culturally; it is therefore not a universal phenomenon on the level of interpretation of sensory data; 2) Perception has an influence on conceptualization, that is, on ascribing meanings through the choice of grammatical constructions and lexical units, thus creating an expression in a given language; 3) Each conceptualized situation has a cognitive basis; in Indo-European languages, this operation is applied to a simultaneous processing of aspectual, modal, temporal, and morphosyntactic alignment, which creates a certain configuration expressed
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in and around the form of the verb; 4) In French, aspect is strictly connected with the category of grammatical tense, although, as in other languages, it can also be expressed with affixes (redire, sautiller), adverbials (souvent, rarement, tous les jours), auxiliary verbs (continuer à, se mettre à, finir de) or with periphrastic constructions (aller + participle, tomber + adjective); 5) The manner of constructing a scene depends upon the individual language user, if we bear in mind his linguistic resources, that is, his general knowledge, memory, problem-solving ability, language, capacity to make decisions and ability to recognize contexts; 6) event predicates can have continual forms, and stative predicates can be interpreted as relating to events. Consequently, the category of tense is of secondary significance in relation to aspectual information, although the form of the verb assumes a given grammatical tense.
3. Methodology The analysis undertaken here will be based upon the concept of aspect proposed by Desclés (1989, 1994). In this formulation, aspect is a category at the cognitive level, which becomes encoded in a given language in the shape of the verb form and/or other aspectual markers on the morphosyntactic level. Desclés’ point of departure is distinguishing between event, state and process. An event is understood as a discontinuity in a stable system of referential data. An event is a process which is visualized as a whole, that is, with a starting-point and an ending-point. An event assumes a structure of succession. A state, by contrast, is characterized by a complete absence of change. In other words, all the phases of a stative situation are identical. A process, in turn, may be incomplete – that is, it may have a starting-point but not assume a conclusion – or complete, if it includes a terminus, and in this case it generates both an event and an ensuing state. In Desclés’ view, the aspectuality of a situation is determined by time, and, in particular, by limitation in time: for example, in the case of an imperfective (incomplete) process the left time boundary is closed, while the right boundary remains open (in the European cultural sphere).
4. French Grammatical Tenses and the Expression of Aspect: Examples 4.1 Use of Tenses THat Do Not Express Time The use of tenses that do not express time, that is, that do not express localization in time, does not correspond to the real state of the situation which has been conceptualized. This phenomenon is observable in most, if not all, languages, and
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results from the human ability to imagine a situation from various positions and in various spatio-temporal relations. This is illustrated in (6): (6)
a. En 1991 la Namibie proclame l’indépendance. ‘In 1991 Namibia proclaims independence.’
Here, the language-user chose the present tense, despite the fact that the event is in the past and is completed. In effect the content of the sentence gains currency at the moment of the utterance of the expression; that is, the language-user conceptualized the event as if he were situated in the year 1991, the year when Namibia gained independence. However, the content of the sentence may be expressed by the employment of other tenses, for example: b. En 1991 la Namibie a proclamé l’indépendance. ‘In 1991 Namibia proclaimed independence.’ c. En 1991 la Namibie proclama l’indépendance. ‘In 1991 Namibia proclaimed independence.’ d. En 1991 la Namibie proclamait l’indépendance ‘In 1991 Namibia proclaimed independence.’ e. En 1991 la Namibie avait proclamé l’indépendance. ‘In 1991 Namibia had proclaimed independence.’ f. En 1991 la Namibie proclamera l’indépendance. ‘In 1991 Namibia will proclaim independence.’ g. En 1991 la Namibie aura proclamé l’indépendance. ‘In 1991 Namibia will have proclaimed independence.’
All of these sentences are correct, though they may inspire more or less uncertainty among French language users: their use is contingent upon the context and the frequency with which they are used, which means that the choice of a form is determined, on the one hand, by the norm, which in turn arises on the basis of a so-called natural logic, and, on the other hand, by the conceptualization, that is, the manner in which the scene is constructed in a given communication context. The most prototypical of the sentences above is (6b), insofar as the situation took place in the past, is finished and complete, and yet had consequences which are still current, and thus the use is resultative. Sentence (6c) represents a depersonalization of the situation, in the sense that the language user assumes the position of a narrator who simply informs the recipient of the gaining of independence by Namibia. Sentence (6d) transmits information about a stative situation in the past, as if the language user were standing before a picture portraying a historical event. The account would suggest a description of what this picture shows. Sentence (6e), in turn, would be the result of an intention to transmit information about a situation completed in the past (perfective tense), but
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in relation to other events which took place later. Sentence (6f) takes the form of the future tense. The choice of this form assumes a description of the situation from a prospective viewpoint. To put it another way, the language user imagines announcing the independence of Namibia in, so to speak, a prophetic fashion. In sentence (6g), which is also in a future tense, but in the future perfect, along with the prospective and prophetic effect we also have an effect of result or outcome, that is, the event is conceptualized as being complete, but its consequences are still to come. (7) a. J’ai terminé dans 5 minutes. (Kwapisz-Osadnik 2009: 209) I finished 5 minutes from now ‘I’ll finished (!) 5 minutes from now.’ b. Nous sommes arrivés dans 5 minutes. We arrived 5 minutes from now ‘We will arrived (!) 5 minutes from now.’
The sentences in (7) are interesting because of the employment of contradictory temporal information. The form of the verbs is past and perfective/complete, but they are accompanied by adverbials of time which situate the contents of the sentences in the future. It seems that we will find the only explanation for this by interpreting the manner of formulating the situation as being perfective, and thus in the past – the language-user situates himself in a past moment, imagining the event as completed, although in reality it will be completed in 5 minutes. The following temporal variants express the same content: c. Je vais terminer dans 5 minutes. ‘I’m going to finish 5 minutes from now.’ d. Je finis dans 5 minutes. ‘I finish 5 minutes from now.’ e. J’aurai terminé dans 5 minutes. ‘I will have finished 5 minutes from now.’
The tense in (7c) lends the situation a prospective, but immediate dimension; that is, the speaker limits the temporal perspective, which is confirmed by use of the adverbial that determines the temporal realization of the situation. The use of the present tense in (7d) gives the situation a dimension of currency. Its conclusion, even if it is to follow in 5 minutes, is imagined in the here and now. Sentence (7e), in turn, is the effect of a conceptualization of the situation as prospective, yet completed (perfective). In other words, the language-user imagines the situation as finished (completed), but in the near future, as indicated by the expression dans 5 minutes (‘in 5 minutes’).
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Let us return to the examples involving children talking about a game of “cops and robbers.” It is obvious in this case that the contents of the sentences are imaginary, for we are dealing here with fiction, but the use of particular verb forms indicates various interpretations that depend upon the attitude taken by the language-user with respect to the contents of the utterance. In the case of the use of present and future forms, we speak of an actualization of the stated roles of cop and robber in the speaker’s imagination; that is, the speaker intends a simulation of reality here and now or in the future. The use of the past tenses in various configurations gives the situation an imaginary dimension and in effect performs a deactualization. The speaker, on the one hand, reconstructs the schema of the cop/ robber, and thereby, as it were, reaches into the past (it was this way, that p); and on the other hand, s/he lets it be known that the roles to be played have nothing to do with the actual reality of the game participants, including the speaker. In the case of the use of compound forms, the situation is conceptualized as completed/ perfective, even though in reality it will take place. An interpretive reference to knowledge about the world or to earlier consideration of a certain situation adds the dimension of the temporal past, which we observe, for example, in expressions of the following type: (8) Je voulais te demander une faveur. ‘I wanted to ask of you a favor.’ (9) J’étais venu vous demander une faveur. ‘I’d come to ask a favor of you.’
The use of the conditional mood informs the recipient about the existence of certain conditions which must be fulfilled (though not necessarily made explicit) in order that the contents of the sentence should happen; for example: if we were to play, I would be the robber, and you would be the cop. Let us now proceed to some observations about the type of predicate and its temporal form which, from a formal point of view, appears to be unclear, and even contrary to logic, and yet in language is correct. Moreover, it contains information about how conceptualization works in the processing of data by a French language-user.
4.2 Event Predicates whose Temporal Form Expresses a State or a Process (10) Le lendemain il partait. (Kwapisz-Osadnik 2009: 239) ‘He was leaving the next day.’ (11) Deux ans après Louis XIV se mariait. (Grevisse 1980: 835) ‘Two years after that Louis XIV was getting married.’
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In all the examples above, the use of a continuous form of tense, that is, one with an open-ended future boundary, even when what is being spoken about is an event contained within defined temporal boundaries, and thus perfective and completed, is the effect of the speaker coming to a halt in the role of an observer of the event in question. The future opening thus created has inspired a variety of interpretations of the uses of the French tense imparfait: scholars speak, among other things, of the use, and also of the value, of a possible or actual new state of affairs (De Saussure 2003; Desclés 2003), of future use (Riegel 1994), of narrative use (Reicher-Bégulin 1990; Gosselin 2005), and of descriptive use (Togeby 1982). In other words, the language-user seems not to be concerned strictly with information about what has happened, for in that case s/he would choose another form of temporal expression, but rather with focusing attention on the consequences, actual or possible, of the conceptualized event.
4.3 Predicates of State or Process in Perfective Temporal Forms (15) Cela a été très bon. ‘That was very good.’ (16) Malgré les objurgations de Zoé, Max continua à voir Eve. (Leeman-Bouix 2002: 156) ‘Despite Zoé’s rebukes, Max continued to see Eve.’ (17) Ils vécurent heureux et eurent beaucoup d’enfants. ‘They lived happily and had many children.’ (18) Hier j’ai rencontré monsieur Legrand qui fut mon professeur d’histoire. (Reicher-Bégulin 1990: 101) Yesterday I have met M. Legrand, who was my history teacher ‘Yesterday I met M. Legrand, who was my history teacher.’ (19) En 1815 Napoléon fut exilé à Sainte-Hélène, six ans plus tard il aura vécu. (Mauger 1984: 238) ‘In 1815 Napoleon was exiled to Saint Helena. Six years later he will be alive.’ (20) L’année 2001 aura été fatale pour l’économie mondiale. (Le Monde in Ciszewska 2006: 142) ‘The year 2001 will have been terrible for the global economy.’
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In most of these sentences, translation into English of the precise temporal forms is not possible: all of the cited forms are perfective, that is, they express a state or process which has a bounded temporal terminus. Therefore, the French languageuser has imposed on each extended situation the dimension of an event. In sentences (19) and (20), we find, in addition, the use of the future form, even though it is obvious that the speaker refers to states of affairs in the past. As was remarked above, such a temporal configuration has the purpose of opening up the boundary of the temporal perspective, which is to indicate that the consequences of a given state will establish the significance of the situation that is being described. Thus, in the case of Napoleon in (19), what is being brought into play is the fact of his death in the year 1821, while in the case of the global economy in (20), it is suggested that its terrible condition may continue for some years further. All of the sentences given as examples in this section can appear also with other temporal forms, for example: (21) Le lendemain il est parti / partit. He left the following day. (22) Deux ans après Louis XIV s’est marié / se maria. Louis XIV married two years later. (23) Deux minutes plus tard Zidane a marqué le but. Two minutes later Zidane scored a goal. (24) Un pas de plus, elle est tombée / serait tombée / tomba. One step more and she has fallen / would have fallen / fell (?). (25) À 8 heures la bombe explosé / avait explosé. At 8 o’clock the bomb exploded. (26) Cela était très bon. That was very good. (27) Malgré les objurgations de Zoé, Max continuait à voir Eve. In spite of Zoe’s rebukes, Max kept on seeing Eve. (28) Ils vivaient heureux et avaient beaucoup d’enfants. They lived happily and had many children. (29) Hier j’ai rencontré monsieur Legrand qui était mon professeur d’histoire. Yesterday I met Mr Legrand who was my history teacher. (30) En 1815 Napoléon fut exilé à Sainte-Hélène. Six ans plus tard, il eut vécu / vivait encore. In 1815 Napoleon was exiled on Saint Helena. Six years later, he was still alive. (31) L’année 2001 a été / était fatale pour l’économie mondiale. The year 2001 was fatal for the word economy.
The possibility of variations of the temporal form, which are correct from the standpoint of the language and which occur with great frequency, testifies to the various possibilities of interpretation, that is, of processing the data that go to
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make up a single fragment of reality. These processes, in turn, are determined by all of the linguistic resources taken as a whole, which become activated in a single moment of use.
5. Conclusion In the light of the examples discussed above, which demonstrate the grammatical flexibility of language on the basis of French, the problem of norms appears, most visibly, as a consequence of the question of the frequency of use of particular forms. We could posit that this frequency is the greater, the more the conceptualization reflected in the form is based upon natural logic, that is, on common sense. The uses that are less prototypical, although still correct, are evidence for the various manners of perceiving the same element of reality. This perception is, in turn, determined culturally, socially and linguistically. For instance, the vocabulary employed by an older person will differ from that used by a younger one; and the choice of the verb form will depend, among other things, on the individual language-user’s receptiveness to changes appearing in the language. An interesting illustration of the latter point is the recently increased use the verb form passé simple (past definite), which had long been considered a strictly literary tense. Thus, the construction of the sentence and the choice of lexemes are the result of the cognitive-semantic operation of information processing. When speaking more particularly of the French language and the examples introduced above, it is necessary to emphasize the great freedom of choice that exists in selecting the temporal forms and moods of the verb, even if, from the cognitive standpoint, some of them seem to work against logic and common sense. However, each of the forms used in the above examples is correct and conveys information about the manner in which the given element of reality that the sentence refers to has been conceptualized. The secondary function of the category of tense has also been made clear – time is expressed by means of aspect and this reflects the imagined position of the language user in respect to the conceptualized situation. Furthermore, the aspect contained in the temporal form need not correspond to the conceptual content of the predicate – often a French language-user will ascribe to a continuing situation the dimension of an occurrence, and vice versa. Hence, it is difficult to separate the functioning of the language from such cognitive skills of the individual as perception, and this, in turn, is culturally, socially, contextually and individually determined. All of these factors play a role in the processing of the data that are consequently included in the construction of sentences.
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References Ciszewska, E. 2006. Quand le futur antérieur n’exprime pas le futur. Neophilologica 18: 139–146. Desclés, J.-P. 1989. State, event, process and topology. General Linguistics 29: 159–200. Desclés, J.-P. 1994. Quelques concepts relatifs au temps et à l’aspect pour l’analyse des textes. Etudes Cognitives 1: 57–88. Desclés, J.-P. 2003. Une classification aspectuelle des schèmes sémantico-cognitifs. Etudes Cognitives 5: 53–69. Gosselin, L. 2006. Temporalité et Modalité. Bruxelles: De Boeck, Duculot. Grevisse, M. 1980. Le Bon Usage. Bruxelles, Paris: Duculot. Guillaume, G. 1970. Temps et Verbe. Paris: Champion. Koschmieder, E. 1929. Les Rapports Temporels Fondamentaux et leur Expression Linguistique. Contribution à la question de l’aspect et du temps. Paris: Septentrion. Kwapisz-Osadnik, K. 2009. Le Verbe Français dans un Cadre Cognitif. Katowice: Wydawnictwo UŚ. Langacker, R. 1987. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar. Theoretical prerequisites. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Langacker, R. 2003. Model dynamiczny oparty na uzusie językowym. In E. Dąbrowska, W. Kubiński (eds.), Akwizycja Języka w Świetle Językoznawstwa Kognitywnego, 30–114. Kraków: Universitas. Leeman-Bouix, 2002. Grammaire du Verbe Français. Paris: A. Colin. Mauger, G., 1984. Grammaire Pratique du Français d’Aujourd’hui. Paris: Hachette. Reicher-Bégulin, J. 1990. Ecrire en Français. Cohésion textuelle et apprentissage de l’expression écrite. Paris: Delachaux & Niestlé. Riegel, M., Pellat, J.-C. and Rioul, R. 1994. Grammaire Méthodique du Français. Paris: PUF. Saussure De, L. 2003. Temps et Pertinence. Bruxelles: De Boeck, Duculot. Togeby, K. 1982. Grammaire Française. Kopengann: Akademisk forlag. Wilmet, M. 1997. Grammaire Critique du Français. Bruxelles: Duculot.
Józef Marcinkiewicz Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland
Verb Transfer in L2 Acquisition vs. Stage Model of Figure/Ground A Case Study with Evidence from Lithuanian and German Previous studies of language errors have primarily focused on the structural analysis of surface similarities or formal-semantic differences involving misused lexemes, and have offered findings that have been implemented (to a varying extent) in applied linguistics. The present contribution aims to provide insights into the semantic analysis of verb transfer under the Cognitive Grammar approach. The paper explores and describes cognitive factors that play a role in verb transfer from L1 to L2 in a bilingual usage setting. The semantic analysis is based on the Cognitive Grammar methodology, including Langacker’s (1990) stage model: figure/ground, which is employed to reconstruct a particular construal that provides the cognitive basis of the misused verb. Identifying the compositional path of the transferred verb’s meaning leads to a contrastive analysis of various conceptualizations and arriving at a set of similarities and differences between the imagistic structures of the equivalent expressions in the languages concerned. The symmetry of the transferred form with its L1 archetype often provides evidence for the mental basis of lexical transfer. The applied methodological approach offers insights into the cognitive nature of L2 errors and may prove to be a valid contribution to language teaching methodology. The second part of the paper presents a case study, which provides empirical evidence for the author’s arguments. The study contains examples selected from the author’s practice materials from the Lithuanian as a Foreign Language course, which is offered to Polish students enrolled in the Lithuanian Studies program at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland.
1. Introduction L2 acquisition is inextricably linked with the immanent and permanent asymmetry of L1 and L2 linguistic resources in the user’s mental lexicon, a phenomenon which has implications for language use. In a speech event, when the user is forced to use L2, the inferior status of the acquired language typically results in the transfer of the missing categories from L1 to L2. The process, which can be termed gap-filling, occurs at various language levels. The transfer of native language patterns applies then not only to the semantic level of lexical units but also to the phonetic, morpho-syntactic and discursive categories.
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It should be noted that it is lexis that plays a key role in this transfer, as every other type of transfer is grounded in a specific speech act and constitutes an inseparable part of its lexical units, which can be perceived as triggering the transfer across all language structures. Much in line with Taylor’s (2001: 79ff.) view of linguistic categorization, it is lexis that should be assigned the status of a basic level category. In terms of cognitive and linguistic factors, lexis is the most distinctive and arguably the most important category of all language levels. As we delve into the phenomenon of linguistic interference, we come to the conclusion that, from the communicative perspective, lexical-semantic transfer is the most important and noticeable error type (especially in the eyes of the hearer). This type of transfer, restricted solely to the category of verb, will remain the focus of our attention in the present paper.
2. Research Perspective Research on errors in the acquisition of various foreign languages has a long history and has indisputably resulted in defining a number of key terms at the theoretical level. Examples include such universal concepts as: direct transfer, the phenomenon of false friends, and semantic or syntactic calque. However, studies to date have largely been confined to indicating errors, and have been conducted within the frameworks of applied linguistics or translation studies (e.g., to account for failures in translation). Methodologically, they have been restricted either to the formal classification and classical analysis of surface structures or to the confrontation of formal-semantic differences at the word or sentence level (see e.g. Lauterbach (2009); Podgórni (2010)). In my view, research on linguistic interference has now reached a turning point. Through the application of new methodological tools from Cognitive Grammar, this subfield of linguistics can provide even more valuable insights. In Poland, this new cognitive approach to various subfields of linguistics has been applied in a number of recent studies, such as, for example, Krzeszowski’s (2012) work on translation, Bierwiaczonek’s (2013) book on metonymy and mind, or Lewandowski’s (2013) work on sports language. However, cognitive studies of language errors are still in the emerging stage not only in Poland, but also worldwide. This research theme certainly deserves to be explored more thoroughly. With this in mind, in recent years, the author of the present paper has attempted to search for the cognitive grounds of lexical transfer, and published a few contributions on this topic (cf. Marcinkiewicz 2011, 2013, 2014). The following analysis of language errors draws largely on examples of language use extracted from practice materials used in the last five years in the Lithu-
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anian as a Foreign Language course at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. However, the analysis will also include an example from German.
3. Thesis and Research Method This paper aims to demonstrate that some tools of Cognitive Grammar can successfully be applied in verb transfer research. It also strives to show that these tools can be effectively utilized in the semantic analysis of a specific language usage. In terms of its methodological framework, the paper draws on Langacker’s (1990) stage model: figure/ground (profile/base). This model provides a method of exploring the verb meaning at the level of construal and is extremely helpful in exposing the semantically hidden spatio-temporal relationships that hold between stage participants (on construal, see Langacker 2008: Ch. 3). In order to successfully implement and test the applicability of the tools of Cognitive Grammar, primarily those of the stage model, a ‘case study’ is conducted. The application of the trajector/landmark alignment in the analysis of specific examples of incorrect verb transfer serves two purposes. Firstly, it is designed to reconstruct the compositional path of the transferred verb meaning. Secondly, it aims to specify an expression’s profile in relation to context (base). Besides the aforementioned tools, the semantic analysis will also be based on other theoretical models from Cognitive Linguistics, such as Rosch’s (1978) prototype theory and radial categories, Taylor’s (1989) linguistic categorization based on Rosch’s ideas, Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) conceptual metaphor theory as well as Lakoff ’s (1987) Idealized Cognitive Models and semantics of perception. The paper will also draw on linguistic concepts that either come from other approaches, e.g. Fauconnier’s (1985) model of mental spaces and blending theory, as proposed by Fauconnier & Turner (2002).
4. On the Cognitive Nature of Lexical Transfer Following Langacker’s (2000, 2003) model of language acquisition, which emphasizes the key role of psychological phenomena in the process, we can safely assume that language transfer in L2 acquisition is governed by the same mental mechanisms. Hence, mental operations in L2 usage should be investigated in the same way as mental data processing, which is coherent with the whole spectrum of psychological phenomena that accompany ‘linguistic’ thinking or thinking for communication purposes (the concept of language transfer as a mental phenomenon is thoroughly explained by Slobin’s hypothesis (2003: 361–398)). In line with this approach, language transfer, i.e., the activation of L1 schema in
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the context of L2 usage, is triggered by specific mental processes involved in the information processing chain, based on such human skills as abstraction, categorization, comparison or association (on mental processes in language acquisition see Langacker 2003: 33ff.). Thus, in line with the general assumptions of Cognitive Grammar, we can posit that lexical transfer originates in our mind. More specifically, our mind stores archetypes which become activated in the form of specific language transfer. This process occurs in a bilingual usage setting, and is caused by the asymmetry between L1 and L2 resources. The semantic analysis of language expressions shows that in every specific case, lexical-semantic transfer is triggered by two sets of factors. The first one includes schemas stored in the user’s L1 mental lexicon, which have a significant impact on the semantics of perception (cf. Lakoff 1987: 125f.). The other set of factors activates these schemas in a specific communicative setting (on the cognitive nature of language transfer, cf. Marcinkiewicz 2013, 2014). The key role in triggering this transfer as part of a speech event seems to be played by what could be termed communicative obligation in a bilingual setting, a factor linked to the user’s sociolinguistic behavior. It is this communicative need at a particular time and in specific conditions that initiates in the user’s brain, when the data begins to be processed, the semantic context of a projected message, which is either required or expected. If the process of translation is to take place, then the message, written or spoken, is already verbalized at the input level. It seems that in order to re-express the message in L2, the next stage of data processing in the brain consists in associating the data and initiating a mental signal that a particular unit is missing in the user’s L2 mental lexicon (this stage occurs irrespective of whether the L1 message is at or past the projection phase). This phenomenon can be termed the ascertainment of a semantic gap, which for the transfer may constitute the most important signal as the neural processing begins. In other words, the main stimulus, or attractor (according to Langacker) activating a ‘rescue’ model from the L1 lexicon seems to be the meaning context of the semantic gap, which results from the projected sense of an expression in L2 usage. This state of the user’s awareness that a particular unit is missing in their L2 mental lexicon can be labelled as semantic projection or anticipation.1 Following another stage of mental processing, which is based primarily on categorization, a suitable L1 unit is activated and instantiated in an L2 message. This operation of
1 The concept of linguistic or cognitive anticipation is employed in translation theory, as pointed out by Tryuk (2007: 59), who discusses the phenomenon of word (meaning) prediction in interpreting.
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gap ‘filling’ can be interpreted as a situation saving device that ensures the message’s semantic continuity in a specific communicative setting.2 The following is what Langacker (2000: 7f.) has to say about categorization in the context of the brain’s processing operations: Categorization is then interpretable as capture by an attractor. Presenting the system with a certain input tends to activate a variety of previously established patterns, some of which may be mutually inhibitory. When an input (B) results in the full activation of pattern [A] – which may have won out over numerous competitors – we can reasonably say that [A] is used to categorize (B). Of course, if the input is only fragmentary, categorization via the activation of [A] may serve to reconstitute the full, familiar experience it represents. The categorizing experience will also be qualitatively different depending on whether (B) is compatible with [A] or succeeds in eliciting [A] despite some discrepancy between them.
The description provided in the above quotation can be fully applied to the process of categorization in lexical transfer, which is visualized in Figure 1. Figure 1: The cognitive model of lexeme transfer.
Let us first explain the symbols. The chain of beads (rings) enclosed in the circle on the left represents lexical components of a phrase in L1 (the source phrase – verbalized or anticipated in a communicative obligation setting). The chain of hexagons b1, b2, b3 enclosed in the large hexagon which is surrounded by the circle on the right represents the produced phrase in L2 (the target phrase that has been transferred from L1). The scheme in the rectangular frame shows data pro2 The phenomenon of data supplementation in the context of general cognitive processes is discussed by Pöppel & Edingshaus (1998: 68), who argue that “the cognitive system […], if it is lacking in sufficient data, supplements it with its own speculations. As a result, the product of perception can be superior to the stimuli reaching the human brain” (cited after Gorczyca 2000: 24).
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cessing in the mental lexicon (symbolically subdivided into two language zones) and the lexical-semantic components involved in this process: L1 [(a1), (a2), (a3) in language (A)] and their equivalents in L2 [(b1), (?), (b3) in language (B)]. The question mark (?), placed in the unshaded middle hexagon, is the marker of the missing lexical equivalent in L2 even though it does not represent a semantic gap. Phrase , which is missing in the user’s mind, occurs in a clearly specified semantic context [(b1), (b3)], and is marked by semantic projection (anticipation). Thus, in Langacker’s model it corresponds to the attractor, or input (B). The left/ right arrows between the elements show the process of categorization, whose initial factor (the attractor) is indicated as the input (B). In the context of Figure 1, the quotation from Langacker can be paraphrased as follows: the above scheme is a simplified illustration of categorization, which consists in “the full activation of pattern [A]”, i.e., an L1 unit marked (a2). This unit then becomes instantiated, i.e., produced in the context of a phrase in L2 (the relationship is marked by the thick arrow). The activated unit (a2), linked with the semantic context, represents “the full, familiar experience” in L1 – a lexicalsemantic unit which comes from the user’s linguistic and cognitive competence. Moreover, the activated model (a2) can be described as “qualitatively different” for two reasons. Firstly, it is related to experience from outside the target language. Secondly, it categorizes the missing concept , which in principle is an element of another “linguistic world” (see Bartmiński 1990). However, the model could be invoked only thanks to its compatibility at the level of contextual meaning, i.e., on the basis of “fragmentary input”. In conclusion, it should, however, be emphasized that the icon representing the unit in the L2 phrase, indicated by the shaded hexagon enclosed in the a2 circle, does not correspond to the lexical-semantic unit, which is identical to the a2 output unit. According to language transfer rules, the unit can occur in various forms, from direct transfer to various types of semantic calques. Hence, it would be safer to refer to the transferred category as a blend, in Fauconnier’s (1985) terms, understood as a result of a clash of two language systems in a bilingual usage setting (on the theory of mental spaces, see Fauconnier (1985); on the idea of blending (conceptual integration), see Fauconnier & Turner (2002)).
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5. Verb Transfer vs. Scene Analysis: A Case Study in Figure/Ground Alignment 5.1 Definitions of Basic Concepts Within the Cognitive Semantics approach, the key role in the analysis of a linguistic expression (verbal phrase) is played by the verb. In predications, it is understood as the linguistic unit (grammatical class) profiling a temporal relationship between stage participants (Langacker 2005: 32), i.e. archetypal roles. These typically include the agent, experiencer, patient, instrument, etc. The stage model is a tool serving as the schematic conceptualization of the key relationship participants, called the trajector (Tr – the most prominent participant, the primary focus) and the landmark (Ld – the referent, another participant, secondary focus, ground) (cf. Langacker 2005: 24, 2008: 58, 70f.). What is of utmost importance in the context of verb transfer to L2 is that the above model can be employed in the detailed analysis of a construed stage, including not only its participants but also, if necessary, other attributes and spatio-temporal nuances, such as aspect, movement trajectory, instrument or quasi-instruments (body parts) that are used to perform an action, etc. In other words, this model encompasses all facets that are profiled by a verb in a specific contextualization. Of equal importance in the contrastive analysis of verb meanings (equivalents in a bilingual usage setting) is the profile/(conceptual) base distinction. I follow Langacker in his understanding of the profile/base relationship as a means of analyzing an expression’s content at two levels of its inseparable constituents: the conceptual base and the way it is construed (profile) (cf. Langacker 2008: 66ff). In their essence, linguistic expressions embrace two semantic aspects: their conceptual content and the way this content is construed, i.e. the linguistic form that is produced. All of these factors play a fundamental role in the analysis of L1-L2 transfer, given the differences in form and content that hold between separate languages.
5.2 Transfer Pol. drążyć > Ger. Tiefen/ Aushöhlen The example below has been extracted from a specialist text on mining.3 In a German-language article, its Polish author uses rather unsuitable equivalents of coal mining terms: 3 The example comes from a paper on Polish-German language interference (cf. Wroński 1974: 5).
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(1) Pol. ‘drążyćwyrobiska’ > Ger. Schächte tiefen/ Schächte aushöhlen (‘deepen/hollowshafts’); Model translation: ‘Schächte auffahren’, (‘drive shafts’).
The correct German equivalent of the Polish specialist phrase drążyć wyrobiska is the collocation Schächte auffahren. The contrastive analysis of the phrases shows that the verbs tiefen and aushöhlen have been misused as a result of L1 lexical transfer, more specifically, its subtype called semantic calque. The relationship between drążyć and tiefen/ aushöhlen can be best explained through conceptual differences and similarities of actions, i.e. the construal nature of spatio-temporal relationships expressed by the respective verbs in both languages. Exploring the prototypical ICMs of the analyzed words (on Idealized Cognitive Models, see Lakoff 1987: 68ff.), it can be concluded that the Polish drążyć (‘deepen’), the German tiefen (literally in Polish ‘pogłębić/ać’, Eng.: ‘deepen’), and the German aushöhlen (literally in Polish ‘wydrążyć/ać’, Eng.: ‘hollow’) are similar in conceptualizing the activity of making a hole4 (deepening or hollowing, cf. the German tief ‘deep’ or Tiefe ‘depth’, and hohl ‘hollow’, Höhle ‘hole’). 5 The Polish drążyć and the German tiefen and aushöhlen share downward, forward, and even upward trajectories (the first two are experientially preferred directions, though). By contrast, in its ICM the German fahren contains the meaning of driving while the prefix auf (Eng. ‘on’, ‘onto’) denotes an upward or on top trajectory (taking out, extracting) or alternatively a movement in front of or across from something (running into or onto something). Moreover, in the case of the German tiefen/ aushöhlen and the Polish drążyć, the action of deepening=making a hole conceptually invokes an outside-inside trajectory towards the imagistic inside of the container, crossing its boundaries. As regards auffahren, in the first variant extracting entails the opposite direction, i.e. an inside-outside trajectory (out of the container). In the other variant, running into/onto something construes the movement of a tool (machine), i.e. the trajector. Its trajectory moves towards the landmark, the container, but it stops short of crossing its boundaries. The above contrastive analysis, based on the stage model, has found that the Polish and German specialist languages differ in the conceptualization of the same action, i.e. ‘driving a shaft’. The difference is found at the level of ICMs: making 4 These pairs of verbs exhibit aspectual differences because the Polish drążyć expresses a durative action while the German tiefen, aushöhlen, and auffahren are aspectually neutral because the semantic feature of durativity/terminativity is not grammaticalized in German, cf. Slobin (2003: 380ff). 5 The meanings of the German lexemes have been taken from DWDS, the Polish ones from WSJP (see References).
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a hole vs. driving/ running into/onto something, which causes a potential clash in the user’s semantics of perception.6
5.3 Verb Transfers in the Acquisition of Lithuanian as a Second Language The following examples primarily include specialist terms and have been taken from the practice materials that I have used in my Lithuanian as a Foreign Language course. Two of them are genuine utterances produced by the students, while examples (2) and (5) come from the assigned translation exercises. In terms of predication, phrases (2), which is in the infinitive, as well as (4) and (5), which are passive participles, are in fact deverbal derivatives. According to Langacker’s (2008: 118f.) view of construal, such forms strictly do not designate a process, but profile nonprocessual relationships. However, this does not preclude stage analysis in the trajector/landmark model. Moreover, besides the imperfective form in example (3), all the other transferred verbs are perfective. Let us then move on to the stage model and analyze the examples one by one.
5.3.1 Example of Transfer: Lith. Padalyti < Pol. Rozdzielić (2) Lith. padalyti energijos kiekius įmonėms (jc3)7 < Pol. ‘rozdzielićkwoty energii (elektrycznej) dla przedsiębiorstw’, (‘divide (electric) energy quotas for companies)’; Model translation: ‘paskirstyti energijos kiekius įmonėms’, (‘distribute (electric) energy quotas for companies’).
Example (2) includes the colloquial verb padalyti (its approximate equivalent in English is divide), which has been semantically calqued from Polish rozdzielić. The source verb in this transfer, i.e. rozdzielić, conceptualizes the resulting activity of ‘dividing’ a set of metaphorical containers (Ld) with electric energy (energy quotas), which has been performed for beneficiaries (companies) by the presumed trajector (energy supplier)8. In its source form, the Polish prefix roz- marks an activity with more than one trajectory of ‘distribution’ in “various directions” with some beneficiaries presumed. The Lithuanian base form dalyti is the conceptual 6 In his discussion of the semantics of perception, Lakoff (1987: 125ff.) emphasizes that perception entails categorization, which is dependent on the acquired ICMs (i.e., knowledge or stereotypes). 7 The symbols in parentheses stand for the student’s initials and year of study. 8 In the DLKZ dictionary (2000: 469), the meaning of the verb padalyti is provided in the first position in the sense of ‘dividing’, and in the second position – as ‘distribution’.
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twin of the Polish dzielić (‘divide’). Regarding the differences in the construal of prefixes, the Lithuanian pa- compared to the Polish roz- profiles the processual state a little more statically, with hardly any trajectory of movement and ‘distribution’. However, the sense is compensated for by other words. The specialist terms used in the Lithuanian energy discourse are energijos skirstymas (energy distribution) and the verb skirstyti (distribute). The latter form differs in its ICM from its Polish equivalents przydzielić/rozdzielić (distribute) mainly because the meaning profile of the skir- root is closer to the prototype of “separating the whole into its constituent parts”. Moreover, it also expresses an iterative action (in Lithuanian, there is a fairly regular semantic opposition of basic forms and suffixal derivatives, in the resultative and iterative sense, e.g., skirti: skirstyti). Thus, it becomes clear why a colloquial verb has been used in the energy discourse. The verb form used in the Polish-Lithuanian translation is based on the lexical-semantic archetype of the Polish (roz)dzielić. This choice is further justified because, unlike the transferred equivalent, the Polish verb as a radial category contains an extension of the specialist meaning.
5.3.2 Example of Transfer: Lith. Dengti < Pol. *Pokrywać 9 (3) Lith. koraliniai rifai dengia apie du šimtai peniasdešimt kvadratinių kilometrų paviršiaus (mm4) < generated from Polish *rafy koralowe pokrywają około 250 km2 powierzchni, (‘the coral reef covers an area of around 250 square kilometers’); Model sentence: ‘koraliniai rifai u ž i m a apie du šimtus peniasdešimt kvadratinių kilometrų paviršiaus’, (‘the coral reef occupies an area of around 250 square kilometers’).
Sentence (3) is an assertive statement about the area of coral reefs. To convey messages about the size of an area, Lithuanian uses restrictive structures, the most common of which is X užima Y (X occupies Y). The verb dengia (cover) used in the above example does not occur with quantitative modifiers in specialist discourse. There are no such constraints in Polish. To refer to the size of an area, two verbs can be used: pokrywać (cover), which is preferred when the covering object is profiled (in the above example, the coral reef), and zajmować (occupy), when the area itself takes precedence. This rule embraces a cognitive analysis of the above example, which brings us to the mental archetype in L1. Based on the close affinity of the ICMs of the Lithuanian dengti and the Polish pokrywać, the source of the transfer can be identified with relative ease. Both verbs denote the 9 The asterisk indicates lexemes or phrases that are transferred as mental projections/ anticipations, reconstructed on the basis of analysis.
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action of covering an area = Ld (provided in specific figures) by Tr (here: the personified coral reef). In this usage, both also express the identical durative action. However, the two verb forms differ in aspect: the Polish pokrywa is perfective while its Lithuanian equivalent dengia – imperfective. Yet, in this case, this aspectual difference can in fact be minimized. The Polish pokrywać contains a prefix (quasi-prefix), and in most contexts has a durative meaning (as opposed to the terminative pokryć). It is also classified as a performative verb, which despite its perfectiveness, can occur in various present tense structures in selected discourse types (e.g., law or administration ) to provide ‘current’ information about the ongoing process or present state of affairs. The action aspect is then ‘suspended’, as in the following Polish sentence from a geography textbook: “rafy koralowe pokrywają olbrzymią powierzchnię u wybrzeży Australii” (‘coral reefs cover a huge area along the Australian coast’). In terms of construal, this usage creates an impression of state/process continuity, which brings it very close to the scheme of imperfectiveness (on performatives, see Langacker 2008: 159).
5.3.3 Example of Transfer: Lith. Sujungtas < Pol. *Związany (*Łączony /*Kojarzony) (4) Lith. danguje sujungtas su jomis yra žvaigždynas X (jw4): < generated from Polish: *na niebie związany (łączony/ kojarzony) jest z nimi gwiazdozbiór X, (‘in the sky they are linked with constellation X’); Model sentence: ‘dangaus skliaute su jomis siejamas X žvaigždynas’, (‘in the sky they are associated with constellation X’).
The above sentence has been generated in a speech made by a student. Its projected meaning is “a sign of the zodiac (probably Pisces) is associated with a constellation in the sky”. The employed predicate sujungtas = Pol. związany (connected) is the passive participle derived from the verb jungti = Pol. łączyć (link). In the broader meaning context of the mental “association of entities”, the participle sujungtas, with its colloquial and ‘harsh’ coloring, can somehow be properly understood, but only thanks to the hearer’s pragmatic competence (cf. Szwabe 2008: Ch. 8). However, in formal language, i.e. in media discourse, it is unacceptable.10 The correct form used by Lithuanian native speakers is siejamas,-a ‘associated’ – the present passive participle derived from sieti – ‘associate, link objects/concepts, but only mentally’. By contrast, sujungtas is reserved for connections in a physical sense. Hence, we have an example of a lexical-semantic error. 10 In 96 examples in DLKT (see References), I did not find a single example of usage in the sense of association.
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The transferred semantic association indicates the transfer of a unit from the basic lexicon. How can the source of this transfer be found in L1? The best way to do it is through the construal of the L1-L2-transferred unit in order to explicate the prototypical meanings. The starting point is the propositional ICM of the verb jungti, the base form, which exhibits imagistic parallels of the Tr/Ld relationship with the Polish equivalents: łączyć (connect) and wiązać (link). Conceptually, jungti and its Polish equivalents are based on the propositional ICM of the prototypical action of connecting. What they share in their construal is that the trajector is located outside the presupposed landmark, which consists of at least two components. In both cases, the trajector transmits energy in the centripetal direction, and tries to connect elements with each other (imperfective action). This line of thinking is supported by pragmatic data in Polish as both łączyć and wiązać regularly occur as extensions of association 11. Hence, the user’s meaning projection, which triggered the error, was correct from the L1 perspective. The source lexeme was the past participle związany (connected), whose Lithuanian equivalent is sujungtas. However, according to the pragmatic rules of Lithuanian, a different lexeme, in a different participial form is required. Finally, the present passive participle, which needs to be used in this context, is non-existent in Polish. This causes additional difficulty in the acquisition of this Lithuanian structure.
5.3.4 Example of Transfer: Lith. Perdarytas < Pol. Przetworzony (5) Lith. perdarytas maistas < Translated from Polish ‘żywność przetworzona’ (kp4), (‘processed food’); Model translation: ‘perdirbtas maistas’, (‘processed food’).
The above (mis)translation is a striking example of gap filling and of the L2 user’s creativity as they strive to metaphorically approach an “unexplored area”. It serves as a good illustration of how a user instinctively ‘goes down’ to the level of propositional meanings. Instead of elaborating on the comparison of construal patterns involving the Lithuanian perdarytas, the Polish przerobiona (reworked), and the source form przetworzona (processed), I wish to focus on the problem of mental processing in search for equivalents. In my view, the specialist term (żywność przetworzona > żywność przerobiona) has been transposed as a result of categorization in the L1 user’s mental lexicon, which has been triggered by the lack of an equivalent specialist term in L2 at the input level. It was only thanks to the mental search for a synonymous term from the basic level (colloquial)
11 See http://nkjp.pl/poliqarp/nkjp300/query/
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lexicon that the process of categorization continued at the L1-L2 level, leading to the activation of the twin pattern ‘perdarytas maistas’. The base forms of the Polish and Lithuanian participles, i.e. przerobić and perdaryti have identical ICMs. However, the Polish przetworzyć is conceptualized from the ICM of create, while its Lithuanian specialist equivalent perdirbti from the ICM of work. Thus, the relationship between the specialist terms żywność przetworzona and perdirbtas maistas in the profile/base model is also a good example of applying the identical profile of processing to two different conceptual bases.
6. Conclusion All of the above examples are perfect illustrations of two phenomena: the process of mental ‘calquing’, and the L1-L2 semantic transfer of lexical-semantic units, which are primarily colloquial equivalents that represent the basic lexical level, and profile prototypical, propositional or imagistic meanings. Prototypical meanings of lexemes are acquired first and are stored deep in our mind. We start learning their extensions only when we become exposed to ‘scientific’ knowledge. Such extensions are difficult to learn in the process of L2 acquisition which, at least at less advanced stages, does not involve specialist knowledge or terminology. The proposed analysis by means of the figure/ground model is an effective tool for uncovering the formal and semantic link between the L1-L2-transferred verb with its L1 archetype and the relationship with the appropriate lexical-semantic unit in L2. Essentially, the proposed tool is central to linguistic analysis at the level of mental construal. It also serves as a means of exposing the user’s ICMs of the L1-L2-transferred forms and meanings and the ICMs of the primary language units, i.e. cognitive domains (semantic paths) that activate incorrect patterns. All of these elements play a key role in providing the cognitive basis of language errors. Translated by Marcin Lewandowski
References Bartmiński, J. 1990. Językowy Obraz Świata. Lublin: UMCS. Bierwiaczonek, B. 2013. Metonymy in Language, Thought and Brain. Sheffield: Equinox. DLKT – Dabartinės lietuvių kalbos tekstynas [Corpus of Current Lithuanian]: http://tekstynas.vdu.lt/tekstynas
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DLKZ – Dabartinės lietuvių kalbos žodynas [Dictionary of Current Lithuanian, 4-th Edition]. Vilnius: Mokslo ir enciklopedijų leidykla, 2000.[ http://dz.lki. lt/search/]. DWDS – Digitale Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache: http://www.dwds.de Fauconnier, G. 1985. Mental Spaces: Aspects of meaning construction in natural language. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Fauconnier, G. & Turner, M. 2002. The Way We Think: Conceptual blending and the mind’s hidden complexities. New York: Basic Books. Gorczyca, W. 2000. Znaczenie i Rozumienie w Procesie Recepcji i Tworzenia Tekstu Obcojęzycznego. Warszawa: Rea. Krzeszowski, T., P. 2012. Meaning and Translation. Part 1: Meaning. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Lakoff, G. 1987. Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What categories reveal about the mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, G. & M. Johnson. 1980. Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Langacker, R., W. 1990. Concept, Image, and Symbol. The cognitive basis of grammar. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Langacker, R., W. 2000. A dynamic usage-based model. In M. Barlow & S. Kemmer (eds.), Usage-Based Models of Language, 1–63. Stanford: CSLI Publications. Langacker, R., W. 2003. Model dynamiczny oparty na ususie językowym. In E. Dąbrowska & W. Kubiński (eds.), Akwizycja Języka w Świetle Językoznawstwa Kognitywnego, 30–117. Kraków: Universitas. Langacker, R., W. 2005. Wykłady z Gramatyki Kognitywnej. Lublin: Wydawnictwo UMCS. Langacker, R., W. 2008. Cognitive Grammar. A basic introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lauterbach, E. 2009. Sprechfehler und Interferenzprozesse beim Dometschen. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Lewandowski, M. 2013. The Language of Football: An English-Polish contrastive study. Poznań: Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM. Marcinkiewicz, J. 2011. Kognitywne i strukturalne podłoże interferencji morfosyntaktyczej w języku litewskim – i nie tylko. In I. Polańska & J. Freundlich (eds.), Zeszyty Glottodydaktyczne Jagiellońskiego Centrum Językowego 2011 (3): 137–156. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego. Marcinkiewicz, J. 2013. O kognitywnym rozumieniu interferencji oraz transferu językowego w akwizycji L2. Scripta Neophilologica Posnaniensia 13: 67–75.
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Marcinkiewicz, J. 2014. The metaphor in feedback transfer in L2 acquisition (with some examples of the interaction between the Polish and Lithuanian languages). In K. Rudnicka-Szozda & A. Szwedek (eds.), Cognitive Linguistics in the Making, 185–196. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. NKJP – Narodowy korpus języka polskiego [The National Corpus of Polish]: http:// nkjp.pl/poliqarp/nkjp300/query Podgórni, H. 2010. Interferenzbedingte Sprachfehler im lexikalischen und grammatischen Subsystem des Deutschen bei polnischen Germanistikstudenten. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego. Pöppel, E. & A., L. Edingshaus. 1998. Mózg – tajemniczy kosmos. Warszawa: PIW. Rosch, E. 1978. Principles of categorization. In E. Rosch & B. B. Lloyd (eds.), Cognition and Categorization, 27–48. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum. Slobin, D., I. 2003. Od „myśli i języka” do „myślenia dla mówienia”. In E. Dąbrowska & W. Kubiński (eds.), Akwizycja Języka w Świetle Językoznawstwa Kognitywnego, 361–402. Kraków: Universitas. Szwabe, J. 2008. Odbiór Komunikatu jako Zadanie Poznawcze. Poznań: Wydawnictwo naukowe UAM. Taylor, J., R. 1989. Linguistic Categorization. Prototypes in linguistic theory. London: Oxford University Press. Taylor, J., R. 1989. Kategoryzacja w języku. Prototypy w teorii językoznawczej. Kraków: Universitas. Tryuk, M. 2007. Przekład Ustny Konferencyjny. Warszawa: PWN Wroński, J. 1974. Niektóre zjawiska interferencji w obrębie języka niemieckiego w odmianie naukowej i zawodowej pod wpływem Języka polskiego. In T. Frankiewicz (ed.), Interferencja w Procesie Przekładu Językowego, 3–19. Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Politechniki Wrocławskiej. WSJP – Wielki słownik języka polskiego [The Great Polish Dictionary]: http:// www.wsjp.pl
Kamila Turewicz University of Humanities and Economics in Łódź
Towards More Radical Solutions for Categorization Problem in Phonology A Cognitive Grammar Perspective In the present paper, I make an attempt to consolidate two perspectives on the categorization of phonological units: one linguistic, the other neurophysiological. My goal here is to propose a more adequate description and better understanding of the cognitive / neurophysiological basis for speech production as well as the nature of phonology / phonetics interface1. Simultaneously, the analysis should shed some light on the degree of adequacy of the analytic tools available in Cognitive Grammar with respect to the problems with categorization of phonological segments, phonemes, allophones, and category overlaps.
1. Introduction Among the problems with phonological analysis that remain unresolved is the issue of category overlap, illustrated by Mompean-Gonzalez’s (2004: 445) discussion on the simultaneous category membership of two allophones: /ɾ/ and /ɾ̥/ in two phonemic categories: /t/ and /d/. A question that is particularly tantalizing in this context is: How are the hearers able to identify the intended meaning in cases such as writing/riding, biddy/bitty? The answer will be sought within Wickelgren’s (1969) proposal on context-sensitive allophones and the analytic potential of Langacker’s (1987) Cognitive Grammar. The paper consists of three parts: (i) a brief discussion on the fundamental assumptions of Cognitive Grammar that are directly relevant for the present analysis (the symbolic nature of language, the phonological structure as conceptual structure, the notion of profile/base alignment); (ii) an introduction of Wickelgren’s (1969) proposal concerning serial order in noncreative behavior; (iii) an attempt to blend Wickelgren’s “context sensitive associative memory” hypothesis
1 The theoretical problem concerning the link between phonology and phonetics is raised, among others, by Morton (1987), who provides arguments for viewing phonetic and phonological processes as distinct.
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concerning speech production with the analytic tools of Cognitive Grammar to address the problem of categorization in phonology.
2. Cognitive Grammar Essential for the analysis I postulate here is Langacker’s (1987) characterisation of (i) the symbolic nature of language, (ii) the phonological structure as conceptual structure, and (iii) the notion of profile/base alignment as a process organising conceptual material into semantic structure, thus as a process of meaning construction.2
2.1 Symbolization In Langacker’s (1987) conception of language, all language structure is symbolic. The symbolic nature of language consists in the symbolization bonds between semantic and phonological spaces. Accordingly, a language structure is a symbolic structure consisting of the semantic pole and the phonological pole symbolizing each other. Indeed, the symbolic structure (or unit) coordinates the semantic space and the phonological space.
2.2 Phonological Structure as Conceptual Structure Crucially, Langacker (1987) views sounds as concepts. Admitting some rationale behind describing phonological structures in terms of (articulatory) features, such as [+high, +front, +tense] for /i:/, Langacker (1987: 20) states that “a feature like [+high] is posited to group together a set of sounds on the basis of a systematically exploited property that they share”, while a sound, and thus its phonological representation, constitutes “an integrated system not reducible to its parts”. What it means for a phonological structure to be an integrated system, not reducible to its parts, Langacker (1987: 20) explains in the following words: If [i] were merely the sum of these components, I could pronounce it by carrying out these articulatory gestures sequentially: first vibrating of my vocal cords, then
2 Commenting on the draft of the paper, Langacker pointed out to me (e-mail communication) that he uses the term “profiling as conceptual reference, not as a general term for prominence or focusing – to avoid prejudging the issues of what other kinds of prominence are best identified as the counterpart(s) of profiling”. While respecting the remark, I will implement the concept in a more technical capacity to be specified in the section on profile/base alignment.
Towards More Radical Solutions for Categorization Problem in Phonology 315 raising my tongue, and so on. But of course I cannot. The sound is not the mere sum of these components, but rather a matter of blending them into a smooth, coordinated articulatory routine. A complete description of the sound therefore requires more than a separate account of each individual component. It must additionally – and crucially – specify such matters as their relative timing and how they influence and accommodate one another. These are the specifications of the sound’s essential systemic character.
Of particular relevance for the present analysis in Langacker’s statement quoted above is the recognition of the conceptual import to the phonological structure representing a sound of the information on how the articulatory gestures involved are performed, as well as possible reciprocal influence of the gestures. Moreover, as indicated by Langacker (1987: 78), the mental representation of a sound has a few dimensions, as it consists of “auditory impressions or perceptual routines”, “cognitively directed motor routines”, “the kinaesthetic sensations that accompany the articulatory event”, and “auditory feedback a speaker receives from his own utterances”. Indeed, Langacker (1987: 78) underlines that A complete linguistic description of phonological units must accommodate all of these dimensions, and thus require a series of parallel (but coordinated) specifications. In this respect sounds are like other concepts, which normally involve specifications in various domains of semantic space (…).
The specifications of the mental representation of a speech sound in various domains of semantic space legitimize considering “a conceptualization of a sound (…) a meaning” (Langacker 1987: 80).3 Indeed, as convincingly argued in the discussion on the nature of semantic space (Langacker 1987: 143), phonological space4 is a subregion of semantic space, and thus semantic processes, such as semantic extension, have their analogues in the phonological space. What it implies is that both in the semantic and phonological space(s), the categorization judgments allow cases where the target partly conflicts with certain specifications of the sanctioning structure.5 Besides, although I am not aware of Langacker’s explicit mention of this, if phonological structures are analogues of semantic 3 As Langacker (1987: 80) points out: “Meanings are conceptual entities, so a conceptualization of a sound can be considered a meaning”. 4 “Phonological space, (…) is our range of phonetic potential, i.e. our capacity to deal with sounds, and with speech sounds as a special case” (Langacker 1987: 76). 5 “Since phonological space is treated as a subregion of semantic space (…), we expect these notions to have phonological analogues. Parallel to semantic extension is phonological extension, i.e. instances where a phonological target conflicts with certain
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structures, and sounds, like other concepts, involve specifications in various domains of semantic space, there is a good reason to attempt to apply the notion of profile/base alignment to the analysis of phonological structures. Let me then discuss briefly the notion of profile/base alignment, as applicable to the analysis of the semantic pole of symbolic structures.
2.3 Profile/Base Alignment Langacker (1987: 183) opens the discussion on the notions of profile and base with the following words: A predication always has a certain scope (…), and within that scope it selects a particular substructure for designatum. (…), I refer to the scope of a predication and its designatum as base and profile, respectively. (…) The semantic value of an expression resides in neither the base nor the profile alone, but only in their combination; it derives from the designation of a specific entity identified and characterized by its position within a larger configuration.
In the glossary, profile is defined by Langacker (1987: 491) as: The entity designated by a semantic structure. It is a substructure within the base that is obligatorily accessed, functions as the focal point within the objective scene [locus of viewing attention (Langacker 1987: 129)] and achieves a special degree of prominence (resulting in one level of figure / ground organisation).
The idea to employ the interdependency between the profile and its base as an analytic tool for the characterisation of a semantic structure is motivated by the role of construal in organizing conceptual material into such structure. Thus, Langacker’s notions of profile and base are employed in the present article to formalize into an analytic and descriptive tool the cognitive process of selecting a substructure (the profile) out of a configuration of concepts forming its immediate context (the base). In other words, the profile/base alignment, as used here, formalizes the conceptual configuration, grasping the essential facts about the nature of semantic structure, i.e., its configurational and dynamic character. The configurational nature of semantic structure can be discussed and described in terms of an alignment between the profiled substructure and a base formed of specification relations that share the profiled substructure. The dynamicity of semantic structure can be accounted for in terms of different arrangements within
specifications of the sanctioning structure instead of merely elaborating it” (Langacker 1987: 143).
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the matrix of activated domains and profile/base alignments differing with respect to hierarchical organisation of the specification relations within the base induced by different syntagmatic contexts.6 In other words, any nod can be selected for the designatum for which a respective portion of the network defines the scope of predication; hence, any substructure in the matrix of activated domains can function as a profile provided it is shared by a portion of the network which constitutes its conceptual base. To illustrate the notion of profile/base alignment at work, let me refer to the analysis of the semantic structure of the symbolic unit [coffee/kɒfi] proposed in Turewicz (2000). As the conceptual structure is a representation of cognitive experience, the concepts relevant for the characterisation of the predicate [coffee] are representations of the types of experience involved in interacting with the real entity – coffee. Thus, as a result of interacting with coffee by drinking it, we experience it as beverage, dark colour, bitter in taste, aromatic. Each of the features has its representation in respective cognitive domains: the representation of beverage is a substructure in the domain of substance, the representation of dark colour is a substructure in the domain of colour, the representation of bitter is a substructure in the domain of taste, aromatic is represented by a substructure in the domain of smell/flavour. The semantic structure of the symbolic unit [coffee/kɒfi] is construed as a local network with a specific profile/base alignment, where the (conceptual) base is formed of the representations of the features enumerated above, whereas the profile is the nod of the network shared by the specifications forming the base. The meaning of coffee just described will be activated when one thinks of morning coffee or asks for coffee in a cafeteria or during coffee breaks. Figure 1 is a graphic representation of the network.
6 Turewicz (2007) offers a sample analysis of the semantic structure of the lexeme mother in terms of profile/base alignment.
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Figure 1: Profile/base alignment for [coffee/kɒfi]1.
Buying coffee is a different kind of experience. When one is looking for coffee in a shop and asks Do you have coffee beans / instant coffee?, a different profile/base alignment will be activated. Figure 2 is a graphic representation of a possible network of meanings that can be profiled by the phonetic sequence /kɒfi/ of the symbolic unit [coffee/kɒfi]. Thus, for coffee beans, the matrix of cognitive domains activated by the symbolic unit [coffee/kɒfi]2 will be the same as for [coffee/ kɒfi]1, but there will be a difference in the substructure activated in the domain of substance, where the specification will have the value beans. [coffee/kɒfi]3 can be postulated as the profile/base construal of instant coffee, with the specification powder in the domain of substance. For an owner of a plantation, the symbolic unit [coffee/kɒfi] can mean a different thing, for instance, raw coffee – green beans as represented in [coffee/kɒfi]4, where the activated specification in the domain of substance will be beans, whereas the value in the domain of colour will be green. Indeed, for coffee producers, a still different profile/base alignment may be activated by the phonetic sequence /kɒfi/, [coffee/kɒfi]5, in
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which the base will be formed of the profiles of the profile/base alignments specific to [coffee/kɒfi]1–4. The highest nod in the network functions as the schema for the predicates [coffee]1–4. Importantly, the meaning profiled by this schema is not the most salient one and its general value is further elaborated by the lower profile/base alignments, which thus function as subschemas in more specific categorizing judgments, such as differences in tastes of various coffee brands. The respective profile/base alignments are indicated in Figure 2 by the thickness of the lines, while the numbers next to the nodes indicate respective meanings within the whole configuration of profile/base alignments. The ellipses represent conceptual domains and active substructures in the domains. Figure 2: The network of interrelated meanings of the lexeme coffee.
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The final issue that deserves mentioning here is partial sanctioning, which occurs in cases where the target partly conflicts with certain specifications of the sanctioning structure (Langacker 1987: 143). To illustrate this, let us consider cases where, for some language users, the phonetic sequence /kɒfi/ stands (via metonymy) for coffee with milk. In that case, the specifications in the domain of colour and taste may conflict with the values activated by [coffee/kɒfi]1. Still, as long as there is enough coffee in the drink, i.e., there is remarkable overlap of the values in the domain smell/flavour, coffee with milk can be categorized as coffee. Worth noting is the fact that the matrix of activated domains will be the same for all the meanings involved. However, different meanings activated by the phonological structure /kɒfi/ result from different construals of the conceptual material from the matrix of domains, construals which consist in the alignment between a certain base and its profile.
3. Wickelgren’s (1969) Proposal on Serial Order in Noncreative Behavior Wickelgren’s (1969) proposal concerning serial order in the pronunciation of words stems from Lashley’s (1951) rejection of associative theories as incapable of accounting for the serial order of elementary motor responses – the neurological system involved in various kinds of noncreative behavior, e.g., simple hand movements, walking, etc., as well as speech production. As a linguist, I do not feel competent to enter into the dispute on issues from psychology and will refrain from subscribing to either Lashley’s or Wickelgren’s arguments concerning associative theories. Nevertheless, as I find Wickelgren’s (1969) proposal referring to speech production inspiring for linguistic analysis, prior to presenting the proposal, I will briefly report on the dispute in which it is rooted. The notions relevant for the discussion – i.e., noncreative behavior, elementary motor responses (emrs) and serial order – are defined below: (i) “noncreative behavior (…) occurs repeatedly in an essentially equivalent manner”, as in the case of “the pronunciation of almost all single words and familiar phrases” (Wickelgren 1969: 2). (ii) an elementary motor response is understood as the neuronal firing that transmits information to the musculature; thus, emrs for speech sounds will be understood as neuronal activity transmitting respective information from the central conceptual system to the peripheral articulatory musculature.
Towards More Radical Solutions for Categorization Problem in Phonology 321 (iii) serial order – the order of emrs that guarantees proper performance of the neural system for the intended action; in the case of articulation, serial order means the order of speech sounds proper for a particular word.
The interdependency between noncreative behavior, emrs, serial order and conceptual structure is grasped by the following quotation: “a noncreative behavior sequence is controlled by a single sequence of internal representatives of elementary motor responses, at the central articulatory level controlling the behavior” (Wickelgren 1969: 2).
3.1 The Lashley – Wickelgren Dispute The Lashley – Wickelgren dispute addressed the question whether associativechain theories were capable of accounting for (and explaining) the phenomenon of serial order in noncreative behavior, as exemplified by the pronunciation of words requiring the articulation of sounds properly ordered. Both Lashley and Wickelgren assumed for the associative model for speech production “some level of the nervous system (…) capable of activating (directly or indirectly) an articulatory representation of the word” (Wickelgren 1969: 4).7 In Lashley’s (1951) argumentation, a word representative was associated with the unordered set of context-independent phoneme-representatives for a particular word. Thus, under the associative memory model, the word representative, by strength of associations, would properly/correctly select an unordered set of context-free phonemes from the inventory of speech sound representatives for the language. Accordingly, associative theory answered the question why certain phonemes were selected. However, according to Lashley (1951), the existence of phonemic/ phonetic anagrams, such as /strʌk/ and /krʌst/, where the same phonemes would be activated by two different word representatives, provided evidence against the associative theories as incapable of accounting for the different orderings of the phonemes. Simply, the theories accounted only for proper selection of phonemes as representatives of emrs for the articulation, leaving the issues of serial order unaccounted for. Hence, Lashley’s conclusion was that the information on the
7 “With an associative system, one would say that the visual or auditory internal representative of the word was associated (directly or indirectly) to the articulatory representative. If the coding of a word in the visual or auditory or some abstract (verbal) conceptual system is “distinct enough” from the coding of all other words, then the strength of associations from this word-representative to the phoneme representatives in the articulatory system provides adequate information concerning the unordered set of phonemes in the pronunciation of any given word” (Wickelgren 1969: 4).
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serial orders of the emrs involved in the pronunciation of the two words had to come from outside the associative system. In other words, for Lashley, the theory was not capable of accounting for what it was in the system of associations that underpinned competing associations of the selected set of phonemes for /strʌk/ and /krʌst/, to the effect that two different orders in the articulatory behavior were possible. Figure 3 is an attempt to represent the problem graphically. The largest ellipsis represents the domain of representatives of articulatory gestures with sample phonemes of English. The smaller ellipses represent two different word representatives which activate the same set of phonemes. For illustrative purposes, the smaller ellipses differ in the thickness of the lines, which are also used to draw relevant links between a free phoneme from the domain of phonemes of English and its position in the respective word representative. As the figure shows, the domain of articulatory gesture representatives consists of an unordered set of contextfree phonemes, whereas the respective word representatives consist of sequences of the same phonemes but in different orders. The question marks relate to the motivation behind this particular order. Figure 3: The graphic representation of the problem posited by Lashley.
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Wickelgren (1969: 1) argued that Lashley “falsely concluded that he had disproved associative-chain theories of serial order in non-creative behavior sequences” and provided arguments saving the associative theory by postulating an innovative conception of a speech sound representative. Wickelgren’s (1969: 5) innovative proposal involves “context sensitive coding” of emrs as a “plausible solution of the problem of serial order in non-creative behavior”. The argument goes as follows (Wickelgren 1969: 3): Lashley assumed that behavior sequences are composed of a number of elementary motor responses (emrs) which can and do occur in a large variety of orders. These emrs are considered to be the same regardless of the context of the other emrs in which they occur. Or, regardless of whether or not the emrs are unchanged by their contexts, the internal representative of these emrs are assumed to be identical for all contexts.8
Wickelgren’s proposal saving the associative theories for serial order is based on the assumption that representatives of sounds / the emrs for the articulation of sounds, similarly to emrs for other noncreative behaviors, are context sensitive. Thus, he postulates that context-free emrs represented in context-free phonemes should be replaced by context-sensitive emrs represented by context-sensitive allophones. The proposal goes as follows (Wickelgren 1969: 5): Let u, v, w, x, y, z stand for emrs in some system, for example, phonemes in the speech system. Let yxz stand for the x which is preceded by y and followed by z. Instead of assuming (…) that the internal representation of yxz and uxw are identical for all x, y, z, u and w, we shall assume that the internal representative of x’s in different local bilateral contexts are different.
8 In this context, two points should be made, following Wickelgren (1969: 4): Firstly, “within an associative system, we may assume that the unordered set of phonemerepresentatives for a particular word [emrs] is selected by strength of associations to the word representative. This means that to obtain the correct ordered set of phonemes [and thus correct sequence of emrs], one only need worry about competing associations between pairs of phonemes both of which are in the word”. Secondly, “phoneme to phoneme associations cannot be the basis for the serial ordering of the phonemes in these two words, because the unordered sets of phonemes [activated by word representatives] are identical in both cases and the ordering is different”.
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As Wickelgren’s understanding of the term allophone differs from the definition of allophone generally accepted in linguistics,9 I will use the term wickelphone10 to refer to the context-sensitive representative of a speech sound (and the representative of its context-sensitive emr). What can be gained by postulating contextsensitive wickelphones is illustrated with Lashley’s examples /strʌk/ and /krʌst/. The point is that under Wickelgren’s assumption the two word representatives will be (i) associated with different sets of sound representative-wickelphones, one for /strʌk/: #st, str, trʌ, rʌk, ʌk# , and the other one for /krʌst/:#kr, krʌ, rʌs, ʌst, st#; (ii) the activated wickelphones, as representatives of context-sensitive emrs, will control the order of articulatory gestures, because of the information concerning the preceding and the following sounds, encoded in their structure. As should be noted, the set of wickelphones activated for each of the word representatives incorporates also the ones specified by the contextual feature beginning #xy, and end yx#. When postulating wickelphones, Wickelgren (1969: 6) accounted for serial order as follows: Assuming again that the unordered set of context-sensitive emrs representatives is partially activated by the word representative, then all that is needed to achieve full activation of the set in the correct order is the well-learned association from the internal representative of “begin” to the set of emr representatives *xz. In the case of /struk/ this will cause *st to be the most strongly activated emr, at first. Then str will be most strongly associated to *st among the all partially activated emrs composing the word, (….) and so on. … an emr so emitted whenever its internal representative [wickelphone] is the most strongly (fully) activated, (…), once fully activated, an emr-representative remains fully activated only for a short period of time before being inhibited and transferring control to the next emr-representative.
As the above quotation indicates, the model based on wickelphones defines neurological links between the central conceptual level of speech sound representatives and the peripheral musculature articulatory level; the links are elementary motor responses. Of both interest and importance is the claim that elementary motor responses, and thus their representatives, are context-sensitive in the fashion characteristic of figure/ground organization. In this, the most salient part of the representative corresponds to the perception and traditional conception of a 9 “Allophone is in this paper to stand for a phoneme in a particular context of phonemes on either side. Most specifically, ‘allophone’ stands for a phoneme with a phoneme specified before and after it. In other words, the allophone concept is defined in terms of phoneme concept, and refers to a class of similar speech sounds or gestures occurring in a specified environment” (Wickelgren 1969: 6f). 10 The term was used by Rumelhart and McClelland (1987).
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phoneme, while the preceding and following values remain beyond awareness of either the speakers or the hearers. Figure 4: The activation of wickelphones of *st str t rʌ rʌk ʌk*.
Figure 4 is an attempt to grasp Wickelgren’s idea of the word representative activating a set of context-sensitive allophones, i.e. wickelphones: *st str t rʌ rʌk ʌk*. The thickest lines indicate what figures in the awareness of the speaker / hearer. The thinnest line is used to indicate the contextual information, beyond awareness of the speaker / hearer, the information encoded in wickelphones beside the profiled structure. Among other arguments supporting his proposal, Wickelgren (1969: page) refers to evidence that “coarticulation effects appear to be found at the motor neuron level” and hence “context sensitive (…) coding is likely for the more central levels of the articulatory system as well”. Simultaneously, he makes an interesting point concerning the status of the phoneme in the context-sensitive associative theory. In relation to wickelphones, the phoneme is a class of context-sensitive allophones (wickelphones) based on similarity of articulation. Accordingly, Wickelgren (1969: 5) postulates notation of the form _x_ to represent the sets of wickelphones forming a phoneme. As far as its role for cognitive functioning is concerned, “phoneme representatives need not play a role in the control of articulation, but they must be quite important for other purposes, such as learning to
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speak” (Wickelgren 1969: 11). It appears that he postulates three levels of speech processing: the highest, conceptual level of phonemes, the intermediate level of context-sensitive representatives, i.e., the wickelphones, and the peripheral level of articulatory musculature controlled through emrs by the wickelphones (as the emrs representatives). Closing up the brief discussion on Wickelgren’s proposal, I would like to argue that his wickelphones and the conception of the phoneme somehow anticipated the cognitive reanalysis of categorization (Rosch 1978) and the radically unorthodox methodologies that have been developing within Cognitive Linguistics, with Cognitive Grammar as one of its main brands. Specifically, the relation between the phoneme and wickelphones complies with that of categorization by the schema, whereas the relations within the sets of wickelphones appear to comply with the categorization by the prototype, as it seems to me intuitively sound to expect that some wickelphones sanctioned by a given phoneme schema will be more prototypical than others. Indeed, in the theoretical discussion on phonemes as complex categories, Langacker (1987, 10.3.2.) argues for multilevel category structure in which allophones are related to their phoneme via categorization by the schema, whereas the relations among allophones are based on prototypes. The analysis postulated here implements Langacker’s characterization of phonemes as complex categories formed of hierarchies of networks. Simultaneously, in view of Wickelgren’s hypothesis, the present analysis has three aims. Firstly, it implements the concept of profile/base alignment as an analytic tool capable of grasping precisely what is pointed out by Langacker (1987: 390) when he states that: “The phoneme (…) is not identical in this model with either this topmost schema or the prototype (…); it is equated with the entire schematic network”. Secondly, my goal is to accommodate the contextual information encoded in the structure of wickelphones as base specifications of profile/base alignment construals mediating between the phoneme and its allophones. Finally, the proposal put forward in this paper will present phoneme networks as multilevel profile/base construals, in which the specification relations forming respective bases are indicative of what is shared by different allophones within the phoneme and, at a higher level of organization, shared by different phonemes within the archiphone.
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4. Wickelphone as a Profile/Base Construal Let me begin with Wickelgren’s observation that the phoneme11 is the representative of a set of context-sensitive allophones. As reflected by the notation he postulates, for the phoneme _x_12 and for the wickelphones zxw, sxt, sxw, the relation between the phoneme and its wickelphones is that of the schema and its elaborations, i.e., the relation sanctioning category membership of the wickelphones, which share some articulatory feature(s) /x/ and differ in context-determined articulatory features “z_w, s_t, s_w”. Simultaneously, in agreement with Wickelgren’s (1969) observation that phonemes belong to the most abstract level of speech sound representation, while context-sensitive allophones / wickelphones constitute the conceptual level directly controlling the articulatory movements, I view wickelphones rather than phonemes as cognitive structures definable in terms of articulatory features. By analogy to the semantic structure of the lexeme coffee, where the most schematic meaning derives from the profile/base alignment with local profile/base alignments as specifications of the base, I assume that the conceptual structure of a phoneme derives from the profile/base alignment whose base consists of wickelphones while the profile is the nod shared by the wickelphones. By the same token, construals organizing representatives of articulatory features into local profile/base alignments (where the base is formed of both the articulatory features in common and those representing types of contexts) characterize the cognitive structure of each wickelphone. Summing up, wickelphones are here conceived of as local profile/base alignments, organizing representatives of articulatory features into construals representing unique emrs. To substantiate the argumentation, let us take /_p_/ as our case. As the representation of a wickelphone derives from the articulatory facets of speech sound (rather than acoustic ones), their characterization requires reference to articulatory features, that is to say, features defining the information that the relevant emrs transport to the peripheral articulatory system, activating the relevant articulatory organs in a particular way. To discern the articulatory features for the wickelphones, we need to identify articulatory organs that are activated by emrs whose representatives are the wickelphones. Thus, articulatory behaviors of the lungs, the vocal folds, the tongue, the lips and the soft palate are represented as 11 Wickelgren (1969) assumed that the phoneme was a context-free cognitive structure as no overt context was discernible. In view of Cognitive Grammar, the schema whose structure presupposes contexts as elaborations is a context-dependent structure. 12 It should be stressed at this point that although Wickelgren (1969) viewed the phoneme as a context-free structure, the notation presupposed context.
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articulatory features forming the domain of phonological potential for a given language. Incidentally, the articulatory information on which articulatory organ is involved in the articulation and how corresponds to the traditional place and manner of articulation.
5. Inventory of Symbols for Articulatory Features This section provides the inventory of symbols for articulatory features that are implemented in the analysis that follows. The notation postulated below is meant to reflect upon both the articulatory organs involved and the type of behavior they perform. Thus, vocal folds can assume one of four positions: (i) wide open, represented as “˄”13; (ii) narrow and tense, represented as “][”; (iii) narrow and lax for voice, represented as “♪”; and (iv) closed/open, represented as “Ѥ”. In the phonological system of English, two of the positions have phoneme status: the position described as narrow and tense is referred to as glottal friction, represented by the phoneme symbol /h/, whereas the closed/open position is referred to as glottal stop, represented by the phoneme symbol /ʔ/. As I attempt to identify the features reflecting the behaviors of articulatory organs controlled by emrs, rather than the articulatory effects of the behaviors, I will refrain from implementing the symbols /h/ and /ʔ/ in the analysis. Lips as movable organs can either form a closure or narrowing. However, as English does not have a bilabial fricative, I account for the “lips: closed/open” position only. The symbol for lips is “≈”, the symbol for closed/open is “Ѥ”, hence, I propose the symbol “≈:Ѥ” for the articulatory position “lips: closed/open”, ignoring the behavior “lips: narrow and tense”, which in the system can be represented as “ ≈:][”. The soft palate is represented by the symbol “~”. The soft palate can be raised, which is symbolized as “ ˇ ”, or lowered, which is symbolized as “ ˆ ”. Hence, the symbol for soft palate raised is “~ˇ ”, while the symbol for soft palate lowered is “~ ˆ ”. The tongue, represented as “t”, can form a narrowing with the upper teeth, represented by “te”. Hence, “te/t:][” represents articulatory gesture “teeth/tongue: narrowing”. The tongue can form a narrowing with alveolar ridge, represented as “a”; hence, “a/t:][” symbolizes “alveolar/tongue: narrowing”; it can form a closure with the alveolar ridge and hence “a/t:Ѥ” symbolizes “alveolar/tongue: closed/ 13 The postulated symbols, regardless of whether they represent a simple articulatory value – an articulatory organ or the type of activity – or a combination of articulatory behaviour and the articulators involved, are put in inverted commas.
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open”. It can form a closure with the soft palate/uvula, represented as “u”. Hence, “u/t: Ѥ” symbolizes “uvula/tongue: closed/open”. Furthermore, assuming various shapes in the oral cavity, the tongue enables articulation of vowels, whose quality is related to two aspects: (i) which part of the tongue is involved in the articulation: front represented as “f ”, central represented as “c” or back represented as “b”; (ii) the position of the respective part of the tongue along a vertical axis: high, represented as “h”, medium high as “mh”, medium low represented as “ml”, low as “l”. Also, for English vowels, the tension of the tongue differentiates between phonemes. Thus, the features tense, represented as “tn”, and lax, represented as “lx”, also participate in the characterization of vowels. All in all, the articulatory positions for English pure vowels will be represented as follows: “tftn/h”, “tflx/h”, “tflx/mh”, “tflx/ml”, “tbtn/h”, “tblx/mh”, “tbtn/mh”, “tblx/ ml”, “tbtn/l”, “tclx/l”, “tctn/ml”, “tclx/ml”. The question that needs to be addressed now is what, if anything, can be gained by postulating such a complicated system of articulatory features representing articulatory gestures. Figure 5 offers an answer and allows us to proceed with the argumentation. It should be noted that the wickelphones represented in the figure do not exist in English. Figure 5: A graphic representation of profile/base alignments for xpy, ztw, skv, rɪn, mɒj ɑ:nɒ.
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In the figure, the largest ellipsis represents the (cognitive) domain of representatives of selected articulatory gestures. The outer circles / ellipses represent potential wickelphones; the links between an outer circle / ellipsis (symbolizing a potential wickelphone) and the respective representatives of articulatory gestures (values in the largest circle) reflect the profile/base alignment defining the conceptual structure of the wickelphone. The base of such a profile/base alignment is formed of articulatory features (as representatives of emrs) that need to be simultaneously activated to articulate the intended sound. Different profile/base alignments are symbolized by thickness of the line. The inevitability of the simultaneous activation of the base is indicated by meeting of all the feature representatives involved in the shared circle / ellipsis – the profile. Indeed, what we have arrived at are local networks of features sharing a nod, hence a graphic representation of a profile/base construal, the construal defining conceptual structure of respective wickelphones, in which the activated articulatory features – the representatives of emrs – form the base. In view of the above, the conceptual structure for each phoneme can be represented by means of a profile/base alignment, in which the profiled value derives from a simultaneous activation of selected features from the domain representing articulatory gestures; the features form the base in the construal. Interestingly, some features: “˄”, “Ѥ”, “~:ˇ”, participate in the bases of profile/base alignments of p , t , k , thus, presumably, it is reasonable to postulate a higher level schema for x y z w s v p , t , k characterized as the profile/base alignment with only three specification x y z w s v relations for the base: a closure “Ѥ”, vocal folds wide open “˄”, soft palate raised “~:ˇ”. As for vowel wickelphones, the articulatory features shared by both rɪn, mɒj is voice “♪” and a shape of the tongue, which might suggest a schema for vowels defined by the profile/base alignment whose base will consist of two articulatory feature representatives: vocal folds vibrating and a shape of the tongue. While Figure 5 is here argued to reflect the extent to which profile/base alignment can grasp the conceptual nature of wickelphones, it does not reflect the relation between the phoneme and wickelphones. Thus, let us consider Figure 6 as a graphic representation of the network activated by the profile/base alignment for the phoneme /_p_/, which is reinterpreted here as the most schematic wickelphone, predicting in its structure co-articulation gestures.
Towards More Radical Solutions for Categorization Problem in Phonology 331 Figure 6: A graphic representation of the network of profile/base alignments for the phoneme /_p_/.
The problem with Figure 6 is its internal complexity, which reflects the complexity of the configuration of networks that represent speech sounds categorized by the wickelphone schema /_p_/. The notational convention is that the thickest line of the configuration represents the profile/base alignment in which the articulatory gestures: “~:ˇ” – soft palate raised, “≈:Ѥ” – lips closed/opened and “˄” – the vocal folds wide open form the conceptual base for the profile /_p_/ – the phoneme / wickelphone schema. The thinner line ellipses represent profiled substructures of sample wickelphones sanctioned by the phoneme – wickelphone schema /_p_/. Again, each of the wickelphones can be represented as a local profile/base alignment such that their bases share the three articulatory gestures “~:ˇ”, “≈:Ѥ”, “˄” and differ in the presence of the wickelphone specific co-articulatory gestures; the values of the co-articulatory gestures are indicated by the thinnest line ellipses. The thickest links represent the highest schema configuration, the thinner links represent local profile/base alignment configurations, each of which consists of a profiled ellipsis and five links to specific articulatory values. Indeed, it makes sense to assume that the schema /_p_/ is defined by the profile/base alignment
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with wickelphones as the conceptual base, though the profiled structure simultaneously, albeit indirectly, participates in the overall construal, whose base consists of the representatives of the articulatory gestures shared by all the wickelphones. What can be gained from this analysis for understanding the process of speech production and perception will be presented on the basis of the articulation of the word pot controlled by wickelphones [*pɒ], [pɒt], [ɒt*]. Figure 7 is designed to reflect the process. Figure 7: The graphic representation of speech production and perception on the basis of the articulation of the word /pɒt/ as the process controlled by wickelphones: [*pɒ], [pɒt], [ɒt*].
Figure 7 presents a model in which six articulatory levels are specified. It should be stressed, however, that they are postulated for descriptive purposes only, because the articulatory process involves simultaneous responses of the system at each stage of articulation. Level 1 corresponds to Wickelgren’s central conceptual level, where phonemes are activated by a word representative, be it an external impulse, such as a spelling
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form, or an internal one, such as the conception of the word. The phonemes are represented as profiles in profile/base alignments, reflected in the notation /_p_ /. Level 2 presents the responses of the chest muscles correlating with the articulation of syllables: one pulse of the air expelled from the lungs correlates with one syllable. In Figure 7, the first triangle represents the breath prior to articulation, the second larger triangle represents the major pulse for the stressed syllable (one-syllable words are normally stressed), and the third triangle stands for breath again; all articulatory gestures for the word correlate with the single pulse. Level 3 presents the wickelphones as interface between phonemes (wickelphone schemas) and the peripheral articulatory system. The word representative (level 1) selects relevant wickelphones: only the proper ones are activated due to their internal structure, profile/base alignments, whose bases incorporate information about possible contexts, and the correspondences between the phonemes (level 1) in word representative and the specifications within the bases of the wickelphones (level 3). Presumably, the contextual information in the activated wickelphones organizes them in a proper order (the problem of serial order) so that the emrs activated by the wickelphones are activated in the order proper for the word. Level 4 is the articulatory level, where articulatory gestures of vocal folds controlled by emrs (activated by wickelphones) respond to the profiled value of the wickelphone but, at the same time, due to contextual information in the bases of the stops, anticipate both sudden voicing by the glottal friction gesture before the vowel, and the sudden no-voice stage by the glottal stop gesture before the voiceless stop: pre-fortis clipping. Crucially, the wickelphone for the vowel [pɒt], due to its base specification that a no-voice articulation follows, abruptly ends the voice production, thus giving the acoustic effect of shortening of the vowel. Indeed, the coarticulation effects can be seen as specifications belonging simultaneously to both neighboring profile/base alignments. Level 5 is the level of specific articulatory gestures. In the case under discussion, the contextual information encoded in the bases of the wickelphones may result in anticipatory lip rounding during the release phase of [*pɒ], whereas the “end” specification in the base of the final wickelphone [ɒt*] may result in a very weak plosion, or no plosion at the release phase, considering the end of the air pulse stage. Level 6 represents the level where nasal flavor can be produced by the articulatory gesture “soft palate down”; with the articulatory gesture “soft palate up”, oral sounds are produced. In the case under analysis, the soft palate remains raised as none of the bases in the profile/base alignments representing the wickelphones
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involved contains specification “nasal release/soft palate down”. Naturally, the “begin” specification in the base of the initial wickelphone activates the “soft palate up” articulatory behavior, whereas the “end” specification in the base of the final wickelphone activates the “soft palate down” articulatory behavior as for breathing.
6. Discussion and Conclusions As argued above, the idea of context-sensitive wickelphones interfaces with linguistic conceptualizations postulated within Cognitive Grammar, whereas the blending of the two perspectives allows for more adequate description of cognitive/neurophysiological intricacies of speech production mechanisms, as presented in Figure 7. Besides, the blending of the two perspectives offers a solution to the problem of category overlap and archiphonemes (Mompean-Gonzalez 2004). Assuming Wickelgren’s idea of context-sensitive allophones as speech representatives (thus the emrs representatives) and evoking the notion of profile/ base alignment as the construal characterizing the cognitive structure of wickelphones, I would argue that the structure of the wickelphones allows the hearer to decide whether a voiced flap belongs to the traditional phonemic categories /t/ or /d/. More precisely, the conception and perception of speech sounds in a specific order, like for potty, for a BBC English speaker, and probably a number of American English speakers, will activate respective wickelphones, organized through contextual information in their bases into sequence [*pɒhpɒtʔɒti hti*], in which aspiration mediates between the first stop and the first vowel, the second stop and the second vowel, whereas the pre-fortis clipping mediates between the first vowel with the second consonant. For some speakers of American English, a slightly different sequence of wickelphones will be activated: [*pɒhpɒtʔɒɾiɾi*], in which the contextual information on the vowel following the second stop /t/ (on the so called “intervocalic position”) will activate vocal folds vibration immediately after the pre-fortis clipping to the effect the alveolar voiceless stop will be realized as a voiced flap with no aspiration following. Crucially, in both cases the emr/wickelphone of the first vowel activates the contextual information encoded in its base t/fortis-stop-follows / vocal-folds-suddenly-open and transmits it to the vocal folds to the effect of abrupt closure of the folds to stop vibration (essential for vowels), which will result in the acoustic effect of shortening of the vowel. For exactly the same reasons, for the hearer, the perception of shortened vowel will activate the profile/base alignment for the /_t_/ phoneme sanctioning the acoustic input generated by [ʔɒtih] and [ʔɒɾi]
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wickelphones in the relation of full sanction in the former case and partial sanction in the latter one.14 As regards the problem of archiphonemes, I would argue that the archiphonemes are conceptual schemas which sanction more specific schemas (basic level categories), which could be phonemes. By analogy to viewing phonemes as profiles in profile/base alignments whose bases would consist of wickelphones sharing a few articulatory gestures/features, archiphonemes can be conceived of as cognitive structures – profile/base alignments whose bases would incorporate a family of phonemes, for example, fortis stops.
References Fisher, W. M. & I. J Hirsh. 1976. Intervocalic flapping in English. In S. S. Mufwene, C. A. Walker & S. B. Steever (eds.), Papers from the Twelfth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, 183–198. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society. Fox, R. A. & D. Terbeek. 1977. Dental flaps, vowel duration and rule ordering in American English. Journal of Phonetics 5: 27–34. Langacker, R. W. 1987. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar. Theoretical prerequisites. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Langacker, R. W. 1988. A usage-based model. In B. Rudzka-Ostyn (ed.), Topics in Cognitive Linguistics, 127–161. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Lashley, K. S. 1951. The problem of serial order in behavior. In L. A. Jeffress (ed.), Celebral Mechanisms in Behavior, 112–136. New York: Wiley. Mompean-Gonzalez, J. A. 2004. Category overlap and neutralization: The importance of speakers’ classifications in phonology. Cognitive Linguistics 15(4): 429–469. Morton, K. 1987. Cognitive phonetics – Some of the evidence. In R. Channon & L. Shockey (eds.), In Honor of Ilse Lehiste, 191–193. Dordrecht: Foris Publications. Nathan, G. S. 1986. Phonemes as mental categories. Proceedings of the Berkeley Linguistic Society 12: 212–223. Nathan, G. S. 1994. How the phoneme inventory gets its shape: Cognitive grammar’s view of phonological systems. Rivista di Linguistica 6: 275–287.
14 Indeed, the perception of the shortening of the preceding vowel has been reported in literature as the decisive factor for categorization judgments; Mompean-Gonzalez (2004: 452) refers to the works of Fisher & Hirsh (1976) and Fox & Terbeek (1977) as the source of information.
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Nathan, G. S. 1996. Steps towards a cognitive phonology. In B. Hurch, & R. Rhodes (eds.), Natural Phonology: The state of the art, 107–120. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Rumelhart, D. E. & J. L. McClelland. 1987. Learning the past tenses of English verbs. Implicit rules or parallel distributed processing. In B. MacWhinney (ed.) Mechanisms of Language Acquisition, 194–248. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Earlbaum Associates. Taylor, J. R. 1989. Linguistic Categorization: Prototypes in linguistic theory. Oxford: Clarendon. Turewicz, K. 2000. Applicability of Cognitive Grammar as a Foundation of Pedagogical / Reference Grammar. Łódź: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego. Turewicz, K. 2007. Profile/base alignment for syntax and semantics. In U. Magnusson, H. Kardela & A. Głaz (eds.), Further Insights into Semantics and Lexicography, 219–234. Lublin: Wydawnictwo Uniwesytetu Marii Curie-Skłodowskiej. Wickelgren, W. A. 1969. Context-sensitive coding, associative memory, and serial order in (speech) behavior. Psychological Review 76(1): 1–15.