Linguistic Typology 9783110859126, 9783110106787

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Linguistic Typology

Empirical Approaches to Language Typology 1 Editors Georg Bossong Bernard Comrie

Mouton de Gruyter Berlin · New York · Amsterdam

Linguistic Typology

by Paolo Ramat

Mouton de Gruyter Berlin · New York · Amsterdam

1987

Mouton de Gruyter (formerly Mouton, The Hague) is a Division of Walter de Gruyter & Co., Berlin. Original edition published under the title Linguistica tipologica by II Mulino, Bologna, 1984 Translated by A. P. Baldry

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Ramat, Paolo. Linguistic typology. (Empirical approaches to language typology ; 1) Translation of: Linguistica tipologica. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Typology (Linguistics). I. Title. II. Series. P204.R3613 1987 415 ISBN 0-899-25085-8 (alk. paper)

87-7039

ClP-Kur^titelaufnähme der Deutschen Bibliothek

Ramat, Paolo: Linguistic typology / by Paolo Ramat. [Transl. by A. P. Baldry]. — Berlin ; New York ; Amsterdam : Mouton de Gruyter, 1987. (Empirical approaches to language typology ; 1) Einheitssacht.: Linguistica tipologica plural. As Greenberg himself points out in a more theoretical work, implicational universals exist at two different levels. On the one hand, they may be empirical and inductive, deriving

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Part one

from their actual observation in all languages. On the other hand, they may be theoretical and deductive inasmuch as they derive logically from the first (Greenberg 1975: 30; see Coseriu 1974: 54 and, with regard to formal logic, Holenstein 1976: 66, note 3). This, of course, brings us back to the dialectic between inductive procedure and deductive procedure discussed above (1.2). Greenberg's example (1975) is as follows: we empirically ascertain that the category 'singular' is more frequent than the plural, i.e., that the existence of the plural, the marked term in the pair, implies the singular but not vice versa. This is called an 'empirical universal'8 and certain predictions can be made from it. For example, we may reasonably expect to find cases of a singular verb with a zero morphological marker in the singular and a non-zero marker in the plural, but not vice versa. In other words, once we have empirically ascertained the implication plural => singular, we may infer "with more than chance frequency" that the features mentioned in note 8 will occur. (These features in their turn helped to formulate the assumptions about general implications, not because of any vicious circle, but because of a dialectal relationship between empiricism and theorizing activity: see Chapter 4.) It is right to distinguish, as Coseriu does (1974: 54 note 30), between implications and essential universals (see section 1.4.1). The latter are implied by the very notion of language itself while implications, both at the primary and the secondary level, are correlations of properties or characteristics. Similarly, I do not think that disjunctive properties may be defined as 'universale' (A v B: if there is A then l B). These are a special case of implication. At least at a preliminary level, they are empirically observed generalizations of intralinguistic relationships. This is not, however, relevant to our discussion on typology — just as we will not examine psycholinguistic issues here relating to the problem of universals (strategies of perception, hierarchy of accessibility and others mentioned in note 8). If I have strayed into the field of universals, it has been to show the significance that the concept of implication has in linguistics, and to stress the strict relationship between typology and universals in this respect.

1.4.4 The hierarchy of features Typology allows a hierarchical arrangement of the relevant features — the trial is subordinate to the dual, which in its turn is subordinate to

7. The problems of linguistic typology

19

the plural. This arrangement is the surface realization of the underlying organizational principle. We may consider the implicational relationships, or at least the correlation between 'Basic Order Typology' (SVO, SOV, VSO etc.), pre- or postpositions, position of the genitive and the adjective in the noun phrase, which make up the subject matter of many of Greenberg's 'universals' (see Seiler 1975a: 13ff.). The analysis of the underlying principles to which typology is directed is in fact reached through the examination of the combination of combinatory possibilities (= hierarchically structured rules of the characteristics). "What is typical (das Typische, characteristic of a type) consists in a series of co-occurrent combinatory features" (Hartmann 1962: 49). This is the 'network' about which Altmann and Lehfeldt speak (see above 1.1), following Skalicka, who, quite independently, develops the ideas put forward by Sapir regarding the combinatory aspects of the properties of various languages and, of course, Jakobson's concept of implication. This view of language type as the "combination of combinatory possibilities" (Hartmann 1962: 39) implies a very big qualitative leap for typology, so much so that we may agree with Sgall (1984: 20) when he says that "typology as a theory of types of language is a different domain from typology without the notion of type."

1.5 Definition of language type In the light of the above discussion, we need to clarify what is meant by 'language type', an expression which I have so far used in a fairly intuitive way. We have seen that the uses of this term often vary, at least in part. Leaving aside all theoretical discussion of logic and epistemology which are amply dealt with in Hempel-Oppenheim's (1936) basic work, I shall examine a number of linguist's positions which emerge either from explicit attempts at definition or, more implicitly, from the context where the term 'type' appears.9 In the course of an interesting article, Lehfeldt and Altmann (1975: 73 f.) consider the approaches of four linguists representing four fundamental stages in the development of typology (Friedrich and August Wilhelm Schlegel, Humboldt and Sapir) and identify four conceptions of 'type'. a) the classificatory definition of the Schlegel brothers who group classes according to the absence or presence of a single specific feature — e. g.

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Part one

languages with or without inflections (we will examine the concept of typology as classification below); b) the combinatory definition (Sapir) which defines classes by means of a combination of several features; c) the definition which takes type to be a scale between two extremes along which languages are to be found according to the degree of development of the characteristic examined (Humboldt): this approach leads to an understanding that classification pure and simple cannot be the be-all and end-all of typology; d) the final definition considers type as an ideal model and ordering principle (Skalicka) which, according to Lehfeldt and Altmann, can be used efficiently only when concepts of measurement are introduced (1975: 75 see also Sgall quoted above in 1.2). Recently, E. Moravcsik also seems to have adopted a classificatory approach: "I will take a type to be a properly included subclass within a class. In other words, it is a subclass of things that share a set of (one or more) properties that other members of the class do not share with them" (Moravcsik 1979: 316). Adopting a taxonomic approach, she believes that within the 'genus proximum' it is necessary, as happens in biology (see 1.4), to consider the 'specific difference(s)'. In this kind of typology a class may, in its turn, be a subclass (= type, with a number of specific properties) of a wider class, with a number of generic properties. For example, motor vehicles (type) V (an empirical generality and certainly not a logical necessity) makes us rightly assume that nasal vowels in some way arose from nonnasal vowels (generally in the presence of nasal elements: cf. French), since they do not exist without the corresponding non-nasal (= oral) vowel. Vice versa, the phenomenon of denasalization (V > V), which is also a well-known phonetic process, is not predictable under this implicational framework: the marked term (V) implies the non-marked form (V), but not vice versa (Ramat 1976b: 21) and indeed the phenomenon of denasalization occurs less frequently than nasalization (i. e., it is not predictable on the basis of typological phonetic criteria). Oberservations of this kind cannot be incorporated into the concept of typology, in our definition, as 'the analysis of the organizational principles of linguistic data'. This concept obviously squares much more with the task that Skalicka assigns to diachronic typology, i. e., checking the role that 'type', taken as a series of rules governing language systems at their different organizational levels, plays in language change. In the passage from: non hoc tibi dico io non te lo dico

or and

OE ME

ne ic secge be pcet to / do not say it to you

we find the familiar tendency to turn the synthetic type into the analytical type, an underlying organizational principle characterized by: a) the passage of the person marker from the verb to the pronoun (English I, you, we, they say French je, tu, U [di] (N. B. French is more isolating than Italian); b) the passage from an inflected pronominal form (tibi, pe) to an analytical prepositional form to you, a te: a and b are both examples of affix, (in this case suffix) reduction as a result of their replacement by independent grammatical monomorphematic signs (to, a) functioning as full semantic words on a par with verbs, nouns, adjectives etc.; c) the appearance in English of a monomorphematic marker generically indicating 'verb function' (do) related to the fact that verbs are no longer formally distinguished from nouns (the work, to work as in Tongan see 1.2.2); d) the existence of a large number of homonyms (or polyfunctional synonyms): English to, Italian a; e) the much more fixed word order (whereas tibi hoc non dico, is possible, *(a) te lo non dico in Italian, *a toi/te le je ne dis pas in French, and * to you it I do not say in English are not possible). Accepting Skalicka's conclusion (1935: 1831), as I think we must, that "in the development of languages,

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Part one

linguistic type is very often active", we come back to the outlook discussed above (1.3.1): the changes which occur morphologically (from case morpheme to preposition: tibi —> a te) and syntacticallly (from a (relatively) free order to a (relatively) fixed order, with consequent reduction in the autonomy of the word), etc. (see Schmidt 1975), do not originate in the surface phonological component (because of the disappearance of an ending for example) but from the typological deep structure. These changes are consequences rather than causes. It follows from this assumption that, without excluding the possibility of a 'conspiracy' of causes belonging to different levels, we will not usually examine diachronic changes starting with phonetic data and then look at their impact on morphology and then on syntax, but rather our approach will be the other way round. This is a clear case of a choice between possibilities which are equivalent in themselves (it has indeed been argued that phonetic changes such as the weakening and disappearance of case endings are the cause of the need for a fixed word order). The decision depends on which theory we accept (and, from a typological point of view, we consider the syntactic level to be deeper than the phonological level). This is, ultimately, an example of how diachronic typology makes it possible for typology in general to create a single scientific outlook in which the experiences of the many diverse branches of linguistics, which all too often have proceeded separately, can be used to good purpose. 1.7.1 Recently there has been much debate as to whether typology can contribute to creating a general theory of language change. This issue is part of a much wider discussion as to whether a theory of language change is at all possible — see Giacalone Ramat (1980); Romaine (1983); Ramat (1982a); Harris (1982a) with reference to both Lightfoot (1979) and Lass (1980); in particular, from a typological standpoint see Comrie (1981c); Mallison-Blake (1981); Klimov (1979a); Bartsch-Vennemann (1982 Chap. III). It is not possible here to enter a general discussion about language change, its methods and their epistemological status. I have dealt with this problem elsewhere (Ramat 1982a). The conclusion which I reached there is that, in contrast to what Lightfoot argues (see 2.3.1), language change cannot be included in a general theory of language. Regarding typology in particular, we will see (2.2.1) that it cannot be considered a theory of language, but that it depends on a theory of language, even

1. The problems of linguistic typology

35

though, of course, in actual fact, observations of a typological nature may, and indeed, must contribute to constructing a theory which matches the facts. To construct a theory in the nomological-deductive paradigm, a means must be supplied by which predictions can be made with regard to a set of empirical data, i. e., by which interpretations of phenomena can be anticipated (while the empirical laws simply express a unifying relationship on a restricted set of observable data). A theory is a system of postulates (i. e. a set of premises) from which empirical laws can be derived as theorems (cf. The New Encyclopaedia Britannica, Micropedia, vol IX,15 1974, s.v. Theory). On the other hand, we have seen on a number of occasions in the course of the previous pages that typology tends to emerge from the empirical observation of language behaviour, with a substantially inductive procedure of comparison between the greatest number of possible facts. Hence the choice of a language sample and the criteria for choosing the language sample are problems of primary importance, while this is not a problem with a normological-deductive method, where the examination of one language is in principle the same as the examination of all languages. But to induce generalizations from the direct observation of languages means introducing historical, sociological and cultural dimensions into the study of language. The variables that thus emerge are too numerous and varied to make a merely deductive procedure possible, since sociolinguistic studies have clearly demonstrated that concepts such as 'social class', 'style', 'sex', etc., which sociolinguistics today considers as causes of variation, are clearly not linguistic variables (see Scalise 1979: 369). The very factors that sociolinguistics now takes into consideration have always been used in historical linguistics to explain language change, albeit in an intuitive and nonformalized way. It follows that typology and diachronic linguistics — both based on a comparative procedure — are on the same side of the divide between 'inductive procedure and deductive procedure'. Neither typology nor a 'theory' of language change can make predictions in the strict, nomological-deductive sense of the term, falsifiable in terms of the theory itself. In this sense, Vennemann is right when he writes that "since typologies of languages are not theories, they cannot be either true or false but have to be evaluated by different criteria, criteria applicable to their specific purpose, e.g. 'useful', 'adequate', 'revealing'"(Vennemann 1984: 601). What has been said above clearly indicates the probabilistic side of both the typological and diachronic approach. Using a vast set of data,

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Part one

typology can give significant clues as to the probabilities of language change which we may consider as unmarked and natural. On the basis of the typological observation that in languages with a nominativeaccusative system, the nominative is usually the unmarked form (cf. Latin sol-0 versus sol-em),^ we may predict that in the case of the loss of the inflectional system, it will probably be the nominative form (usually corresponding to AG, in turn usually the 'topic' of the sentence) which will prevail over the accusative (normally corresponding to PAT, in turn usually the 'comment' of the sentence and hence the more important part from the point of view of giving information). This depends on the general tendency, whereby the development from more marked forms to less marked forms is more 'natural' — even in the case of syncretism, the Romance languages show many cases of generalized extension of the nominative form: Italian uomo, re, moglie, French pretre, Catalan pastre ( ces even in the nominative case because the old form of the nominative plural cist coincided with the nominative singular) (Mayerthaler 1981: 77 f. and many other examples throughout the book). The very concepts of 'markedness', 'naturalness' are defined on the basis of empirical observations (processes of language acquisition, aphasia, pidginization, creolization and so on). Given the nature and empirical origin of these parameters, languages will not necessarily evolve towards 'natural' and 'unmarked' forms. Cases of the opposite development towards highly iconic and marked forms, as a result of the desire to be clearly understood, are well-known. In this perspective, which is still the perspective of typology, we will thus find a posteriori explanations rather than a priori predictions. But all this is a very far cry from denying that a typological approach has any value. It will be observed that in the typological consideration of the previous example, various considerations immediately arose at various levels: the semantic-referential level (when we spoke of AG, PAT), the morphosyntactic level (with the notions of SUBJ, NOM and ACC) and the pragmatic level (regarding 'topic' and 'comment'). The complexity of facts which are relevant to typology imposes (and at the same time stems from) an overall approach (or tendentially overall) to linguistic phenomena, which is not the case with the construction of a formal theory.

1. The problems of linguistic typology

37

Furthermore, it is not necessarily the case that the nomologicaldeductive paradigm is the only possible type of scientific knowledge. We must be ready to accept different paradigms of scientific knowledge. But tackling this epistemological discussion now would take us too far off our course. I will merely mention that the inductive-probalistic procedure, which departs from the empirical consideration of phenomena, is also widely adopted today by so-called 'natural sciences', particularly those, such as biology, dealing with complex facts which cannot be reduced to a single cause. In the course of a very full discussion of these problems, R. Lass (1980: 107) reports the views of the biologist Ernst Mayr "In view of the high number of multiple pathways available for most biological processes ... and ... the randomness of many of [them], causality in biological systems is not predictive, or at best is only statistically predictive". This is obviously true, in a much greater way, for the type of linguistics that deals with phenomena which are only partly biological and mostly historical and cultural in nature. The inductive-probabilistic method proceeds by accumulating and organizing wide sets of empirical observations, observing the regularity of behaviour within these sets and, finally, generalizing these regularities. As an illustration of this, we need only recall the famous 'phonetic laws'. If in n number of cases we find that A > B, we may argue that in case « + 1 we will also find that A > B, although it is not possible to assert that the 'phonetic law' is the explanation for the passage of A > B unless we can deduce the 'phonetic law' from some logical need for this passage. Thus, we cannot argue that A must become B. The 'phonetic law' is therefore the a posteriori observation of a statistical regularity of correspondences (A = B) and changes (A > B), a generalization of the data in the form of a working hypothesis, which cannot be proved logically (see Ramat 1981:1). For all these reasons, it is possible to find exceptions to the 'law'; and there is no need to recall the numerous 'exceptions to phonetic laws' put forward by historical linguistics.14 The historical linguist and typologist who find counter-examples to the 'law' A > B will not be forced to review their general theory so as to incorporate all those cases where A does not become B. They will, on the other hand, take note of the existence of counter-examples and will try, in their respective fields of probabilistic analysis, to find some a posteriori reason why these counter-examples exist (the case of ce% replacing cist: restoration of the morphological opposition between nominative singular and plural is the causal explanation of the substitution). This type of functional explanation is evidently not nomological-deduc-

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Part one

tive in nature, but is of no lesser value for all that. In the case in point, it is the only possible explanation. Consequently, since we can legitimately adopt the inductive-probabilistic procedure to increase our scientific knowledge, we cannot deny that typology has an orienting and organizational function: a set of data (the broadest possible) will tell us which co-occurrences are probable and which are not. The relationship between typology and language change may, in conclusion, be specified as follows: typology is one approach (among many others) to linguistic phenomena. Language change is a problem (of how and why). The typological approach can help to resolve the problem by giving a posteriori explanations of a causal type.

Notes \. Nor, in this respect, should we overlook those works which, with a very courageous but questionable procedure, deal directly with typological problems without tackling either a definition of 'type' or the question of what is considered relevant to the typological approach. See Mallinson-Blake (1981) for an example of this attitude. 2. On this point see in particular Chapter 3 The Typological Level. 3. S. Dik (1981) falls in with this tradition. Although his book Functional Grammar is not specifically dedicated to typology, much of it nevertheless deals with typological problems. The adjective 'functional' is used by Dik for his type of grammar precisely because it is designed, unlike other grammatical models, such as the generative model, to link the semantik (and pragmatic) level with the more strictly level. In this sense, we may recall the earlier functionally-oriente analyses of sentences developed by the Prague school (Firbas). 4. As a consequence of the logical-semantic relationships between PRED and ARGs, at a deep level. 5. "In actual fact, an exhaustive language typology is the biggest and most important task which faces linguistics .... A in all, its task is to reply to the question, what are the possible linguistic structures, and why are such structures possible while others are not? So doing, linguistic typology, more than any other kind of linguistics, will come closer to what may be called the problem of the nature of language", Hjelmslev (1963: 110) (see 1.1). 6. "... the 'language type' includes functional principles, i.e., types of procedure and oppositional categories of the system and, therefore, represents the functional coherence which can be demonstrated between the various parts of the system itself. Thus interpreted, type is an objective linguistic structure, a functional plan of language. It is simply the highest level of structuring linguistic techniques" (Coseriu 1968: 276). 7. Who explicitly mentions Hjelmslev (Birnbaum 1970: 9). 8. Whose motivation should be sought in universal psycholinguistic considerations such as the cognitive opposition between complex (= plural) and less complex (= singular) and whose consequences are to be found in a series of empirical generalizations of various types; it is, for example, a widespread general cross-linguistic fact that the

/. The problems of linguistic typology

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

39

plural has a more complex morphology than the singular, that those affected by aphasia have more difficulty in forming the plural than the singular, that in pidginization phenomena it is usually the plural which disappears and so on (see Mayerthaler 1981:6). Neither will I go into the more or less analogous positions which are to be found in disciplines parallel to linguistics such as sociology (Max Weber) or psychology. See the contributions to the interdisciplinary convention "The notion of 'type' in the science of language" (LeSt 1980: 31 Iff., where the logic is dealt with by Picardi and Sandri). "Taxonomic analysis is constructed on selected external characteristics ... . By contrast with these external characteristics typology is based on the analysis of patterns and principles which have been identified as central in language" (W. P. Lehmann 1978a: 5). The linguist's operation of relevance-making, which in itself might be an arbitrary choice of elements, has an objective limit in the functional nature of language structures. Those facts which make it easier to identify the hierarchical implications and the essential principles will be more relevant to typology, more relevant, that is, as regards the functioning of structures. Object2 designates the distant object, similar in its function to adverbs; Objectj designates the nearby object and is used, precisely, only with active verbs. It indicates an action to which V refers, for example "a bear is breaking a tree" but also to "a snake is swimming in the river" (Klimov 1977: 316). Notice that is a Determiner vis-a-vis V, which is Determined, just as PREP/ POSTPOS is Determined vis-ä-vis NP see Bartsch-Vennemann (1982: 11, 39ff.). For a critical discussion of the vast literature on 'Word Order' see Comrie (1981c: Chap. 4); Mallinson-Blake (1981: Chap. 3); Dezso (1982a: Part 2); Bossong (1982). 'Universal' 38 Greenberg "Where there is a case system, the only case which ever has zero allomorphs is the one which includes among its meanings that of the subject of the intransitive verb" (Greenberg 1966b: 95). The case is somewhat different for ergative languages, where PAT is treated as SUBJ (see Comrie 1981c: 119). We should note in passing that in 'natural sciences' the concept of "law" is now often interpreted in the sense of a statistical probability, a working hypothesis to explain certain phenomena in a unitary way, and no longer in the sense of an absolute necessity, of something that must be.

Chapter two Universals and typology

2.1 I have already exemplified the differences and relationships between 'universal' and 'typological' in 1.4.2. Although, as we shall see below, typological research and research into universals are, in principle, diametrically opposed, they are, in practice, associated in quite a large number of works, sometimes programmatically announced in the title itself (see, for example, Comrie 1981c). This association is neither arbitrary nor casual. There is a quite widespread tendency to use the term 'universal' in a very wide and inaccurate sense. E. Keenan, for example, speaks of 'finite observation universale' (for example, all the languages which have personal pronouns, possessive constructions and so on), contrasting them with 'infinite observation universals' (such as restrictions on transformations): 'finite observation universals' are linked to the empirical observation of facts, 'infinite observation universals' to the chosen theoretical model (Keenan akup 25, 1976: 134 f.). Moravcsik contrasts 'analytic' with 'synthetic universals' (akup 25: 146). P. Garvin contrasts 'definitional' and 'potential' universals: only the first are absolute universals (akup 25: 110 f.). Faced with this improper terminology, which has caused much confusion, we must stress Hempel's distinction between empirical generalizations and theory construction, between Observative' and 'theoretical terms', whereby the latter do not refer to immediately observable entities and are, in fact, used to construct scientific theories which serve to explain empirical generalizations (Hempel 1958). The logician and linguist BarHillel adopts this line of thinking (1969: 9) "Whereas, I propose, general should be used to denote 'accidental allness', universal should be reserved for 'necessary allness"', whence the major consequence "... generality should therefore allow of degrees ..., universality would be absolute". To speak of 'near-universals' is obviously a logical contradiction, and to speak of Overall universals' is mere tautology. The universals which really deserve this name are therefore only those which comply with the formula Univ(P)(Vx)(Lx->Px)

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Part one

i. e., the property P is universal when it is true that all cases of L possess P. As for x, if χ is a language then χ will have the property P, or L =3 Ox (for L there is the compulsory requirement that there must be x). The intrinsic properties of human language may be universale of this type ('essential universale' as Coseriu 1974 calls them). The essential, universal property, that phonic elements appear in language with a certain statistical frequency of relationships between them derives from the definition that a language is a structure of phonic elements with a contrastive function designed to convey meaning within a specific community. Or, since language is a phonetic structure, it has the universal property of linearity (phonic elements cannot all appear together, but must necessarily be arranged in linear order). Or again, bearing in mind the functional side of the above definition, the relationship which arises in the linguistic sign between signifiant and signifie is universal; hence also the affirmation that the co-variance of form and meaning is universal. Or more specifically, since language is a functional structure designed to convey meanings (messages), one of its universal properties is the capacity of saying (predicating) something about somebody, i.e., distinguishing 'topic' (or 'theme') from 'comment' (or 'rheme'). The determination of these universals depends strictly on the axiomatic definition of language that is acceptable in the first place. In this sense, it is based on a deductive procedure. These universals will be important, in particular, for formal linguistics, as exemplified by the 'Montague Grammar'. The purpose of typology is, on the other hand, to create a universally valid means of describing languages (see Chapter 1), which will necessarily be based on the essential, constituting (= universal) properties. For the creation of an effective model of typological research, such concepts as 'sentence' (and Operation' inasmuch as it reflects the ability to form sentences) 'grammar', and even ' structure', Opposition' and so on are relevant (see above) — and these concepts do belong to the domain of universals. In this sense, typology is not a theory of language, but depends on a general theory of language (universal level): to find something you need to know what you are looking for, which makes the deductive approach important even in typological research. The deductive dimension of the approach to universals does not, however, legitimatize their arbitrary postulation: they are not scientific fictions, but real properties, immanent in languages (see Holenstein akup 25 (1976: 58 ff.). However, these properties have logical implications which are not only linguistic in nature. When we say that the concept

2. Universals and typology 43

of 'sentence' is implicitly contained in 'human language', in the sense that every human language is by definition capable of constructing sentences, this at the same time implies a series of further concepts such as 'structure', Opposition', 'linear sequence', and so on which represent the properties which logically make up the concept 'sentence', its metalevel as it were. What Kaznelson (1974: 14) says should also be borne in mind. He argues that these universale (e. g., "all languages have phonemes", which can be deduced from the previous definition of language) are analytical judgements with a low information content ("analytische Urteile mit geringem Erkenntniswert"; see Vardul's 'non-informative universale' (1969: 443); see also Ruggiero (1978: 460). This is true, but only shows that these universale carry relatively small weight in concrete typological research. Structuring into phonemes is effectively a characteristic of human languages (see above), but precisely because it is a universal property, it is not typologically relevant.1 Although typology depends on universals in the sense just mentioned, in practice it deals with (or should deal with) generalizations of empirical data inductively. There is a big divide between universals and generalizations: the first constitute a deductive approach, the second an inductive approach (see also van de Boom akup 25 (1976: 87). In practice, it is impossible to achieve any sensible generalizations of interest if there are no general concepts of a theory (which includes universals). 2.2 In principle, we have to agree with Coseriu when he says (akup 25 (1976: 94) that typology is the opposite of research into universals: typology is directed towards the study of language differences. "Research into language characteristics which is not directed towards the observation of certain common empirical facts nor the causes of these resemblances is a field which is entirely different [from the generalization of linguistic facts and] which is not directed towards the analysis of concrete language characteristics, but is designed to ascertain the characteristics of language as a specific attribute of human activity. The linguistics of universals and language typology in this sense research into completely different things and have different ends" (Kolschanski in 1975: 453; see Parret 1978: 133). Variability of universals is zero. Within generalizations, we will find options that a particular human language operates within a range of possibilities whose limits have universal validity. For example, in Jakobson's theory of distinctive features, the phonological system of any

44

Part one

language will use those distinctive features, and not others not foreseen by that theory, although it is not vital for any individual language to make use of the whole set of features (see Comrie 1981 c: 15). There are, moreover, generalizations of optional properties which are not logically necessary and which may hence be absent in a specific language. For example, REFL PRON is a general morphological category, but it does not necessarily follow that a language possesses reflexive pronouns: the reflexivity function may be expressed by some other means (see Keenan 1978 a: 86). Another example: it has been said that the six theoretically possible word orders of S, O, V constitute the (universal) set from which every language must choose a specific order, and typology studies the optional choices made (see Hetzron akup 25 (1976: 120). There are, however, languages such as Quechua and Walbiri with a free word order: the choice of an order is not compulsory, and the true universal, which no language can dispense with, is linearity, the linear sequence of elements. When we speak of a "possible human language" (Keenan 1978 a), keeping in mind the existence of optional properties within universal restrictions, or the causes of the interlinguistic resemblances, a reply has been implicitly given to the question why typology and research into universals often go hand in hand, even though in principle they are precise opposites: typology concretely maps universal principles onto the set of natural languages (see van de Boom akup 25 (1976: 88) or, put in another way, universals are terms by means of which the typology of linguistic reality is studied (see Parret 1978: 129).2 2.3 As well as 'essential universals' discussed so far, which are fundamental and defining, there are two other types of universals: objective universals and subjective universals. Although psycholinguistic studies certainly need to be deepened, we are now in a position to state with absolute certainty that there are bio-physio-neuro-psycholinguistic conditionings which have a universal validity for all human beings.3 We may again use the example of basic word order constituents to illustrate this: it is highly likely that the explanation for the very low percentage of languages with an OVS order (no more than 1 % of the world's languages) is to be sought in a high degree of markedness, nonnaturalness, of Ο preceding S, i. e., the syntactic role which usually pertains to the 'deep case' of the Agent. The Agent, in turn usually represents the 'given topic' of the sentence; hence it occurs in initial position, or at least before O.

2. Universals and typology

45

Experiments relating to techniques of perception have demonstrated that certain structures are more easily perceptible than others; among these are those which tend to give what is known before the new information.4 Equally, two embedded REL CLAUSES are very difficult to understand (and the difficulty increases as the number of embedded REL CLAUSES increases) The girl that the man whom the boy hit was following was stealing oranges. There is no difficulty in understanding this (passivized) sentence when the first REL CLAUSE is extrapolated to the right of the main clause: The oranges were being stolen by the girl that the man whom the boy hit was following, or better still (albeit with a focus-shifting which need not detain us here): The boy hit the man who was following the girl who was stealing the oranges, with a chain of right-extraposed REL CLAUSES, which is theoretically infinite as in the familiar nursery rhyme pattern. There is no overload in the short-term memory of the hearer/speaker codifying the message when the relative marker refers to the immediately preceding word. On the other hand, in an SOV language such as Japanese, with the verb rigidly in sentence final position, there is no difficulty in saying: ga oikaketa} neyumi ga tabeta\ chiiyu wa "cat SUBJ pursued mouse SUBJ ate cheese TPC kusatte-ita\ bad-was" (see Kuno 1972 a discussed by Mallinson-Blake 1981: 301 ff.). In this case too, the REL CLAUSE, which has no specific marker in Japanese, is completed by its predicate verb before passing on to the next word to which it refers (namely its Object): "the cheese that the mouse that the cat followed ate was bad", although in actual fact the linear order is "the cat followed the mouse ate the cheese was bad". (On the psycholinguistic aspects of problems of perception, decodification and comprehension see Bever — Katz — Langendoen (1976); Murch-Woodworth (1978). See also 1.5.1 above.) On a more strictly neurolinguistic level, studies relating to lateralization are well-known. Among all animals, man is the only one who shows

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any asymmetry in functions and specialization of each of the brain's hemispheres, even as regards language abilities. Experiments have shown that, for example, language material (numbers, word, syllables) is subject to REE (right ear effect), while melodies and sequences of tones are more generally subject to LEE (left ear effect) (see Deegener 1978: 83). The left hemisphere is endowed with a predominantly analytical capacity/ ability (including the linguistic one) whereas the right hemisphere is predominantly synthetic (hence its predominance in activities such as the perception of music). McNeill (1970) observes that a consequence of lateralization seems to be a shift in consonants, but not vowels, to the brain's left hemisphere because the right ear shows a clear predominance for consonants. Consonants may indeed be considered to be more 'linguistic' material when compared with vowels which also have a 'musical' nature. Indeed vowels are perceived without any significant difference by both ears. Going into much greater detail, W. P. Lehmann reports the findings of M. S. Gazzaniga, who claims that the right hemisphere is able to produce isolated nouns in patients who have undergone a lobotomy, but not verbs (Gazzaniga 1970; see W. P. Lehmann 1972 c: 321 ff.). Examples of this type could easily be multiplied (as demonstrated by the vast bibliography relating to aphasia). Obviously, we are dealing with universal characteristics, which are specific to the human faculty of language. To a great extent, they come before any cultural conditioning and have been verified or are verifiable in laboratory experiments. Such conditionings may help to throw some light on the functioning of cognitive human structures and are not without significance as regards the form that language structures may take on in a 'possible human language'. Given that the right hemisphere does not seem able to produce verbs, we may deduce the central role of the verb itself — or rather the central role of the element carrying out a verb action in the predication, which is a complex operation where different elements are related and which the left hemisphere is known to control (see Lehmann 1972c), in much the same way as an OS order seems to go against the universally valid perceptive strategies which require the 'topic' (or theme) before the 'comment' (or rheme). In this way, we can move towards a possible 'universal grammar' without the very costly theory of innate interiorization of specific grammatical rules (albeit of extreme simplicity and generality) as required by generative grammar (see note 3). The linguistic behaviour of speakers can be explained (in the causal meaning of this word) by a bio-physio-

2. Universals and typology

47

neuro-psychological approach, in which it would be necessary to seek out the basis of notions such as 'naturalness' and 'markedness'. 'Marked' will come to mean 'complex on a cognitive level'. Oblique' will thus be marked vis-a-vis 'vertical' and 'horizontal' because distinctive features in our sense organs are thought of in two dimensional space as [vertical] and [horizontal], and hence "oblique" must be defined by two features [-vert,] [-horiz] (see Mayerthaler 1980). All this corresponds largely to the theoretical claim of Generativism that linguistics should actually be psycholinguistics. The decisive difference, according to Chomsky, consists in the fact that we know too little about the brain's structuring and functioning to say anything sensible with regard to empirical psychology, whereas psychologists (and linguists, too!) have already gone a long way into this exploration, so that it is no longer acceptable to ignore, in a rigidly deductive formal theory of language, all that we know in the psychological perspective of language (see 4.2). There are, in conclusion, objective conditionings which determine the form of possible linguistic systems, not only in terms of phonic articulation such as those mentioned above (1.5.1), but also at the morphosyntactic (and lexical) level. Here, we are dealing with language universale, which do not derive deductively from the definition of language itself: rather they are derived inductively as a result of empirical research and therefore constitute an objective increase in our knowledge which any nomological-deductive general theory of language will necessarily have to take into account. 2.3.1 The question of language change universals, about which much has been written recently, needs to be mentioned at this stage. Historical and social variables which are not predictable by a formal theory need, of course, to be reckoned with. Since it has no power of prediction, language change does not belong to a formal theory of language, unlike the first type of universals ('essential universals' see 2.1; see also Ramat (1980 a: 5) and 1.7.1). It is, in fact, quite difficult to find concrete examples of language change which must be excluded by virtue of a general theory of language, i. e., those which conflict with the notion of 'possible human language' (Lightfoot 1979). There are counter-examples even with extremely general theoretical statements such as the affirmation that syntactic processes 'are structure-dependent' in natural languages and not 'structure-independent'. Comrie (1981c: 21 ff.) quotes an example from Serbo-Croatian where the clitic pronoun is in second position according to a purely

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distributional criterion of occurrence, whatever function it has in the sentence: it is even possible to break an NP to keep the clitic in second position: taj mi pesnik cita knjigu danas that to-me poet reads book today "Today, that poet is reading me a book". In principle, it will always be possible to find a counter-example to a rule established previously using a theoretical, deductive procedure; but only theory will, by definition, be able to exclude the possibility of a counter-example — with obvious circularity in the reasoning (see 4.2). This obviously does not mean that language changes are chaotic or entirely unpredictable, but that their typology is based on the synchronic typology of languages, as they actually appear (see Hoenigswald 1963: 45). Like synchronic typology, language change typology is thus inevitably linked to a probabilistic dimension as regards changes which are more or less marked, 'natural' and 'easy' from a sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic standpoint. The answer to the question as to whether language change has universal properties is that it does not. Language change phenomena are not predictable in the nomological-deductive sense, but only as regards their greater or lesser probability. Nor can general theory logically foresee which of all the possible directions language change will effectively take, as we might legitimately expect if language change universale did exist. 2.3.2 Another aspect of psychic activity, which gives rise to language phenomena which are universal in nature, should not be overlooked. Since, in the functional approach adopted here, language is by definition a system of signs which are activated to resolve problems of communication within a specific community, every language will not only have the universal property of distinguishing between 'theme' and 'rheme' (see above 2.1), but also other universal requirements of communication such as questioning, ordering, replying and negating. These are ''pragmatic universale', which relate to the pragmatic aspect of psychic activity that gives rise to language phenomena. They relate to 'behavioral-cognitive functions' found in all languages, such as the banal, but often wrongly overlooked fact that imperative, interrogative and negative functions can be translated from one language into any other language — precisely because of their universal psychic reality.

2. Untversals and typology

49

In the current state of research, the list of pragmatic universale is still open. D. L. Bolinger (1968: 18) only lists "interrogatives, negatives, and commands", but exclamatory and concessive sentences would also seem to be fairly widespread.5 Since they are 'universale' which do not directly derive deductively from the definition of language, their existence is subject to the control of the greatest possible number of languages, under the 'generalization' procedure — even though, in principle, the existence of pragmatic universals must be admitted deductively, in keeping with what was established in the previous paragraph. Within a theory of communicative competence, Jürgen Habermas divides Austin's speech acts into four main categories. But he puts a list of linguistic constituents before these which he considers to have the status of pragmatic universals in that they are general structures of the speech act situation: personal pronouns, vocatives, courtesy forms which refer to the protagonists of communication; deictic expressions relating to time and space (demonstratives, pronouns, verb tenses and possibly moods) which relate to the speaker-hearer's time of expression, place and perceptive field; executive verbs (interrogative, imperative, indirect speech) which refer to the utterance as such; verbs of intention and a few modal verbs which relate to the speaker's intentions and attitudes (Habermas 1971: 72 ff.). From a strictly linguistic standpoint, these elements are extremely heterogeneous and their membership of one or another category is often very difficult to establish (see for example the Japanese personal 'pronouns' which are also courtesy forms), and the effective existence of a category needs to be demonstrated in any language. The preliminary problem for this type of universals is precisely whether we should speak about them in terms of grammatical categories or in terms of functional ends (the 'behavioral-cognitive functions' mentioned above) which may be linked to very different grammatical categories. 2.4 The third type of universals, after definitional and psycholinguistic universals, is the subjective type. These are the formal decisions adopted by the linguist for the purposes of analysis which all too often are confused with reality itself. Coseriu (1974: 58) gives a clear example of this procedure "if in the case of a language which possesses two vowels and a constant CV syllable structure type, the linguist decides for reasons of economy in the descriptive system to treat vowels as distinctive features of consonants, this decision

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is a formal decision, which concerns the description and not the language described". The same is true for the thesis advanced by Bach (1968) and discussed by Coseriu (1974: 60 ff.), which argues that any noun is derived from a REL CLAUSE An Eskimo Pass) is not necessarily true as has already been pointed out as being the case in Choktaw (3.1) (24)

hattak-at obo.yob-a: (00-) pisa-h man-SUBJ woman-OBJ 3.AG 3.PAT see-PRES "the man sees the woman";

ί. The typological level

63

but for a sentence with *oho:jo-t ("woman-SUBJ") to say that the woman was seen by the man is impossible (see Heath 1977: 207). The passive is thus, where it exists, the marked category vis-a-vis the active, as is apparent from its grammatical form, which is generally more complex than the active form. This agrees with the observation that the 'deep case' of AGent (or AGentive) (:the semantic-referential level) tends psycholinguistically to be topicalized (:the pragmatic level) and hence realized as SUBJ at a grammatical level. But if, for example, the 'deep case' is CAUSE EFFicient rather than AG (i. e., if the feature [-f- animate] is missing), the passive construction may be even preferred, reserving the subject position for the NP with the feature NP [+ animate]; see for example newspaper headlines: (25)

two women run over by a train

rather than: (26)

train runs over two womerf*

Mayerthaler (1981: 58) rightly points out in this respect that such cases, in which tests of perception have shown that decodification of the passive is even simpler than the simple active, are destined to cause a crisis in the generative theory of isomorphic correspondence, which argues that the complexity of the decodification of a sentence is isomorphic to the complexity of its transformational derivation (see Bever 1970). In other words, this means that the active/passive relationship is not governed by the morphosyntactic level. Active and passive represent, instead, different topicalization (and focalization) techniques (see examples (14) —(16) from Tagalog for the same referential content): it is up to typology to provide a concrete analysis of these techniques, which represent different possible realizations of a universal linguistic capacity distinguishing 'topic' and 'comment' in the message (see 2.1). As may be seen, typology abandons the field of universals and 'universal grammar' and takes up a relativist standpoint which is halfway between the absolutely general (universal) and the absolutely particular (idiolinguistic). In mathematical terms, between oo — and > 1, (see 1.3). 3.3 What conclusions can be drawn from the discussion of our concrete example? It seems difficult to reach a 'universal grammar' through categories of grammatical description. The linguistic data are infinitely more complex and polymorphic than the possible patterns; and, in particular, there can be no guarantee that the generalizations of rules

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and empirically observed phenomena are completely without possible counter-examples, precisely because these generalizations are not logically necessary (= deducible from the definition of a language). It is, for example, a fact that all known languages have personal or demonstrative pronouns, but there is no logical need for their existence, which can be expressed by the formula: (27)

Univ. (P) a sbinu koto o osorenai soldiers TPC die fact OBJ not fear "Soldiers do not fear to die" (Lehmann 1976: 6),

where koto 'the fact' bears the object marker o, which clearly demonstrates dependence on the transitive adjective osorenai (for the accusative plus infinitive construction in Latin see Comrie (1981d), who clearly shows that Latin never had any 'Subj-to-Obj-Raising Rule'). From this example, we can get a clear indication not only of the need to widen the horizons of TG to include a comparative standpoint, but also of the need to stress the relevance of the concept of "language type" in the formulation of a universal grammar. 4.7.1 A second case, also discussed by Rizzi (1980), will help us to extend our observations in this respect. According to Chomsky (1981), any empty category, i. e., any category which is not filled up by linguistic data in the sentence structure must

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93

be 'locally controlled' by the preceding elements. This empty category principle (ECP) rules out sentences like: (29a) *S[NP[ 1 has left] b) *S[NK[ ] has left

NPi[/eA»]]

c

) *NPiiy^0] did you say that S[NPI[ ] bad left]?

The empty NP SUBJ is not 'locally controlled' by any preceding element. The corresponding sentences of languages with fully developed verb ending systems, such as Modern Greek, Hebrew, Irish and Italian are, however, perfectly admissible: (30a)

S [ NP []

e partita]

b) S[NK[ ] ' partite

NPi[/0/>«]]

c) NPil/^] h™ detto ehe S[NPI[ ] era partita]? (see Cinque 1983: 90). The well-known fact that the pronoun subject may be absent in languages with a system of well-developed verb endings (the 'langues synthetiques' of A. W. von Schlegel), but that it must, on the other hand, be expressed in languages with a system with few endings ('langues analytiques' see Schlegel 1818: 16) has been interpreted within generative theory as a 'parameter' capable of distinguishing one from the other "pro-drop languages (i. e. languages which let the pronoun drop) allow AGR[eement] to be a local controller while non pro-drop languages do not" (Chomsky 1981: 245; see Rizzi 1980; Cinque 1983). In terms of the 'extended standard theory' (EST), a typological difference therefore becomes a 'parameter' which 'explains' the differences, say, between English and Italian, 'explains' being understood to mean 'infers deductively from a general principle to be considered as a cause'. In any case, the presence of the AGR 'parameter' does not necessarily involve pronoun omission, as the following examples from Italian, which are perfectly grammatical, demonstrate: (30e) Egli e partita. (He has left) f) Giovanni e partita. (John has left) and even (in special co-textual circumstances, such as in 'echo-questions'): (30g) Hat detto ehe era partita chi? ("Who did you say left?"). The introduction of the 'parameter' shifts the discussion from a nomologicaldeductive level of theory to one of probability: we can have (30a), (30b)

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and (30c) but also (30e) and (30f). The important point to note is that the empirical observation of the different behaviour of languages forces us to introduce a variable into the general theory which accounts for this diversity. Deductively, it may be concluded that observing different typological behaviour has the effect of projecting general principles of the theory of language onto the class of natural languages (see 2.2). But inductively we may say that typology contributes to the construction of reasonable general theories, in the sense that it introduces reality into general principles and thus imposes severe conditions of economy and plausibility on abstract theory (see 2.4). It may also be added that, for typology at least, the problem is not the correctness of a formal theory such as the EST in itself or for itself. The 'local control condition' can indeed be considered as a very plausible psycholinguistic explanation to be linked to the 'given —> new' strategy: the antecedent ('given') usually controls the subsequent ('new') information. This would be a functional explanation relating the linguistic behaviour to external causes. On the other hand, the internal, formal explanation is an 'explanation-how', and not an 'explanation-why'. At the same time, by agreeing to bring back the 'local control condition' to this strategy on psycholinguistic grounds, it is possible to connect this condition to a series of other facts, such as the statistically low number of languages (not more than 10% of known languages) with verbs in initial position (indeed, the new information is often conveyed by verb predication), and the high number of languages with the verb in final position. The true explanation seems, once again, not to be found at a formal level, but rather lies in cognitive strategies (see Keenan 1978b: 302 f.; Brettschneider, 1980: 4; see also 2.3 above). The formal framework of the EST supplies a correct description of 'local control' and the ECP (Empty Category Principle), and not an explanation. It is good practice not to confuse a formal principle (for example the ECP) with its possible and plausible functional interpretation (as Rizzi rightly says 1980: 357). Nor should a formal principle be confused with the mentalistic assumption which precedes theory construction, which argues that "The language learner equipped with the theory of universal grammar as a part of the initial state requires evidence to fix the parameter and then knows the other properties of the language that follow from this choice of value" (Chomsky 1981: 241).6 The same is true for the other principles and rules of TG. 4.7.2 The 'subjacency condition', a Universal Grammar principle, states that an element cannot be extracted (e. g. 'raised') from more than one

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binding chain; cyclic transformational rules can apply only within S or within NP. Consequently, it is impossible for a language which has a 'Wh-pronoun' to produce a sentence such as: (3 la) *In whom did jour interest surprise me? while it is obviously correct to say: (31b) Your interest in Bill surprised me. The 'subjacency condition' in (31) is violated, since the interrogative pronoun moves through two cyclic nodes: (31 c) $[COMP] s[Npb°Ar interest} VCH['« whom}} surprised me}

ι

rj—

(Chomsky 1978; see Graffi 1980a: 44 ff.). The following example on the other hand is grammatical, although not simple: (32a)

Who doyou think Mary says Peter wants to marry? (i. e. get married to);

because here the shifting of the NP, represented by X (Peter wants to marry X), which becomes an interrogative pronoun, occurs in various cycles; it goes up one node at a time until it ends up in initial position: (32b)

You think s|(X)Mn---ί-j ai— -I/-JJ|VA^VM-L—.-j $[P. wants to marry X}}\

This is possible by admitting that there is an 5 rewritten as COMP + S. We cannot on the other hand transform: (33a)

Nf[Marj's

affirmation that $[Peter wants to marry X]}

into: (33b)

*who(m) do you think \p[o/ Mary's affirmation that $[Peter wants to marry

\\?

because in this case, in the absence of 5, we will have a node jump from X directly into initial position (see Graffi 1977: 45). The rule is consistent, in the sense that it does not violate the premises, and is an elegant, economic and adequate representation within the chosen theory.

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The problem of why this rule exists still remains in full force, unless we are prepared to accept it as 'reasonably innate', i.e., a type of 'explanation' which — as we have already seen — is systematically removed from any possibility of verification (see 4.2). We can, of course, interpret the 'node jump' in psychological terms. In fact, in terms of perception strategies, the 'node jump' technique is far too costly since it forces us (and not only in the technical, Chomskyan sense) to trace who(m) right through the sentence before being able to place it in its true reference. But the point is precisely to demonstrate psycholinguistically, with appropriate tests, that this technique is extremely unnatural. Until this is done, the 'subjacency condition' will be nothing more than a representation of facts which, however elegant, belongs to formal linguistic apparatus rather than language phenomena. In the search for an explanation in the full sense of the term, we must turn once more to the psycholinguistic dimension, which, although Chomsky has claimed tout court on several occasions as being the only sensible perspective for linguistics, has never been taken into consideration by generative grammar, because, as Chomsky (1968: 221) says, the organization of the human mind is a complete mystery and we know too little to be able to undertake a serious psycholinguistic study based on the empirical analysis of real behaviour. Despite Chomsky's (1977: 48) polemic note against Piaget, precisely the study of how a system is learnt and is used may give vital information about its nature. Nor does the theory of an innate genetic structure, a 'mental organ' predisposed to language activity (see Note 3), in itself contain enough evidence for it to be preferred to Piaget's constructive interactionism. (For a defence of Chomsky's innatist hypothesis vis-a-vis Piaget see Cinque (1983: 68 f.). Whatever the case may be, when summing up a section devoted to 'new horizons' (albeit with a question mark), we should not overlook the importance of stressing this (potential?) convergence of different approaches towards a more complete and 'integrated theory of language', nor should we overlook the significance of the fact that generative theory has felt it necessary to open up the universal grammar system, mitigating the previous aprioristic rigidity by introducing 'parameters', in terms of which it is possible to explain the real difference in behaviour between one language and another — in practice accounting for the existence of phenomena that lead to the divergences that typological studies feed on.

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Notes 1. In actual fact, this rule has never been formulated as a 'universal'. But undeniably all generativists' speculations on the 'passive transformation' and on the 'deep basic order' have tacitly accepted its universality. 2. From a psycholinguistic standpoint, the theory of a universally valid immediate constituent structure has been empirically demonstrated to be untenable by M. Bowerman, who examined the utterances of English-speaking and Finnish children "In sum, no one has yet to my knowledge succeeded in demonstrating on purely linguistic grounds that the verb 'belongs with' the direct object [= VP] or the locative in child speech rather than, for example, with the subject — in other words, that verb plus direct object or locative is a constituent in a way in which subject plus verb is not" (Bowerman 1973: 179). 3. And we should note in passing that the entire philosophical and ideological apparatus is, moreover, superfluous to the proper functioning of the TG rules inasmuch as the latter, taken as the linguist's formal decision and not as the native speaker's competence, effectively manage to represent many concrete phenomena ('raising', 'Wh-movement' etc.). G. Koefoed, a generative theorist, recognizes this: "Mentalist statements that generative linguistics connects to this [the system of possible sound emissions endowed with meaning] are, as it were, an addition (almost like whipped cream on a cake). What changes if we leave out this addition? Practically nothing. We can go on using the same types of argument.... Discrepancies between grammar and language behaviour data must not be interpreted as proof of falsification for grammar" (Koefoed 1976: 23 and 24). And to speak of language — i. e., according to the mentalist paradigm of TG, of grammatical competence — as a 'mental organ' (Chomsky 1978: 187) is either (a) nothing more than a metaphor for 'structure, mental apparatus' and such like — but generativists distinguish between 'mental organ' and 'faculty of language, which is common to the species' (see Kostervan Rimsdijk-Vergnaud 1978: 2), in which case there would appear not to be any advantages in the improper use of the term Organ', or (b) the latter is not being used in a metaphorical way — "cognitive structures employed in speaking and understanding ... can be viewed as steady states of the corresponding 'mental organs'" (Koster-van Rimsdijk-Vergnaud, 1978: 2), in which case we are once again back to non-falsifiable ideological and philosophical assumptions, at least until such a time when we can demonstrate that the similarity between language and other organs such as, say, the heart or lungs are greater than the differences and thus justify the use of the term Organ' even for language (see Milner 1978: 6 f.). 4. This is certainly not a language universal in any of the accepted uses of the term given in the previous chapter. There are numerous counter-examples to this generalization, to be seen precisely in terms of greater or lesser markedness as compared with the concept of 'morphological naturalness' (see Mayerthaler 1981). Rosenbaum mentions the case of Zapotec, a free word order language like Quechua, where the gapping of VSO is VSO SO, not *SO VSO (while for all other possible orders (SVO, OVS, SOV) gapping can take place either to the right or to the left SVO SO and SO SVO, OVS OS and OS OVS, SOV SO and SO SOV (Rosenbaum 1977; for a possible explanation of the impossibility of *SO VSO see Mallinson-Blake 1981: 251 f.). 5. On this point see Anttila (1975: 268 ff.) who refers to Andersen (1973). See also Robinson (1978). 6. In this respect, it is rather difficult to 'explain' cases like German which do not make it possible to come down to a simple [+ AGR] dichotomy, although it still has a system of verb endings which are notoriously differentiated, German must necessarily show a pronoun before the verb, if there is no NP with a subject function.

Part two

Chapter five Towards a typology of Common Germanic

5.0 Common Germanic is a dead language, or rather the product of a reconstruction using comparative techniques. With no native speaker to fall back on, systematic examination has to be carried out using all the earliest texts in an effort to recreate the original syntactic patterns with the greatest degree of approximation possible. In this case, too, it will be appropriate not to forget the particular nature of the texts which underlie our syntactic reconstruction for they are, more often as not, translations heavily influenced by a non-Germanic original (Greek or Latin), or, alternatively, texts in an old poetic tradition, where marked constructions, which do not reflect common everyday language, are to be expected a priori. A recent survey of the Gothic 'Skeireins' has, for example, revealed that this fragment — which is certainly not a literal translation from the Greek — shows marked (S)OV type characteristics (e. g. GEN + N), while Wulfila's translation follows a more VO-type pattern, like the Greek New Testament original (see Ebel 1978). Recently, a number of partial analyses of this or that text have appeared which comment on word order, for example, in Beowulf (Greene 1982), the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles (Yoshida 1982), the sagas (Kossuth 1978), the corpus of the most ancient Runic inscriptions (Braunmüller 1981) and Old Norse in general (Christoffersen 1980). But no overall comparison, which really ought to take into account the differing nature of the texts, has been forthcoming. Moreover, the results achieved often conflict with each other. Thus, Yoshida concludes his (partial) analysis of Runic inscriptions and the Gothic Calendar arguing in favour of an SOV order, while Braunmüller claims that the Runic inscriptions tend rather towards an unmarked basic SVO order. Nevertheless, the data he gives would not seem to give sufficient evidence to support his claim: for 24 cases (including two doubtful ones) of unmarked SVO there are 18 (four of them doubtful) in which OVS and OVs (where Vs means that the subject is expressed only in the V ending) ought to be seen as marked variants of the basic SVO order. Moreover, there are 16 unmarked cases of SOV

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(including three doubtful ones), compared with only two cases of OSV as a marked variant. We will return below to the reliability of the relative order of the three elements S, O and V when establishing a basic word order typology. For the time being, we may say that, despite the limits, and sometimes, the contradictions mentioned above, a number of findings can be considered as accepted by all. In particular, there is the tendency to develop an SVO1 order from an earlier (Indo-European?, pre- or proto-Germanic?) SOV order. There is more or less complete agreement on this point today, even though, in the course of the evolution of individual languages (or subgroups of languages), there are examples of the reverse trend (on the concept of 'Gegendrift' see Braunm ller 1981: 152 ff., 197 f.; for 'Early New High German' in particular see W. P. Lehmann 1971,1978 b). The likelihood of the SOV -» SVO drift is further increased by the fact that the individual phenomena reconstructed for Common Germanic are not isolated, but point to a substantially homogeneous framework as regards the typology of word order, with parallels in other languages. In other words, phenomenon χ is confirmed by the contemporary existence of phenomenon j and vice-versa, since χ andj are concurrent from a general typological standpoint. Obviously, the greater the number of concurrent variables, the greater, cumulatively speaking, their strength as evidence becomes. 5.1 On the specific question of the three basic elements of the simple affirmative sentence, S, O and V, we have already seen that they can give rise to divergent interpretations, quite apart from the perplexities that the generalized use of the symbols S, O and V may create (see 1.2.2). The OV type: (1)

[ek] ...dagastiR runo faihido (The Einang stone) (I) Name (the) runes painted

(2)

ek HlewagastiR HoltijaR horna tawido (The Gallehus horn) I Name son of Holt (the) horn made

can be easily matched by many examples of the VO type: (3)

ek Hagusta(l)daR I Name

hlaaiwido magu minimo (The Kiolevik stone) buried son mine

(4)

ek HraRaR satido [s]tain[a]/H (The Ro I stone) I Name laid (the) stone

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In all these four examples, the same epigraphic scheme is repeated and it is just not possible, in the absence of a more adequate context, to identify the reasons for the different word order. Only in a few cases is it clear that the invesion is for rhetorical effect (focalization): (5)

wurte runoR an walhakurne made (the) runes on the "Romans' grains of corn" heldaR kunimudiu (The Tjurkö stone) Name for Name

Here, there is clearly a desire to stress the name of the person making the dedication (HeldaR) and, above all, the name of the dead person (Kunimund) which entails a departure from the usual formula as in: (6)

ek wiR wiwio writu i runo (The Eikeland stone) I Name for Name wrote (the) runes "I, Wir, wrote the runes for Wiwia (?)"

(7)

HI R woduride staina — firijoR ? for Name (the) stone three dalidun (The Tune B I/II stone) prepared.

or

dohtriR daughters

The fact is that the basic elements give no absolute or valid criterion for defining the basic word order of the earliest form of Germanic, since they are subject to pragmatic strategies such as focalization and topicalization in the speech act. We should not forget that the flectional type to which both Indo-European and Common Germanic fundamentally belong makes a relatively high degree of freedom in word order possible, since the function of a lexeme in the sentence is expressed by case endings: in venator (1) occidit (2) lupum (3), all six possible combinations can, in theory, exist without any semantic ambiguity, while /'/ lupo uccise il cacciatore (i. e., the wolf killed the hunter) will normally (i. e., without any particular stress in the sentence) be taken as having lupo = S and cacciatore = O. Here, the word order becomes morphosyntactically significant. This does not mean that in inflecting languages there is complete anarchy in word order. An inflecting language, however, gives this sequence a more pragmatic, as opposed to grammatical or syntactic function, i. e., it uses the order of the elements not to give grammatical information, but to distinguish new information in the sentence from what is already known, or in other words, the 'theme' from the 'rheme', the 'topic' from the 'comment' (see Thompson 1978: 20-22). In the 1-

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2-3 order of the Latin example above, 1 represents the known and 3 the new information; in a 3-2-1 order, the known is represented by 3 and the sentence replies to the question "Who killed the wolf?" (while 1-32 replies to the question "What did the hunter do (to the Wolf)"?). To define the original basic order we ought to resort to criteria which are more deeply rooted in the morphological structure of a language, primarily compound structures which reflect word formation rules ('Wortbildung') that cannot be easily modified. Now, the Germanic compound with a verb element and a noun element is normally N + V. With transitive verbs N = OBJ, the compound is virtually a sentence: Common Germanic *harjatugan > Old Saxon beritogo, Anglo-Saxon heretoga, Old Frisian hertoga, OHG heri^pgo > NHG Herzog, Icel. hertogi "(he who) leads the army". Verb compounds with the verb element in the first position, of the type: OHG weitstem, Anglo-Saxon hwata-stän "whetstone" or the English scarecrow type cannot be reconstructed for Common Germanic. On this point see Ramat (1981: 190) and Yoshida (1982: 300 ff.). More generally, the structure of the Germanic compound is of the Determiner + Determined type, consistent with the (S)OV type: Gothic briip-faps "man of the bride, bridegroom" midtun-gards, Icelandic mid-gardr, Old Saxon middil-gard, OHG mittin-gart, AngloSaxon middangeard "middle fence > world", and so on. The opposite order, the Icelandic bär-fagr "hair-fine" i. e., "with a beautiful head of hair" is very rare (for a list of the characteristics of Germanic in keeping with the basic SOV word order, see Ramat (1981: Chap. 7). From a general typological standpoint, the drift from a 'pragmatic' order (i. e., stylistic marked, or as Delbrück said, "occasional") to a grammatically normal (i. e. compulsory) order is a well-known phenomenon (see Li-Thompson 1976). Obvious traces of this drift are the inconsistencies which are found at a given syntactic level within a given linguistic tradition. The concepts of 'use', 'norm' and 'system' used by Coseriu (1952: 55 ff.) (see also Braunmüller 1981: 50,107) may be useful when trying to understand the phenomenon: a linguistic phase Lj can reveal a syntactic structure of Type A while phase L3 has structure B. It is highly likely that a phase L2 will show hesitation between A and B where B, which originated as a stylistic variant, permitted by the LI linguistic system, progressively becomes the norm until it ousts A in the L3 system. As regards the Germanic languages in particular, there is thus a 'drift', i. e., a tendency to develop from SOV to SVO. This drift tends to develop in the individual languages, and the examples already quoted, which run counter to the SOV type, show that Germanic was already

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drifting from SOV to SVO in the earliest attestations, just like other Western Indo-European languages (Slavic and Romance). Probably there never was any pure SOV type in Germanic (see Dik 1980: 170). While there is more or less general agreement on the fact that Germanic has undergone an SOV —» SVO drift, the explanations for this change are much more controversial and uncertain. Here too, in what follows, we will not go beyond theoretical possibilities. The difficulty about coming to any definitive conclusion stems from the fact that word order change is affected by various factors relating to discourse and pragmatic levels of language rather than morphosyntactic levels. As such, it is difficult to establish which features were relevant in linguistic phases which have long passed and which are known to us only through fragmentary documents. From a historical standpoint, it seems difficult to accept Vennemann's hypothesis which argues that the word order with V in second position derives from T(opic)VX (with T —> S and X substantially, in our case, = O). The topicalization of X in the SXV order, it is argued, produced TSV with the topicalized element in sentence-initial position. But if T( morphological categories

(8)

117

eal swä hnxet swä we to göde dop ... ealle pas god all that which we for good do ... all these goods cumap o f . . . (Blikl. Homilies). come from ....

Person and thing have not yet been specified. More generally, we may say that a fronted REL CLAUSE may create a concept that has been neither introduced in the sentence nor lexicalized: What John did is incredible = John's action is incredible (see Lehmann 1984: 293). Hence, we can easily understand the use of the indefinite Indo-European pronoun *k"O -Ik"1!- in this type of sentence, as in examples (2) to (8). Under these circumstances, the Indo-European interrogative/indefinite pronoun, which is anaphorically referred back to in order to stress the co-referentiality of the elements in question (whoever ... he ...) can easily become the REL PRON when a true REL CLAUSE develops - one of the conditions for which is, precisely, co-referentiality.3 But the indefinite as such only presupposes the possible existence of the person or thing one is talking about: Whoever eats this bread does not predicate anything about the nature of the person in question, but simply presupposes "someone eats this bread" or "there may be someone who eats this bread". It should also be noted that this indefinite value from which the REL PRON was to develop occurs in sentences where parataxis rather than hypotaxis predominates (as example (3) demonstrates), in keeping with a pattern characteristic of SOV languages like Indo-European. 6.3.2 The other type of REL CLAUSE discussed here, which has a completely different origin, is the postposed REL CLAUSE which refers to an already mentioned head noun, and which therefore has the feature [+ known]. This type of REL CLAUSE has the function of providing further information about the head noun. (9)

Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, polytropon, hos mala polla] The man to me narrates, O Muse, versatile, who very much plagchte (Odyssey 1.1) suffered;

(10)

Old Persian martiya hya dgariya aha avam ubartam (the) man who loyal was him esteemed abaram (Darius's Inscr. at Behistan 1.21f.) I bore "I rewarded fully the person who was loyal";

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(11)

Oscan eitiuvam paam ... dededeisak eitiwad, etc. (Planta, n. 29) the money that he gave, with that money

(Cf. the Latin example quoted in (18) below). In many examples the pronoun which introduces the second part of the sentence is a deictic of the Indo-European theme *so-/-to from which the demonstratives in many languages of the Indo-European family derive: in (12) the REL CLAUSE function is restrictive: precisely that scar, among the many scars, which once ...: (12)

autika d' at once PART min sys to him (a) boar

egnö oulen, ten pote she recognized (the) scar, that/which once elase (Odyssey 19,392f.) had inflicted.

In (13) the REL CLAUSE function is much more attributive: further information is given regarding individuals already mentioned in the discussion: (13)

all' ho ge Talthybion te but he PART to T. to hoi esan they/who two to him were

kai Eyry baten proseeipe, and to E. spoke, keruke (Iliad l,320f.) messengers.

The essential feature is that in both cases new information is added to something that has already been introduced in the discourse and is therefore known. It should be noted that these REL CLAUSES introduced by *so-jtonever precede their NP in Homer.4 Moreover, as (12) and (13) show, there is no subordination marker, so much so that the proposed translation deliberately wavers between the two values, deictic and relative. When translating Homer into a modern Western language (whether English, German or French) which has developed a complete system of relative and demonstrative pronouns and also articles, the question is raised as to whether we should interpret ten in (12) and to in (13) as 'which' or 'the one', 'they two' or 'who two'. The question is somewhat inappropriately applied vis-a-vis a linguistic phase which as yet did not clearly distinguish between these two morphological categories and was restricted to expressing co-reference between the head noun and REL CLAUSE by means of a DET. This is precisely the situation which we find with the earliest Germanic texts:

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(14)

... gi gilößian sculun endi gihuggian thero you believe must and remember (you) of the wordo the hie iu ... sagda (Heliand 5853) words those\that he you told "you must believe and remember the words that he told you"

(15)

gatauhun ina du Annin frumist sä was auk they led him to A., first he I who was also swaihra Kajafin (John 18,13) K's father-in-law.

(16)

qap sums pi^e skalke ... sah nipjis was said one of the servants (and) the one\who relative was pammei afmaimait Paitrus auso to he who had cut P.'s ear (John 18.26).

We may note in addition that the earliest Germanic texts do not have embedded 'REL CLAUSES' of the type Der Mann, der bei mir wohnt, ist ein Freund von mir: 'REL CLAUSES' occur almost exclusively in 'extraposition', i. e., to the right (or to the left) of the main clause (see also Romaine 1984). 6.4 It does not seem possible to ascribe the REL PRON function to a specific Indo-European form because even the theme *jo-y which in IndoIranian and Greek functions as a REL PRON is not sufficiently widespread to be considered pan-Indo-European, and elsewhere (for example in Germanic cf. Germanje-ner) it seems to have had a deictic rather than relative function. We may even raise doubts as to whether Indo-European really had a REL PRON like those found in modern Indo-European languages. Probably demonstrative themes had a generic deictic function which could be used in what we call REL CLAUSES (see Kurzova 1981: 9f. and 16, where the Indo-European REL CLAUSE is considered as having a "noncompact and non-formalized character").5 SOV languages typically do not have any explicit marker for REL CLAUSES which, of course, are placed before the head noun: (17)

Jap. John wa Mary ga kaita non o yonda John TPC Mary SUBJ has written book OBJ has read

"J. has read the book that M. wrote" where one OBJ is applied to both verbs without any surface REL CLAUSE marker. Stressing the coreferentiality is a good way of decodifying the difficulties presented by embedded REL CLAUSES with no surface marker (see Antinucci-Duranti-

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Gebert 1979) and, at the same time, of expressing the co-reference between the main clause and the dependent relative — indispensable if there is to be a relative. This may be achieved by repeating the noun in both parts of the sentence or by placing a 'pro-noun' in its place in one of the two, or finally, with a certain redundancy, by repeating the noun accompanied by the deictic 'pro-noun' as in the following Latin example: (18)

in area trans viam paries qui ([+ known]) est propter viam in eo pariete media ostiei lumen aperito (Corpus Inscript. Latinarum, I 698,1, 9 — 11) in the area beyond the road the wall that there is near the road, in that wall in the middle for a door a hole must be opened;

i. e., "To make a door a hole must be opened in the wall which lies in the area beyond the road, near the road itself. Without repeating the noun and by means of replacement with a (deictic) 'pro-noun' we have: (19)

ab arbore abs terra pullt qui nascentur eos in terram deprimito (Cato, De agric. 51) from a tree from the earth (the) shoots which come out those must be planted into the earth

i. e. "the shoots of a tree which come out from the earth must be dug back into the earth". (See Chr. Lehmann 1984: 370f. and also the Vedic example quoted in note 3).6 6.5 It is precisely at this stage that ART needs to be taken into consideration in our discussion. Repeating DET in both parts of the sentence — main and 'relative' as in examples (20) to (24) — generates NPs made up of DET + N, the characteristic structure of ART + N: (20)

gengr par inn mafrr ... sä mabr malte went therein (a) man (that) the man said (= who said)

(21)

alle thie knehta thie thar wärun in Bethleem (Tatian 10.1) all the children who were in B.

(22)

se ellengäst ... se be in pjstrum bad (Beowu/f the powerful-spirit who in the shadows waited

(23)

var par alt traust I>eira konunga ePa iarla, there was there full trust of the kings and (the) earls beira er Jyrer lande re PO (Heusler 1962: 162). who (GEN by attraction) over the land ruled;

86f.)

6. New morphological categories

(24)

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sa hundafaps sa atstandans in andwairpja is (Mark 15.39) the centurion who (was) standing in front of him

As may be seen from (21), (22), (23), the deictic forms may be strengthened by particles, of deictic origin thar, ße, er cf. the processes of deictic reinforcement in French ce -> ce-ltti —> celui-ci. This is the origin of Gothic relative sa-ei: (25)

sa ist Helias saei skulda qiman (Mathew 11.14) This is Elia who should come

or, with indefinite reference: (26)

saei habai ausona hausjandona gahausjai (Mathew 11.15) any(one who) has ears to hear let him listen.7

But the type in (22), (21) se ellengast, Me knehta etc. i. e., ART -f- N — is not usual in the earliest Germanic texts cf. for example runoR writu (The Järsberg stone) "(I) wrote (the) runes", wurte runoR (The Tjurkö stone) "( x ) made (the) runes", etc. Indeed the tendency to avoid DET before N is particularly evident when N is already specified either as a proper noun or by some other element GEN,8 POSS,9 ADJ,10 and in a few LOG and temporal constructions.11 All this confirms DET's individualizing deictic function ([+ known]; see Ramat 1981: 85f.). The type of construction in (24) is, however, rather more recent (and perhaps directly influenced by the Greek original ho kentyriön ho parestekös eks enattas autou) than the one exemplified by (31) (which shows, moreover, a less than perfect correspondence with the Greek original; ego eimi ho poimen ho kalos). The type exemplified in (31) appears in all Germanic traditions from the earliest stages: (27)

ip saei nu gatairip aina anabusne but who(ever) now breaks one of the commandments pi%o minnistono (Mathew 5.19) of the smallest "But whoever now breaks even one of the most minor commandments ...";

(28)

sea they guoda good

scoldin ahebbean ... godspell that had to begin gospel the (Heliand24t.} "the good gospel";

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(29)

kalladi pä Knefrqdr ... seggr inn said then Kn. man the sudrani (Atlaqvida. 2.5 f.) from south "the man from the south";

(30)

mägas wäron ... on sele parn (the) relatives were in the hall beam (Beowulf \Q\Si.) (that) the high "in the high hall".

We may also note the contrast between strong and weak adjective endings in: (31)

ik im hairde is gods, hairdels sa goda saiwala I am shepherd good. Shepherd that good the soul seina lagjip faur lamba (John 10.11) his leaves for (the) lamb "I am the good shepherd. A good shepherd gives his soul for the lamb".

where it almost seems that the N+ DET+ ADJ construction is preferred in a non-predicative position (and we will see which one below). In any case the N+ DET+ ADJ/N 2 pattern is quite common, particularly with names of people Old Icel. Eirikr enn raude; Judith seo adele, right up to modern forms such as Alfred the Great, Karl der Grosse, etc. Non-Germanic parallels show the existence in Indo-European of this type: Greek Sokrates ho philosophos, Ancient Persian Gaumätam tyam magum (ACC) 'Gaumata the Magician', right up to Romance parallels such as Flore la belle o $tefan eel Mare 'Stephen the Great', Lorenzo il Magnifico; even common nouns may have the same construction vitulum ilium saginatum of the Vulgate (Luke 15.27) = Gothic sfiur pana alidan.n The traditional explanation was based on the idea that what we have indicated as DET was a 'Gelenkpartikel' (Greek arthron "articulus"), tied to the noun to give it its attributive marking (see for example Heinrichs 1954: 30). But having reached this stage in our argument we can take a further step: it is well known that the Indo-European NP had no copula so that we can take the type hairdeis sa goda or Eirikr enn raude as an NP with no copula. Their DET gives them the function of REL CLAUSES am the shepherd, the one/who (is) good', with a restrictice function.

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This is particularly clear when the REL CLAUSE uses a participle as ADJ (in the N + DET + ADJ pattern): (32)

rums wigs sa brigganda in fralustai (Mathew 7.13) broad (is the) way that leading to perdition "broad is the way that leads to perdition";

see also (24) for the repitition of sa. (33)

aber dbritto belt ist selbes druhtines Cbristes the third person is of the same Lord Christ, dhes chisendidin ("gesandten") (Isidor 4.7) of the sent "the third person is that of Christ himself who was sent (to us)

DET thus refers back anaphorically to a preceding N ([+ known]) and has the function of providing further information about it or, at the very least, specifying it: hairdeis sa goda specifies which shepherd is referred to and marks off this shepherd from the set of possible shepherds (see what was said for (12) above). Other languages in the Indo-European family use a (deictic!) pronoun form in the same position and with the same function which develops into a true REL PRON: (34)

visve maruto ye sabasab (Rg Veda VII 34.24) all (the) Marutas who powerful (are) "all the powerful M."

(See Longobardi 1980; Ramat 1981: 96; Haider-Zwanziger 1984; Kurzova 1981: 36 ff., and, with a discussion of the preceding bibliography, Chr. Lehmann 1984: 396 f.); (35)

(Avestan) naracit^ yöi taxma (Yast. 5.86) (the) men-PART who valiant (are) "the valiant men"

Indian ye and Avestan yöi relative forms refer anaphorically to a preceding head noun and nominal REL CLAUSES do not have a copula: there is in fact no difference when compared with the hairdeis sa goda or Alfred the Great type! The conclusion to be drawn, then, is that a Germanic DET, which was still undifferentiated, *sa, so, bat developed, thanks to a split, and

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at the same time, a refinement in its functions, towards REL PRON and DET ART. 6.5.1 The relative construction with an anaphoric DET also offers a reasonable solution to the problem of how and why a basically OV language such as 'common Germanic' has shifted (like other IndoEuropean languages) from prenominal to postnominal REL CLAUSES. The earliest Germanic texts clearly show that prenominal REL CLAUSES are already the norm. What, in actual fact, is found in many Indo-European languages (including Germanic) is the existence of both typical OV language features and postnominal REL CLAUSES side by side with each other. It has also been suggested that precisely the passage from prenominal to postnominal REL CLAUSES must be considered a factor of primary importance in the SOV -* SVO change see Antinucci (1977: 176); Antinucci-Duranti-Gebert (1979: 170). Indeed, on the one hand, we may claim that the REL CLAUSE does not belong to universal, fundamental syntactic types — see Comrie (1981c: 137) and we can think of the frequent replacement of REL CLAUSES in spoken language by paratactic structures Give me the book which is on the table —» Give me that book: it's on the table; on the other hand, the REL CLAUSE is perhaps the oldest type of subordination in Indo-European syntax (see Kurzova 1981: 14). Finally, we should note — as I have indicated above — that Old Germanic languages only have a few examples of prenominal REL CLAUSES (with indefinite reference see Ramat 1981: 191 f.), so that the rise of the subordinate postnominal REL CLAUSE may indeed have triggered the postpositional SVO-type. When we speak of a change from preposed to postnominal REL CLAUSES, we should not think in terms of a mechanical shift of items from a prenominal to a postnominal position, but rather in terms of a morphological category (the DET) taking on a relative function. This new DET function certainly coexisted for a time with the earlier type of prenominal 'REL CLAUSE' (see examples (5) and (6) above) and then substituted the earlier *k*o- /#"/'-13 even then the REL CLAUSE remained in the prenominal position: (36)

ter demo dlenöt, ter ist who (ever) to him serves, that person is follün vrt (Notker Labes 3.30) completely free (the person who ... that person is ...)

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with an indefinite function and repetition of the DET in both parts of the sentence; see also: (37)

der ie gewesen waere Soever been was her^e waere da (the) heart was then "the heart of whoever

ein tötriuwesaere, des one who repents, of him gevreut (Hartmann, Iwein 609 f.) cheered; repented would then be cheered"

or even with a definite reference (to Satan, quoted in the preceding verse): (38)

fön themo er unsih retita in hellu from the one he us saved in hell nan gistrewita (Otfried, Evangelienbuch 5.16; 3) that one he banished "he banished to hell the one (i. e., the person) from whom he saved us".

6.5.2 We can attempt the following interpretation of the origin and development of the new postnominal REL CLAUSES. As mentioned above, the postnominal DET, not yet specialized as REL PRON. and ART, refers anaphorically to a head noun already introduced in the discourse. We have also seen that in many cases no subordination marker is present. Now this type of construction strongly resembles what Hyman calls the 'pattern of afterthought'. Hyman argues that in special pragmatic circumstances "the speaker may forget to say something in the course of his utterance; or he may find that it is necessary to add something, because his interlocutor has not understood; or he may realize that the sentence he has just uttered is unclear or ambiguous. In all of these cases (and doubtless others) he may wish to add something after the verb-final utterance", Hyman, 1975: 120). In German, for example, a strictly SOV language in dependent clauses, the speaker will say: (39)

Der Mann, den ich gesehen habe ... gestern Abend the Man, who I seen have ... yesterday afternoon

with a pause after the verb. Hyman (1975: 121) goes on to observe that this pattern entails intermediate stages between SOV and SVO, i.e., that the verb will not jump into second position in one go. This, too, is in keeping with what we have observed as regards the progressive development of true REL

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CLAUSES in Germanic. A type of non-syntactic co-ordination, which is particularly evident in cases such as those mentioned in note 14 does, however, exist. Such 'REL CLAUSES' do, in fact, give new information about something which has been introduced previously into the discourse and therefore considered to be already known by the listener, i.e., on the 'topic' or 'theme' of the sentence.14 A basic characteristic of the theme is, of course, the fact that it normally appears in the first position in the discourse, i.e., at the beginning of the sentence. In other words, the theme creates the reference framework for the rest of what follows and the latter will expand it or specify it. In everyday speech such forms as the following are frequently found: (40)

Ο I' George Creech, his son just wrecked his new Chevy;

(41) Jean, son fr ere repare les mobylettes (42)

Ich habe eine Schwester — sie hat sich ein Fahrrad gekauft.

ΟΓ George, Jean and meine Schwester give the theme of the sentence — what immediately comes to the speaker's mind, who is thus obliged to add subsequent information on the theme by means of the 'afterthought' technique (see Noonan 1977: 380). A. Culioli (1976) speaks of Jean in example (41) as the 'point de repere ('reference point') from which the whole sentence is structured, if not grammatically, at least as regards pragmatic communicative strategies (and it is well-known that there are languages like Japanese where the 'topic' is given an explicit grammatical marker). In the first verse of the Odyssey (see example (9) above) andra 'the man' is the theme of the sentence and, at the same time, the entire poem; as such it is focalized in initial position and what is said, predicated about it (polytropon, hos mala etc.) comes after, when the listener's attention has already been directed to the topic/theme. And this is precisely the structure we find in the Germanic examples of the type illustrated in (15) and (16)! Pragmatic topicalization and 'topic' focalization strategies based on the 'afterthought' pattern can thus explain the rise of an order which clearly differs from the SOV type to which common Germanic must be ascribed. In other words, the development of postnominal REL CLAUSES and ART may be seen as the grammaticalization of what were previously marked forms, or 'afterthought forms', as they are called.

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Let us take for example the beginning of Margaret's famous song in Goethe's Faust: (43)

Es war ein König in Tbule,\gar treu bis in das Grab,] dem sterbend seine Buhle l einen goldnen Becher gab. "There was a King in Thule\ very faithful until his tomb I to him his lover] gave a golden tankard]"

Here, first the theme is given (/created). An apposition without a verb is added to this as an 'afterthought' in the second verse. And it is a nominal 'REL CLAUSE' without a copula which might even be translated as "who was faithful until the tomb". Once the framework has been created, the third verse refers to it anaphorically through the DET dem, which could be translated either paratactically, after a brief pause, as "to this king" or, with a true relative, hypotactic link and no pause, as "to whom" (see Johansen 1935: 37). On the use of ein see 5.6 below. 6.5.3 The earliest pattern adopted was, in fact, *sa, so, pat used only in reference to a noun already introduced previously or given as known: (44)

ahma ina ustauh in aubida, jah was in (the) spirit him took in desert and was in biyai aupidai dags fidwor tiguns (Mark 1.12f.) this desert days four tens [forty]

(45)

ther man was reht ... inti beilag the man was right and holy Inphieng tbo antwurti fon He received then answer from geiste (Tatian, 7.4f.) ghost.

geist was in imo ghost was in him themo heilagen this holy

The anaphoric use of DET represents the first step towards the DEF ART. 6.5.4 Greenberg (1978) has discussed the typological evolution of the morphosyntactic category of ART in a very convincing way: First phase. No marker. Definiteness is not expressed morphologically (for Germanic note such cases as wurte runoR (the Tjurkö stone) horna tawido (the Gallehus horn) "(I) made (the) horn", where the runes, the horn under discussion, are before the reader's eyes and therefore clearly defined in the context; bait hino (ACC) 'stone this' in the Strom inscription

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or run A R p At A R (still ACC) in the Istaby inscription 'runes these' show a particularly emphatic effect with DET postposition. Finally, the complete substitution of the noun with a pro-form is also found: sA p At bAriutip (the Stentoften stone) "who(ever) this (i. e., this stone) breaks ..." In 'common Germanic' the semantic feature [ + definite], in both its individualizing and anaphoric functions was expressed by combining different grammatical features such as the inflectional case, DET, pronouns, word orders etc. and was probably more contextdependent in the pragmatic communicative situation. Second phase. 1. DEF ARTs develop from purely deictic elements ( = DET) which identify an element as being previously known and already mentioned in the discourse (this is the hairdeis sagoda type, a construction which is closely related to 'REL CLAUSES'). Second phase. 2. When the DET which is typically linked to discourse strategies becomes compulsory, the DEF ART is born. The path towards this development is illustrated by cases such as (14), (20) etc. (see 6.5), which originally served to emphasize co-reference. ART spread through the normal process of grammaticalization and was increasingly also applied to those nouns, which, by virtue of the semantic feature [ + unique], did not need any attributive or restrictive specification: (46)

seo sunne is micle ufor donne se the sun is much (more) over than the möna sy (Leechdoms iii 262, 10) moon is "the sun is much higher than the moon".

This use is not yet completely grammaticalized in Anglo-Saxon or in OHG, so that we find both sunne and seo sunne or sunna as well as diu sunna. Greenberg speaks of languages which are on the boundary between two phases and quotes English cases such as by hand, on foot, at home, at night versus the hand, the foot etc. "the whole development is to be viewed as a single continuous process marked by certain decisive turning points", (Greenberg 1978: 61). Second phase. 3. Non-generic articles. In this phase, we find an ART which, together with other possible uses, includes both marking of definiteness and non-definite specific uses. The article is used in contexts which go far beyond the anaphoric function and is applied to a specific but as yet unidentified reference. English I'm looking for a book is potentially ambiguous implying either a reference to a specific book or to any book.

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Third phase. Class prefixes. The article has become a simple marker for nouns or NPs. It may be used to subdivide nouns into classes according to grammatical gender (Der Mond, die Sonne, das Weib] or mark off a noun as being a noun (the work versus to work}. Finally, in such cases as those mentioned at the beginning of 6.1 (die sieben kleinen Zwerge) or English the ups and downs, die acts as the marker which indicates the NP and the as the nominalizer, i. e., the explicit marker of noun status (See Heinrichs 1954: 24; Greenberg 1978: 71, Ultan 1978: 252). Certainly, we cannot state that class prefixes have no meaning; they function at a different level as compared with the previous phase. 6.6 Finally, a few observations relating to the definite/indefinite opposition which we saw in (43) ein\der. The main function of the INDEF ART is to introduce a previously unknown element into the discourse (hence it is [— known], individualized within its class [+ unique], but not specified [ — specific]: (47)

boy was playing in the garden.

An INDEF ART as such was unknown in common Germanic so that there is no need here to go into the use of an NP with an INDEF ART as the representative of the entire class [+ generic] see Hawkins (1983: 214 ff.) of the type: (48)

A rose is a flower (= The rose is a flower

Roses are flowers).

Nor do we need to examine the use of the INDEF ART with the feature [— generic] ( [ + definite]!) as in: (49)

/ have a rose on my table.

Gothic used the indefinite adjective sums, after N: (50)

gamotida imma wair sums us baurg saei ... Luke 8.27) met to him man a from city who "A man from the city met him who ..."

In OF, OE, OS, OHG and ON, the Germanic *suma% did not have the meaning of its modern day English counterpart same, but rather the function of an INDEF ART: (51)

ßä sume dage räd se cyng up (Parker Chron., A.D. 895) and one day road the king

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The numeral an "one" steadily eliminated sum in the course of the 12th century (see Givon 1981). But notice the early equivalence of sum and an in: (52)

sum man hafde twegen suna (Luke 15.11) a man had two sons

(in Gothic manne [partitive GEN!] sums aihta ttvans sununs) and: (53)

an man hafde twegen suna (Mathew 21.28).

Like English, other Germanic languages, too, steadily adopted "one" as the INDEF ART (and INDEF PRON).15 But, earlier on, the feature [+ indef.] was not expressed by an explicit marker, as may be clearly seen from the following examples: (54) (55)

he ärärde märe mynster (Petersb. Chron., A.D. 1087) he built great monastery he was swyde spedig man (Alfred, Orostus., 1.1) he was fairly rich man

The use of an seems, moreover, to have been first introduced in translations, where to a certain extent it was suggested by the original: (56)

da clipode he aenne oeorv (Luke. 15.26) and called he one of the servants (-.vocavit unum de serf is)

(57)

cume an spearwa (Alfred, Bede's Hist. Eccles, 2.13/1367 came a sparrow (:adveniens unus passerum)

The development of the INDEF ART took place in a way which was complementary to the DEF ART's development and may be traced in the extant texts: it is not a simple grammatical or syntactic loan from Latin, even though originally an external influence may have been significant, but rather the gradual grammaticalization of the feature [ +definite] inevitably bound to the NP (see Ramat 1981: 89,112). 6.7 In conclusion, all the phases of ART development as outlined schematically by Greenberg are to be found in Germanic. ART is a new morphosyntactic category which arose in Germanic from the splitting of a DET originally following the name to which it referred by means of the technique of 'afterthought'. From the originally paratac-

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tic structure hairdeis sa goda came both the deictic function of the ART (der gute Hirt} and the attributive/restrictive REL CLAUSE, placed after the head noun (der Hirt, der gut ist}. Both these developments are consistent with the SOV -» SVO shift which is one of the main characteristics of the development of the Germanic languages. This shift made an explicit definite versus indefinite opposition necessary. This opposition previously had no grammatical expression and was instead expressed by pragmatic strategies in discourse. We do not find a single REL PRON form either in Germanic or in Indo-European. What we do find in both Germanic and other IndoEuropean languages is the rise of the REL PRON category — and ART as well — using different means which all, however, reveal the same tendency from a typological standpoint. Finally, a brief methodological note. The purpose of this research was to sketch a typological development. So it is appropriate to quote examples from different linguistic traditions (the various Germanic languages, and also non-Germanic languages), from different eras and different linguistic levels. This approach would have been inappropriate if the task had been to describe a specific linguistic situation, in a specific moment, in a specific language. The typological approach to language operates at a comparative level — like the genealogical approach which attempts to reconstruct linguistic phases which have gone by. On the one hand, diachronic and cross-linguistic examination of a basically homogeneous tradition like Germanic is, to my mind, the only way to interpret the synchronic situation characterized by forms such as German der, die, das and English that which both have two different functions. On the other hand, it is precisely typological language parallels that show the development characterized here as being the most probable.16

Notes \. For example, the Romance (and Germanic) periphrastic forms for the future and the present (see Benveniste 1968 and Chap. 8 below). 2. See Ramat (1981 Chap. 7). For Modern Irish see Kossuth (1978). See also the passage from Middle English me semeth > it seems to me (Butler 1977). 3. Justus (1978) has convincingly demonstrated that the constructions with *kfo-lkfioriginally had the function of signalling the 'focus': this function was the basis for its uses as a relative, interrogative and indefinite pronoun. For the development in Germanic, this Indo-European reconstruction is not of primary significance, although completely in keeping with what is found in the earliest forms of Germanic. The basic

132

4. 5.

6.

7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

Part two point of interest for our discussion is rather that interrogative and indefinite pronouns and the REL PRON have the same origin Co-referentiality is often expressed by the other Indo-European 'REL PRON' *yo- which also originated as a deictic (see 6.4) Vedic yas te modo jujyas cärur asti ... which/that of you drink habitual dear is sa team indra prabhävaso mamattu (R V VII 22,2) that you Indra rich inebriates "may inebriate you, rich Indra, that habitual drink that is dear to you". Here, too, we find the same anaphoric function of *yo-, with a reprise by means of the deictic *so-/to- that we found in the previous examples (see Kurzovä 1981: 30 f.). see Monteil (1963: 38). Indeed very often juxtaposition and co-ordination occur in sentences where we would tend to use a subordinate clause introduced by REL. As regards the Germanic examples of this type see footnote 14. So-called 'relative anticipation' in Classical languages is historically nothing of the kind. Sentences with the interrogative theme *lfo-\kfi- could come first in the sentence in early times (with or without the repetition of the head noun). The same strategy is still found today in Hindi, where "Ram saw the knife with which the man had killed the chicken" is expressed as "With which knife the man had killed the chicken, Ram saw that knife" see Comrie (1981c: 139). For Germanic see example (8). On the priority of non-inflected forms — particles — for indicating the relative relationship, whichis of secondary importance here, see Ramat (1981: 105 ff.). e. g.,flöh her ötachres nid (Hild. 18) "Fled he Odacre's anger". e. g., mit dlnem wortun (Hild. 40) "with your words". e. g., Her furlaet in lante ... prut in bure, barn unwahsan (Hildebrandslied 20f.) "he left in the land wife in house, child small". e. g., Gothic du maurgina = English to morrow, Gothic himma daga = German heute etc. This type is also found in non-Indo-European languages (Tagalog, Javanese, Hebrew etc.) see Heinrichs (1954: 32 f.); Greenberg (1978: 55). For an analogical extension see postnominal REL CLAUSES with wb- such as (lb), while *^O-/^i- was originally cataphoric; see Justus (1978), Rissanen (1984). J>a cweed heora an his nama was quirion (Ifr. Vitae XI 67). "Then said of them one ... his name was Q." In Middle Dutch men ridder, was doot, vonden si "a knight — was dead — found they" quamen tere stat, biet Babilone "they reached to the city (was) called B." See Franck (1910: 186). And see also the sentences with 'and' where we would put 'that', 'which' or 'who': bann sä at madr stöd at baki Qlvi ok var bojdi he saw that (a) man stood behind Q· and was of the head hteri en aorir menn (Egilssaga 25,11) higher than other men; Middle Dutch ene stat ende biet Babilone a city and (= which) was called B. MHG/*ir di^e %it und (= in which) di%e urteil ist geschehen; see Behaghel (1923-32, Vol. Ill: 739); Ramat (1981: 102).

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15. Notice that the sum type could also occur as an indefinite pronoun and not only as a prenominal ART: (i)

and hira scipu sumu genämon (Parker Chron., A.D. 894) "and of their ships some captured"

(ii)

some the throte and som the beorte hadyn "some the throat and some the heart had j-perced (King Alts., 940). pierced"

A good example of transition from adjectival to pronominal use is (iii)

sum mann thann midflri men forlätid (Hel.s 3476) some man then in middle age evil forsake "some people (will) abandon evil when they are middle-aged".

16. The most obvious parallel is, of course, with Romance languages, which have already been mentioned (see Harris 1979 and 1980). But even in Finnish we find a third person anaphoric (Latin ille) used in deictic strategies (i)

Annoin sille tytolle se kirja I gave that girl the book

along with the more formal (ii)

Annoin tytolle I gave girl

kirja-n book-ACC

to indicate a more definite direct object contrasting with the nominative object of the more colloquial variety (see Ultan 1978: 256 f., who rightly stresses the interplay between definiteness, topicalization, word order and disappearance of case oppositions as markers of definiteness). For other parallels see Greenberg 1978, Harris 1980 and Heinrichs 1954: 30 ff., 46 ff.

Chapter seven Towards a typology of Pompeian Latin

7.0 In the preceding chapters, we saw the significance that the examination of word order has recently had in providing typological descriptions for this or that language. In this chapter, I shall try to examine the situation in a very welldocumented, specific linguistic tradition, namely Latin, at a particular moment in time, in the light of Greenberg's 'universale' (which, in actual fact, as we have seen, are generalizations induced from concrete empirical observations). We may note in passing that there is no difficulty about this, since Greenberg's Surface Structure morphological categories are basically those of Indo-European languages, which can be applied without difficulty to Latin, whereas they are not so easily applied to other types of languages such as ergative languages. The significance of an examination of Pompeian inscriptions from a linguistic point of view is obvious: we are dealing with one of the clearest examples of spoken language, within a linguistic tradition which is known to us almost exclusively thanks to literary texts, even though the spoken language has been filtered down to us through the language of literary writers, from Plautus to Petronius. (The Pompeian inscriptions themselves are, of course, not without literary reminiscences and, sometimes, literary ambitions). Since the Pompeian inscriptions show features which were later to become characteristic of Vulgar Latin and Romance, we need to see whether this passage, which has already been thoroughly investigated phonologically and morphologically (see mainly Väänänen 1971), is confirmed or otherwise in a mainly syntactically-based typology like Greenberg's. Note, finally, that the corpus of inscriptions, given the tragic events of Pompei, offers an absolutely synchronic vision within the evolution of Latin. 7.1 At the end of an interesting analysis of Latin from a typological standpoint, J. N. Adams recently reached the conclusion that "the language was in many respects undergoing a readjustment from an OV type

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to a VO type before the time of early literary texts such as the plays of Plautus" (1976: 72 see also Warner 1980). Indeed, features and forms of the vulgar language appear in Plautus that the subsequent learned and literary tradition was to submerge but which resurfaced in Late Latin and Romance languages. According to Adams, some phenomena in Plautus would be inexplicable unless we assume a change from an OV to a VO type, which had either already occurred or which was taking place. Not all Adams arguments are perhaps convincing,1 but the basic thesis is undoubtedly valid in the light of what we know about the history of Latin literature and language "Plautus, who wrote for a popular public was evidently ready to accept the characteristics of the daily language" (1976: 95). What then are the results of the analysis of Pompeian Latin of the first century A. D.? Do they confirm Adams' conclusions? The basis of this research is E. Diehl's collection of inscriptions (1910) which also contains other documents in addition to the Pompeian inscriptions such as those of the VII cohort stationed in Rome (CIL VI = Dfiehl] Nr. 215 — 239). These inscriptions have been considered in the following statistics, since they are contemporary with those of Pompei and testify to the same type of language. No consideration has been given to those inscriptions which contain verses or quotations from verses, even though they contained vulgar features, since literary tradition and metrical requirements may very well have modified the 'natural' word order.2 The inscriptions show a clear dominance of the S + V order vis-a-vis inversion V + S (182: 26) in sentences with a single actant (without O). In initial position we find V almost exclusively in stereotype sentences, such as the 'signatures' of the inscriptions scribet puer Rusticus (D 494, but in the preceding line Africanus moritur!}; ... scripsit C[...] (D 155) and so on. This would seem to confirm Marouzeau's observation (1949: 49) "The verb is attracted to the initial position of a sentence when the latter is not self-sufficient, but in some way a function of a neighbouring utterance".3 In sentences of the type hie habitat]Felicitas (D 6) or labyrinthus\hic habitat I Minotaurus (D 53, written on a sketch of a labyrinth), there seems to be a tendency to place the verb in second position (cf. 'Wackernagel's Law' mentioned above in Chapter 5). The problem is obviously more complex when a third possibility comes into play, i.e., O. Here we find 32 cases of SVO (= 33.6%), 54 SOV (= 56.8%) and also 5 OVS, 2 OSV, 1 VSO, 1 VOS (in all 9.6%).

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SOV thus seems to be the most frequent type, but 17 of the 54 cases repeat the same stereotyped formula NN sebaciaria(m) fecit (e. g., D 215, 216, 217 etc.). Inversions occur, however, even with this formula ... lulius Saturninus fecit sejbaciaria ..., D 233; Μάρκος Αΰλνος / "Ολυμπο(ς) (...) φηκι σηβα//κιαρνα, D 225. Note that all other information is given either before or after the OV (or VO) nexus, but never between V and Ο (see Lehmann 1973), at least for the SOV and SVO types under discussion here: imp. Antonino\et Sacerdotem\TI cos. Calpurniu$\ Victor sebacariaj[fecit m. Apri/ejin loco Sucessi, D 215 (see also D 217, 218, 219 etc.). At the very most, an adjective with a predicative function is found between Ο and V ... Planius SaturninusI sevacia tuta fecit ... D 221 (see also D 233; but very often the order is NN sebaciaria fecit ... (omnia) tuta; see for example D 226, 227, 230 etc.). The general Latin rule, upheld by the inscriptions, is that only one inflected item may appear between Ο and V *Galliam tertio anno Caesar occupant does not appear (see Charpin 1978: 31). It is, on the other hand, interesting to note that the order of S, V and Ο seems to be independent of any loss of endings. This would confirm the hypothesis that phonetic change was not the cause of a fixed SVO word order (see 1.7). Indeed, we find ... sebaciariam tu[t]a (sic) fecit (D 233), ... lulius Maximus ... I sebaciariam fed (D 229), etc., with the maintenance, at least graphically, of the -am ending, but we also have sebaciaria fecit (D 230, 232, 227 and so on) as well Q.S fecit sebaciaria (D 223, 225, 231). We may also quote Veneria\Maximo\mentla [= mentulam\ exmuccavt [= -avii\ (D 625 with SOV) and Successus textor amat Coponiaes [ = -ae] ancilla [= -am] (D 1026a with SVO) and in a distich quisquis amat nigra ... nigra cum video (D 596). Other sequences such as OSV are clearly exceptional: Marcellum\Fortunata cupit (D 164) versus Marcellus Praenestinam amat (D 1084); ... bos ego ubicumque deposue [= -ui\ (D 1027 a), the only two examples of this order. The only case of VSO is given by a. d. VI k. Novembres praebuit Surus Petilius ornamental M. Fansto Siloni honoris causa Suri liberti (D 422). We find OVS in D 224 ... sebaci\aria fee. Falius Tuarius (see D 237) and in D 214 b Caesio dec. [= decurioni\ feliciter] homini bono\gratias agimus\\omnes commilitones\qui subcura eius sumus, where the extraposition of S is probably due to the presence of a postnominal REL CLAUSE and the set expression gratias agere.4 There is, therefore, considerable freedom in word order, which may be attributed in part to the fact that a flectional language like Latin never had a rigidly fixed word order because every part of the sentence had its own grammatical marker indicating its function, and may be, in part,

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due to the fact that Pompeian Latin was effectively in a transitory phase, in which the characteristics of subsequent linguistic stages already appear.5 Other features, consistent with the basic word order, which are traditionally taken into account when considering the Greenbergian typological approach, show the same lack of rigidity. Against 105 cases of N + ADJ (including numerals), there are 55 cases of ADJ + N. Some examples clearly show that the order is indifferent and with no precise function: while we find bellis moribtts (D 454, 456, 458), plurimam salutem (D 451, cf. 538, 540), we also get moribus bellis (D 455, 457), salute plurima (D 539, 1042): even stereotype expressions like these show word order variations. The Pompeian inscriptions do not seem to confirm Adams' (and others') hypothesis about an archaic N + Objective ADJ (populus Romanus) versus Subjective ADJ + N (felices homines); see Adams (1976: 80 f.) who refers to Marouzeau (1953: 16ff.): in animula dulcis (D 505, cf. 506 and 547) panem bonum (D 179), the adjectives evidently express a subjective judgement, although they are postposed; and inversely there is no subjectivity in multis annis (D 573), omnibus commilitonibus (D 214 a). On the contrary, what emerges from the inscriptions is an opposition [ + restrictive] of the type that Perrot (1978: 20) has pointed out: dux Romanus indicates a leader of the Roman army (and not of another army); the adjective has an individualizing function (= [+ restrictive]). Conversely, Romanus dux indicates a leader with characteristics typical of a Roman leader (= [— restrictive]). Numerals are restrictive in this sense and are usually prenominal in our 'corpus' fanatici tres, D 46; stipendiorum trium, D 22; /. Ittlis primis, D 435; and also the adjectives in word groups such as insula Arriana, D 437; balneum ]/enerium; D 435; c\e\nacula equestria, D 437, etc.6 Prenominal adjectives of quantity, on the other hand, do not have a restrictive value (see multis annis, omnibus commilitonibus and so on). Pompeian Latin thus seems to be heralding the tendency which was to be found later in the Romance languages, where the postnominal adjectives are restrictive but prenominal adjectives are not: cf. route mauvaise, strada cattiva (i.e., a badly built or badly sited road) versus mauvaise route, cattiva strada (not restrictive but qualified and subjectively characterized: see Waugh 1976). Even in this case there are counterexamples: ... Locaturltrinclinium cum tribus lectis, D 439, with a prenominal numeral but annos continues quinque, D 435 with a postnominal nonrestrictive adjective and so on. Equally, we find 26 cases of GEN + N (consistent with the SOV type) and 59 cases of N -f GEN (consistent with the SVO type). On the other

7. Towards a typology of Pompeian Latin

\ 39

hand, there is only one example of postposition (mecum attested twice), as compared with 158 examples of pre-position as was to be expected given Classical Latin's position. There are 15 examples of REL CLAUSES coming after the head noun (omnes commilifones qui sub cura eius sumus, D214b) against no cases of the opposite order. (If the relative has an indefinite reference, it can precede the main clause rutam qui oderat tisanam edebat D 640). The adjective with an adpositive function follows N (cum Martialelsodale, D 46, but there is no example of the reverse order). Finally, the OV type would appear to prevail in the VP (whereas in the NP, the VO type predominates); 61 examples of Ο + V in affirmative sentences versus 34 examples of V + Ο (regarding the possibility of the NP order differing from the VP order see Canale 1976: 43). It would appear that VP preserves the older order better. Thus we also find OBJind. OBJDir V in 16 cases versus 4 cases of OBJDir OBJ lnc j V (even with Ο represented by pronouns tibi me misit D 510). 7.2 In conclusion, then, Pompeian Latin, on the one hand, either confirms in a banal way what was already well-established in Classical Latin (e. g., the almost total absence of postpositions, postnominal relative clauses) or, alternatively, presents a complex picture, which sometimes contradicts the rigid typological models (SOV and SVO) which have been considered so far. If it is legitimate to draw a general conclusion from the examination of a specific case, which a priori seemed to be interesting precisely because of the specific nature of its corpus, then this conclusion must be to uphold the criticisms that have been expressed vis-a-vis those who believed it is possible to extrapolate a more or less all-embracing typology of syntactic phenomena (and not just syntactic phenomena) merely by analyzing basic word order. (On this point, see Comrie's appropriate remarks (1981 c: 93 ff.) Even in this case, the clues that typological linguistics can give us are probabilistic in nature — which is entirely in keeping with the general features of the historical evolution of Latin, which are also reflected in the Pompei episode.

Notes \. Since we find many features of the OV type in Plautus it seems unlikely that the change from OV —» VO had been completed by his times (see Adams 1976: 97). These features are explained by Adams as the effect of the "constant register-switching" that Plautus uses (ibidem) but there is no parameter outside Plautus to judge by: on the one hand

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3.

4. 5.

6.

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VO is claimed as being evidence for the spontaneity of spoken language while evidence for the archaic nature of OV features only comes from comparison, within Plautus, with VO type features. All this is true for the evolution of Latin over a long period of time but it prevents us from relying on Plautus, who deliberately uses various registers, as proof of the change in question. See also Panhuis 1984: 145 f. The statistics are taken from the degree thesis presented by my student Adelma Schirinzi, L'ordine delle parole nelle iscri^ioni pompeiane, University of Pavia, in the 1977/78 academic year. Focalization strategies may in special texts bring about a V + S order in praedis Inline Sp.f. Felicis\locantur\balneum Venerium et nongentum tabernae pergulaej ..., D 437. Here, the advertising strategy requires that the "to let" be given a separate line or for it to be placed at the beginning of the line. Sometimes, S and V inversion is caused by a desire for stylistic variation Amianthus Epaphra Tertius ludantjiucundus No/anus petat nu[m]eret Citus et Status, D 725. The only example of VOS is D 501 ... rogat te Arpogra ut ..." While imperative and hortative sentences tend to have V in initial position, in keeping with the general rules of Latin syntax (see Marouzeau 1949: 46; cf. D 493, 631, 632, 704 — with counter-examples D 197, 498, 35 etc.), even subordinate sentences show considerable hesitation. A trend towards SOV is, however, statistically apparent: 23 examples of SOV, 4 of SVO, 1 of OSV. See for example ... Set copo probe fecisti\quod sella commodasti D 178; urna aenia pereit de taberna] ... /sei furem dabit unde r[e]m\\servare [p]o[ssimt4s] ..., D 432. Also worth noting is D 640 with OSV (+ OV in the main clause) ruta(m) qui oderat tisana(m) edeba(t) versus D 828 ... qui emit\servant [doctujm os non habet. V in final position is characteristic of dependent clauses (see Marouzeau 1953: 45). Note D 34 habeaspropitiosjdeos tuos tres. The adjective in the predicative position precedes, the numeral follows.

Chapter eight An example of reanalysis: periphrastic forms in the Romance languages' verb system

8.0 In this chapter I present a typological examination of a very wellknown and much-studied problem fully attested for more than two thousand years and which, precisely for these reasons, stands up very well to the general extrapolations that I intend to make here. Emile Benveniste considers the Romance periphrastic forms (PFs) as an example of 'conservative mutations' (though, of course, the same would also be true for Germanic languages), in which one set of morphological categories is replaced by another set with the same functions (see Benveniste 1968). Nevertheless, the functional identity of dixi and ho detto ( < habeo dictum) is only established at the end of a long period of what is, as we shall see, a partly cyclical evolution which leads to the disappearance of the past simple dissi. The introduction of a form habeo dictum in the dicere paradigm is an example of morphological discontinuity, a break which takes place owing to a 'reanalysis' of pre-existing language 'material'. Reanalysis of grammar leads to (and derives from) a change which, as Thorn puts it, is 'catastrophic' and which is related to a series of changes, sometimes apparently unconnected, which brings about wholesale restructuring, as argued by Lightfoot in the case of the English modal verbs (see Lightfoot 1979 Chapter 2; for criticism of Lightfoot from a philological standpoint see, however, Plank 1984). The development of PFs was not an isolated phenomenon but went hand in hand with other changes in the Latin system. On the one hand, there was a general tendency to adopt analytical forms in both noun and verb morphology and, on the other hand, a corresponding crisis in the system of inflections with less attention being paid to agreement (e. g., adjective and noun agreement) — which is typical for languages with a high incidence of inflections. Finally, a fixed SVO word order was established. Yet, at the same time, the morphological means which led to the reanalysis were,

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as we shall see below, already present in Latin, so that we may speak of a kind of stability of forms within morphological discontinuity — so typical of catastrophic reorganizations in the sense envisaged by Rene Thorn (1980: 84) "... it may be said that the primary task of every morphological interpretation is the identification of the discontinuity of a morphology and the stable parts of these discontinuities." The notion of 'reanalysis' has been defined as a "change in the structure of an expression ... that does not involve any immediate or intrinsic modification in its surface manifestation. Reanalysis may lead to changes at the surface level ... but these surface changes can be viewed as the natural and expected result of functionally prior modifications in rules and underlying representations" (Langacker 1977: 58). It is not difficult to see that reanalysis may be considered as a case of catastrophic restructuring which a long series of 'conspiratory' changes taking place in the language system lead up to. 8.1 The antecedents of the type ho scritto,j'ai ecrit, (eu) am scris etc. (i. e. habere + P(P)P were, of course, found in Plautus and probably predate Plautus (Thielmann 1885 a: 834). (1)

and I la ... quae babeat cottidianum familiae a servant who has daily for the family coctum cibum (Plautus Merc. 398) cooked food "a servant who cooks every day for the family"

(2)

nam hominem servom j suos domitos habere oportet so a man slave his tamed have must oculos et manus (Plautus Mil. 563 f.) eyes and hands "so a slave must control his eyes and his hands"

(3)

neive quis in eo agro agrum and nobody in that field land oqupatum habeto (Corpus Inscript. Latinarum I2 585 (111 B. C.)) occupied must have "and nobody must occupy the land in that field".

In these examples, the P(P)P (coctum, domitos, oqupatum) represents the necessary semantic complement to habere on par with what happens in the noun phrase with esse (such as the gonlegium quod est aciptum type, Corpus Inscript. Latinarum I2 364, "the college which has been set up").

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Example (2) without domitos would have no sense and example (1) without coctum would mean something quite different! The P(P)P is thus the complement of babere and, as such, corresponds to other constructions in which the verb babere (or even tenere}^ have a verb complement without the feature [+ tense]: (4)

agrum ... colendum habebat (Terentius, Phorm. 364f.) "he had a field to cultivate";

or:

(5)

nihil habeo ad te scribere (Cicero ad Att. 2.22.6) "I have nothing to write to you";

and even the forerunner of the Romance future (see below 8.5 and subsequent sections); (6)

ubi diaconus perdixerit omnia quae dicere habet (Peregrinatio ^Etheriae, 24,6.).

The gerundive colendum in (4) is the equivalent of a complement clause with a final function; and example (5) is the equivalent of the following structure, also taken from Cicero, (7)

habeo quoddicam (e.g., Cicero S. Rose. 104) "I have to tell you"

where quod is the explicit clause marker (COMP) introducing the complementation which is dependent on babere (see Bliimel 1979: 90). But the same is also true of the well-known example from Plautus: (8)

multa bona bene parta habemus (Plautus, Trin. 347) many goods well procured have we

Bene parta is functionally equivalent to a subordinate REL CLAUSE, (and, of course, also examples (4) (5) and (7) could equally be translated with subordinate REL CLAUSES "we have many goods which were rightly purchased". Note incidentally that similar constructions characterized by agreement of non-finite verb forms still reflect the old tendency of Indo-European syntax to avoid hypotaxis (see W. P. Lehmann 1980; Ramat 1980 a: 5 f.).2 Examples (4) and (8) are, in any case, typologically comparable since they have the same structure (9) (10)

vp[Np[N[agrum]Adj[colendum]]v[habebat]] V p[Np[Quant[multa] N [bona] Ad j[bene

parta]]v[habemusj]

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Of course, from a semantic-functional standpoint, colendum, which agrees with its N, like adjectives and participles, is the necessary complement which completes the meaning of habere, while bene parta is an attribute of N, which, in theory, can even be omitted without any fundamental change in the meaning of the sentence. 8.2 If we now compare examples (1) and (2) with example (8), we can see that the degree to which the P(P)P is integrated with höhere is different: in (2) it is indispensable; in (1), and also in (3), its absence seriously alters the meaning; in (8) it can, in theory, be omitted. The final stage of this process of integration is represented by well-known forms of the type: (11)

episcopum ... invitatum babes (Gregorius Turonensis, vit. patr., 6, 3, p. 682, 17);

The analysis of this examples gives: (12)

vp[N[episc°Pum]v[invitatum habes]].

From the context, it is clear that the translation "you now have (with you) the bishop who has been invited", proposed as (still) being a possible alternative to "you have invited the bishop" (see Pulgram 1978), is to be rejected. Habere is here purely and simply an auxiliary (AUX); cf. Gregory of Tours promissionem quam ... statutam habemus (Franc. 10, 28, p. 439, 29), promissum habemus (ibidem, 9, 16 extr.: see Thes. Linguae Lot., VI 2453, 37 ff.), etc. But the following example is even clearer: (13)

haec omnia probatum habemus (Oribasius sjn. 7, 4, 8, p. 190b)

Here the lack of agreement of the P(P)P with the noun object3 makes it clear that the analysis can only be: (14)

vp[Np[Det[haec]N[omma]]v[pr°batum habemus]].

Habemus only has an AUX function and the P(P)P provides full lexical information on its own. Moreover, the subject of habemus can only be the same as that of the P(P)P, unlike cases such as (8) where, theoretically, the subject could be different: habere at this stage is a form with a purely morphological function (see Wunderli 1969: 324).4 At a surface level we are dealing with a change with limited effects, (namely lack of agreement) but at a deeper level, reanalysis of the type described above (8.0) has taken place "... the most innocuous way to

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introduce a change into the syntax is ... for the syntactic change to be actualized gradually in grammar ... the effects of all these changes spread through grammar gradually" (Chung 1977: 37 f.). 8.3 Diachronically, the drift from type (10) to type (12) occurs gradually: constructions which, as the Thesaurus says have a "diminished verb force" (i. e., of habere}, are already attested in Classical Latin (see for example Cicero div. in Caec. 11 \fidem meam\ babent spectatam et cognitam, so much so that in a few cases the subdivision into constituents may be uncertain: (15)

sollicitos patronos habent (Plautus Men. 581) "they cause their masters worries";

where habere does not mean "putäre, iudicäre" but merely serves as a periphrasis for sollicitäre (see si te babes carum, Plautus Mil. 1041, with carum habere = amäre Thielmann 1885 a: 385); (16)

id ipsutn certum habere (Cicero Att. 10, 10, 1) "consider the same matter ascertained"

where certum is a P(P)P functioning as a predicative adjective, which, of course, is precisely "the direct link with Romance periphrases" (Thielmann 1885 a: 527 ff.);5 compare: (17)

neque tu me habebis falso suspectum (Plautus Bacch. (573) "and you will not wrongly consider me a suspect person" (with the P(P)P functioning as a predicative adjective)

with: (18)

locus ille quern suspectum babes (in ep. Plin. et Trat., 91) "that place which you have seen" (which suspectum babes = suspexisti).

Finally, we may also quote Livius 21, 11, 3: (19)

Hannibal, quia fessum militem proeliis operibusque habebat (Livius 21, 11, 3) "Hannibal, since he had the soldiers tired after the battles and the work" (i.e. "... since his soldiers were tired after ...")

where habere + P(P)P expresses the durative state deriving from an action already undertaken (a matter to which we will return in 8.4.1). In the forms in which the P(P)P has now become an integral part of V as in (14), the agreement of the P(P)P with N O bj could easily be

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overlooked, in particular in the Late Latin age, when there was considerable uncertainty in declensions and the ending -urn (masculine accusative, neuter nominative and accusative singular) was per se statistically very frequent.6 The loss of agreement, a surface indicator of the underlying reanalysis, did not occur overnight and in Romance languages we find numerous examples of agreement between P(P)P and NObp as late as the 14th century we find the following examples in Portuguese: (20)

TWOS meus dias tenho perdudOS (Graal 67 r.) All my days I have lost

whereas in contemporary Portuguese a sentence like: (21)

eu tenho AS car tAS escritAS would mean: "I have got the letters written" (Naro-Lemle 1976: 231)

in just the same way as there is a contrast in French between: (22) fai urn lettre ecrite

and: (23) fai ecrit urn lettre? Agreement is no longer found in contemporary Portuguese: (24)

eu tenho escrito muitas cartas

Also in Portuguese, forms of the type dar-te-ei "I will give it you", terno-lo-ao escrito "they will have written it to us" with infixed pronouns, indicate that habere persisted as a form still retaining some autonomy, i. e., as a verb form which has not yet become merely a suffix in the new synthetic future (see 8.5 and see Moreno 1985: 438 f.). And the same is true in Provencal comptar vos at, dar vos n'ai "I will tell you, I will give you some" (see in this respect Schlegel (1818 n. 18) who makes some interesting observations). Such examples as the following indicate that habere still had a (relative) degree of autonomy: (25)

et eil qui molt I'avoit amee\vient vers li, si I'en lieve amont (Chretien de Troyes, Yvain 4394)

where the meaning is "... who held her dear" and not "who had loved her".

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See also: (26)

Dameisele,je croi\a ces ansaignes que je voi\que chevalier a eü ci/Non a, sire,jelvos aft (Chretien de Troyes, Graal, 785 — 88 (published by Lecoy, Paris 1975) "I believe, damsel, from the signs I see, that a knight has been here. He has not, sire, I assure you";

(27)

... ond'io non credo aver peccato ... Certo si hai; Novellino (published by Favati, Genoa 1970: 333). "so that I do not think I have sinned .... But you have; Novice".

The repetition of the verb avere alone, which would be quite impossible today in Italian and French, demonstrates that its original meaning has not entirely disappeared and that it does not yet function entirely as a simple AUX (see Salvi 1982). 8.4 We may now return to the problem of the agreement of the P(P)P with its N 0 bj · For some native speakers of Italian, sentences with agreement of the type illustrated in (28) are perfectly acceptable: (28 a) Francesco ha chiush. (instead of chiusö) la porta "Fr. has closed the door" b) Maria ha lavafä (instead of lavato} tutte le finestre. "M. has washed all the windows" It is highly significant that these sentences are possible only with verbs like "close" and "wash" which indicate that an action has ended in a new state, which is different from the state existing before the action started. The type exemplified in (29) is much less acceptable, or even, in fact, impossible: (29 a) *Le ragga^e hanno salifiL tutte le scale "The girls have climbed all the stairs" b) *Le raga^e hanno cantafiL tutte le can^oni "The girls have sung all the songs" The stairs (scale} and songs (can^oni) at the end of the action of "climbing" and "singing" are no different from what they were before the action started (see Parisi 1975). 8.4.1 "Close" and "wash" belong to Vendler's 'accomplishment verbs', which indicate an action which cannot be continued beyond its natural

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completion. Similarly, verbs like "climb" and "sing" indicate this type of action — but, unlike "close" and "wash" they do not imply any resultative state for the object (Vendler calls them 'achievement verbs').8 Now it is precisely achievement verbs that children, in the first stages of language learning, make agree with N O bj, as emerges from Antinucci and Miller's interesting analysis: (30 a) PresA Checco campana "Francis has taken the bell" b) La signora ha cbiusA la porta "The lady has closed the door" (Antinucci-Miller 1976). This agreement, they claim, indicates that the P(P)P is construed as an adjective, an attribute of the noun — akin to what we saw happening in diachronic developments: the P(P)P expresses the aspect (the resultative state) reached by the OBJ at the end of the action. They go on to explain that it is precisely this which interests children who think in terms of plastic object categories (for criticism of Antinucci-Miller see Weist 1982). Although agreeing with them, I do not wish to put forward an ingenuous isomorphism between diachronic and ontogenetic language development: the discussion would obviously go way beyond the issue at hand. But from a typological standpoint, we should bear in mind the general tendency of PFs to stress aspect rather than tense: cf. in Finnish minä olen saanut literally "I am received" ( = "I have received", with saanut as a P(P)P, Czech koupil jsem knthu literally 'bought am I a book' (= "I have bought a book") etc. see Comrie 1981: 106ff.). Characteristic of these PFs with P(P)P is that, at the same time, they express both the idea of a past action or situation and a present state — as, for example, happens in Welsh jr jdayf i wedi ysgrifennu'r llythyr, literally 'am I after writing the letter' i.e., "I have written the letter", Irish taim tar eis teacht isteach literally -am after coming in' i. e., "I have just come in", Old Russsian Kolja e (= "is") kupil (verbal adjective, then preterite participle) knigu "K. has bought a book" (see Comrie 1981 a: 106 ff.). It is a past with relevance for the current situation (see Harris 1982b). In any case, what should be noted in this series of examples is the primarily aspectual value of the PFs constructed with a participle in the past tense. With specific regard to the Romance languages and Latin, there can be no doubt about the significant role that aspect played in the development of PFs — for example, in the shift from the more archaic type mibi est to the more recent type habeo + P(P)P. The mihi est type expressed

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a state in which AG was immediately involved, with a medial voice: cf. the pre-Classical formula of agreeing on purchase which uses a question as confirmation: (31)

tanti stint mi emptae [i. e. oves]?, Varro, rust. II, 2, 5 "at so much are for me bought?" (i. e. "Have I bought the sheep for that price?");

(32)

meditati sunt mibi doli docte, Plautus, Pseud. 942 meditated are for/by me deceits wisely (i. e. "I have wisely meditated the deceits").

This old construction, which we could label as an ergative-type construction, but which is documented in languages other than Latin, such as Old Persian,9 was progressively replaced by the type with habere (see Benveniste 1960). The syntactic structure habere + P(P)P may thus be interpreted as a possessive relationship arising from the action exerted by the SUBJ on the OBJ (see also Benveniste 1960). But both in type (31) with PAT acting as 'topic' in the syntactic role of SUBJ, and in the habere + P(P)P type, the result of the action is significant vis-a-vis the Patient rather than the Agent. "The resultant change of state is attributed primarily to P, rather than A" (Comrie 1981 a: 70 and see also Sasse 1978: 245) (33)

vir me habet despicatam, Plautus Cas. 189 "the husband holds me in a state of scorn".10

And indeed, like its Germanic counterpart haben (and unlike the etymological counterpart of the latter capio "to grasp", which is dynamic!) habere was stative, a typical feature of Indo-European -e- verbs cf. pallere "to be pale", candere, "to be candid" and so on. We can understand why, therefore, given this resultative-possessive, stative aspectual value, PFs with habere appear very frequently with P(P) P such as compertum, cognitum, suspectum, constitutum and so on (even though this does not mean that they are the earliest examples):11 AG (or LOG see note 9) is originally directly involved — almost with a medial value, as in the type mihi esf — in the state arising from the action which has been achieved mihi compertum est —> compertum habeo "I am in the state of having learned" (but before I was not!). Gradually, the semantic restrictions on the P(P)P disappeared and non-resultative, non-achievement verbs came to be employed in this periphrastic construction. The aspectual value of Latin PFs is particularly evident when they are accompanied by and in opposition to the perfect and pluperfect forms: urbem condidit et ... cooptavit augures et habuit plebem in clientelas principum

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descriptam, Cicero rep. 2, 16; nullum ille poetam noverat ... cognoverat; sed ei tarnen unum illud habebant dicendi opus elaboratum. Similar oppositions may be recalled for example in Old Slavic: budichü "I woke" versus budilu jesmi "I have woken" (literally a verbal adjective which has become a past participle + I am); in Armenian: sirefi "I loved" versus sireal em "I have loved" (literally a past participle + I am) and in Greek: edesa "I bound" versus echo demeno "I have bound" (see Meillet 1952: 144 and 154). 8.4.2 In the course of time, aspectual values were gradually lost. With the few exceptions mentioned above (20), (25) etc., the Romance type habeo scriptum litteram came to express the past simple and, occassionally, when there was a paradigmatic opposition to the past simple, a recent past, close to the moment when the sentence was uttered: habere at this stage was really an AUX with no trace of its original meaning. These PFs show much greater formal simplicity and regularity than the previous perfect forms, a clear advantage: habeo factum, dictum are much simpler to analyze than feet, dtxi (see Meillet 1952: 155). The basic feature has become [ + past], i.e., a tense distinction, and shows no sign of the old aspectual opposition [+ achieved]. We should note that the Latin perfect form (which was replaced by PFs in those areas of Romania where the opposition feci:ho fatto is practically lost) originally had an aspectual rather than a tense function, in that it was stative with an essentially medial value (as the similarities between the medium voice and perfect inflections show: e. g. *WOIDA "I am in the state of knowing (through having seen)". The process which led to the old Indo-European perfect forms losing their aspectual value and taking on a much more tense-oriented function was thus repeated in Romance languages. The birth of PFs to express the Romance past, in fact, repeated a semantic and typological question of grammaticalization which was not new to Indo-European languages. Moreover, the almost cyclic repetition of the same phenomena (or typologically comparable phenomena) is not an exceptional fact in languages (see for example Hagege 1978). 8.4.3 Finally, we need to explain how litteram scriptam\-um habeo became habeo scriptum litteram. (On the order N + ADJ/ADJ + N see Chapter 7). As regards word order typology, Steele, who took part in .the Stanford Project on research into universals observes on the basis of empirical observation of numerous languages that: "all languages with an AUX

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in sentence-final position are rigidly SOV. All languages with AUX in sentence initial position ... are rigidly VSO/VOS languages. Languages with AUX in second position are prevalently either rigidly SVO languages (English ...) or SOV with a relatively free order (Luiseno, Walbiri:12 ... the position in the sentence is the one which dominates among all languages for any AUX" (Steele 1978: 35) (cf. Greenberg's 'universal' no. 16 "... In languages with a dominant SOV order, an inflected auxiliary always follows the main verb" (Greenberg 1966b: 111). The drift from litteram scriptam\-um habeo first to habeo script\-um litteram, episcopum invitatum habeo and then to bo invitato il vescovo is thus consistent with the drift from SOV to an almost fixed SVO characterizing the development from Latin to Romance: the inflected verb form (i.e., AUX) took up the second position after SUBJ.13 We should note that V in the modal (= second) position is quite rare in the earliest IndoEuropean documents. It would, therefore, seem that this position was a subsequent development. It may well be that this medial position, or rather the position immediately after S, is in some way connected with the rise of the AUX category itself: as auxiliaries, "be" and "have" show no great autonomy (and cases of their semantic weakening are found in the earliest forms of Latin: cf. examples (15) and (18); they may, therefore, appear in clitic position after S, i. e. in second position under 'Wackernagel's Law' (cf. the case of AUX treated as a copula in SOV languages such as Amharic and Bengali: Ferguson 1972). Very often, the SOV AUX to S AUX VO drift is posited as having taken place in the development from Classical Latin to Romance. This overlooks the fact that the morphological category AUX was something of a latecomer. Example (8) must be analyzed like (10) with habere as the main (and only!) verb, although now and then there are cases where habere shows signs of semantic weakening: e.g., (15), (18). In (8) we find bona bene parta habemus, as with many other examples, i. e., N + ADJ + V and not ADJ + N + V — as we would expect in an SOV language, and as we do, in fact, find in the earliest forms of Latin: vindex adsiduus esto (Leges XII tab. I. 4)" let the owner (SUBJ) be (the) defender", with vindex acting in the sentence as a noun predicate, i. e., with the same function as ADJ in our scheme (see Warner: 260). Note also the [— restrictive] value of ADJ (cf. Chapter 7): despite agreement, the ADJ is not taken as an attributive of the noun, but as a complement to the verb predicate (habemus) in analogy, once again, with what happened in the nominal 'be' clause with the development from ADJ + Nv to N +

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ADJ + V, i.e., from the type mentioned above vindex adsiduus esto to the type puer (SUBJ) diuis parentum sacer esto ('Leges regiae' apud Paulus ex Festo, p. 230 M 337 sg. L) "Let the son be consecrated to the parents' gods". PFs with AUX developed from this use. Take for example: (34 a) te auratam et vestiiam bene habet (Plautus Men. 801) "he keeps you well covered with gold and clothes" with the order O ADJ ADV V (cf. example (33) above). Its Romance counterpart (with a change in meaning!) would be: (34 b) te\f;em\]habet auratum et bene vestitum

"he has covered you well with gold and clothes" where habere would not have any autonomous meaning and the semantic information would be entirely in the P(P)P. Now, in an SOV language the Determiner usually precedes the Determined, while the opposite is true in an SVO language. In the VP habet auratum there is a hierarchy of marking. In categorial grammar, the constituent whose category coincides with the category of the entire phrase is the Determined (also called Operand' or 'specified'). In the following example: (35)

Np[N[yellow]Adj[flag]]

the category of flag coincides with the category of the entire NP: flag is thus Determined vis-a-vis yellow which, in its turn, is the Determiner (also called an Operator' or 'specifier'): (see Bartsch—Vennemann 1982: 39 f£). Analogously, in auratum habet invitatum habes etc., we have (36)

vp[ppp[mvitatum]v[habes]],

where invitatum and auratum represent the Determiner and habes\-t the Determined. In exactly the same way the infinitives in dicere habet (see example (6) above), bibere dant (e.g., Plautus Pers. 821; Terentius Andr. 484), curare oportet (Plautus Most. 283) are Determiners. This is quite clear semantically as well, when we remember that they represent the complement of the finite verb (see 8.1). In the type invitatum habes, the earlier Determiner + Determined maintained the characteristic SOV order. In Romance languages with the type bat invitato, (tu) as invite on the contrary, the order Determined + Determiner is consistent with the new SVO order. (On the remains of the old P(P)P + AUX order, where AUX may de facto be considered as the main verb, see note 4 — an order

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which was disappearing from the Romance Languages, see Renzi 1976: 168 f.). Schematizing this, we obtain: (37)

vp[ppp[invitatum]v[habes]] => vp[[hai]PPP[invitato]]

which corresponds to: (38)

epsicopum invitatum babes => hat invitato il vescovo (S) O V (S) V

If V is made up of AUX + P(P)P (or P(P)P + AUX) we get the following order, which is consistent with the SOV type (invitatum habes).

(39)

SO P(P)P AUX

or, consistent with the SVO type, (hai invitato):

(40)

S AUX P(P)P

(Note also that this seems to confirm the status of habere as the main verb in the PFs). 8.5 We shall now examine the Romance future and, implicitly, the conditional, since it is precisely from the comparison of these forms with the periphrastic past that the most interesting overall considerations emerge. The origins of the Romance future are exactly the same as those for the periphrastic past. The earliest attestations of the new future, PVSSEDIRAVIT "(he) will possess" on the Ladoix-Serrigny buckle (Northern Gallia, 6th or 7th century: see Stimm 1977), daras "you will give" in the so-called Fredegar Chronicle (6th or 7th century), derive from pussedire habet, dare habes, a periphrasis which is abundantly testified to, particularly with modal values, throughout the history of Latin (see (5) and (6) above and Leumann 1962; Devoto 1968: 267 f., 287; and Kiss 1982: 13). I have already mentioned that the infinitive represents the complement of habere, exactly as the P(P)P in (1) —(3) does. Thus, in contrast to what Ineichen (1980) says the items that go to make up the new Romance future are not more recent than those of the new past forms. Analogical forms such as dicebö, vivebö, reddibö found as early as Nevius and Plautus (see Valesio 1968: 284) are evidence of an early crisis in future forms such as dicam, vivam redam, which were too close to the subjunctive. But, subsequently, the development of the future was profoundly different from the development of the new past forms: the latter remained

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an analytical form apart from inversion of the AUX and P(P)P order mentioned above, while the future PFs gave rise to new synthetic forms: cantare habeo (once more with the AUX in final position) > *kantarajo > cantarao > cantero, chanterai, cantare (see Valesio 1968). It is well known, however, that alongside the type canter-o there is also the Romance aggio canta type, which is exactly parallel to bo cantato: Sardinian appo kantare, Galician hei cantar, old Northern Italian I'avi veder in Barsegape and bo corre in Bonvesin de la Riva — details in Wunderli (1976: 302 f.), who rightly points out the structural difference of these forms with the prepositional type HABEO AD + INF (Logudorese apo a kantare, Lucan I'aggi'a manna etc.) or HABEO DE + INF (Portuguese hei-de cantar). From a typological standpoint, the type aggio canta — and not the cantero type — is consistent with the analytical type with preposed AUX ho cantato (cf. other Romance periphrases for the future such as Romanian voiu cinta, Sardinian deppo cantare).^ 8.5.1 As regards the reasons for the development of the new synthetic forms (which once more is probably a cyclic development,15 we should first of all point out the significance of the stress accent. This reappeared in Vulgar Latin with the tendency to develop as a syntagmatic accent affecting word groups, rather than as an accent on each individual word: (41 a) de ab ante > davanti, devant; ecce iste > Old French cest; lentä mente > lentamen te, lentement et sim. (see Valesio 1969: 441), as well as: b) non habet; die mthi; illa(m) habet > Old French nat; dimei; lat, etc. 'Reappeared' is the appropriate term since a strong syntagmatic stress accent existed in pre-Classical Latin, as is apparent from such examples as: (41 c) indiciost (GIL I 1012, 7), tactiost (Plautus, Aul. 423) gratumst (Catullus, 2, 11), etc; d) mage volo; quinque decem; scire licet > malo; quindecim; scilicet, etc. We are thus faced with a further example of the well-known phenomenon of the reappearance in Vulgar, non-Classical and Late Latin of features and tendencies which were found in the earliest forms of Latin (the case, for example, of quindecim}, which subsequently became the established forms in written, formal Latin (see the concept of 'asperitas'

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similar to the concept of 'rusticitas'). The old PF cantare habeo, is involved in this tendency to form synthetic-type agglutinations which go beyond the confines of the individual lexeme giving rise to broader stress units. It gives rise to a fused morphological structure: cantero (except in the type dar-te-ei — see 8.3 with the insertion of a clitic pronoun which prevents fusion: (see Fleischman 1982: 73 f.). We may also suggest that the tendency to increase the strong syntagmatic accent is in some way connected to the increase in analytical, periphrastic forms in the verb system — whose morphological 'convenience' we have already stressed and which, moreover, represent one of the most typical examples of syntagmatic unity: the increased frequency of fixed VPs led to an increase in (or rather restoration of) the tendency towards syntagmatic stress. 8.5.2 An explanation needs to be given as to why such forms as *tnvitato or *inviteto did not arise from invitatum habeo (see examples (38) and (39) above), while we have invitero from invitare habeo. Clearly, under the pattern given in (37), the passage from (39) to (40) ought to have occurred before the change which produced the new synthetic structure invitero (where, of course, the synthetic form occurred): the discussion is not valid for the type aggio canta, because otherwise we ought to expect the same treatment for the forms with P(P)P and with the INF. I will argue that the different treatment is to be linked to a difference between the more aspect-oriented value of the analytic past forms and the more tense-oriented value of the future forms (which originally had a modal function). Generally the periphrastic verb forms are, of course, much more linked to aspectual factors than the synthetic forms — as we saw with regard to the type habere + P(P)P (8.4.1). While this aspectual value dominates in past forms (habere -f P(P)P), modal values tended, on the other hand, to predominate with the INF + habere type: Tertullianus, resurr. 52: 107, 21: cui dare habet deus corpus; Scorp. 11: 172, 1: aliter praedicantur quam evenire habent; Augustinus in Psalm. 98, 9m: quid habemus adorare?; Peregrinatio Aetheriae 24, 6: ubi diaconus perdixe rit omnia quae dicere habet (= (6)) etc. (see Thielmann 1885 a: passim; Leumann 1962 and see also Thesaurus Linguae Lat., VI 2454 f.): in all these examples, the PF expresses obligation, need or possibility; in any case a modal value. More generally, of course, the past forms are associated with aspectual functions rather more than the future forms which, in their turn, are associated with modal functions rather more than past forms are.

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In the progressive grammaticalization of the INF + habere forms, the first examples of which go back to a Latin with a prevalently OV order (see example (5) above), a much stronger tense function gradually replaced the modal functions. Sometimes, a more modal function was retained where the HABEO AD/DE + INF type survived — as in Corsican (see note 14).16 But at this point there were no longer any obstacles preventing AUX habere from fusing with the preceding INF so as to create a new synthetic form, as we saw in 8.5.1. While forms which express modality generally tend to be analytical forms, forms where tense prevails, as occurs in a true future, tend to be synthetic (see Fleischmann 1982: 75, with whom I basically agree). Moreover, there is a general widespread tendency to use AUX in a clitic form (as in English /'// do, I'm gonna, I've gotten, etc. cf. Mod Greek θα πω < θέλει 'ίνα εί'πω lit. it wants so that I speak, "I'll speak": Steele (1978: 37). Also note that in Romance languages, when the verb habere is used as an AUX, it may have a reduced form contrasting with the complete form used when it has its full value: see Rom. not avem, voi ave/i vs. not am, voi afi ve^ut, as well as, naturally, the opposition between, on the one hand, Italian -emo, French -ons and the full forms avemo (for abbiamo), avons, etc. Specific Romance factors, (e. g., accent), and general typological considerations thus concur to provide a satisfactory explanation of the new synthetic future. On the other hand, the past forms with P(P)P + habere were not subject to the same typological factors. The aspectual value remained dominant (see 8.4.1) even when the change from an unmarked OV order to a VO order occurred, as is apparent from numerous examples where the agreement remains (8.3 and 8.4). This aspectual value, which is mainly expressed by PFs (see above) 'protected' these forms against the fusion that occurred in the case of the new future forms. When the aspectual function began to be lost, the order was now habere + P(P)P, which could not give rise to any synthetic form: thus analytical forms of the type ho detto,j'aifait, am veyut, he cantado, etc. were grammaticalized (see Fleischmann 1982). Two contrasting trends thus acted at the same time or in strict chronological sequence within the Latin and Romance tradition. It is helpful to summarize the facts outlined so far: a) the rise of both the invit tum habeo and invit re habeo-type PFs in the verb system was made structurally possible by the Latin complementation system; b) the (new) analytical forms originally tended to have aspectual (or modal) rather than tense functions;

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c) the subsequent development of invitätum babeo and invitäre habeo was different — at least in the Romance areas with the bojaggio/appo invitäre type; and this development is, in principle, in keeping with general Romance typological trends (see Ineichen 1980): invitatum habeo follows the regular SOV => SVO development and becomes ho invitato; invitäre habeo which is more modal than aspectual and is involved very early on in the recovery of the syntagmatic accent (the 6th/7th Century attestation of daras) passing from modal functions to more strictly tense functions. The invitero type still reflects an OV order, while ho invitäre reflects the other possible alternative consistent with the SOV => SVO drift. d) a 'reanalysis' of the earlier language items occurred in the habere + P(P)P type (see a). The external sign of this reanalysis is the abandonment of the agreement of the P(P)P with the N O bj, which was entirely consistent with the general crisis in inflections. At a certain stage reanalysis led to a (catastrophic) change in grammatical structure. At the same time the general crisis in noun declensions led to (and also derived from) the establishment of an SVO order, with which the habere + P(P)P type is entirely consistent. Thus all these factors coincide, interact and contribute to the same outcome, as suggested at the outset (8.0).

8.6 Conclusions Were the different results of invitätum habeo and invitäre habeo in some way predictable? This is the same as asking more generally: is it possible to have an nomological-deductive criterion, of a formal nature, which is able to give causal explanations — in the strict sense, i. e., nomologicaldeductive in the same way as it is possible to achieve a formal theory of grammar? This issue was discussed in 1.7.1, and the conclusion reached there that it is not possible is confirmed here by a very extensive set of data and an exhaustive discussion: even if we simply compare cantero, invitero with aggio canta, invitä, the reply can only be negative. No formal theory is able to predict which of the alternatives a Romance language or dialect will choose as a result of the accidents of history. The supporters of a formal theory of language change argue as follows: a formal theory gives (or rather tries to give) a definition of the notion 'possible human language'. Thus changes will be excluded that lead to impossible human languages (see Lightfoot 1979: 149). A theory of language change would thus be part of the general theory of language "We take a theory of change of an individual language in a given time

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span as part of the theory of that language and we take a general theory of language change as being part of a general language theory" (Bartsch — Vennemann 1982: 15). This means, in other words, applying the notion of rule to language change inasmuch as it is a component of a metatheoretical Universal Grammar, whatever the form of the latter may be (see Benedini 1981). But the restrictions that, for example, Lightfoot (1979) imposes on language change on the basis of his general theory are of extreme generalness, so that they are of no concrete use for the understanding of real language changes. Not only does the 'impoverished theory of [syntactic] change' contain affirmations of extreme generalness such as "communicability must be preserved between generations" (Lightfoot 1979: 149), but it is also quite difficult to determine what the "severe constraints on possible historical changes that a restrictive theory imposes on possible changes" could be (ibid.}. Bernard Comrie has discussed an interesting example from Serbo-Croat, where word order rules may be independent of syntagmatic structure and sensitive on the other hand to straightforward serial distribution: clitic personal pronouns must appear in the second position (see 2.3.1 above): (42)

taj mi pesnik cita knjigu danas that me poet reads book today "that poet reads a book to me today",

regardless of the syntactic structure of the constituents (taj pesnik; see Comrie 1981 c: 21 f.). There are thus counter-examples even to the most general rule which lays down that it is impossible in a sequence pi, p2, p3, p4 ... pn to change the even words with Odd' words (: p2, pi, P4, ps, ... pn) on the basis of the fact that the rules of grammar depend on the syntactic structure of the sentence and not on their distributional order (see Ramat 1982 a: 6 f.), even though it is true that there is a tendency to restore unity to the syntagm: taj pesnik mi cita knjigu danas is possible (Comrie loc. tit.}. The notion of 'possible change', which may be defined according to the supporters of a formal theory of language change only within a synchronic theory (although the term achronic would be more appropriate) which drastically limits the variety and arbitrariness of the rules, is, by its very nature, perennially subject to the possibility of being denied empirically, in the sense that we cannot exclude a priori the possibility of counter-examples and that everything we find in a language — even one language — is by definition universally possible, i. e., may appear in

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any human language (see the 'possible universals' put forward by Coseriu 1974: 49 ff.). Furthermore, the lesson that may be drawn from the discussion of our case is that languages are not necessarily consistent and homongeneous in their underlying principles (ho scriito is analytical, whereas scrivero is synthetic). Theories which are too rigidly all-embracing risk ending up by understanding very little about reality — which is certainly not rigid. All this brings us back to the inductive-probabilistic approach to language change and its possible typologies, which we reached in the previous discussion (1.7.1). In this probabilistic dimension, some language changes are obviously more likely than others. In our case, considerations of a typological nature not only make the type aggio canta more 'normal', and less marked than the type cantero — which nevertheless appears, demonstrating that languages are free not to follow processes of normalization — but also imply that the birth of a *cant-o-re (fut.) or *cant-o-to (past) is highly improbable since the technique of incorporating infixes is completely extraneous to the Romance type (Portuguese dar-te-ei, which has already been discussed, should be interpreted in a different light: see 8.3). Analogously, it is highly probable that taj mi pesnik ... will evolve to taj pesnik mi ... 8.6.1 Historically speaking, the ability to predict phenomena is an old dream of linguistics. Very often a famous passage from Georg von der Gabelentz, which goes back to 1891, is quoted: "Every language is a system in which all the parts are interdependent and interact with each other. It is clear that none of these parts could be missing or different without everything changing. We would have to examine these characteristics; and then we would have to study which details are regularly found together with these. Induction that I want here would be very difficult; and should this succeed, profound philosophical reflection will be necessary to recognize the forces operating behind this regularity. But what advantage would it be if we could safely say of a language 'you have such and such a characteristic, hence you have this and that property and this and that general character'; if we could construct the lime from the leaf of the lime, as some bold biologists have attempted to do. If I had to give a name to this as yet unborn child I would choose typology as the name" (Gabelentz 1891: 481). A year before, Raoul de la Grasserie (1890) expressed the desire to be able to predict the characteristics of a language, since certain features are clearly subordinated to others so that

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the latter's presence normally entails the former's presence. He was impressed by the example of Cuvier's paleozoology, with its principle of the subordination of characters which makes it possible to reconstruct the entire skeleton of the extinct animal from its fossil jaw (Greenberg 1974: 43 f.). It goes without saying that the child is now born and fully weaned and has attempted to answer this old aspiration by using the principle of implication foreshadowed by Gabelentz and de la Grasserie (see in particular Greenberg 1966 b and Hawkins 1980; the latter succeeds precisely in eliminating many of the counter-examples to Greenberg's 'universale', resorting to a chain of successive implications). Only, precisely as happened in natural sciences invoked by the forerunners of typology (see the quotation from the biologist E. Mayr in 1.7.1), these implications are not logical and nomological-deductive in nature, but probabilistic: "with more than chance frequency", to use the prudent formulation of many of Greenberg's 'universale'. They do not represent any absolute necessity. Even if forms such as *canf-o-re, *cani-o-to were to be found in some unknown Romance tongue discovered at the end of some remote valley, or should they develop tomorrow in Italian or elsewhere, this would not affect the validity of the typological-historical approach to languages — nor on the other hand can I see how a formal theory of language change could a priori exclude the possibility of these forms. What the typologist and the historical linguist should do in this case would be to acknowledge the existence of these forms and examine the internal and/or external causes which 'explain' them: and, of course, this would not only represent an explanation of 'how' but also of 'why', insofar as the matter at hand could be brought back to another which caused it (see also 1.7.1). The theoretical linguist using an nomological-deductive approach who excluded the theoretical possibility of such forms at the theoretical level would at this stage be forced to review his entire theory. It is hardly necessary to add that what has been stated should not be taken as a vote of no confidence in theoretical and general linguistics, which has its own aims and models of analysis, whose results have benefited both historical linguistics and linguistic typology in the past and which will certainly continue to do so in the future, in a fruitful dialectic between inductive and deductive procedure. We have already stated that typology (and historical linguistics as such) cannot and must not be considered as a theory of language, but that they must depend on a theory of language (see 2.1).

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The general conclusions, after the specific ones mentioned in 8.5.2, may be formulated as follows: a) a typology of language change is no doubt imaginable in the probabilistic sense (i. e., in the sense of more or less probable, more or less marked language changes, both in absolute, and within a given language type: darfe-ei is undoubtedly marked within the Romance system and, in fact, seems to be used less and less in contemporary Portuguese); b) no causal explanation is given of language change, if by this we mean a predictive and logically necessary explanation; c) consequently, it does not seem that a sufficiently analytical general theory of language change is possible which is really able to account for actual language changes. d) the scientific paradigm which best interprets language change phenomenon and its typology is the inductive-probabilistic paradigm.

Notes 1. See for example addictum me tenes, Plautus, Poen. 720 "you keep me prisoner". It is well-known that Portuguese developed ter (< tenere) as an auxiliary: tenbo feito, dito, etc. It is evidently the same type of development, although with different linguistic material (see Harris 1982 b). It is interesting to observe that in Germanic a similar phenomenon nearly took place: in Prankish there was an alternation between haben and eigun (preterite-present) as an auxiliary (AUX): see Barat (1913: 140). 2. See the type video te venientem "I see you coming", also found in Greek, Indo-Iranian etc. Its analysis is entirely parallel to (9): VP[v[video]NP[te]Ad|[venientem]]]. See Cälboli 1978: 209 ff.; Ramat 1980: 315. See above 4.7. 3. See already ut rem ... cognitum habuerim, Pseudo Sallustius rep. 2,1,3 (versus, for example, ne super tali scelere suspectum se baberet given by Sail,/»g. 74); cohortes ad me missum facias, Pomp, apud Cicero, Att. 8, 12 B (see Thesaurus Linguae Lai., VI, 2454). 4. On the problem of AUX as main verb, according to Ross's generativist approach (Ross 1967), see Renzi (1980); Salvi (1980b, 1982). The analysis proposed by Salvi is: NP,[John]VPi[V][hasVp2[V2[eaten]NP.,[the apple]]]. The question of the relationship between AUX and P(P)P will be discussed below: 8.4.3. 5. It is interesting to note that cerium habere (alternating with pro comperto, pro certo habere) is firstly limited to the epistolary style, which indicates a certain colloquial, non-literary level in the expression. More generally, it has been rightly pointed out (Thielmann 1885b: 535) that the incidence of habere + P(P)P is high in the language of plays (Plautus), agriculture (Cato, Varro), and in military language (Livy, Caesar), strongly suggesting the likelihood of its popular origin. See the equivalences of the type

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exemplified in (15) between exercitum habere (Plautus, Epid.: 529; Bacch.: 21; Pers.: 856 a; Mil. fragm. . 1262 ) and exercere (Terentius, Adelph. 4,2,48) anxium habere and angere "anguishing": see Thielmann 1885h: 377. 6. An interesting correspondence in the case of the AUX esse is offered by Cicero, Verr. V 167: bane sibi rent praesidio sperant futurum (rather than futuram) "they hope that this will be their defence". Gallius notes (I 7,6): "nam futurum non refertur ad rem, sicut legentibus temere et incuriose videtur, neque prop participio positum est, set verbum est indefmitum ... neque numeris neque generibus praeserviens, set liberum undique et inpromiscum" (see Löfstedt 1956: 11 f.). 7. Finally, on this opposition see Martinet (1981) (with the example _/'W ma lessive faite. vs.j'aifait ma lessive) Renzi (1980) (concerning the opposition Gigi ha la macchina rotta versus Gigi ha rot to la macchina). It should be noted that English also has a similar contrast: I have my work done vs. / have done my work; see Visser (1963 — 1973, 111,2: 2387) (see in German ich habe einen geschriebenen Brief vs. ich habe einen Brief geschrieben: see Ramat 1981: 195. As regards Latin, we should note that in general the postnominal position of P(P)P/ADJ vis-ä-vis N stresses its predictive function: (i) ut commeatus paratos et in urbibus haberent (Livius, 26, 8,11) "for to have the provisions ready in the city"; even with the possibility of introducing other words between N and P(P)P: (ii) venenum quod multum antea praeparatum habebat (Livius, 34, 51) "the poison that he had (kept) ready for a long time". When, on the other hand P(P)P/ADJ is prenominal, it has a mainly attributive function, according to the regular Latin SOV order: (iii) sollicitos patronos habent (= (15)) "they have (the) owners worried" i. e., "they have worried the owners". For the twofold function of P(P)P see the Latin of the Gospel. (iv) signa fecit lesus ... quae non sunt scripta (Greek ha ouk estigegrammena) in hoc libra. Haec autem scripta sunt (Greek tauta de gegraptai) ut credatis quia ... (John, 20.30f.). Finally, we should note the interesting correlation pointed out by Korner (1981, 1982) between agreement and 'prepositional accusative', in the sense that the Romance languages which do not have the 'prepositional accusative' (of the type he visto a su amigo "I have seen his friend") such as French and Italian have a strong tendency to let the P(P)P agree with its N O bj^ Catalan conec aquestes notes (versus Castilian cono^co a estas muchachas)', les he vistes passar moltes vegades por davant de casa versus Castilian las he visto pasar ...) "I know these girls; I have often seen them passing/walking in front of the house". Whatever the explanation of the connection between these facts, it effectively seems that there are correlated phenomena in the system, similar to what we saw at the beginning (see 8.0).

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8. See Vendler (1967); Rohrer (1979) and so on. According to Bertinetto (1981): section 2.1.), the 'accomplishment verbs' may be related to the superordinate class of 'telic verbs' together with 'transformative verbs' such as "come back", "give back" which express a change in state. Telic verbs are those which are designed to achieve some purpose such as "building", "drowning" (Transitive), and also "singing" (Transitive) "climb" (Transitive) etc. Since this superordinate class hides differences which are important for our discussion (contrast (28) with (29)) it is, however, preferable to keep to the opposition [+ resultative]. 9. See for example ima tya manä kartam (Darius's Inscription at Behistan I 27; IV 1, 49) that which of me done "this is what I have done"; utä- maty vasiy astiy kartam (Darius's Inscription at Behistan IV 46) and- of me much is done "I've done a lot more" (Benveniste 1966: 211).

10.

11.

12. 13.

In the construction of the type mihi est (as may be found in contemporary Russian), the possessive relationship is expressed by a locative which, precisely, gives a medial value to the possessor: mihi est liber means that the book is located (in a possessive relationship) in terms of me; mihi is LOC(ative) according to Vincent (1982: 79), who speaks of LOG as the deep case of the SUBJ even in sentences such as terror (LOG) habet votes; "terror invades the poets; hostis (LOG) habet muros "the enemy occupies the wall". See also inclusum in curia senatum habuerttnt (Cicero, Alt. 6.2.8) "they kept the Senate locked up in the curia" segregatum habuisse ... a me Pamphilum (Terentius, Hec. 752) "have held P. separate from me"; see below (34), etc. Note that the verbal adjectives in *-/o-, from which the P(P)P in Latin originated, expressed per se an action or a property considered as an inherent characteristic: Brugmann (1895: 93). From the documentation, there appear to be no grounds for Hofmann's and Szantyr's assertion (1965: 319; see also Benveniste 1960), that the periphrastic construction with habere arose with verbs such as parere, cognoscere, et sim.: ianctum, ciausum, occultum, scriptitm habere, where the SUBJ of the P(P)P can, in principle, be different from that of habere (see above 8.2), are equally frequent and perhaps even earlier attested than cognitum, constitutum, notum habere (see also Rosen 1980: 311 n. 3). The important thing is that they are verbs, so much so that in the series with iungere and in the series with cognoscere, where the change may be attributed to OBJ (Patient) rather than to SUBJ (Agent) — as in general is characteristic of PFs for the past tense. And Latin too [author's note]. It is of no importance in this context to discuss whether Classical Latin was already (S)VO or still SOV (in any case: not in a rigid way, since it is a flectional language which, as such, makes it possible to have great freedom in word order). Examples of (S)VO are already numerous in pre-Classical Latin: ubiporcum imolabis, agnum vitulumque; Precationespafrisfamilias, c. 141 with a stylistic 'variatio' OVOO (see Salvi 1982: 130 f.). What is effectively important is the existence, over a long period of time, which needs to be studied in more detail, of an SOV —» SVO drift.

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14. Periphrastic and synthetic forms can coexist within the same morphological system (with different functions). Corsican scrivar + aghju > scrivaraghju "I will write versus aghj'a scriva (second person singular: ha da scriva "je vais/dois ecrire" with "engagement subjectif, qu'il s'agisse d'intention ... de rejet ..., ou encore de mise en garde, ä propos d'un evenement envisage" (Culioli 1981: 164). We shall return to modal values in the formation of the future later: see 8.5.2. 15. According to the current hypothesis amäbö reflects an original periphrastic form with the root *-bhu "to be". It is •well-known that it is not possible to reconstruct any unitary form for the future in Indo-European. All the forms of the future attested are more recent formations. 16. See also the French typej'ai a dir» vs. dirai; Italian ho da dire vs. diro: see Wunderli 1976.

Chapter nine Sentence negation in Germanic and Romance languages

9.0 This chapter is concerned with sentence NEGation in Germanic and Romance languages. We cannot go into the question of syntagmatic NEG (of the pas beau, pas bien type). Equally, it will only be possible to outline very rapidly the problem of negative 'pronouns' (personne, rien etc.) which, nevertheless, is strictly tied to sentence NEG and, in particular, discontinuous NEG, which is our major concern here.

9.1 The current situation as regards discontinuous negation in the Romance languages (by Piera Molinelli) Negative constructions in Romance languages have often been studied with reference to the individual Romance languages and in general terms. The primary objective here is to provide an overview which shows the Romance negative constructions arranged in a typological, temporal, area and sociolinguistic continuum. The research is also designed to document a deep change in the strategy in negation currently taking place in some Romance languages. As regards sentence negation (NEG), we may reduce the different Romance forms to three major types: (Donadze 1981: 298) NEGi) NEG2) NEG3)

NEG - V NEG - V - NEG V - NEG

NEGi was the first of these three constructions to appear inasmuch as it is a Latin construction and, before that, an Indo-European construction. NEG t is now normally found in Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Eastern Romansch and Romanian:

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(la) b) c)

Port. Näo venho; Span. No vengo; It. N on vengo Rom. N u vin "I'm not coming"

(2)

Eastern Romansch Rico nun avaiva mamma "Rico had no mother"

The second type to appear was discontinuous NEG: (3)

French Je ne viens pas "I'm not coming"

While the desemanticized particle, pas, is a pure NEG marker, there is an area around French in which the support particle has a pragmatic, though non-semantic value (Donadze 1981: 298). This area starts with Catalan, a language which often uses the particle pas in the negative sentence. It has the peculiar feature of giving the negative construction an adversative meaning (Badia Margarit 1962: 43): (4)

Cat. Li demanare el libre. No te'l deixara pas. "You will ask him for the book. (But) he won't give it to you."

In much the same way, Italian mica is often used to reinforce the NEG, "it has a purely presuppositional content" (Cinque 1976: 104): (5)

It. N on dor mo mica "I'm not asleep.

Here, mica presumes that, in the context, somebody is thinking or affirming the opposite. As Donadze says (1981: 298), these peripheral areas go back to a previous phase whereas French has completely desemanticized pas and turned it into a grammatical marker, pure and simple. NEG2 is found in Catalan, French, in the Italian dialects of Emilia Romagna and Western Veneto, and in Central Romansch (Schwegler 1983: 309). Besides the examples in Catalan and French given above, from map 1678 of the Atlante Italo-Svi^ero (AIS], we find in Emilian: (6)

sta dona ki la nem pia^ miga "I don't like this woman"

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For Central Romansch,. Schwegler (1983: 309) mentions the following example, where, however, we may note a certain emphatic value: (7)

... ke co nu fatschi britch "... that I won't do it"

An interesting example is to be found in the Ladin of the Val Gardena: (8)

... ne stepa a davei festidi de nos

"... don't bother yourself about us!" This sentence comes from a letter written by an Italian prisoner in Austria during the Firts World War. (Spitzer 1976: 28). The third type of negative construction is V — NEG. It is the standard form in Proven9al, the dialects of Piedmont and Lombardy and in Western Romansch (Rohlfs 1975: 24, 56, 72, 73, 74): (9)

Provengal

volt pas "I do not want"

(10 a) AIS 1678 Pied. b) c) Western Romansch

sä fum m a m pia% nen; kela duna ke la me pia% mia; kwela diuna play a mi buk

"I don't like that woman" For the distribution of mica, brisa ... see Donadze (1981: 299). The use of postverbal no, which is found in a small area of Lombardy, including Pavia and Milan: (11)

D ormi no

"I'm not asleep" gives the same type of reinforcement but with different lexical material (cf. 9.3 below). The three types of negative, listed in chronological sequence, cover the following areas, as may be appreciated from the map at the end of the chapter (p. 187): NEG! is the rule in the Southern Romance area NEG 2 is found in a vast Central and Northern area NEG3 the only construction which does not appear in any of the standard national languages, is found in the Central area. 9.1.2 The basic patern so far outlined reveals a 'continuum' of types at least when standard languages and dialects are examined without regard to their social standing and the distinction between spoken and written register. Yet examination of precisely these two fields reveals a change

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which is occurring in both French and Italian and which may be usefully compared. In fact, the reduction of the discontinuous French negative construction to a simple postverbal negative construction (i. e., from ne ... pas to pas) has been the focus of various studies for a number of years now (Gaatone 1971: 67; Ashby 1981: 674; Sankoff/Vincent 1980: 295). This phenomenon is found both in spoken French in Montreal and also in spoken varieties in France, while, for the moment, its effects on the written language, heavily conditioned by stylistic and social factors, are much slighter. In Italian, there is an analogous process of reduction of various negative constructions with deletion of preverbal NEG. A particular characteristic of this reduction is the fact that it belongs to the social variety of Italian called "popular Italian" (on the definition and problems associated with this notion see Berruto (1983) which contains an updated bibliography). What needs to be stressed is that, in this Italian register, the elimination of the preverbal negative adverb, when there is a postverbal negative word, occurs particularly in the North, where dialects only use postverbal NEG as their negative strategy (Molinelli 1984). This process of reduction appears to be gaining ground if we consider the following factors: i) the few examples found in Spitzer (1976): (12)

41 Scrivo. Itagliano. Ö Tedesco. in ehe Manier a ricevo mat niente "I write. Italian. Or German. So I never receive anything"

(13)

223 ne da giovane ne da vecchio ha fat to nulla per la patria! "Neither when he was young nor when he was old did he do anything for the fatherland!"

(14)

265 perconto mio m'interessa niente affatto, perche a quesfa raga^a bene d'amore ce ne volei mai e m'hai ce ne professai "as far as I'm concerned, I'm just not interested, in this matter because I've never been fond of this girl and I never revealed anything of the sort to her"

These examples are taken from letters of northern Italian prisoners and date from the First World War. ii) About 50 years later, we find many more examples in autobiographies in the Cremona area (Montaldi 1961): (15)

157 credo di veder nessuno "I think I (can) see nobody"

9, Negation in Germanic and Romance

(16)

182 loro studiano per fare niente "They study so as to (be able to) do nothing"

(17)

409 ti porto nulla "I'm not bringing you anything"

169

Other examples are to be found on pages: 188, 254, 267, 275, 281, 282, 336. Only a few sporadic examples are to be found in Southern Italy: in Dolci (1966) for Sicily: (18)

120 Ma ancora c'e venuto nessuno a dire "But nobody has come to tell us yet"

(19)

293 Quellt ehe hanno niente ... "Those who have nothing ..."

Subsequent collections of popular Italian texts further stress the process (see Molinelli 1984 for further details). In Milan, Alasia and Montaldi (1975) conducted a survey among immigrants from various parts of Italy. But the numerous cases of reduction of NEG which they found cannot be considered real evidence of texts which were actually produced, since the authors rely on memory and not recordings. However, the examples I will quote represent a counter-check for what I have said, since the authors take them as being representative of the working class register of their interviewees: There are numerous examples: 161, 193, 195, 205, 224, 234, 238, 239, 243, 292, 293, 317, 319. Apart from these sentences which have a negative pronoun, non is also missing in the following: (20)

(Montaldi 1961) 104 ... perpoipiu far ritorno "... never to come back again" (Standard Italian ... per pot non far piu ritorno.}

(21)

219 adesso sei piü una bambina "you're not a child any more" (Standard Italian adesso non sei piü una bambina.}

(22)

(Dolci 1966)

94 I'bo mai vista "I've never seen her (before)." (Standard Italian «0« I'bo mai vista}

(23)

(Montaldi 1971)

273 ... ehe poi c'erano mai "... who in any case were never there"

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Part two

Here piü and mat act as NEG markers in their own right, and closely resemble their French counterparts plus and jamais, which, as Ashby (1981: 679) and Sankoff/Vincent (1980: 299) point out, occur without tu in popular registers. The similarity with French, however, becomes more evident if we consider the use of mica in popular Italian. We have already seen mica in standard Italian (5) as a marker reinforcing NEG; popularly and familiarly, mica often constitutes the only NEG in the sentence: (24)

(Montaldi 1961) 256 insomma va mica male "all in all, things are not too bad"

(25)

(Alasia/Montaldi 1975) 225 non sono mica a contratto io ... "Me, I don't have a (regular) contract ..." e mica da due giorni "It hasn't just been for the last two days"

(26)

299 Vedendo trovar mica ad lavoro "Since I see that I can't find a job"

(27)

302 Io sono l'autista, e mica roba mia "I'm the chauffeur, it doesn't belong to me"

(28)

307 Ferro ehe siano mica tanta rusne "Iron which had better not be a load of old rust"

(29)

355 c'e mica quest'aria di Sesto "There isn't this Sesto [a town] air"

(30)

(Revelli 1971) 113 Con questi della Russia bisogna mica soffiargli sotto il naso "With these Russians we better not breathe under their noses"

In my opinion, mica, in these examples (which are all taken from popular Italian texts from Northern Italy), becomes the only sentence NEG as a result of two factors. The first is the tendency towards reduction to a single postverbal NEG that we have seen above. The second is the massive presence of mica in Northern dialects: in the dialectal texts of Montaldi (1971) mia (