Review of Hopper & Traugott
Grammaticalization
Chapter 4:
Pragmatic Inferencing
H&T deal with first and second later; here focus on speaker/hearer relationships or roles, and notions of 'grammar' and 'rule.'
Speakers in a given situation may not share these motivations--one may prefer economy, the other may prefer informativeness. They process information differently.
But ideally (the ideal communicator/hearer? ) people want others to understand them, and they seek ways to facilitate the success, helping interlocutors to process the new information they are imparting, and helping them integrate it wit h old information. This assumes they know what is new and what is old; if interlocutors differ in:
they may not process the same way, and change may occur. Even in the individual speaker, motivations of simplicity and informativeness may compete (at different times and places: fatigue? time constrains?) so there are conflicts and needs to solve problems.
I.e. what we have here is a competition between motivations.
| If you're interested in | You'll focus on: |
|---|---|
| abductive reasoning | morphosyntactic changes |
| expressivity | lexical origins of grammaticalization, especially pragmatic enrichment of lexical stuff. |
| tendency to economize | routinization, semantic loss, frequency. |
In other words, American linguistics mistrusts functionalism and doesn't see language as "in flux" and "always changing" which is what grammaticalization is focusing on, crucially. H&T admit that
Position taken by H&T: meaning changes and cognitive strategies that motivate them are crucially linked to expressivity. Changes are initially pragmatic and associative, arising in flow of speech. Later, as grammaticalization proceeds, meaning loss, "bleaching" occurs, but even then older meanings "hang in there ". and constrain or affect the newer "emptier" (because grammaticalized) meanings.
Can you pass the salt?i.e. between the
Please pass the salt.
Or, as some have put it:
In contemplating the role of meaning change and its involvement in the mechanisms and motivations for grammatical change, we have to talk about different elements or aspects of meaning. But as H&T say
(4.2.2) "there is little agreement ...[on how] to characterize the relationship between the various senses of a form. People don't even always agree on the idea that forms that 'sound the same' but have different meanings should be called homonymy or polysemy .[I can't agree with McCawley, hs]. H&T declare themselves in favor of a theory of semantics that
allows for polysemy wherever some common semantic factor ... is present ... . From this perspective, any two or more conceptually related senses with the same form are regarded as one item.
Polysemy has to do with the fact that a particular lexical item may have multiple meanings, which may have something in common with each other, such as the "will" example on pg. 70. Idea is that 'will' is polysemous, and the 3 meanings have something in common.
Homonymy is the term that defines items that sound alike, but are really different, such as "two, too, and to" all sounding like [tu] but not sharing any meaning. Or different senses of the word down (i.e. 'opposite of "up"; fine feather-like undercoat found on some birds). Or McCawley's "bachelor" example.
Another business is that of the phenomenon of defining something because of "part for whole" i.e. someone/something is identified by some (prominent?) feature of its characteristics, e.g. 'Mr. Stuffed Shirt' (for a pompous, self-absorbed person), 'Mr. High-pockets' for a tall man; "Four eyes" for someone who wears glasses; `Big-mouth' for someone who talks a lot, etc.
Here's a cartoon playing on the expression Hanky-Panky. Or see this set of metonyms for Disney characters. Metonymy can get confused with synecdoche by some...
When it comes to the fine-grained continuum of meaning distinctions involved in the stages ( cline ) of grammaticalization, we may need a theory that allows for meanings to be closer, or more distant, i.e. multi-gradient (see various proposals p. 70). For grammaticalization, we must assume polysemy if there is a plausible semantic relationship, because if meaning is changing along the continuum, there has to be overlap of meaning at some (or multiple) points: it would not make sense for there to be discontinuity in the semantic "chain".
But what constitutes a plausible semantic relationship? H&T list some work on this:
Grice and his conversational implicatures (1975) outlined a number of maxims, but there are questions about whether they are the right ones; H&T say maybe the maxim of Relevance alone, defined to include informativeness, may be adequate to account for pragmatic meaning. Processes of grammaticalization draw on Relevance. (See also the review of Levinson's new book Presumptive Meanings: The Theory of Generalized Implicature.
H&T: most conversational implicatures are abductive since a speaker hears an utterance, concludes it is motivated by a particular Maxim, then guesses speaker's intent. But maxims can be flouted:
Pragmatic effect of implicatures across utterances illustrated by examples where once clause may be assumed to be related in cause and effect when in fact it may be unrelated, as in:
Speakers assume that (2) results from (1) (and 4 from 3) but if the sentences are reversed:
Conversational implicatures are contrasted with conventional implicatures, which are unpredictable and arbitrary, and must be learned (and are not cancelable ). Example from Tamil of use of self-benefactive ko(L) which implies "success" as contrasted with lack of ko(L) which implies nothing; the latter can be cancelled; but the former can't be cancelled. (H&T give example of English manage to Vb and its implicature, which cannot be cancelled.)
| Without ko(L) | With ko(L) |
|---|---|
| raman veele-ye teeDinaan | raman veele-y-e teeDikiTTaan |
| "Raman work-ACC. sought | R. work-ACC sought-Self-Benefactive |
| ...aanaa keDekkalle | * aanaa keDekalle |
| but available-not | but available-not |
| but didn't find any." | *but didn't find any |
| "R. looked for work but didn't find it." |
*"R. looked-for-and-found work
but didn't find work." |
We can therefore include conventional implicatures/meanings in the polysemies of a form. Examples of temporal and causal meanings of since which can be usually figured out (non-past event/state, causal; events in past, temporal); but sometimes ambiguous, as in
which could mean either that there is a sequence of events (appointment of the foreign-born judge followed the suspension), but no causality or causality is implied; or the appointment of the foreign-born judge was made precisely because Rocker had demonstrated xenophobia and homophobia. Thus since is semantically ambiguous and polysemous. Next question: Are there pragmatic polysemies as well as semantic ones?
After Rocker was suspended for xenophobic remarks, a foreign-born judge was appointed to hear the arbitration case.
This problem of ambiguity illustrates the logical fallacy known in Latin as Post hoc, ergo propter hoc `After the fact, therefore because of the fact.'
Thus, if you want to avoid the pragmatic ambiguities, you have to say something like:
Precisely because Denise Rich contributed $1.5 million to Clinton's library fund, Clinton pardoned her former husband.
Grice stated tentatively that conversational implicatures may become conventionalized. Others hypothesized that the "secondary meanings" of tense and aspect (e.g. "present relevance" of the perfect) are derived by conventionalization of implicatures.
H&T state that in early stages of grammaticalization, conversational implicatures often become 'semanticized,' i.e. become part of the semantic polysemies of a form. Inferences, to play a role, must be frequent and must be standard in order to play a role, especially cross-linguistically. Standard would be such things as "since" having both temporal and causal meanings, i.e. the inference of causality from temporal sequencing. If something is local, idiosyncratic, highly contextualized (perhaps specific to a culture) we won't expect inferences to become conventionalized.
Another question: When can we recognize conventionalization to have occurred? H&T give examples of development of causality with English "since", some of which are ambiguous (could be causal, could be temporal; could be causal, but probably not conventionalized in OE, but only in late ME, i.e. attested in stative and other non-completive environments where the temporal reading is blocked.)
Metaphor heavily involved in meaning change. Metaphoric processes involve:
Traditionally, metaphoric processes seen as semantic, but lately, seen more as pragmatic (not being truth conditional, based in communicative use.) H&T:
We accept the view that metaphor is pragmatic, and ... that in so far as metaphor is primarily analogical in character, is different from the kinds of conversational processes based on maxims mentioned above... .As Green says, metaphors are intended to be interpreted as literally false, (a person is not literally a stuffed shirt) whereas conversational implicatures are not. (But note that people often say things like He keeps his nose to the grindstone, and I mean literally.)
Earlier, metaphor was seen in the lexicon, but now some people see it as an early motivation in grammaticalization: (Bybee and Pagliuca 1985)
Rather than subscribe to the idea that grammatical evolution is driven by communicative necessity, we suggest that human language users have a natural propensity for making metaphorical extensions that lead to the increased use of certain items.For H&T, best examples are development of spatiotemporal forms, e.g. the development, in many languages, of temporal forms out of spatial ones, e.g. 'back' (in time) out of 'back (behind us)' based on the metaphors SPACE IS AN OBJECT, TIME IS SPACE, so this happens in Dravidian, too: meele 'on top of' can be used temporally: adukku meele 'on top of that' or 'upon that; whereupon' (i.e. right after):
| adukku | meele, | enna | senjirukkiinga? |
| that | upon, | what | done-have-you? |
| After that, what have you done? | |||
|---|---|---|---|
Other typical metaphorical things are the use of English particles up, down on, over for aspectual meanings; the development of gonna , the development of modals, where obligation --> possibility, probability (epistemic meanings). Sweetser takes a different approach: "socio-physical concepts of forces and barriers" i.e. tendency to experience the physical, social, and epistemic worlds in similar ways, allowing the mapping of sociophysical potentiality onto the world of reasoning. E.g. obligative must and epistemic must
H&T criticize those who think only "lexical item > grammatical item" i.e. independent of context, instead of (what they prefer):
i.e. in utterance contexts. They say it is not go that is grammaticalized in gonna but rather the phrase be going to in the local context be going to in order to V. But see the development of Tamil poo (Kannada. hoogu ) meaning "go" that becomes a change of state aspect marker with certain verbs, such as die, rot, cool, spoil, break etc. e.g.
| koDe | kaaladalli | haNNu | beega | keTT-hoogatte | antare |
| hot | season-in | fruit | quickly | spoiled-goes | say-they |
| Fruit spoils quickly in the hot season, they say. |
|---|
As for context here, it seems to be the verbs that have a meaning involving transitional state (in fact they're all involved with a kind of semantic 'cline') which can be conjoined with hoogu to give the notion 'go to complete the change of state.' So hoogu meaning simply 'motion away from speaker' with these verbs is grammaticalized as an aspect marker meaning 'completive' (and usually with a nuance 'pejorative' i.e. the effect is undesirable.)
H&T take the stand here that metonymy is more important than metaphor, since metaphor is merely analogical. Metonymy, in contrast, depends on contiguity and reanalysis. They try to indicate (p. 81) that much of what has been called metaphoric in grammaticalization is perhaps not correct: the metaphoric use of 'go' becoming grammaticalized in gonna is, (they say) improper; it's not 'go' that was grammaticalized, but the context be going in order to V and it was the contiguity (adjacency?) with 'to' in the purposive sense that made the difference.
Meaning changes arising out of contiguity in Linguistic/pragmatic contexts are associative or conceptual metonymic changes. For short, H&T call them "(conceptual) metonymy".
Problems with Metonymy:
H&T reject these uses as useless (?), preferring the restrictive sense of conceptual association. In this process, meaning (say element A) permutes to another element that is adjacent to it. They refer to Brinton (1988) and his analysis of E. considering, supposing and concessive 'while' (e.g. 'While I do admit that Mr. Gore has a point there, I otherwise reject his proposal.') Note also Brinton's analysis of development of English aspect markers, esp. have which sees this as metonymically motivated, rather than metaphorically motivated.
More useful views (acc. to H&T): Antilla, saying metaphor is analogical
and iconic, while metonymy is
(semantic transfer through) contiguity and
thus is imminent future.
Thus semanticization + grammaticalization of be going to
is shown best
when following subject and/or verb is incompatible with purposiveness
, yielding to only possibility: immediate future.
The reject the metaphoric explanation, the metaphor being "projection
of a trajectory through space mapped onto a trajectory in time" doesn't
explain why E. progressive (-ing) and "to" are involved. Compare
cross-linguistically:
Tamil's grammaticalization of poo 'go' as an immediate future
doesn't have the
same morphology as English, i.e. no progressive marker (-ing), only an
infinitive, which can have the inference 'purposive' but tends to
not have it, since the second example, with a dative-marked VN, is more
common as purposive in modern Tamil. (In LT, infinitive has a number of
possible readings, such as purposive, but also 'simultaneous' and maybe
some others.) Note that in Kannada, however, the distinction between use
of dative-marked verbal noun (for purposive) and the 'other' "old" or
"second" infinitive (Kittel 1903:122) for other uses has broken down--the
old infinitive is now used only with modals and negative, but can't be
used (e.g. with hoogu 'go') to mean "going to Vb" in
the way that Tamil has grammaticalized poo . So Kannada -okke
(dative-marked VN) is used for both purposive and directional as in
this example (Schiffman 1983:53.)
This sentence has two datives in it, one dative-of-Verbal-Noun for
purposive, another directional dative (to town) and a verb 'go' which only
means 'move in the direction of', not 'immediate future" etc.
Semanticization of 'concessive' while illustrates how something
that starts out as a marker of temporal simultaneity was reduced
phonologically to wile and with the lost of the demonstrative
that signalled the simultaneity, less precise conversational inferences
could arise, one of them being causality (or the reason for s.t.), i.e.
'all the time that' or 'all the while that' 'all during s.t. Then
finally, a new inference of 'even though' e.g.
And finally, a concessive inference, i.e. there is a contrast of
values, a "subjective construal of the world" in linguistic
terms, i.e.
This is, of course, what H&T refer to often as the speaker-centered
nature of these inferences and subsequent grammaticalizations, the
subjectification of them. (E.g. development of epistemic modals.)
Another way of looking at it:
Many researchers use the metaphor of Verbleichung, affaiblissement,
bleaching or a process whereby linguistic units lose in semantic
complexity, pragmatic significance, syntactic freedom, and phonetic
substance. (Heine and Reh 1984). But H&T have talked about the opposite:
pragmatic enrichment, strengthening, etc.
Clusters are not rigid, fixed points, but gathering places, like
iron filings around magnets.
Remember that once embarked upon, grammaticalization does not have an
inevitable
result; may be arrested etc. We can't work back from any one form
to see a clear path; and we can't illustrate a particular cline with
only one form. (Not enough historical record, they say; I would bet
we might find examples in Tamil with its long time depth, hs).
What is important is the issue of directionality between adjacent
forms on the cline not demo. of complete sequence of events for
a given form.
Examples:
I'm going to eat there (immed. future)
ange saappiDa poo r-een
there to-eat go pres/PNG
I'm going there (in order) to eat
ange saappiDr-ad-ukku poo r-een
there eat-VN-DATive go pres/PNG
I'm going to town (in order) to see a movie.
naan sinimaa
nooDokke uurige hoog tt iini
I
movie see-dativeVN town-dat. go pres PNG
The problem? The solution
Main Direction Which Axis?
Representing things in one semantic domain in terms of another
Metaphor toward informativeness
Paradigmatic: specify one (complex) thing as another not present in
context
How to find ways to regulate communication and negotiate
speaker-hearer interaction Metonymy
Toward informativeness
Specifying one meaning in terms of others present, though covertly,
in the context.
Summary of principles:
But do we have unidirectionality along the cline? Are the clines
continua, or rather clusters at points with grammatical properties
resembling ("family resemblance") certain other kinds of things:
____________
___________________
_________________________
_________________
_____________________
_________________________
_________________
Etc.
Again, not strictly discrete, but arbitrary clustering points on a cline.
Most forms we find will not fit clearly into one or another of named
categories, but will land somewhere on the cline.
That is:
haroldfs@ccat.sas.upenn.edu, last modified 26/1/2001
