L e c t u r e 8. Semantic aspects of syntactic constructions. Sentence typology within a cognitive approach

I. The problem of the semantic study of syntactic constructions. Concepts

represented by syntactic constructions.

II. The problem of sentence typology within a cognitive approach:

a) L.Talmy’s classification of syntactic structures;

b) J.R. Taylor’s conception of sentence classification.

I. The problem of the semantic study of syntactic constructions. Concepts

represented by syntactic constructions.

There are two main approaches to the study of the sentences in cognitive linguistics investigations. The first one brings into focus the observation of the concepts represented by syntactic constructions, their nature, content and structure (A.Goldberg, L. Talmy, N.N. Boldyrev, L.A. Fours). The second one concerns the sentence typology and principles of sentence classification (L.Talmy, J.R. Taylor).

One of the semantic investigations of the syntactic structures within a cognitive approach has been started by A.Goldberg. She argues that constructions are conventionalized pieces of grammatical knowledge and they exist independently of the particular lexical items which instantiate them. The constructions brought under her observation are: ditransitive construction, caused-motion construction, resultative construction, way construction.

Ditransitive construction in the most general sense represents transfer between an agent and a recipient and schematically it can be defined as:

Subject (Agent)- Predicate (Cause-Receive)- Object 1 (Recipient)- Object 2 (Patient), e.g.: Joe loaned Bob a lot of money.

Caused-motion construction represents the situation where one object (the causer) directly causes the motion of the other object: Subject (Causer)- Predicate (Cause-Move)- Object – Obl (Goal), e.g.: They laughed the poor guy out of the room.

Resultative construction represents the situation where a patient undergoes a change of state as a result of the action denoted by the verb. Resultatives can apply to direct objects of some transitive verbs, e.g.: I had brushed my hair smooth; or to

subjects of particular intransitive verbs, e.g.: The river froze solid.

Thus, resultative construction can be defined as: Subject (Agent) – Predicate (Cause-Become) – Object (Patient) – Obl-adjective or prepositional phrase (Result-Goal) for transitive resultatives, and Subject (Patient) – Predicate (Become) – Obl (Result-Goal) for intransitive resultatives.

“Way” construction represents the situation which involves the motion of the subject along some path. The construction admits two interpretations: “means” interpretation and “manner” interpretation. The first one means that that the path of motion is created by some action of the subject, e.g.: He pushed his way through the others; He bought his way into the exclusive country club (metaphorical motion). The second one means that the path is pre-established, e.g.: They were clanging their way up and down the narrow streets. The construction can be defined as Subject (Creator-Theme) – Predicate (Create-Move) – Object way (Createe-Way) – Obl (Path).

The semantics of a construction is viewed as a family of closely related senses. It means that one and the same construction is paired with different but related senses, one of which is a central sense (a prototypical one), the others (non-prototypical ones) are the senses which are its metaphorical extension. Thus, within the semantics of the ditransitive construction A.Goldberg distinguishes the central sense “the actual successful transfer”(e.g.: He gave her a lot of money) and metaphorical extension senses, such as, “causal events as transfers” (e.g.: The rain brought us some time), “communication as reception”, (e.g.: She told Joe a fairy tale), “perception as reception”(e.g.: He showed Bob the view), “actions as reception entities”( e.g.: She blew him a kiss), “facts and assumptions as objects which are given” (e.g.: I’ll give you that assumption). Thus, a syntactic construction is viewed by A. Goldberg as a category structured by the prototypical principle.

The main object of her further study is to make proposals for how to relate verb and construction. For this purpose she proposes the notion “semantic constraints”. The latter are the principles which license the use of verb in the construction. Thus, the semantic constraints for the caused-motion construction, for example, are the constraints on the causer and on the type of causation.

Constraint on the Causer presupposes that the causer can be an agent or

a natural force, e.g.: Chris pushed the piano up the stairs; The wind blew the ship off the course.

Constraints on Causation, i.e. constraints on what kind of situations (causations) can be encoded by the Caused-Motion Construction, are as follows:

I. No Cognitive Decision can mediate between the causing event and the entailed

motion, e.g.: Sam frightened (coaxed, lured) Bob out of the room.

II. The Implication of Actual Motion: if motion is not strictly entailed, it must be

presumed as an implication and can be determined pragmatically, e.g.: Sam asked (invited, urged) him into the room.

III. Causations can be Conventionalized Causations – causations which involve an

intermediate cause, i.e. are indirect, but cognitively packaged as a single

event, e.g.: The invalid owner ran his favorite horse (in the race).

IV. Incidental Motion Causations: incidental motion is a result of the activity

causing the change of state which is performed in a conventional way. It

means that the path of motion may be specified and the causation may be

encoded by the Caused-Motion Construction, e.g.: Sam shredded the papers

into the garbage pail. The action performed by the agent typically implies

some predictable incidental motion.

V. Path of Motion: the path of motion must be completely determined by the

causal force. Which paths count as “completely determined” is in part a matter

of pragmatics, e.g.: They laughed the poor guy into his car.

The semantic constraints have been proposed in an attempt to show principled patterns where there seems to be idiosyncrasy (compare the examples with relative verbs: Pat coaxed him into the room. – sounds correct, while Pat encouraged him into the room. – does not). (For details see: Goldberg Adele E. Constructions: a construction grammar approach to argument structure. – Chicago: University of Chicago press, 1995; Further Readings on English Syntax (this book, pp. 60-65).

The main value of A.Goldberg’s observation of the senses encoded by the constructions is that it deals with the analysis of the conceptual constituents of the events, such as agent, patient, causer, path , as well as the processual parameters of events (aspectual characteristics, characteristics of motion – directed motion, self-propelled motion, etc.) The constituent content is determined by lexical semantics and general world knowledge.

The linguistic investigations within the cognitive approach for the present give the priority to the issue of concepts represented by the simple sentence. Thus, it has been stated that syntactic concepts represent both linguistic and extra-linguistic knowledge in their structure (N.N. Boldyrev and L.A. Fours); it has been observed that the simple sentence as a linguistic unit represents not only a single event but also an event complex, when the syntactic pattern shapes two distinct events into a unitary one – the phenomenon termed by L.Talmy “event integration”. In other words, the linguists have performed a study of the nature and structure of concepts represented by the simple sentence.

The basic target of N.N. Boldyrev and L.A. Fours’ study is to observe the nature of the concepts represented by simple sentences and propose concepts typology. The main principle governing the concept typology is the assumption that syntactic concepts represent both linguistic and extra-linguistic knowledge in their structure.

L.A. Fours argues that there are three formats of representing knowledge in syntax of the simple sentence and points out a configurational format, an actualizational format and a format of mixed type (combining properties of configurational and actualizational formats).

Configurational format includes concepts which are represented by the basic syntactic configurations (schemes) defining the rules of combining words into constructions. Actualizational format includes concepts which are verbalized by particular types of sentences. The concepts of configurational format are: “autonomous action” (автономное действие) –represented by the intransitive construction configuration, as “A moves to B” in the most generalized sense, and “directed action” (направленное действие) – represented by the transitive construction configuration, as “A moves B”. Configurational format represents the linguistic knowledge (the knowledge of the transitive and intransitive congigurations) which is common for different types of sentences. Actualizational format represents the extralinguistic knowledge – the knowledge of the different types of events as they become verbalized in the basic configurational structures through the concrete lexical content. The concepts of these format are: “actionality”(акциональность), e.g.: They moved to the city. (uncausative construction) , “causativity” (каузативность), e.g.: He galloped the horse forward. (causative construction) , “process” (процессуальность), e.g.: The cup cracked (decausative construction), “state” (состояние), e.g.: Cables and wires ran in all directions., “quality” (свойство), e.g.: The clothes washed well. (medial construction). Thus, within the actualizational format the two configurational structures actualize particular event types reflecting the world ontology through the speaker’s intentions, in other words, the transitive and intransitive constructions as combined with lexical units of the sentence profile various aspects of events and thus help to conceptualize them as particular event types (actions, processes, states, quality, causations). In this format extra-linguistic knowledge prevails.

Format of mixed type – the format combining configurational and actualizational ones - represent both linguistic and extra-linguistic knowledge. This format includes configurations of combining words into sentences which are different from the transitive and intransitive ones. They are:

there-constructions , e.g.: There is a house on the corner. There existed an inborn instinct of aggression;

it-constructions, e.g.: It’s so lonely here. It is raining hard;

inverted constructions, e.g.: Now there comes another. There above him stood Fleur;

elliptical constructions, e.g.: Are you going to write that composition for me? I have to know. – If I get the time, I will. If I don’t I won’t.

There-constructions verbalize the conceptual characteristics of “object existence”, it-constructions – those of “process orientation” or “quality orientation”, inverted constructions – “temporal parameters” and “spatial parameters”, elliptical constructions – “sense verification”.

Thus, within syntax of the simple sentence there exist three formats of concepts. They are based on aspects of world ontology, speaker ontology and language ontology. Each of these formats is characterized by its own mode of knowledge coding and reflects the dynamic character of speech and thinking processes. (For details see: Болдырев Н.Н., Фурс Л.А. Репрезентация языковых и неязыковых знаний синтаксическими средствами // Филологические науки. №3, 2004, стр. 67-74; Фурс Л.А. Форматы представления знаний в синтаксисе //Вопросы когнитивной лингвистики. Вып.1., 2004, стр. 166-181.)

One of the basic arguments of cognitive approach to syntax says that grammatical constructions provide alternative imagery (conceptualizations) for the same event or situation. The idea of imagery function of grammatical constructions was formulated as a principle of conceptual alternativity by L.Talmy and became the basis in his investigation of conceptual content of syntactic structures.

L.Talmy brings into focus a certain type of event complex which can acquire alternative conceptualizations through different syntactic structures.

The different ways of conceptualization of the same content is viewed in the following examples:

a) The guy left the room because they had laughed at him (complex sentence).

b) They laughed at him and he left the room (compound sentence).

c) They laughed the guy out of the room (simple sentence).

On the one hand, the event complex can be conceptualized as composed of two simple events and relation between them and expressed by a composite sentence. On the other hand, the event complex can be conceptualized as a single event and expressed by a simple sentence. L. Talmy proposed the term “event integration” to identify the process of conceptual fusion of distinct events into a unitary one.

L.Talmy studies complex events that are prone to conceptual integration and representation by a single clause. L. Talmy calls this type of complex events a macro-event and distinguishes several event- types: Motion, Change of State, Action Correlation and some others, e.g.:

Motion - The bottle floated into the cave. I kicked the ball into the box;

Change of State (this event-type involves any process or activity which determines the dynamics of the macro-event and causes a change in some of its property) – The door blew shut. I kicked the door shut;

Action Correlation (involves two or more activities associated with each other and performed by different agents)- I jog together with him. I jog along with him. I outran him.

L.Talmy observes the conceptual structure of these event-types and linguistic means of its representation. The general idea of the macro-event as Motion, Change of State, etc. is expressed in the syntactic structure of the sentence by satellites (verb particles, prefixes, resultatives (adjectives), prepositional phrases containing a “locative noun”), e.g.: The coin melted free (from the ice).; He waved us into the hall. The main verb in the predicate position in such like sentences expresses the idea of circumstance event within the macro-event, such as Manner, Cause, Constitutiveness, etc., e.g.:

Manner – I rolled the pen across the table (Motion); I eased him awake gently. He jerked awake (Change of State);

Cause – I blew the pen across the table (Motion); I shook him awake (Change of State);

Constitutiveness – I ate with Jane. I ran after Jane. I outcooked him (Action Correlation).

Thus, L.Talmy has studied the conceptual structure of the event complexes as it appears mapped onto the linguistic forms. (For details see: Talmy L. Toward a cognitive semantics. 2000; Further Readings on English Syntax (this book, pp. 65-73).

Summing it all up, it is necessary to note that the study of the concepts represented by the syntactic structures is centered around the following principles:

- syntactic structures reveal a concept-structuring function in the language, i.e. syntactic structures provide alternative conceptualizations of the event;

-conceptual content expressed in the linguistic forms integrates linguistic and extra-linguistic knowledge;

- syntactic categories are viewed as categories organized in accord with the prototypical principle of category structuring.

The observation of the recent studies shows that the linguists have examined practically the same syntactic structures, but from slightly different angles. As a result, various facets of the conceptual content of the syntactic structures have been profiled. The further investigation of the syntactic concepts and the linguistic means of their representation is more likely to be based on the elaboration and unification of the recent cognitive linguistic findings of syntax study.