Main/Subordinate clauses: markedness

Sat Feb 20 14:13:55 UTC 1999

----Original Message Follows----
Date:         Fri, 19 Feb 1999 18:25:16 -0500
Reply-To: David Gohre <dgohre at INDIANA.EDU>
From: David Gohre <dgohre at INDIANA.EDU>
Subject:      FUNKNET: Main/Subordinate clauses: markedness
To: FUNKNET at LISTSERV.RICE.EDU

Is there any difference in the markedness of the syntax of subordinate
clauses as opposed to main clauses, or to Infinitival clauses?  Does
anyone know of some Bib that they might send me?  Thanks,

Dave

**************

Dear Dave,

As a matter of fact, I wrote a PhD [= French D.E.A.] in 1997, about
markedness / unmarkedness of Subordinate clauses. I can give you the
reference, although it is as yet unpublished, and written in French ; if
you wish, I could send it to you using your personal e-mail.

FRANÇOIS Alexandre, "La subordination sans marques segmentales, Formes
de dépendance interpropositionnelle dans le discours", Univ. Paris-3
Sorbonne Nouvelle, DEA en Sciences du Langage, October 1997, 180 p.
(unpublished).

My main concern was to examine, in a typological perspective (> 25
languages referenced, including French, English, Chinese, Fulani,
Turkish, Hausa, Melanesian Pidgin), types of structures that were
apparently / supposedly independent clauses, from lack of marks which
would have clearly indicated them as being subordinate. I would then
discuss whether these so-called independent clauses could show some kind
of "hypersyntactic" (e.g., pragmatic) dependence with another main
clause. I then hypothesized a (thus far neglected) PRAGMATIC
SUBORDINATION (in Fr. "la subordination énonciative"), to account for
such sentences.

In a way, my aim was to (re)define the linguistic limits of the sentence
/ utterance ("énoncé"), based on its fundamentally pragmatic nature :
performing a speech act in a given situation. A simplified way to sum it
up, would be as follows : a clause, which by its syntactic marking seems
to be independent, will be considered to be (pragmatically) subordinate
to another one, every time it can be proved that it is not performing a
satisfying speech act in the situation.

For instance, the English sentence "Suppose you had come earlier" is
syntactically well-formed to be called 'independent' (with imperative
form of the verb "to suppose"), but this is definitely not the case from
a pragmatic point of view (see discussion & demonstration in my PhD).
Instead, this clause is to be considered subordinate (to the following
clause), at least pragmatically
— or even syntactically, provided we redefine syntax on a pragmatic
base.
And we would then understand better how the main verb "Suppose" was
grammaticized in Pidgin English as a conjunction /sapos/ meaning "if",
where subordination is clearly marked as syntactic (within the classical
definition of Syntax).

***********
Out of my 200 bibliogr. references, here are a few I selected for you,
because they deal more specifically with this issue, and are written in
English (some of them are "classics" you may already know) :

FOLEY W., VAN VALIN R. (1984), Functional syntax and universal grammar,
Cambridge University Press.
GIVÓN T. (1979), "From discourse to syntax : grammar as a processing
strategy", in Givón (ed.), p. 81-112.
–– (ed.) (1979), Discourse and syntax, coll. Syntax and Semantics 12,
Academic Press, New York.
HAIMAN J., THOMPSON S. (eds) (1988), Clause combining in grammar and
discourse, Typological studies in language, vol. 2, Benjamins,
Amsterdam.
LI C., THOMPSON S. (1973), "Serial verb constructions in Mandarin
Chinese : subordination or coordination ?", in Corum C. & al. (eds.)
Papers from the comparative syntax festival, Chicago linguistic society.
LONGACRE R. (1979), "The paragraph as a grammatical unit", in Givón
(ed), p. 115-134.
–– (1983), The grammar of discourse.
–– (1985), "Sentences as combinations of clauses", in T. Shopen (ed), p.
235-286.
NICHOLS J., WOODBURY A. (eds) (1985), Grammar inside and outside the
clause, Cambridge University Press.
PAYNE T. (1991), "Medial clauses and interpropositional relations in
Panare (Ge-Pano-Carib subgroup)", Cognitive linguistics, 2, 3, 1991, p.
247-281.
SHOPEN T. (ed.) (1985), Language typology and syntactic description, II
(Complex constructions), Cambridge University Press.
SLOBIN D. (1985), "Crosslinguistic evidence for the language-making
capacity", in Slobin (ed), tome II, p.1157-1256.
–– (ed.) (1985), The cross-linguistic study of language acquisition, I
(The data) & II (Theoretical issues), Hillsdale, New Jersey.
THURMAN R. (1978), Interclausal Relations in Chuave, MA Thesis, Los
Angeles.
*****
Here are other useful references, partly in French :

AKSU-KOÇ A., SLOBIN D. (1985), "The acquisition of Turkish", in Slobin
(ed) I, p.839-878.
ANDERSEN, H. L. (1993), "Complétives non introduites en français parlé",
in CERLICO n° 6, p. 5-14.
–– (1996), "Verbes parenthétiques comme marqueurs discursifs", in Müller
(ed.), p. 307-315.
BALLY C. (1944), Linguistique générale et linguistique française,
Francke, Berne.
BLANCHE-BENVENISTE C. (1990), Le français parlé (Études grammaticales),
coll. Sciences du Langage, CNRS, Paris.
BORILLO A. (1996), "Les relations temporelles entre propositions :
subordination ou parataxe ?", in Müller (ed.), p. 127-139.
BOUSCAREN J., FRANCKEL J.-J., ROBERT S. (eds) (1995), Langues et
langage. Problèmes et raisonnement en linguistique (Mélanges offerts à
Antoine Culioli), coll. Linguis-tique Nouvelle, PUF, Paris.
CARON B. (1986), "Les accomplis I et II du haoussa et la subordination",
in D.R.L. (1986), p. 109-120.
CERLICO (1992-93), Subordination Subordinations, Travaux linguistiques
du CERLICO n° 5 et 6, Presses Universitaires de Rennes.
CHAKER S. (1985), "Syntaxe de la langue / syntaxe de la parole ?
Intonation et situation dans l'analyse syntaxique : quelques points
controversés en berbère.", Travaux du CLAIX, 3, p. 122-139, repris dans
Chaker (1995), p. 83-95.
–– (1995), Linguistique berbère, Etudes de syntaxe et de diachronie,
coll. M.S.-Ussun Amazig, Peeters, Louvain.
CHAO Y.-R. (1968), A grammar of spoken Chinese, University of California
Press, Berkeley.
COMRIE B. (1995), "Serial verbs in Haruai and their theoretical
implications", in Bouscaren, Franckel, Robert (eds), p. 25-37.
DANON-BOILEAU L., MOREL M.-A., MEUNIER A., TOURNADRE N. (1991),
"Intégration discursive et intégration syntaxique", Langages, Paris, n°
104, p. 111-128.
GALAND L. (1984), "Typologie des propositions relatives : la place du
berbère", Lalies n° 6, Presses de l'Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, p.
81-101.
HAIMAN J. (1978) "Conditionals are Topics", Language, 54, p. 564-589.
HAIMAN J., MUNRO P. (eds) (1983), Switch reference and universal
grammar, Typological studies in language, Benjamins, Amsterdam.
LE FUR D. (1995), "Juxtaposition, argumentation, et intonation à
l'oral", in Morel (ed.), p. 71-97.
LEMARÉCHAL A. (1995 a), "Superposition des marques, zéro et
morphologisation", Journée d'Etudes de la SLP (21.1.95) sur La
Gramma-ticalisation, à paraître aux Mémoires de la SLP, Paris.
–– (1995 b), "Zéros, superpositions des marques et relation minimale",
Actes du Colloque Absence de marque et représentation de l'absence,
Travaux linguistiques du CERLICO, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, p.
111-139.
MULLER C. (ed.) (1996), Dépendance et intégration syntaxique
(Subordination, coordination, connexion), coll. Linguistische Arbeiten,
Niemeyer, Tübingen.
ROBERT S. (1995), "Aoristique et mode subordinatif : liens entre aspect
et prédication", in Bouscaren, Franckel, Robert (eds), p. 373-389.
–– (1996), "Aspect zéro et dépendance situationnelle : l'exemple du
wolof", in Müller (ed.), p. 153-161.

***********
Hope this will help you find what you desire,

Alex FRANCOIS
(currently on a PhD in Melanesian syntax),
Univ. Strasbourg-2 / Paris-3 Sorbonne Nouvelle

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