form and function

[Michael Barlow]

Who is going to argue with grammaticalisation, routinisation and the
complexity of language phenomena?

Immanuel Barshi wrote a paper a few years ago arguing, as I remember, that
some agreement patterns in Hebrew should really be thought of as set routines
rather than regular, analysable agreement patterns. I can accept that; I
certainly believe that routines and chunks play a large role in language use.
I assume that we are not talking about such instances.

There may be relations which, for all intents and purposes, may count as
purely formal. Here I am simply taking issue with Dicks's assumption (and the
assumption of many people) that is agreement is clearly formal in the sense
that agreement can best be described by saying that form of the agreement
target depends on the morphosyntactic form of the agreement source. If you
want to account for a range of agreement phenomena in a language (even
English), then such an approach breaks down.

If agreement morphemes exert themselves in Quirk-style examples such as "that
two weeks", "England collapse" "rain and mist is expected", "two is too many"
"the french fries at table 10 is" etc., then are we assume that something
completely different is occurring in the above examples compared to in "those
two weeks" "England collapses" etc.

A quick note from a service station on the M40 near Oxford.

Michael

In message  <38B87714.77D9F7B5 at oregon.uoregon.edu>
 tgivon at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU writes:
> Dear friends,
>
> This exchange has been skirting hilarity, or the Theater of the Absurd.
> I get a verigo feeling, something like irrealis, like people not only
> forget to listen to the other guy (common enough), but have stopped
> listening to what they themselves are saying. Otherwise I can't imagine
> why there seems to be such an abundant, recurrent, reflexive need to
> jump on reasonable people (Edith Moravcsik, Dick Hudson) and try to push
> them into extremist positions which realy don't fit. So how about a
> simple exercise in logic, to begin with:
>
> 1. If "form correlates with function", or
>       "form is iconic with function", or
>       "form it motivated by function"
>    are all true, them "form exists" is also true.
>
> 2. If "form correlates with function" is true,
>    then, unless you wish to be tautological, you have no choice but to
>    define "form" and "function" independent of each other. And unless
> you
>    defined structure in purely structural terms, you haven't escaped
> this
>    tautology. (That's *all* Edith meant).
>
> 3. Escaping tautology in (2) above does not mean that you could not or
>    should not investigate the functional (semantic, pragmatic)
> motivation
>    of form/structure. Non sequitus.
>
> 4. In most biologically-based system, functions are not simply performed
>    by themselves. They are performed by some structures. Why should
>    this overwhelming fact, which has bothered no biologist since
> Aristotle,
>    should be such a shocking revelation to linguists?
>
> 5. The notion of "structure" is, by definition, formal and more abstract
> than
>    unstructured, unconstrained, unorganized reality. The only remaining
>    question is -- "How formal? How abstract?" And that question must be
>    resolved empirically. Different domains, in language and elsewhere,
>    are structured with different degrees of formality ('generativity',
>    'rule governedness').
>
> 6. When functionalists cite Sapir's famous dictum: "...all grammars
> leak...",
>    they often forget that Sapir did not say "all grammars leak 100% all
>    the time". What he *meant*, I think, is something like this:
> "Grammatical
>    rules/regularities/structures often, maybe always, retain a ceretain
>    measure of flex, rule-ungovernedness" Fact of life.
>
> 7. Chomsky's apriori assertion that grammars are 100% algorithmic (see
> 'On
>    the notion 'rule of grammar'", 1961) clearly over-shoots the
> empirical
>    facts, and was not motivated by them. It was motivated, I suspect, by
>    his background in Machine Theory. Of course, the notion of
> *competence*
>    allowed him to do it, by ruling out facts of natural communication as
>    *performance tainted*. But the fact that Chomsky was wrong, and
> grammar is
>    not 100% generative, does not mean that grammar is 0% generative.
> Such an
>    assertion is just as much at variance with the facts as Chomsky's
> assertion
>    of 100% generativity (and damn the rest of the facts).
>
> 8. Grammar is just another instance of *automaticity* of processing.
>    In all known cases (vision, memory, motor control, music) the
> acquisition
>    of complex, rhythmic-hierarchic skills entails autoimaticity. And
>    automated processing is *highly* structure-dependent and category-
>    dependent. That's what 'chunking' is all about in memory
> organization,
>    kinesiology & elsewhere.
>
> 9. Why should both evolution and history conspire to -- repeatedly --
>    grammaticalize so many communicative functions if grammar was just
>    a mushy affair with near-zero generativity/rule governedness or pre-
>    dictability? Why this extravagant machinery that we desvcribe both
>    synchronically and diachronically? All spandrells? Come on. Get real.
>
> 10. Grammar arises diachronically from pre-grammar, and has a life
> trajectory
>    during which the degree of 'generativity' changes drastically. At the
>    very early stages of grammaticalization of paratactic constructions
> with
>    only 'pragmatic'('discourse') regularities, one tends to find low
>    generativity. A nascent construction reveals variability of behavior,
>    it is not 'well governed'. Somnewhere in mid-life of constructions,
> rule-
>    governedness increases, i.e. efficiency and predictability of
> form-fuction
>    correlations ('iconicity'). But sooner or later, what John Haiman
> calls
>    'ritualization' begins to creep in: Contructions and morphology
> become
>    nearly-100% rule-governed, indeed highly inflexible, but also slowly
>    loose their iconicity. This is the *more* Chomskian, *more* arbitrary
>    phase of grammatical structure.
>
> 11. It is unfortunate that, for whatever reasons, different people
> choose
>     to look at *only* the earliest stage of grammaticalization
> ('emergence',
>     high motivation, low generativity), or the latest (arbitrariness &
> high
>     generativity). Sort of reminds you of the three blind men reporting
>     on the elephant. Taking one aspect & claiming it represents the
> whole.
>     It would be nice if we started considering the whole.
>
> 12. In the process of early grammaticalization, constraints creep in
>     rather gradually, often in a subtle way. The argument about the
>     reflexive is of course a case in point. Older reflexives are much
> more
>     relationally governed, having severed their umbilical cord, their
>     connections to old *emphatic* pronouns that were *not* relationally
>     governed. Newly-emergent reflexives are a mix, the old 'discourse'
>     constraints on contrast/emphasis co-exist with 'goverened true
> reflexives'
>     that are not emphatic anymore. But 'severing of the umbilical cord'
> can
>     be both gradual and subtle. And it allows coexistence of older and
>     newer, emerging 'structured' or 'governed' constraints.
>
> 13. EXAMPLE: It is tempting to say that REL-clauses in Japanese are
> *not*
>     relationally governed, since they only have zero anaphora,
> presumably
>     just like in main clauses governed by 'discourse'. But haven't we
>     forgotrten someting? Zero anaphora in Japanese discourse is
> *overwhel-
>     moingly* anaphoric. But zero anaphora in Japanes REL-clauses is 100%
>     cataphoric, because REL-clauses in Japanese precede their head noun.
>     So something new and construction-specific has crept in here,
> whatever
>     its diachronic source may have been.
>
>     EXAMPLE: It is tempting to say that in Malagasy (VOS) the zeroes in
>     EQUI (verb complements) are just the same as zero anaphora in
>     'discourse'. But again, discourse zeroes are overwhelmingly
> anaphoric,
>     while the EQUI zero in complementation are 100% cataphoric, because
> the
>     subject of the  main clause *follows* the zero in the complement
> verb.
>     Again, something new is creeping in during the process of
> grammatica-
>     lization. Not only functions are re-analyzed and re-organized, but
>     structures too.
>
> I suppose I could go on forever, everybody who seriously studies the
> process of grammaticalization probably could. So let me just suggest
> that maybe it is time we bade farewell to reductionism, and to the
> bizarre idea that complex systems can be described and explained by
> single principles. Sure, that is the hallmark of much of what Chomsky
> has been trying to do. But all of us, functionalists and formalists
> alike, know language is much too complex for such reduction. And we
> ought to, by now, know enough about conflicting motivation and adaptive
> compromise ('OC'?) to know better. So let's get off the dime.
>
> Cheers,  TG
> =============
>
>
> Michael Barlow wrote:
> >
> > Dick Hudson states:
> >
> > > >He sees a formal rule linking those forms, but others don't.
> > > ## But since the formal rule is on the table (labelled "Rule A") it's
now
> > > over to you to show how you can describe the covariance of noun and
> > > modifying adjective without using formal categories such as Noun,
Adjective
> > > and Modifying.  It would also be good to see reasons why this gives a
> > > better analysis than Rule A.
> > >
> >
> > I am not against the use of formal categories of Noun and Adjective. I
need
> > them too.
> >
> > Rule A works well in those cases where (i) the source of agreement, the
noun,
> > is both present and is fully specified for agreement features and where
(ii)
> > the agreement features of the adjective don't differ in their value from
the
> > features of the noun. Looking at more data, however, leads to the
discovery of
> > examples in which the source is either absent or exhibits fewer "features"
> > than occur on the agreement target, a situation, which I noted in my more
> > formalist days (1988), could be handled better by a unification account
than
> > by feature copying or coindexing. More interesting are those cases in
which
> > there is a feature mismatch (such as those noted by, for example, Edith
> > Moravcsik many years ago; by Grev Corbett in various publications; and,
for
> > French, by Blinkenberg 1950).
> >
> > Dick Hudson would agree that formal features such as FEM or PLUR have
> > interpretations or meanings and, in fact, are often polysemous such that
> > within a particular language PLUR may indicate, for instance, something
like
> > "multiple entities" or "a single entity politely referred to". A FEM
feature
> > might indicate "grammatical gender" or "natural gender". These relations
> > between forms and meanings are conventional; they are a part of a
language and
> > are to some extent separate from information about actual referents. For
Dick
> > (and many others) these interpretations have nothing to do with agreement.
> >
> > If we consider the agreement features of an adjective, we can ask whether
the
> > agreement relation associated with those features (i) is morphosyntactic
and
> > depends on the features of the noun sources; or (ii) is based on a
> > "consistency" of interpretations of agreement features, or (iii) depends
on
> > the properties of the referent associated with the noun.
> >
> > My Rule B is based on a consistency relation between interpretations of
> > nominal/agreement morphology and relates to the identification and
tracking of
> > discourse referents. I believe that this non-syntactic account is
a "better
> > analysis" because it covers a wider range of data and because it can be
shown
> > that what at the morphosyntactic level are unmotivated feature mismatches
> > typically turn out to "make sense" at the level of interpretation.  A
mismatch
> > in formal features is nearly always associated with "extra" information
about
> > the associated discourse referent. (I am far from home and don't have any
> > examples at hand.)  Also, when an agreement morpheme shows up in a
discourse
> > fragment with no accompanying noun, and hence nothing to be modified by,
then
> > somehow the agreement morpheme is still always there; it is not omitted.
> >
> > I don't want to state Rule B here---I usually rely on diagrams---but
> > conceptually it is quite straightforward and involves (i) a listing of the
> > conventional relations between agreement/nominal morphemes and their
> > interpretations and (ii) a description of what counts as a coherent chain
of
> > discourse referents, which is essentially that the associated
interpretations
> > be consistent. (My Rule B can be found in a recent "agreement" issue of
Folia
> > Linguistica XXXIII/2 guest-edited by Grev Corbett, which I am happy to
send to
> > Dick and anyone else interested.)
> >
> > I guess that the differences between our accounts of agreement come down
to
> > the range of data to be considered as "ageement" and the level of
commitment
> > or priority given to a morphosyntactic account, which in turn is
associated
> > with differing degrees of tolerance of multi-domain accounts along the
lines
> > of the discussion of reflexives in John Moore's recent posting.
> >
> > Michael