differences in form without differences in meaning

Krekoski Ross rosskrekoski at gmail.com
Sat Aug 6 19:01:23 UTC 2011


The discussion surrounding this slight controversy is quite interesting. I'm
simply a wimpy graduate student, but for what its worth, my perspective is
that the problem seems to be intractable from an analytic perspective.

If we are making up examples, what analytic basis do we have to say that the
'meaning' of two distinct syntactic forms is equivalent, and what precisely
do we mean by 'equivalent' if we are to make that claim? I can't think of
any solid basis for making this argument based on a single person's
intuition alone, and if we are to base any potential findings on the
intuitions of more than one person, how do we account for the differences in
connotation that we will inevitably find? If we base our argument on
pretheoretic notions of certain 'relevant' elements of syntax criterially
determining semantic meaning, we end up with circularity.

If we are looking at actual conversation or another type of real data, it
would be difficult to argue for semantic equivalence anyways since you will
never find two contextual environments that are precisely identical.

I could be wrong, but my intution of the semantics of the question itself
seems to suggest that the question is designed to elicit examples that
'prove' that there will be such examples rather than to actually investigate
whether or not this is true outside of an idealized world.

Ross Krekoski


Department of Linguistics
University of Toronto


On Sat, Aug 6, 2011 at 1:00 PM, <funknet-request at mailman.rice.edu> wrote:

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>   1. Re: difference in form without difference in meaning
>      (john at research.haifa.ac.il)
>   2. Re: difference in form without difference in meaning
>      (Joanna Nykiel)
>   3. Re: FUNKNET Digest, Vol 95, Issue 2 (s.t. bischoff)
>   4. Re: difference in form without difference in meaning
>      (T. Florian Jaeger)
>   5. Re: difference in form without difference in meaning
>      (john at research.haifa.ac.il)
>   6. updated CfP: Information Structure and Discourse - LSA
>      Organized Session in memory of Ellen F. Prince (Sophia A. Malamud)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Fri,  5 Aug 2011 20:27:09 +0300
> From: john at research.haifa.ac.il
> Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] difference in form without difference in
>        meaning
> To: Tom Givon <tgivon at uoregon.edu>
> Cc: funknet at mailman.rice.edu
> Message-ID: <1312565229.4e3c27edbeb24 at webmail.haifa.ac.il>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1255
>
> Actually I thought of an example in present-day British English showing the
> same
> stative/active distinction I was talking about. IIRC (I'm not a native
> speaker
> myself), British speakers who still use the VS construction for main-verb
> 'have' if it's stative ('have you a book?' rather than 'do you have a
> book?')
> would use the do-construction when 'have' is active ('did you have sex?'
> rather
> than 'had you sex?').
>
> What Tom write is definitely true. It's generally difficult to tell to what
> extent the differences which appear in written language reflect differences
> in
> the spoken language of the time (or for that matter any time). But in the
> case
> of the rise of the do-construction, at least before about 1570 or so there
> didn't seem to be any clear stylistic correlates of the choice between the
> do-construction and the corresponding VS construction, that is, there was
> no
> pattern of the do-construction being used less frequently in more formal
> contexts in the data (and I did look for this)--if the change to the
> do-construction had really taken place significantly earlier in the spoken
> language, then we would have expected to find it used more frequently in
> less
> formal contexts in the written language. Towards the end of the century,
> though, as the VS construction go more and more rare (with the obvious
> exception of the verbs which became the modal class and a few other verbs,
> mostly stative, which took longer to 'switch over' ('know ye...?' was used
> a
> lot for a long time)), it got to be more and more stylistically marked,
> restricted to more formal contexts, and it stands to reason that by that
> time
> the switch to the do-construction had largely been completed in the spoken
> language--and at the same time and for the same reason, the meaning
> difference
> disappeared.
> John
>
>
> Quoting Tom Givon <tgivon at uoregon.edu>:
>
> >
> > John did an excellent job in showing some of the complexities involved
> > in the actual process of change. One possible implication is, perhaps,
> > that such complexity can be captured in neither the Generative nor
> > Varb-rule perspective. The cognitive implication outstrip the
> > theoretical machinery of either of these "theories".
> >
> > Perhaps one thing to remember concerns the time-course issue: The
> > data-base for the study of 16th Cent. English is, exclusively,written
> > texts. That genre tends to be, sometimes, centuries behind the actual
> > changes, which took place, almost exclusively, in the spoken language.
> > Often, the low-frequency variants characteristic of the slow first part
> > of the S-shaped curve are completely ignored in the written language,
> > which tends to go with the higher-frequency (well-established) form, and
> > thus appears to be "more generative". This gives a false impression of a
> > much faster curve of , i.e., the middle portion of the SW-shaped curve.
> > Lynn Yang & I made this observation when studying the rise of the
> > GET-passive in English. It was nigh impossible to find examples in
> > 19th-century writing--till we got to sampling Huck Finn, which is
> > deliberately pitched toward the colloquial. All of a sudden, seemingly
> > with no gradual prep time, the frequencies jumped up. Which suggested to
> > us that the mature (tho still largely adversive) GET-passive
> > construction may have been lurking around for a long time prior, perhaps
> > centuries, in the spoken language . Cheers,  TG
> >
> > ============
> >
> > On 8/5/2011 2:25 AM, john at research.haifa.ac.il wrote:
> > > A long time ago (early 1980s), together with Tony Kroch and Susan
> Pintzuk I
> > did
> > > a study of how 'do' came to be used as a question marker, a change
> which
> > was
> > > was for the most part started and completed in the course of the 16th
> > century.
> > > DURING the 16th century, there was a lot of variation between the older
> > > VS question and the newer do-construction, the most significant factor
> > being
> > > whether the subject was a pronoun or noun, whether there was a direct
> > object,
> > > and if so, whether the direct object was a noun or pronoun. There was
> also
> > a
> > > clear tendency for the do-construction to become more common as the
> century
> > > went on. But there was also an effect of the semantic type of the verb,
> > with
> > > the do-construction being associated with active verbs and the VS
> > construction
> > > associated with stative verbs. It was very difficult to say anything
> > concrete
> > > about this, because the variation was affected by so many non-semantic
> > factors,
> > > but in some sense at the time, to the extent that any difference in
> meaning
> > > could be suggested, 'Did you see the bird?' would have implied that the
> > subject
> > > took some action to intentionally see the bird (like going to a place
> where
> > the
> > > bird was), whereas 'Saw you the bird?' would imply that the bird passed
> in
> > > front of the subject's field of vision. It's difficult to get a
> parallel
> > > difference in meaning in the present tense. Additionally, there was at
> the
> > time
> > > a strong tendency to use 'ye' as a clitic-like subject form, so that in
> > general
> > > 'See you the bird?' would have been disfavored because in involved a
> > non-clitic
> > > subject form intervening between the verb and the object. 'Saw ye the
> > bird?'
> > > would have been much more normal. And the semantic alternation would
> have
> > been
> > > clearest in the middle of the change, whereas earlier and later than
> this,
> > > stylistic factors were more important--I would guess that there were no
> > more
> > > than two generations when there was something like a productive
> > > semantically-based alternation.
> > > John
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Quoting jess tauber<phonosemantics at earthlink.net>:
> > >
> > >> Hi folks. I'll admit at the outset that this isn't my area, but just
> on
> > the
> > >> face of it, to my sensibilities, the difference between 'Saw you the
> > bird?'
> > >> and 'Did you see the bird?' is one of directness and/or formality. The
> > first
> > >> seems to me more intimate, informal, less 'accusing' usage, at least
> for
> > my
> > >> modern English. Maybe easier to see with 'See (you) the bird?' vs. 'Do
> you
> > >> see the bird?'. With 'do' the question seems (at least potentially) as
> > much
> > >> about the bird as my ability/willingness to see it, while without it
> > perhaps
> > >> its more about the speaker's needs. I know that in many instances
> > pronominal
> > >> paradigms have been reshaped to reflect unwillingness to appear
> > >> confrontational in conversation. It would be interesting here from the
> > >> typological perspective to know whether there is any linkage between
> > >> constructional switching and the degree to and direction in which
> > discourse
> > >> has to be negotiated. More formality structurewise= more formality
> > >> interrelationally? Languages with the least morphology more context
> > sensitive
> > >> and all that rubbish.
> > >>
> > >> Jess Tauber
> > >> goldenratio at earthlink.net
> > >>
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > > This message was sent using IMP, the Webmail Program of Haifa
> University
> >
> >
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> This message was sent using IMP, the Webmail Program of Haifa University
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Fri, 05 Aug 2011 23:36:01 +0200
> From: Joanna Nykiel <joanna.nykiel at us.edu.pl>
> Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] difference in form without difference in
>        meaning
> To: funknet at mailman.rice.edu
> Message-ID: <20110805233601.92443b062t74dsm4 at poczta.us.edu.pl>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; DelSp="Yes";
>        format="flowed"
>
> HI,
>
> There is a possible instance of syntactic variation without semantic
> difference. Elliptical constructions (sluicing, Bare Argument
> Ellipsis) may contain either PP or NP remnants in examples such as
> those below:
>
> (1)
> A: And we?ll compare notes some more.
> B: Compare notes, on what?
> A: On you, honey-pie. What else?
> (Corpus of Contemporary American English)
>
> (2)
> A: And, somebody told me you read all the Harry Potter books by how old?
> B: Four.
> A: By four years old. Wow.
> (Corpus of Contemporary American English)
>
> "On you, honey-pie" and "What else" occur within a single speaker's
> turn, and "By four years old" is a paraphrase of "Four", suggesting
> genuine variation.
> I've been working on a project investigating the distribution of PP
> and NP remnants, and so far haven't found any semantic constraints.
>
>
> Perhaps another case in point could be the progressive vs. present
> simple tense in Early Modern English.
>
> Joanna Nykiel
>
>
>
> Joanna Nykiel
> Assistant Professor
> English Department
> University of Silesia
> Grota-Roweckiego 5
> Sosnowiec 41-205, Poland
> E-mail: joanna.nykiel at us.edu.pl
> Homepage: http://uranos.cto.us.edu.pl/~jnykiel/
> ???
> ----------------------------------------------------
> Uniwersytet ??l??ski w Katowicach http://www.us.edu.pl
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Fri, 5 Aug 2011 19:22:27 -0400
> From: "s.t. bischoff" <bischoff.st at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] FUNKNET Digest, Vol 95, Issue 2
> To: funknet at mailman.rice.edu
> Message-ID:
>        <CABBCDhqgvBarCoSKpaFpQ-orwwcqw8yYV=b1Rv8KDcVSuVyLnA at mail.gmail.com
> >
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>
> What about the following...I've been curious about these types of sets but
> have never looked into them...surely some clever analysis out there
> somewhere...
>
> (1) The kids have been bike riding all day/The kids have been riding
> (their)
> bikes all day.
>
> (2) He's out job-hunting/He's out hunting for a job.
>
> (3) Wolfie loves to go kite-flying/Wolfie loves to go fly kites.
>
> (4) She started horseback riding when she was 8/She started riding horses
> at
> 8. (here "riding horses" could refer to "English riding" and  "horseback"
> might be construed as "Western"...but where I come from that wouldn't be
> the
> case...folks only ride one way)
>
> cheers,
> Shannon
>
> On Fri, Aug 5, 2011 at 1:00 PM, <funknet-request at mailman.rice.edu> wrote:
>
> > Send FUNKNET mailing list submissions to
> >        funknet at mailman.rice.edu
> >
> > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
> >        https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/funknet
> > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
> >        funknet-request at mailman.rice.edu
> >
> > You can reach the person managing the list at
> >        funknet-owner at mailman.rice.edu
> >
> > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
> > than "Re: Contents of FUNKNET digest..."
> >
> >
> > Today's Topics:
> >
> >   1. difference in form without difference in meaning
> >      (Frederick J Newmeyer)
> >   2. Re: difference in form without difference in meaning
> >      (Daniel Everett)
> >   3. Re: difference in form without difference in meaning (Tom Givon)
> >   4. Re: difference in form without difference in meaning
> >      (Angus Grieve-Smith)
> >   5. Re: difference in form without difference in meaning (jess tauber)
> >   6. Re: difference in form without difference in meaning
> >      (Victor K. Golla)
> >   7. Re: difference in form without difference in meaning (Tom Givon)
> >   8.  References (Sylvester OSU)
> >   9. Re: difference in form without difference in meaning
> >      (john at research.haifa.ac.il)
> >  10. Re: difference in form without difference in meaning (Tom Givon)
> >
> >
> > ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > Message: 1
> > Date: Thu, 4 Aug 2011 14:17:27 -0700 (PDT)
> > From: Frederick J Newmeyer <fjn at u.washington.edu>
> > Subject: [FUNKNET] difference in form without difference in meaning
> > To: Funknet <funknet at mailman.rice.edu>
> > Message-ID:
> >        <alpine.LRH.2.01.1108041417270.26399 at hymn33.u.washington.edu>
> > Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
> >
> > Dear Funknetters,
> >
> > I am looking for convincing examples of where two syntactically-related
> > sentence-types manifest clearly identical meanings, where 'meaning' is
> taken
> > in its broadest sense, including discourse-pragmatic aspects. Another way
> of
> > putting it is to say that I am looking for two sentence types that in
> early
> > TG would have been related by 'optional rules', but which absolutely do
> not
> > differ in meaning. It's not so easy to come up with good examples, once
> > differences in topicality and focus are allowed as meaning differences.
> One
> > possible example that comes to mind are sentences with or without
> > complementizer-deletion, such as 'I knew that he'd be on time', vs. 'I
> knew
> > he'd be on time'. But even here there have been argued to be meaning
> > differences.
> >
> > One possibility that has been suggested to me is from Early Modern
> English,
> > when many speakers could say both 'Saw you the bird?' and 'Did you see
> the
> > bird?' Does anybody have evidence that there were subtle meaning
> differences
> > here?
> >
> > I had always been quite skeptical of Dwight Bolinger's idea that
> > differences in (lexical and syntactic) form always correlate with meaning
> > differences. But I have become less skeptical recently.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > --fritz
> >
> > Frederick J. Newmeyer
> > Professor Emeritus, University of Washington
> > Adjunct Professor, University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser
> > University
> > [for my postal address, please contact me by e-mail]
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------
> >
> > Message: 2
> > Date: Thu, 4 Aug 2011 17:41:02 -0400
> > From: Daniel Everett <dan at daneverett.org>
> > Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] difference in form without difference in
> >        meaning
> > To: Frederick J Newmeyer <fjn at u.washington.edu>
> > Cc: Funknet <FUNKNET at mailman.rice.edu>
> > Message-ID: <02BDE2FA-F961-4A4B-87F4-188EF72D9FF2 at daneverett.org>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
> >
> >
> > The phonological equivalent of this would be free variation.
> >
> > Not sure that exists either.
> >
> > Dan
> >
> >
> > On Aug 4, 2011, at 5:17 PM, Frederick J Newmeyer wrote:
> >
> > > Dear Funknetters,
> > >
> > > I am looking for convincing examples of where two syntactically-related
> > sentence-types manifest clearly identical meanings, where 'meaning' is
> taken
> > in its broadest sense, including discourse-pragmatic aspects. Another way
> of
> > putting it is to say that I am looking for two sentence types that in
> early
> > TG would have been related by 'optional rules', but which absolutely do
> not
> > differ in meaning. It's not so easy to come up with good examples, once
> > differences in topicality and focus are allowed as meaning differences.
> One
> > possible example that comes to mind are sentences with or without
> > complementizer-deletion, such as 'I knew that he'd be on time', vs. 'I
> knew
> > he'd be on time'. But even here there have been argued to be meaning
> > differences.
> > >
> > > One possibility that has been suggested to me is from Early Modern
> > English, when many speakers could say both 'Saw you the bird?' and 'Did
> you
> > see the bird?' Does anybody have evidence that there were subtle meaning
> > differences here?
> > >
> > > I had always been quite skeptical of Dwight Bolinger's idea that
> > differences in (lexical and syntactic) form always correlate with meaning
> > differences. But I have become less skeptical recently.
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > >
> > > --fritz
> > >
> > > Frederick J. Newmeyer
> > > Professor Emeritus, University of Washington
> > > Adjunct Professor, University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser
> > University
> > > [for my postal address, please contact me by e-mail]
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------
> >
> > Message: 3
> > Date: Thu, 04 Aug 2011 16:29:53 -0600
> > From: Tom Givon <tgivon at uoregon.edu>
> > Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] difference in form without difference in
> >        meaning
> > To: funknet at mailman.rice.edu
> > Message-ID: <4E3B1D61.1000807 at uoregon.edu>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
> >
> >
> >
> > Many if not all examples of on-going grammatical change are like that,
> > Fritz (as is the English ex. you cited). And therefore the phenomenon
> > must be massive--because you can find MANY constructions in the grammar
> > that are are RIGHT NOW/THEN in the midst of change. At that point, some
> > people would call this "free variation". Out of which there are two
> > major venues: (a)  the old firms will obsolesce; (b) the two forms will
> > diverge in meaning. I've also seen people trying to describe this
> > presumably-transitory stage as "a conservative dialect vs. a progressive
> > dialect". But as I go now over my Ute texts, I find numerous examples
> > where the same (old) speaker, in the same text, uses either the more
> > conservative form or the more progressive one without batting an
> > eyelash, sometime in consecutive sentences that repeat the very same
> > material. So, cognitively, we've got to assume that during this
> > (presumably transitory)stage, speakers know both forms, and know that
> > they have the same semantic & pragmatic value.
> >
> > Now, is this stage really all that transitory? Tony Naro has noted that
> > such "coexisting forms" can go for a long time, with the dominant old
> > form comprising 90% of the text-instances and the innovative form(s)
> > 5-10%. Then at a certain point there is a very rapid shift in
> > frequencies. This gives you an "S-shaped learning curve", much like in
> > the psychology of learning. Most of us who observed this curve don't
> > know what triggers the beginning of the rapid change.  TG
> >
> > ==============
> >
> > On 8/4/2011 3:17 PM, Frederick J Newmeyer wrote:
> > > Dear Funknetters,
> > >
> > > I am looking for convincing examples of where two syntactically-related
> > sentence-types manifest clearly identical meanings, where 'meaning' is
> taken
> > in its broadest sense, including discourse-pragmatic aspects. Another way
> of
> > putting it is to say that I am looking for two sentence types that in
> early
> > TG would have been related by 'optional rules', but which absolutely do
> not
> > differ in meaning. It's not so easy to come up with good examples, once
> > differences in topicality and focus are allowed as meaning differences.
> One
> > possible example that comes to mind are sentences with or without
> > complementizer-deletion, such as 'I knew that he'd be on time', vs. 'I
> knew
> > he'd be on time'. But even here there have been argued to be meaning
> > differences.
> > >
> > > One possibility that has been suggested to me is from Early Modern
> > English, when many speakers could say both 'Saw you the bird?' and 'Did
> you
> > see the bird?' Does anybody have evidence that there were subtle meaning
> > differences here?
> > >
> > > I had always been quite skeptical of Dwight Bolinger's idea that
> > differences in (lexical and syntactic) form always correlate with meaning
> > differences. But I have become less skeptical recently.
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > >
> > > --fritz
> > >
> > > Frederick J. Newmeyer
> > > Professor Emeritus, University of Washington
> > > Adjunct Professor, University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser
> > University
> > > [for my postal address, please contact me by e-mail]
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------
> >
> > Message: 4
> > Date: Thu, 04 Aug 2011 20:15:58 -0400
> > From: Angus Grieve-Smith <grvsmth at panix.com>
> > Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] difference in form without difference in
> >        meaning
> > To: funknet at mailman.rice.edu
> > Message-ID: <4E3B363E.4060301 at panix.com>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
> >
> > On 8/4/2011 6:29 PM, Tom Givon wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > Many if not all examples of on-going grammatical change are like that,
> > > Fritz (as is the English ex. you cited). And therefore the phenomenon
> > > must be massive--because you can find MANY constructions in the
> > > grammar that are are RIGHT NOW/THEN in the midst of change. At that
> > > point, some people would call this "free variation". Out of which
> > > there are two major venues: (a)  the old firms will obsolesce; (b) the
> > > two forms will diverge in meaning. I've also seen people trying to
> > > describe this presumably-transitory stage as "a conservative dialect
> > > vs. a progressive dialect".
> >
> >     Yes, Bill Croft discusses these three possibilities in his 2000
> > book, but he describes the third possibility more generally (page 177):
> >
> > "Speakers will divide the community or set of communities and associate
> > the distinct forms with distinct communities.  For example, I heard a
> > historical linguist suggest that /grammaticalization /tends to be used
> > by European-trained historical linguists and their students, while
> > /grammaticization/ tends to be used by American-trained historical
> > linguists and their students."
> >
> > > Now, is this stage really all that transitory? Tony Naro has noted
> > > that such "coexisting forms" can go for a long time, with the dominant
> > > old form comprising 90% of the text-instances and the innovative
> > > form(s) 5-10%. Then at a certain point there is a very rapid shift in
> > > frequencies. This gives you an "S-shaped learning curve", much like in
> > > the psychology of learning. Most of us who observed this curve don't
> > > know what triggers the beginning of the rapid change.  TG
> >
> >     I'm skeptical that the coexisting forms have the same meaning
> > during that entire time.  In my theatrical data on French negation,
> > before 1600 /ne ... pas/ is used to negate sentences between 10-20% of
> > the time, but almost never in contexts where it unambiguously represents
> > predicate negation.  Instead, it is used to deny a presupposition, while
> > /ne/ alone is used for predicate negation.
> >
> >     Once /ne ... pas/ starts being used for predicate negation, it
> > seems to be considered "the same" as /ne/ alone.  That is also the time
> > when the S-curve starts (what Weinreich, Labov and Herzog 1968 call
> > "actuation").  I discuss this in greater detail in my dissertation:
> >
> > http://hdl.handle.net/1928/9808
> >
> > --
> >                                -Angus B. Grieve-Smith
> >                                Saint John's University
> >                                grvsmth at panix.com
> >
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------
> >
> > Message: 5
> > Date: Fri, 5 Aug 2011 00:07:25 -0400 (GMT-04:00)
> > From: jess tauber <phonosemantics at earthlink.net>
> > Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] difference in form without difference in
> >        meaning
> > To: funknet at mailman.rice.edu
> > Message-ID:
> >        <
> > 15617119.1312517246312.JavaMail.root at wamui-junio.atl.sa.earthlink.net>
> >
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
> >
> > Hi folks. I'll admit at the outset that this isn't my area, but just on
> the
> > face of it, to my sensibilities, the difference between 'Saw you the
> bird?'
> > and 'Did you see the bird?' is one of directness and/or formality. The
> first
> > seems to me more intimate, informal, less 'accusing' usage, at least for
> my
> > modern English. Maybe easier to see with 'See (you) the bird?' vs. 'Do
> you
> > see the bird?'. With 'do' the question seems (at least potentially) as
> much
> > about the bird as my ability/willingness to see it, while without it
> perhaps
> > its more about the speaker's needs. I know that in many instances
> pronominal
> > paradigms have been reshaped to reflect unwillingness to appear
> > confrontational in conversation. It would be interesting here from the
> > typological perspective to know whether there is any linkage between
> > constructional switching and the degree to and direction in which
> discourse
> > has to be negotiated. More formality structurewise= more formality
> > interrelationally? Languages with
> >  the least morphology more context sensitive and all that rubbish.
> >
> > Jess Tauber
> > goldenratio at earthlink.net
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------
> >
> > Message: 6
> > Date: Thu, 4 Aug 2011 21:22:31 -0700
> > From: "Victor K. Golla" <Victor.Golla at humboldt.edu>
> > Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] difference in form without difference in
> >        meaning
> > To: Frederick J Newmeyer <fjn at u.washington.edu>,
> >        funknet at mailman.rice.edu
> > Message-ID:
> >        <CAKxvog709RyMzihs6xwzT4e6=
> 50imWp6yM30E6mh8t7j5rY6FA at mail.gmail.com
> > >
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
> >
> > Fritz--
> >
> > > I had always been quite skeptical of Dwight Bolinger's idea that
> > > differences in (lexical and syntactic) form always correlate with
> > > meaning differences. But I have become less skeptical recently
> >
> > I think Bolinger was merely paraphrasing Bloomfield, according to whom
> > the "fundamental assumption of linguistics" (i.e., "In certain
> > communities some speech-utterances are alike as to form and meaning")
> >
> >          implies that each linguistic form has a constant and specific
> >          meaning.  If the ... forms are different, we suppose that their
> >          meanings also are different....We suppose, in short, that there
> >          are no actual synonyms (Language, 1933, 144-45).
> >
> > Bloomfield, however, was at pains to confine this "somewhat rigid
> > analysis of speech-forms" to "the descriptive phase of linguistics" in
> > which pragmatic, sociolinguistic, and diachronic variation is
> > purposely ignored. But "when we deal with the historical change of
> > language, we shall be concerned with facts for which our assumption
> > does not hold good" (ibid, 158).
> >
> > --Victor Golla
> >
> > On Thu, Aug 4, 2011 at 2:17 PM, Frederick J Newmeyer
> > <fjn at u.washington.edu> wrote:
> > > Dear Funknetters,
> > >
> > > I am looking for convincing examples of where two syntactically-related
> > sentence-types manifest clearly identical meanings, where 'meaning' is
> taken
> > in its broadest sense, including discourse-pragmatic aspects. Another way
> of
> > putting it is to say that I am looking for two sentence types that in
> early
> > TG would have been related by 'optional rules', but which absolutely do
> not
> > differ in meaning. It's not so easy to come up with good examples, once
> > differences in topicality and focus are allowed as meaning differences.
> One
> > possible example that comes to mind are sentences with or without
> > complementizer-deletion, such as 'I knew that he'd be on time', vs. 'I
> knew
> > he'd be on time'. But even here there have been argued to be meaning
> > differences.
> > >
> > > One possibility that has been suggested to me is from Early Modern
> > English, when many speakers could say both 'Saw you the bird?' and 'Did
> you
> > see the bird?' Does anybody have evidence that there were subtle meaning
> > differences here?
> > >
> > > I had always been quite skeptical of Dwight Bolinger's idea that
> > differences in (lexical and syntactic) form always correlate with meaning
> > differences. But I have become less skeptical recently.
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > >
> > > --fritz
> > >
> > > Frederick J. Newmeyer
> > > Professor Emeritus, University of Washington
> > > Adjunct Professor, University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser
> > University
> > > [for my postal address, please contact me by e-mail]
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------
> >
> > Message: 7
> > Date: Thu, 04 Aug 2011 23:15:57 -0600
> > From: Tom Givon <tgivon at uoregon.edu>
> > Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] difference in form without difference in
> >        meaning
> > To: funknet at mailman.rice.edu
> > Message-ID: <4E3B7C8D.9080609 at uoregon.edu>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
> >
> >
> >
> > Right on, Vic. The old fox was not stupid, he just needed to idealize
> > synchrony by segregating it from diachrony. Standard Saussurean
> > position. Or Chomskian.  TG
> >
> >
> > ================
> > On 8/4/2011 10:22 PM, Victor K. Golla wrote:
> > > Fritz--
> > >
> > >> I had always been quite skeptical of Dwight Bolinger's idea that
> > >> differences in (lexical and syntactic) form always correlate with
> > >> meaning differences. But I have become less skeptical recently
> > > I think Bolinger was merely paraphrasing Bloomfield, according to whom
> > > the "fundamental assumption of linguistics" (i.e., "In certain
> > > communities some speech-utterances are alike as to form and meaning")
> > >
> > >            implies that each linguistic form has a constant and
> specific
> > >            meaning.  If the ... forms are different, we suppose that
> > their
> > >            meanings also are different....We suppose, in short, that
> > there
> > >            are no actual synonyms (Language, 1933, 144-45).
> > >
> > > Bloomfield, however, was at pains to confine this "somewhat rigid
> > > analysis of speech-forms" to "the descriptive phase of linguistics" in
> > > which pragmatic, sociolinguistic, and diachronic variation is
> > > purposely ignored. But "when we deal with the historical change of
> > > language, we shall be concerned with facts for which our assumption
> > > does not hold good" (ibid, 158).
> > >
> > > --Victor Golla
> > >
> > > On Thu, Aug 4, 2011 at 2:17 PM, Frederick J Newmeyer
> > > <fjn at u.washington.edu>  wrote:
> > >> Dear Funknetters,
> > >>
> > >> I am looking for convincing examples of where two
> syntactically-related
> > sentence-types manifest clearly identical meanings, where 'meaning' is
> taken
> > in its broadest sense, including discourse-pragmatic aspects. Another way
> of
> > putting it is to say that I am looking for two sentence types that in
> early
> > TG would have been related by 'optional rules', but which absolutely do
> not
> > differ in meaning. It's not so easy to come up with good examples, once
> > differences in topicality and focus are allowed as meaning differences.
> One
> > possible example that comes to mind are sentences with or without
> > complementizer-deletion, such as 'I knew that he'd be on time', vs. 'I
> knew
> > he'd be on time'. But even here there have been argued to be meaning
> > differences.
> > >>
> > >> One possibility that has been suggested to me is from Early Modern
> > English, when many speakers could say both 'Saw you the bird?' and 'Did
> you
> > see the bird?' Does anybody have evidence that there were subtle meaning
> > differences here?
> > >>
> > >> I had always been quite skeptical of Dwight Bolinger's idea that
> > differences in (lexical and syntactic) form always correlate with meaning
> > differences. But I have become less skeptical recently.
> > >>
> > >> Thanks,
> > >>
> > >> --fritz
> > >>
> > >> Frederick J. Newmeyer
> > >> Professor Emeritus, University of Washington
> > >> Adjunct Professor, University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser
> > University
> > >> [for my postal address, please contact me by e-mail]
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>
> >
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------
> >
> > Message: 8
> > Date: Fri, 5 Aug 2011 08:59:45 +0200 (CEST)
> > From: Sylvester OSU <sylvester.osu at wanadoo.fr>
> > Subject: [FUNKNET]  References
> > To: funknet at mailman.rice.edu
> > Message-ID: <18476851.7574.1312527586070.JavaMail.www at wwinf2218>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
> >
> > Dear Funknetters,
> >
> > I will soon be teaching a course on language and its relationship to
> > reality and will like to have some relevant references on this topic.
> Kindly
> > please send such to:
> >
> > sylvester.osu at wanadoo.fr
> >
> > Thanking you in advance.
> >
> > Sylvester
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------
> >
> > Message: 9
> > Date: Fri,  5 Aug 2011 11:25:55 +0300
> > From: john at research.haifa.ac.il
> > Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] difference in form without difference in
> >        meaning
> > To: jess tauber <phonosemantics at earthlink.net>
> > Cc: funknet at mailman.rice.edu
> > Message-ID: <1312532755.4e3ba913d71d2 at webmail.haifa.ac.il>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1255
> >
> > A long time ago (early 1980s), together with Tony Kroch and Susan Pintzuk
> I
> > did
> > a study of how 'do' came to be used as a question marker, a change which
> > was
> > was for the most part started and completed in the course of the 16th
> > century.
> > DURING the 16th century, there was a lot of variation between the older
> > VS question and the newer do-construction, the most significant factor
> > being
> > whether the subject was a pronoun or noun, whether there was a direct
> > object,
> > and if so, whether the direct object was a noun or pronoun. There was
> also
> > a
> > clear tendency for the do-construction to become more common as the
> century
> > went on. But there was also an effect of the semantic type of the verb,
> > with
> > the do-construction being associated with active verbs and the VS
> > construction
> > associated with stative verbs. It was very difficult to say anything
> > concrete
> > about this, because the variation was affected by so many non-semantic
> > factors,
> > but in some sense at the time, to the extent that any difference in
> meaning
> > could be suggested, 'Did you see the bird?' would have implied that the
> > subject
> > took some action to intentionally see the bird (like going to a place
> where
> > the
> > bird was), whereas 'Saw you the bird?' would imply that the bird passed
> in
> > front of the subject's field of vision. It's difficult to get a parallel
> > difference in meaning in the present tense. Additionally, there was at
> the
> > time
> > a strong tendency to use 'ye' as a clitic-like subject form, so that in
> > general
> > 'See you the bird?' would have been disfavored because in involved a
> > non-clitic
> > subject form intervening between the verb and the object. 'Saw ye the
> > bird?'
> > would have been much more normal. And the semantic alternation would have
> > been
> > clearest in the middle of the change, whereas earlier and later than
> this,
> > stylistic factors were more important--I would guess that there were no
> > more
> > than two generations when there was something like a productive
> > semantically-based alternation.
> > John
> >
> >
> >
> > Quoting jess tauber <phonosemantics at earthlink.net>:
> >
> > > Hi folks. I'll admit at the outset that this isn't my area, but just on
> > the
> > > face of it, to my sensibilities, the difference between 'Saw you the
> > bird?'
> > > and 'Did you see the bird?' is one of directness and/or formality. The
> > first
> > > seems to me more intimate, informal, less 'accusing' usage, at least
> for
> > my
> > > modern English. Maybe easier to see with 'See (you) the bird?' vs. 'Do
> > you
> > > see the bird?'. With 'do' the question seems (at least potentially) as
> > much
> > > about the bird as my ability/willingness to see it, while without it
> > perhaps
> > > its more about the speaker's needs. I know that in many instances
> > pronominal
> > > paradigms have been reshaped to reflect unwillingness to appear
> > > confrontational in conversation. It would be interesting here from the
> > > typological perspective to know whether there is any linkage between
> > > constructional switching and the degree to and direction in which
> > discourse
> > > has to be negotiated. More formality structurewise= more formality
> > > interrelationally? Languages with the least morphology more context
> > sensitive
> > > and all that rubbish.
> > >
> > > Jess Tauber
> > > goldenratio at earthlink.net
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > This message was sent using IMP, the Webmail Program of Haifa University
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------
> >
> > Message: 10
> > Date: Fri, 05 Aug 2011 10:31:57 -0600
> > From: Tom Givon <tgivon at uoregon.edu>
> > Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] difference in form without difference in
> >        meaning
> > To: funknet at mailman.rice.edu
> > Message-ID: <4E3C1AFD.4030904 at uoregon.edu>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
> >
> >
> > John did an excellent job in showing some of the complexities involved
> > in the actual process of change. One possible implication is, perhaps,
> > that such complexity can be captured in neither the Generative nor
> > Varb-rule perspective. The cognitive implication outstrip the
> > theoretical machinery of either of these "theories".
> >
> > Perhaps one thing to remember concerns the time-course issue: The
> > data-base for the study of 16th Cent. English is, exclusively,written
> > texts. That genre tends to be, sometimes, centuries behind the actual
> > changes, which took place, almost exclusively, in the spoken language.
> > Often, the low-frequency variants characteristic of the slow first part
> > of the S-shaped curve are completely ignored in the written language,
> > which tends to go with the higher-frequency (well-established) form, and
> > thus appears to be "more generative". This gives a false impression of a
> > much faster curve of , i.e., the middle portion of the SW-shaped curve.
> > Lynn Yang & I made this observation when studying the rise of the
> > GET-passive in English. It was nigh impossible to find examples in
> > 19th-century writing--till we got to sampling Huck Finn, which is
> > deliberately pitched toward the colloquial. All of a sudden, seemingly
> > with no gradual prep time, the frequencies jumped up. Which suggested to
> > us that the mature (tho still largely adversive) GET-passive
> > construction may have been lurking around for a long time prior, perhaps
> > centuries, in the spoken language . Cheers,  TG
> >
> > ============
> >
> > On 8/5/2011 2:25 AM, john at research.haifa.ac.il wrote:
> > > A long time ago (early 1980s), together with Tony Kroch and Susan
> Pintzuk
> > I did
> > > a study of how 'do' came to be used as a question marker, a change
> which
> > was
> > > was for the most part started and completed in the course of the 16th
> > century.
> > > DURING the 16th century, there was a lot of variation between the older
> > > VS question and the newer do-construction, the most significant factor
> > being
> > > whether the subject was a pronoun or noun, whether there was a direct
> > object,
> > > and if so, whether the direct object was a noun or pronoun. There was
> > also a
> > > clear tendency for the do-construction to become more common as the
> > century
> > > went on. But there was also an effect of the semantic type of the verb,
> > with
> > > the do-construction being associated with active verbs and the VS
> > construction
> > > associated with stative verbs. It was very difficult to say anything
> > concrete
> > > about this, because the variation was affected by so many non-semantic
> > factors,
> > > but in some sense at the time, to the extent that any difference in
> > meaning
> > > could be suggested, 'Did you see the bird?' would have implied that the
> > subject
> > > took some action to intentionally see the bird (like going to a place
> > where the
> > > bird was), whereas 'Saw you the bird?' would imply that the bird passed
> > in
> > > front of the subject's field of vision. It's difficult to get a
> parallel
> > > difference in meaning in the present tense. Additionally, there was at
> > the time
> > > a strong tendency to use 'ye' as a clitic-like subject form, so that in
> > general
> > > 'See you the bird?' would have been disfavored because in involved a
> > non-clitic
> > > subject form intervening between the verb and the object. 'Saw ye the
> > bird?'
> > > would have been much more normal. And the semantic alternation would
> have
> > been
> > > clearest in the middle of the change, whereas earlier and later than
> > this,
> > > stylistic factors were more important--I would guess that there were no
> > more
> > > than two generations when there was something like a productive
> > > semantically-based alternation.
> > > John
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Quoting jess tauber<phonosemantics at earthlink.net>:
> > >
> > >> Hi folks. I'll admit at the outset that this isn't my area, but just
> on
> > the
> > >> face of it, to my sensibilities, the difference between 'Saw you the
> > bird?'
> > >> and 'Did you see the bird?' is one of directness and/or formality. The
> > first
> > >> seems to me more intimate, informal, less 'accusing' usage, at least
> for
> > my
> > >> modern English. Maybe easier to see with 'See (you) the bird?' vs. 'Do
> > you
> > >> see the bird?'. With 'do' the question seems (at least potentially) as
> > much
> > >> about the bird as my ability/willingness to see it, while without it
> > perhaps
> > >> its more about the speaker's needs. I know that in many instances
> > pronominal
> > >> paradigms have been reshaped to reflect unwillingness to appear
> > >> confrontational in conversation. It would be interesting here from the
> > >> typological perspective to know whether there is any linkage between
> > >> constructional switching and the degree to and direction in which
> > discourse
> > >> has to be negotiated. More formality structurewise= more formality
> > >> interrelationally? Languages with the least morphology more context
> > sensitive
> > >> and all that rubbish.
> > >>
> > >> Jess Tauber
> > >> goldenratio at earthlink.net
> > >>
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > > This message was sent using IMP, the Webmail Program of Haifa
> University
> >
> >
> >
> > End of FUNKNET Digest, Vol 95, Issue 2
> > **************************************
> >
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 4
> Date: Fri, 5 Aug 2011 20:51:57 -0400
> From: "T. Florian Jaeger" <tiflo at csli.stanford.edu>
> Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] difference in form without difference in
>        meaning
> To: funknet at mailman.rice.edu
> Cc: Tom Wasow <twasow at gmail.com>
> Message-ID:
>        <CAG2Vd7iDnQVNx7PTq_z83m+HvS1Q0HXiZzXE1y=J41=dy9mqvg at mail.gmail.com
> >
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> Hi Fritz,
>
> I've recently spent more time thinking about the very same question. I am,
> however, not even sure that it is a well-formed question. At least if we're
> willing to base our decision about the correct answer on data from actual
> language understanding (I am not sure that meaning can be meaningfully
> defined if we don't commit to this assumption).
>
> The mapping from perceptual input to meaning is noisy, so that two
> different
> forms can most certainly lead to the same set of inferences. This might
> seem
> irrelevant to your question, but I think it might affect the answer.
> Meaning
> differences that are associated with linguistic forms that are very likely
> to lead to overlapping perceptual inputs are unlikely to be learnable.
>
> You were asking about syntactic alternatives (or syntactically related
> forms
> that share the same meaning). But even for those, there are some that
> differ
> very little in perceivable linguistic form (e.g. that-omission, which you
> mentioned; or to-deletion after *help* in English). I think there are
> reasons to suspect that such difficult to perceive differences (in
> conversational speech either of these two words is often going to reduced
> to
> some co-articulatory information on the surrounding words) are unlikely to
> be associated with strong meaning differences. This, of course, hasn't kept
> people from claiming such meaning differences (e.g. Yaguchi, 2001; Dor,
> 2005
> for that-omission). However, those meaning differences that seem so
> apparent
> when we look at written language offline seem to be hard to confirm in
> studies. Some years ago, Rafe Kinsey (back then an undergrad at Stanford)
> conducted a study (together with Tom Wasow and me) on alleged meaning
> differences between complement clauses with "that" and those without. We
> didn't find any evidence for meaning differences. This, of course, doesn't
> mean that there are none. What I thought was interesting is that I used to
> bug some of my fellow students about whether they felt that complement
> clauses with "that" were different from those without "that". Almost all of
> them felt that there was a meaning difference. However, none of them agreed
> on what the difference was and several of them even had the exact opposite
> opinion! I find that example, though anecdotal in nature, quite
> instructive:
> perhaps we can't help thinking that there are meaning differences, but that
> doesn't mean that they are stable enough to become successfully associated
> with one of the two forms.
>
> I've been fascinated by the fact that most of my fellow psycholinguists
> simply assume that there are no (relevant) meaning differences between
> syntactic alternatives. They are quite fine running active vs. passive
> experiments where effects of animacy or givenness of the agent or theme on
> the preferred choice between the two structures are interpreted as evidence
> about the underlying structure of the production system, rather than as
> evidence for meaning differences. Arguably, they have one thing on their
> side: these and other factors have the predicted effects across many
> structural alternations across many languages (cf. e.g, Branigan et al
> 2009;
> Jaeger and Norcliffe, 2009 for overviews).
>
> I agree with the other comments that differences in form often end up
> becoming associated with differences in meaning, but I think that for many
> alternations, at any given point in time, differences in meaning **are just
> one of several factors* *that determine speakers' preference between the
> two
> forms. For example, there is evidence from heavy NP shift that sometimes
> the
> only reason why it happens is that the heavy NP was not yet ready for
> articulation when the speaker had to make a choice as to how to maintain
> fluency (Wasow, 1997). Also, would we really want to claim that the same
> speakers describing the same pictures reliably choose their argument order
> (e.g. in the ditransitive structure) based on the number of words in the
> theme/recipient constituent because that affects how likely they are to
> think of the picture one way or another, thereby affecting what subtle
> meaning difference they want to convey? It's possible, but I wouldn't bet
> my
> money on it. Do we want to attribute the fact that more predictable
> relative
> and complement clauses are less likely to have a relativizer/complementizer
> "that" to meaning differences (same of passive RCs, to-omission,
> contraction, etc.; Jaeger, 2006; 2010, 2011; Wasow et al., 2011; Levy and
> Jaeger, 2007; Frank and Jaeger, 2008)? From a processing-perspective this
> makes perfect sense, whereas the meaning theories that have been evoked
> differ for each of those cases.
>
> All of this is not to say that comprehenders aren't incredibly sensitive to
> the motivations behind speakers' preferences. Actually, there's plenty of
> evidence for that. For example, Arnold et al show that comprehenders know
> that speakers are more disfluent before difficult words and that knowledge
> allows them to process words that are a priori more difficult much faster
> after a disfluency. Similarly, comprehenders expect difficult material
> after
> a "that" at the onset of a complement or relative clause and if they don't
> get it this slows comprehension (relatively speaking; Race and MacDonald,
> 2003). I think it's perceivable that these processing-based expectations
> can
> easily create the 'illusion' of a meaning difference. They are also likely
> to 'cause' meaning differences in the long run, but it seems to me (from
> the
> data I have seen in experiments) that these meaning differences can be
> quite
> fickle for a long time and can be overriden by processing preferences. One
> of my students, Judith Degen, recently started looking into the possibility
> that such processing preferences might even affect the choice between two
> rather meaning-different forms (she's focusing on "some X" vs. "some of the
> X"; recently presented at XPRAG 2011).
>
> So my current best-bet-speculation (see also my thesis, Chapter 6.2.2) is
> that speakers, when they encode their intended meaning into linguistic
> forms, probabilistically select between different forms and that this
> selection is affected by the strength of connections between different
> meanings and that form as well as processing considerations (such as the
> well-documented preference to avoid speech suspension; for refs see, e.g.
> Clark and Fox-Tree, 2002; Fox-Tree and Clark, 1997; V. Ferreira and Dell,
> 2000; V. Feirreira 1996; Bock, 1987).
>
> so in this sense (if my argument makes sense), it would be misleading to
> think that most alternatives in syntactic alternations are meaning distinct
> unless you're willing to accept any difference in the probability
> distribution over inferred meanings given a linguistic form as evidence for
> difference meanings -- in that case, it would probably hold that no two
> forms are the same (including no two actual acoustic realizations of the
> same syntactic structure, since they will differ in speech rate, etc.,
> which
> will affect some inferences the comprehender might draw).
>
> I think for any stronger claim about meaning differences there would need
> to
> be testable (and preferably quantifiable) theories about those meaning
> differences, so that they could be pitched against well-established
> theories
> of speakers' preferences during incremental language production.
>
> I hope some of this is useful? This would be an awefully long email if it
> turned out to be completely incomprehensible ;).
>
> florian
>
> One final thought - didn't Bresnan et al (2007) also discuss alleged
> meaning
> differences for the ditransitive alternation?
>
>
>  ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > Message: 1
> > Date: Thu, 4 Aug 2011 14:17:27 -0700 (PDT)
> > From: Frederick J Newmeyer <fjn at u.washington.edu>
> > Subject: [FUNKNET] difference in form without difference in meaning
> > To: Funknet <funknet at mailman.rice.edu>
> > Message-ID:
> >        <alpine.LRH.2.01.1108041417270.26399 at hymn33.u.washington.edu>
> > Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
> >
> > Dear Funknetters,
> >
> > I am looking for convincing examples of where two syntactically-related
> > sentence-types manifest clearly identical meanings, where 'meaning' is
> taken
> > in its broadest sense, including discourse-pragmatic aspects. Another way
> of
> > putting it is to say that I am looking for two sentence types that in
> early
> > TG would have been related by 'optional rules', but which absolutely do
> not
> > differ in meaning. It's not so easy to come up with good examples, once
> > differences in topicality and focus are allowed as meaning differences.
> One
> > possible example that comes to mind are sentences with or without
> > complementizer-deletion, such as 'I knew that he'd be on time', vs. 'I
> knew
> > he'd be on time'. But even here there have been argued to be meaning
> > differences.
> >
> > One possibility that has been suggested to me is from Early Modern
> English,
> > when many speakers could say both 'Saw you the bird?' and 'Did you see
> the
> > bird?' Does anybody have evidence that there were subtle meaning
> differences
> > here?
> >
> > I had always been quite skeptical of Dwight Bolinger's idea that
> > differences in (lexical and syntactic) form always correlate with meaning
> > differences. But I have become less skeptical recently.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > --fritz
> >
> > Frederick J. Newmeyer
> > Professor Emeritus, University of Washington
> > Adjunct Professor, University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser
> > University
> > [for my postal address, please contact me by e-mail]
> >
> >
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 5
> Date: Sat,  6 Aug 2011 09:45:17 +0300
> From: john at research.haifa.ac.il
> Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] difference in form without difference in
>        meaning
> To: "T. Florian Jaeger" <tiflo at csli.stanford.edu>
> Cc: Tom Wasow <twasow at gmail.com>, funknet at mailman.rice.edu
> Message-ID: <1312613117.4e3ce2fd27552 at webmail.haifa.ac.il>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1255
>
> One issue here is 'what is meaning?' Is this supposed to include only
> lexical
> meaning? Does it include aspect? Does it include definiteness? Does it
> include
> the relative topicality of different referents? I mention these factors in
> particular because they are common factors which affect voice alternations
> (active vs passive, ergative vs antipassive). If such factors are included
> as
> 'meaning', then it's going to be pretty hard to find cases in which there
> are
> syntactic alternations which aren't associated with meaning differences.
>
> Another issue is that, as Florian mentions (and I described in my message
> about
> do/VS in English questions), there are often a variety of factors all of
> which
> have an effect on an alternation. I am particularly aware of this because I
> studied at Penn and I'm completely used to doing multivariate statistical
> analysis such as sociolinguists typically do with phonological
> variables--except that I've also done them with syntactic alternations. And
> even aside from factors like aspect, definiteness, topicality, etc.,
> there's
> also the matter of style, which further confounds the issue. And heaviness
> (for
> the EME do/VS alternation the most important factor was that 'do' was
> particularly favored with transitive verbs with nominal subjects, e.g. 'Did
> Bill see the bird?' vs 'Saw Bill the bird?'
>
> This said, if we take a broad understanding of 'meaning', my experience so
> far
> has been that I have never met an alternation for which I haven't been able
> to
> find SOME meaning-related difference. This includes active vs passive,
> argative
> vs antipassive, clitic-climbing in Romance languages (e.g. Spanish 'quiero
> conocerlo' vs 'lo quiero conocer'), and 'equivalent' English modals like
> should/ought, have to/have got to. The various 'I' words (boku, ore,
> watashi)
> and 'you' words (anata, kimi, omae, etc.) in Japanese have clearly
> different
> meanings. Even words from different speech levels in Javanese, where the
> alternation is supposedly conditioned purely by stylistic factors, turn out
> to
> have slightly different meanings. I haven't tried to find a meaning
> difference
> for complementizer 'that', and I have to admit that I have an instinctive
> feeling that there is no difference--but I wouldn't be surprised that if I
> spent a long time investigating the topic, I could find some difference.
>
> Also--the fact that different speakers claim that there is a meaning
> distinction
> in a certain case but the describe it in opposite terms doesn't mean that
> there
> isn't a meaning difference--it usually seems to mean that the speakers are
> using the term in different ways. When I've asked Russian speakers about
> the
> difference between the obligation markers nuzhno and dolzhen, some will say
> that one is more stronger while others will say that the other is
> stronger--but
> it's because express two types of obligation, one an objective obligation
> based
> upon 'the nature of things', the other based upon emotions, and some people
> think that one kind of obligation is stronger while others think that the
> other
> kind of obligation is stronger. Similarly, I repeatedly had the experience
> of
> being confused about the meanings of Arabic emotion words because Arabic
> speakers generally believe that emotions which are kept inside are
> 'stronger'
> than emotions which are expressed, whereas the reverse is generally true
> for
> English speakers (who tend to think that if an emotion is too strong it
> can't
> be controled). So the descriptions of the average person aren't really
> worth
> too much in many cases if you don't know what they mean by them.
> John
>
>
>
>
>
> Quoting "T. Florian Jaeger" <tiflo at csli.stanford.edu>:
>
> > Hi Fritz,
> >
> > I've recently spent more time thinking about the very same question. I
> am,
> > however, not even sure that it is a well-formed question. At least if
> we're
> > willing to base our decision about the correct answer on data from actual
> > language understanding (I am not sure that meaning can be meaningfully
> > defined if we don't commit to this assumption).
> >
> > The mapping from perceptual input to meaning is noisy, so that two
> different
> > forms can most certainly lead to the same set of inferences. This might
> seem
> > irrelevant to your question, but I think it might affect the answer.
> Meaning
> > differences that are associated with linguistic forms that are very
> likely
> > to lead to overlapping perceptual inputs are unlikely to be learnable.
> >
> > You were asking about syntactic alternatives (or syntactically related
> forms
> > that share the same meaning). But even for those, there are some that
> differ
> > very little in perceivable linguistic form (e.g. that-omission, which you
> > mentioned; or to-deletion after *help* in English). I think there are
> > reasons to suspect that such difficult to perceive differences (in
> > conversational speech either of these two words is often going to reduced
> to
> > some co-articulatory information on the surrounding words) are unlikely
> to
> > be associated with strong meaning differences. This, of course, hasn't
> kept
> > people from claiming such meaning differences (e.g. Yaguchi, 2001; Dor,
> 2005
> > for that-omission). However, those meaning differences that seem so
> apparent
> > when we look at written language offline seem to be hard to confirm in
> > studies. Some years ago, Rafe Kinsey (back then an undergrad at Stanford)
> > conducted a study (together with Tom Wasow and me) on alleged meaning
> > differences between complement clauses with "that" and those without. We
> > didn't find any evidence for meaning differences. This, of course,
> doesn't
> > mean that there are none. What I thought was interesting is that I used
> to
> > bug some of my fellow students about whether they felt that complement
> > clauses with "that" were different from those without "that". Almost all
> of
> > them felt that there was a meaning difference. However, none of them
> agreed
> > on what the difference was and several of them even had the exact
> opposite
> > opinion! I find that example, though anecdotal in nature, quite
> instructive:
> > perhaps we can't help thinking that there are meaning differences, but
> that
> > doesn't mean that they are stable enough to become successfully
> associated
> > with one of the two forms.
> >
> > I've been fascinated by the fact that most of my fellow psycholinguists
> > simply assume that there are no (relevant) meaning differences between
> > syntactic alternatives. They are quite fine running active vs. passive
> > experiments where effects of animacy or givenness of the agent or theme
> on
> > the preferred choice between the two structures are interpreted as
> evidence
> > about the underlying structure of the production system, rather than as
> > evidence for meaning differences. Arguably, they have one thing on their
> > side: these and other factors have the predicted effects across many
> > structural alternations across many languages (cf. e.g, Branigan et al
> 2009;
> > Jaeger and Norcliffe, 2009 for overviews).
> >
> > I agree with the other comments that differences in form often end up
> > becoming associated with differences in meaning, but I think that for
> many
> > alternations, at any given point in time, differences in meaning **are
> just
> > one of several factors* *that determine speakers' preference between the
> two
> > forms. For example, there is evidence from heavy NP shift that sometimes
> the
> > only reason why it happens is that the heavy NP was not yet ready for
> > articulation when the speaker had to make a choice as to how to maintain
> > fluency (Wasow, 1997). Also, would we really want to claim that the same
> > speakers describing the same pictures reliably choose their argument
> order
> > (e.g. in the ditransitive structure) based on the number of words in the
> > theme/recipient constituent because that affects how likely they are to
> > think of the picture one way or another, thereby affecting what subtle
> > meaning difference they want to convey? It's possible, but I wouldn't bet
> my
> > money on it. Do we want to attribute the fact that more predictable
> relative
> > and complement clauses are less likely to have a
> relativizer/complementizer
> > "that" to meaning differences (same of passive RCs, to-omission,
> > contraction, etc.; Jaeger, 2006; 2010, 2011; Wasow et al., 2011; Levy and
> > Jaeger, 2007; Frank and Jaeger, 2008)? From a processing-perspective this
> > makes perfect sense, whereas the meaning theories that have been evoked
> > differ for each of those cases.
> >
> > All of this is not to say that comprehenders aren't incredibly sensitive
> to
> > the motivations behind speakers' preferences. Actually, there's plenty of
> > evidence for that. For example, Arnold et al show that comprehenders know
> > that speakers are more disfluent before difficult words and that
> knowledge
> > allows them to process words that are a priori more difficult much faster
> > after a disfluency. Similarly, comprehenders expect difficult material
> after
> > a "that" at the onset of a complement or relative clause and if they
> don't
> > get it this slows comprehension (relatively speaking; Race and MacDonald,
> > 2003). I think it's perceivable that these processing-based expectations
> can
> > easily create the 'illusion' of a meaning difference. They are also
> likely
> > to 'cause' meaning differences in the long run, but it seems to me (from
> the
> > data I have seen in experiments) that these meaning differences can be
> quite
> > fickle for a long time and can be overriden by processing preferences.
> One
> > of my students, Judith Degen, recently started looking into the
> possibility
> > that such processing preferences might even affect the choice between two
> > rather meaning-different forms (she's focusing on "some X" vs. "some of
> the
> > X"; recently presented at XPRAG 2011).
> >
> > So my current best-bet-speculation (see also my thesis, Chapter 6.2.2) is
> > that speakers, when they encode their intended meaning into linguistic
> > forms, probabilistically select between different forms and that this
> > selection is affected by the strength of connections between different
> > meanings and that form as well as processing considerations (such as the
> > well-documented preference to avoid speech suspension; for refs see, e.g.
> > Clark and Fox-Tree, 2002; Fox-Tree and Clark, 1997; V. Ferreira and Dell,
> > 2000; V. Feirreira 1996; Bock, 1987).
> >
> > so in this sense (if my argument makes sense), it would be misleading to
> > think that most alternatives in syntactic alternations are meaning
> distinct
> > unless you're willing to accept any difference in the probability
> > distribution over inferred meanings given a linguistic form as evidence
> for
> > difference meanings -- in that case, it would probably hold that no two
> > forms are the same (including no two actual acoustic realizations of the
> > same syntactic structure, since they will differ in speech rate, etc.,
> which
> > will affect some inferences the comprehender might draw).
> >
> > I think for any stronger claim about meaning differences there would need
> to
> > be testable (and preferably quantifiable) theories about those meaning
> > differences, so that they could be pitched against well-established
> theories
> > of speakers' preferences during incremental language production.
> >
> > I hope some of this is useful? This would be an awefully long email if it
> > turned out to be completely incomprehensible ;).
> >
> > florian
> >
> > One final thought - didn't Bresnan et al (2007) also discuss alleged
> meaning
> > differences for the ditransitive alternation?
> >
> >
> >  ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> > >
> > > Message: 1
> > > Date: Thu, 4 Aug 2011 14:17:27 -0700 (PDT)
> > > From: Frederick J Newmeyer <fjn at u.washington.edu>
> > > Subject: [FUNKNET] difference in form without difference in meaning
> > > To: Funknet <funknet at mailman.rice.edu>
> > > Message-ID:
> > >        <alpine.LRH.2.01.1108041417270.26399 at hymn33.u.washington.edu>
> > > Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
> > >
> > > Dear Funknetters,
> > >
> > > I am looking for convincing examples of where two syntactically-related
> > > sentence-types manifest clearly identical meanings, where 'meaning' is
> > taken
> > > in its broadest sense, including discourse-pragmatic aspects. Another
> way
> > of
> > > putting it is to say that I am looking for two sentence types that in
> early
> > > TG would have been related by 'optional rules', but which absolutely do
> not
> > > differ in meaning. It's not so easy to come up with good examples, once
> > > differences in topicality and focus are allowed as meaning differences.
> One
> > > possible example that comes to mind are sentences with or without
> > > complementizer-deletion, such as 'I knew that he'd be on time', vs. 'I
> knew
> > > he'd be on time'. But even here there have been argued to be meaning
> > > differences.
> > >
> > > One possibility that has been suggested to me is from Early Modern
> English,
> > > when many speakers could say both 'Saw you the bird?' and 'Did you see
> the
> > > bird?' Does anybody have evidence that there were subtle meaning
> > differences
> > > here?
> > >
> > > I had always been quite skeptical of Dwight Bolinger's idea that
> > > differences in (lexical and syntactic) form always correlate with
> meaning
> > > differences. But I have become less skeptical recently.
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > >
> > > --fritz
> > >
> > > Frederick J. Newmeyer
> > > Professor Emeritus, University of Washington
> > > Adjunct Professor, University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser
> > > University
> > > [for my postal address, please contact me by e-mail]
> > >
> > >
> >
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> This message was sent using IMP, the Webmail Program of Haifa University
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 6
> Date: Sat, 6 Aug 2011 12:26:17 -0400
> From: "Sophia A. Malamud" <smalamud at brandeis.edu>
> Subject: [FUNKNET] updated CfP: Information Structure and Discourse -
>        LSA Organized Session in memory of Ellen F. Prince
> To: funknet at mailman.rice.edu
> Message-ID:
>        <CAOVbHfPAOLUPFOftTLsWSfyAsTQqJXHoBz+bS7=sjj_QZyYz5Q at mail.gmail.com
> >
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> Dear funknetters,
>
> Here is an updated CfP - now with information about abstract size and
> format!
>
> With regards,
> Sophia
>
> Linguistic Society of America Annual Meeting
> * Portland, Oregon, January 5-8 2012
> *
> Organized Session in memory of Ellen F. Prince: Information Structure and
> Discourse
>
> Ellen F. Prince was a pioneer in the field of linguistic pragmatics,
> producing seminal work on the typology and linguistic marking of
> informational status, on the discourse functions of syntactic
> constructions,
> including insights from cross linguistic studies in Yiddish and English,
> language contact phenomena, and the study of reference and salience in the
> Centering framework. In the course of her work, she also pioneered the use
> of naturally-occurring data in linguistic research, long predating the
> advent of electronic corpora.
>
> We invite submissions of papers for 20-minute talks (15 min presentation, 5
> min for questions), presenting current research addressing discourse
> phenomena, including information structure, attentional status of
> linguistic
> expressions and their meanings, the relationship between coherence and
> reference, and phenomena at the discourse-syntax-semantics interface that
> emerge in situations of language contact and change. Research based on
> experimental or corpus data is particularly encouraged.
>
> Please email all submissions to the session organisers at
> lsa2012.prince at gmail.com. The subject of the email *must be* "*LSA session
> abstract*". Please include the following information in the email:
>        -- Name, affiliation, and email address for each author
>        -- The title of the paper
>
> The deadline for all submissions is Monday, September 5.
>
> The abstract must be anonymous and conform to the following guidelines:
>
>   1. Abstracts must be submitted in PDF format.
>   2. An abstract, including examples, if needed, must be no more than 1000
>   words and no more than two pages in length, in type no smaller than 11
> point
>   and preferably 12 point; margins should be at least .5 inches on all
> sides.
>   References should be included on a third page.
>   3. Your name should only appear in the accompanying email. If you
>   identify yourself in any way on the abstract (e.g. "In Smith
> (1992)...I"),
>   the abstract will be rejected without being evaluated. In addition, be
> sure
>   to anonymise your .pdf document by clicking on "File," then "Properties,"
>   removing your name if it appears in the "Author" line, and resaving
> before
>   uploading it.
>   4. Abstracts that do not conform to the format guidelines will not be
>   considered.
>   5. Your paper has not appeared in print, nor will appear before the LSA
>   meeting.
>   6. A 150 word abstract, intended for publication in the Meeting Handbook,
>   will be requested from all authors of accepted papers. The title and
> authors
>   must be the same as those in the originally submitted abstract. The
> deadline
>   will be October 1. This deadline, must be observed or the paper will be
>   withdrawn from the program.
>   7. You must be an LSA member in order to present at the conference.
>
>
> End of FUNKNET Digest, Vol 95, Issue 3
> **************************************
>



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