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<font face="Arial Unicode MS">Dear Martin and others,<br>
no question - 'flagging' seems to make sense in the given context.
However,I'm not sure whether it is specific enough to match the
functional domain at issue. The quote Martin gives (Aissen 1987:11) is
- by itself - somewhat ambiguous: <br>
<blockquote type="cite">"5. Flagging: Tzotzil uses prepositions and
so-called 'relational nouns' to mark NPs for their grammatical or
thematic relations — to FLAG them, in the terminology of relational
grammar." </blockquote>
This passage does not make clear to me whether *other* linguistic
'units' (such as verbs) can be flagged or not. If we start from the
semantics of the source domain (<FLAG>), we get nothing but a
very general notion of something marked by a 'flag' (be it the original
flag or, metonymically, the flag on e.g. an index card). The term does
not tell us which specific information is given with the 'flag' (as for
the source domain: which color it has, which shape it has etc.). In
linguistic terms this would mean that a flag only indicates that
something is marked by an additional segment (if we consider the formal
expression of flagging only). It does not tell us *which* functional
domain the flag reflects. In other words - flagging itself would be a
technical, but not necessarily a functional term. For instance, we may
likewise say that verbs are flagged for 'person' or 'class', just as
nouns or NPs can be flagged for 'case' (whatever this would mean) or
for gender, class, number etc. I think that it is crucial to mention
the type of 'qualification' (the 'flag type') related to a given
paradigm of 'flagging'. If I'm not mistaken, it is communis opinio to
claim that case functions (marked synthetically or constructionally)
reflect properties not of the NP itself but of the verb (or, in a
cognitive sense, of the 'verbal' relation) that occurs with the
'case-marked/flagged' NP - even though NP-specific properties such as
gender, class, or number may fuse with the expression of these
functions. These properties or features are copied onto the NP domain
just as NP-specific properties can be copied onto the verbal domain.
This is why I prefer the term 'echo' - it symbolizes this copying
process perhaps better than the term 'flagging' - which - in my eyes -
is more neutral with respect to the location of the 'stimulus' for the
flagging process. As the stimulus at issue normally stems from the
verbal domain (or: relational domain), I ended up in the term
'relational echo' ('referential echos' representing the reverse
process). One might argue that case forms (case/adpositions) that occur
between NPs (or: Referents) such as genitives or locatives (pater
amic-i, the house OF the woman, the woman IN the garden etc.) lack the
verbal 'stimulus' and hence are not echos in the sense just proposed.
Here, I would add that such constructions reflect a 'hidden'
(nevertheless cognitively present) verbal, copula-like entity that may
become apparent in paraphrases like relative clauses. <br>
<br>
Martin argues that <br>
</font>
<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid44B6283B.6010404@eva.mpg.de"><font
face="Arial Unicode MS">(...) other terms based on "relat-" (such as
Croft's "relational morpheme", M. Noonan's "relational morphology", and
W. Schulze's "relational echo") have the disadvantage that the term
"relation" is extremely broad.
</font></blockquote>
<font face="Arial Unicode MS">Right! But we have to bear in mind that
'relating' is exactly what verbs do on the cognitive level. In terms of
Cognitive Linguistics, we only have the representational 'classes'
'Referent', 'Relation', and 'Deixis' (plus sets of pragmatic markers).
Hence, 'relation' is clearly defined as denoting those types of
cognitive representations that relate two or more (more or less)
time-stable referential entities. From the point of view of
Linguistic/Cognitive Reductionism, the term 'relation' is not broad at
all, but very basic. If we claim (what I do) that relational echos are
a cognitive option to make the value(s) of relational structures more
explicit (be it semantically, syntactically, or pragmatically), the
'basicness' of 'relation' (in a cognitive sense) also holds for
'relational echos' (in which way soever you want to term them
language-specifically). <br>
<br>
Best wishes,<br>
Wolfgang<br>
</font><br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze
Institut fuer Allgemeine und Vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet Muenchen
Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1
D-80539 Muenchen
Tel.: ++49-(0)89-2180-2486 (Sekr.)
Tel.: ++49-(0)89-2180-5343 (Office)
Fax : ++49-(0)89-2180-5345
E-mail: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:W.Schulze@lrz.uni-muenchen.de">W.Schulze@lrz.uni-muenchen.de</a>
Web: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.ats.lmu.de./index.php">http://www.ats.lmu.de./index.php</a></pre>
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