<div dir="ltr"><div>Thanks, everyone, for an interesting discussion. My reply here may not be very insightful, certainly not especially theoretical, but I wanted to share it anyway.<br></div><div><br></div><div>I remember this coming up when I took a Quechua class, and at the time I felt like it simply made sense, e.g. from the perspective of formal features: 1SG (for example) is the same in two locations, which seems both convenient for the language learner, and also efficient in terms of grammatical organization.</div><div><br></div><div>But yes, it's a bit of a leap from that abstract perspective (that the person features would by default be realized in different places identically, and that's certainly not the case in general across languages).</div><div><br></div><div>So I wonder if this isn't just a simple explanation via grammaticalization: subject pronouns are often juxtaposed with verbs, and similarly (though perhaps less often, or with some other marker, e.g. case) posessors may be juxtaposed with posessees. The shared forms are a historical accident. And perhaps with a little analogy between them (from the perspective of grammatical consistency, along the lines of formal features), the correspondence (including reduction corresponding to morphologization) would be maintained.</div><div><br></div><div>Cognitive explanations are ultimately diachronic, either that certain usage is more frequent and grammaticalizes, or because certain grammaticalized usage is maintained through continued usage. Here in both cases the identity in some languages would seem to be explained without need for cognitive principles, beyond simply having the same forms in both contexts being somewhat convenient.</div><div><br></div><div>(As for explaining why they sometimes differ, it would simply be because they came from different syntactic sources. We also can find examples within either domain that are split, such as the prefixing vs. suffixing conjugation patterns in Semitic languages that have distinct, although somewhat overlapping, forms, presumably all grammaticalized from pronouns, but at different diachronic stages and in different positions.)<br></div><div><br></div><div>Daniel<br></div><div><br></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sat, Mar 19, 2022 at 8:30 PM William Croft <<a href="mailto:wcroft@unm.edu">wcroft@unm.edu</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div style="overflow-wrap: break-word;">Semantic/cognitive parallelism between referring phrase and clause structure in general were proposed by formal semanticists such as Emmon Bach (1986); see also the layered structure of the phrase and clause in RRG and Dik’s Functional Grammar as well as the cognitive linguistic versions found in Langacker (1991) mentioned by Siva, or in Croft (1990, 2007).<div><br></div><div>The empirical relationship between possessors and verbal arguments, and hence its explanation, is much more complex than “possessor = subject”; see Siewierska (1998) (she starts from Seiler’s hypothesis that inalienable = P/O and alienable = A, but finds it needs at best to be revised).</div><div><br></div><div>Bill<br><div><br></div><div>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:0.25in">Bach, Emmon.
1986. Natural language metaphysics. <i>Logic,
Methodology and Philosophy of Science VII</i>, ed. R. Barcan-Marcus, G. J. W.
Dorn & P. Weingartner, 573-95. Amsterdam: North-Holland.<u></u><u></u></p>
<p>Croft, William. 1990. A conceptual framework for
grammatical categories (or, a taxonomy of propositional acts). <i>Journal of Semantics</i> 7.245-79.<u></u><u></u></p><p>
</p><p>Croft, William. 2007. The origins of grammar in the
verbalization of experience. <i>Cognitive
Linguistics </i><span style="font-style:normal">18.339-82</span><i>.</i></p><p><u></u><u></u></p>
<p>Langacker, Ronald W. 1991. <i>Foundations of cognitive grammar, vol II: descriptive application.</i>
Stanford: Stanford University Press.<u></u><u></u></p>
<p>Siewierska, Anna. 1998. On nominal and verbal person
marking. <i>Linguistic Typology</i> 2.1-55.<u></u><u></u></p>
<div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div>On Mar 19, 2022, at 10:04 AM, Yury Lander <<a href="mailto:yulander@yandex.ru" target="_blank">yulander@yandex.ru</a>> wrote:</div><br><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;text-decoration:none;line-height:12pt;background-color:rgb(255,102,102)"><b><span style="font-size:10pt;color:white"> [EXTERNAL]</span></b></p><b style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;text-decoration:none"></b><span style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;text-decoration:none;float:none;display:inline"></span><div style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;text-decoration:none"><div>Dear all,</div><div> </div><div>Just a small note. I believe that Langacker's idea of "reference-point constructions" was anticipated by Edward Keenan in his:</div><div><div>Keenan, Edward L. 1974, 'The Functional Principle: Generalizing the Notion of "Subject of''', Papers from the Tenth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, Chicago, pp. 298-309.</div><div>(Also reprinted in his book "Universal Grammar: 15 essays")</div><div> </div><div>As far as I remember, there he draws parallels between the possessor/possessum and the subject/predicate relations in terms of the dependency of interpretation. (Note that for Keenan in 1974 the typical subject was definitely S/A.) But maybe I am wrong in details...</div><div> </div><div>Kind regards,</div><div>Yury</div></div><div> </div><div>19.03.2022, 15:34, "Siva Kalyan" <<a href="mailto:sivakalyan.princeton@gmail.com" target="_blank">sivakalyan.princeton@gmail.com</a>>:</div><blockquote><div style="overflow-wrap: break-word;">Hi Adam,<div> </div><div>Langacker’s writings on Cognitive Grammar touch on this, particularly his paper on “reference-point constructions”:</div><div> </div><div>Langacker, Ronald W. 1993. Reference-point constructions.<span> </span><em>Cognitive Linguistics</em><span style="font-style:normal"> 4(1): 1–38. Available at </span><a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/cogl.1993.4.1.1/html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/cogl.1993.4.1.1/html</a></div><div> </div><div>He introduces the concept of “reference points” in the context of his semantic analysis of possessive constructions, and then notes a broad range of parallels in other areas of grammar, including “topic and topic-like constructions, pronoun-antecedent relationships, metonymy, and the discrepancy typically encountered between those entities that figure most directly in a relationship and the explicitly coded relational participants”. He<span> </span><em>doesn’t</em><span style="font-style:normal"> use the notion of “reference point” to analyse agenthood or subjecthood—but given that subjects are often grammaticalised topics, there is at least an indirect relation.</span></div><div> </div><div>One of the early chapters of volume 2 of<span> </span><em>Foundations of Cognitive Grammar</em><span style="font-style:normal"> (1991) contains a discussion of nominalised clauses, and in particular the fact that the agent often appears with possessive marking, (Unfortunately, this book is no longer available on Google Books, and I don’t have easy access to my physical copy, so I can’t provide a page reference.)</span></div><div> </div><div>More generally, analogies between nominal and verbal structure are a recurring theme in Cognitive Grammar (particularly in volume 2 of<span> </span><em>Foundations</em><span style="font-style:normal">; see especially the discussions of “grounding”, “quantification”, and “instantiation”</span>), and in functionalism more generally. (In fact, I think Van Valin & LaPolla 1997 explicitly cite Langacker on this point.)</div><div> </div><div>Hope this helps.</div><div> </div><div>Siva<div> <blockquote><div>On 19 Mar 2022, at 9:28 pm, Adam James Ross Tallman <<a href="mailto:ajrtallman@utexas.edu" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">ajrtallman@utexas.edu</a>> wrote:</div> <div><div><div style="color:rgb(76,17,48);font-family:monospace,monospace">Hello all,</div><div style="color:rgb(76,17,48);font-family:monospace,monospace"> </div><div style="color:rgb(76,17,48);font-family:monospace,monospace">I thought there must be sources on this - but I haven't really found anything specific. I'm looking for sources that discuss potential semantic links between possessors in the nominal domain and agents (A subjects) in the verbal domain. Or just semantic explanations for structural homologies between noun and verb structure in general.</div><div style="color:rgb(76,17,48);font-family:monospace,monospace"> </div><div style="color:rgb(76,17,48);font-family:monospace,monospace">I am aware of diachronic works that discuss the development of verbal alignment systems from (clausal) nominalizations. For instance, Gildea's work<span> </span><em>On Reconstructing Grammar<span> </span></em>gives a good explanation as to why we might find structural similarities between nouns and verbs for diachronic reasons (today's verbal structures were reanalyzed from a nominalized structure).</div><div style="color:rgb(76,17,48);font-family:monospace,monospace"> </div><div style="color:rgb(76,17,48);font-family:monospace,monospace">Generative works, at least dating back to Chomsky's<span> </span><em>Remarks,<span> </span></em>explain structural homologies between noun and verb structure based on abstract formal schema (like X' theory).</div><div style="color:rgb(76,17,48);font-family:monospace,monospace"> </div><div style="color:rgb(76,17,48);font-family:monospace,monospace">But, I was wondering if there were works in cognitive grammar or metaphor theory that have attempted to give a more synchronic explanation for potential symmetries between noun and verb phrase structure, based on the idea that noun and verb structures might have some common schematic form - or based on the idea that there is some metaphorical mapping between referential and event (verby) domains.</div><div style="color:rgb(76,17,48);font-family:monospace,monospace"> </div><div style="color:rgb(76,17,48);font-family:monospace,monospace">The idea would be that somehow possessors in the nominal (referential) domain are at some abstract level like agents in the verbal (event/situation?) domain (and perhaps analogies with other arguments could be made, but those seem less obvious). Maybe there's nothing like this, but I assumed that there must be, given discussions of "transcategoriality" in the literature. Any leads would be appreciated.</div><div style="color:rgb(76,17,48);font-family:monospace,monospace"> </div><div style="color:rgb(76,17,48);font-family:monospace,monospace">best,</div><div style="color:rgb(76,17,48);font-family:monospace,monospace"> </div><div style="color:rgb(76,17,48);font-family:monospace,monospace">Adam</div><div style="color:rgb(76,17,48);font-family:monospace,monospace"> </div><div style="color:rgb(76,17,48);font-family:monospace,monospace"> </div><div style="color:rgb(76,17,48);font-family:monospace,monospace"> </div><div style="color:rgb(76,17,48);font-family:monospace,monospace"> </div><div style="color:rgb(76,17,48);font-family:monospace,monospace"> </div><br>--<div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><font face="times new roman, serif">Adam J.R. Tallman</font></div><div><font face="times new roman, serif">Post-doctoral Researcher<span> </span></font></div><div><font face="times new roman, serif">Friedrich Schiller Universität</font></div><div><font face="times new roman, serif">Department of English Studies</font></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>_______________________________________________<br>Lingtyp mailing list<br><a href="mailto:Lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a><br><a href="http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp</a></div></blockquote></div></div></div>,<p>_______________________________________________<br>Lingtyp mailing list<br><a href="mailto:Lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a><br><a href="http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp</a></p></blockquote><div> </div><div> </div><div>***********************************************</div><div>Yury Lander</div><div>HSE University, Linguistics</div><div><a href="http://www.hse.ru/staff/yulander" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">http://www.hse.ru/staff/yulander</a></div><div><a href="http://www.hse.ru/en/staff/yulander" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">http://www.hse.ru/en/staff/yulander</a></div><div><a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Yury-Lander" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Yury-Lander</a></div><div> </div></div><span style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;text-decoration:none;float:none;display:inline">_______________________________________________</span><br style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;text-decoration:none"><span style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;text-decoration:none;float:none;display:inline">Lingtyp mailing list</span><br style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;text-decoration:none"><a href="mailto:Lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px" target="_blank">Lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a><br style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;text-decoration:none"><a href="http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp" style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px" target="_blank">http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp</a></div></blockquote></div><br></div></div></div>_______________________________________________<br>
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