delocutive
Frans Plank
Frans.Plank at UNI-KONSTANZ.DE
Wed Jul 31 20:56:58 UTC 2002
Here at last comes the Delocutive Summary. If you can read the attachment
(Word for Mac) so much the better.
Language particular details from responses available on request.
Frans Plank
******************************************
Summary: Delocutive Query on LINGTYP, 12 June 2002
Frans Plank, 31 July 2002
frans.plank at uni-konstanz.de
At a first go and roughly following Benveniste ("dérives de locutions
formulaires"), delocutive morphology can be defined as bound morphology
being used to form verbs which mean 'to say "X" (to someone)', where 'X' is
the derivational base.
Attested derivational bases are:
(a) pronouns of (formal/informal) address;
(b) nouns of (possibly abusive) address, including titles, epithets,
and proper
names;
(c) sound-related interjections (perhaps ideophones), or also
conventionalized reproductions of animal sounds;
(d) words for answering yes/no questions, or also for reacting to
assertions
(e.g. 'but', 'okey')
(e) greeting, thanking, swearing, and warning phrases, wishes and curses
(which can be nouns or noun phrases in appropriate case forms, such as
nominative, vocative, or accusative, or verbs or verb phrases in
imperative
or optative or similar mood forms);
(f) features of pronunciation characteristic of dialectal or other
linguistic
varieties;
(g) anything else?
To illustrate from German, so far as possible, a language where delocutive
verbs have traditionally been recognized:
(a) jemand-en du-z-en/sie-z-en
someone-ACC.SG thou-DELOC-INF/you-DELOC-INF
'to say "thou"/"you" to someone'
(informal/formal personal pronoun of 2nd person singular)
(b) jemand-en ver-hund-z-en [orthographically: verhunzen]
someone-ACC.SG PREFIX-dog-DELOC-INF
'to say "dog" to someone'
(lit.; more generally, 'to speak depreciatingly of
someone/something', also
'to treat someone depreciatingly')
(c) äch-z-en
ach-DELOC-INF
'to say "ach!"'
(i.e., to give a deep sigh)
(d) die Frage be-jah-en/ver-nein-en
the question PREFIX-yes-INF/PREFIX-no-INF
'to answer "yes"/"no" to a question'
(e) jemand-en willkommn-en
someone-ACC.SG welcome-INF
'to welcome someone by saying "welcome!"' (= a resultative
participial
verb form with imperative force; periphrastic alternative:
jemanden willkommen heissen 'to bid someone welcome')
(f) unattested in German; illustrated from Russian:
a-k-a(j)-t'
[a]-DELOC-DELOC-INF
'to speak a dialect where unstressed /o/ is pronounced as [a]'
(g) nothing else, so far as I know
Concerning the semantic characterization given above, there is the question
of whether delocutives are plainly quotatives (verba dicendi, if you
prefer) expressed through bound morphology rather than through independent
verbs. If the answer is yes, then delocutives would be very common
crosslinguistically. However, it probably ought to be no. Arguably, there
is something special about delocutives, insofar as they involve the doing
of something, the performing of a culturally recognized act, by saying 'X',
rather than just the saying of 'X' or the telling of 'X' to someone -
namely to address (informally/formally) someone by using 'thou/you' for
her/him; to depreciate someone by calling her/him a dog; to express that
one is under pressure by uttering the conventional sigh of pressure; to
answer a question in the affirmative or negative by the alternative words
available for this special purpose; to welcome someone by uttering the
conventional phrase of welcome; to speak a dialect characterized by a
particular feature of pronunciation.
Possibly, the semantics of delocutives ought to be conceived of even more
narrowly, as also comprising an allocutive component - if this does not
come automatically with the performative one. What is done by saying 'X'
would accordingly have to be said directly to the face of the person
getting this done to her/him. Delocutives from pronouns of address would
be the prototypical case, then: on this model, abusing someone by calling
him a dog to someone else would not do to qualify for prototypical
delocutivity.
What delocutives in this narrower sense (illocutive, allocutive) would seem
to share with ordinary speech reporting is that the 'X' that is being
uttered (in order to do something) is a conventional linguistic sign with a
meaning (or a meaning-distinguishing function, namely a phoneme) and a
form; it is not a mere vocal noise. Typically, languages have separate
verbs for linguistic and non-linguistic quotation: cf. English God said
'Amen' vs. He went [brrrrrr], German Gott sagte 'Amen' vs. Er machte
[brrrrrr] (='made'). Even in the case of interjection-based delocutive
verbs, these interjections are proper words, rather than just inarticulate
groans or suchlike. Still, here seems to be where the boundary between the
quotation of linguistic and non-linguistic sound can become blurred. (As
Benveniste says: "on doit soigneusement distinguer les délocutifs et les
verbes dérivés d'interjections. ... Un délocutif a toujours pour radical
un signifiant, qui peut être interjeté dans le discours, mais sans cesser
d'être signifiant, alors que les verbes comme claquer sont bâtis sur de
simples onomatopées. Ici, la distinction est facile.") It is also blurred
with manner-of-speaking verbs (to yell, whisper, sigh, miaow, grunt, croak,
...), which can be used for quoting linguistic sound, despite their focus
on the manner of producing sounds or on the kind of sounds produced. It
should not come as a surprise, then, to find special morphology being
shared between manner-of-speech and delocutive verbs - as in German, though
non-productively: kräch-z-en 'to croak', grun-z-en 'to grunt', maun-z-en
'to miaow', raun-z-en 'to runt, reprove, rate'.
As defined at the outset, delocutives belong with derivational,
verb-forming morphology. As refined just now, crediting them with special
illocutive and allocutive semantics differing from that of general
quotatives, there could be non-bound expressions for delocutive acts,
namely through specifically delocutive verbs contrasting with
run-of-the-mill quotative verbs. Italian has such lexical expressions for
delocutives formed from pronouns and nouns of address, using 'to give'
rather than 'to say' for this special purpose: dare del tu/cretino 'to
give of the "thou"/"fool". The verb dare itself is not dedicatedly
delocutive; but the use of the preposition de for the patient (here the
'X' said) seems rather special. Turkish uses the same verb for quoting
linguistic and non-linguistic sound (demek 'say'), and also puts it to
special delocutive uses. When there is bound delocutive morphology, such
"periphrases" by means of specifically delocutive verbs seem to be avoided,
though they are not strictly preempted. In a language with delocutive
morphology like German, the verbs that could be used for this same purpose
are the general linguistic-quotative ones ('du' zu jemandem sagen 'to say
"thou" to someone', jemanden einen Hund nennen 'to call someone a dog').
In Latvian, where the pronoun of formal address (2nd person plural) can be
straightforwardly verbalized, the verb of addressing has to be used
periphrastically with the pronoun of informal address (2nd singular), which
would be phonologically unoptimal if verbalized.
When bound morphology is used for delocutive acts, it can be of various
kinds. What has been encountered so far are (i) affixes or affix
combinations (German, French, Slavonic, Uralic, Turkish, Indonesian, Tukang
Besi, Diyari, Central Alaskan Yup'ik); (ii) affixation combined with a
reduplicative template of sorts (French tu 'thou' - tu-toy-er, vous 'you' -
vou-voy-er 'to address someone informally/formally'), full reduplication
([Teuto-]Turkish tak-tak-la-h-mak tak-tak-DENOMINAL-RECIPROCAL-INF 'to say
[tak] (=German Tag) to each other'), and consonantal gemination (Moroccan
Arabic: kebber 'to call out "'llahu /akbar"', formed from k-b-r); and
(iii) zero (i.e., conversion: English, Mwotlap, widespread elsewhere).
Probably zero derivation is in fact the commonest strategy, especially for
bases which are nouns, rather than pronouns, interjections, or response
words. Nonetheless, when zero derivation is available in a language at
all, forming delocutive verbs will never be the first use it is put to.
To disappoint those who expect all bound morphology to come about through
univerbation, it seems rare for affixes used for delocutive acts to be
transparently related to delocutive or general quotative verbs. Areas
where fusion of delocutive/quotative verbs with the expressions uttered in
delocutive acts has been observed are Northeast Africa and Northeast
Australia. The results of such fusions, however, seem to be complex
predicates or possibly compounds, rather than morphological words with the
delocutive/quotative verbs reduced to affixes.
Whatever the means used for delocutive acts, they are almost never
dedicated to just this single purpose. Verbs used in delocutive function
are verbs for quoting non-linguistic sound, whatever their own sources ('to
make/do, go ...' - the stuff that light verbs are made of), or perhaps also
general quotative verbs. Bound delocutive morphology is either
general-purpose morphology to derive verbs including conversion (Ancient
Greek, Latin, Latvian, German, Hungarian, Turkish, Arabic,
Malay/Indonesian, Tukang Besi), or it is verb-deriving morphology
subserving several functions, including in particular ones relating to
aspect or aktionsart (such as iterative, frequentative, habituative, or
momentative: e.g., German, Hungarian, Finnish, Slavonic), intensification
(e.g., German), causative (or causative plus frequentative: Finnic),
non-linguistic and perhaps also linguistic quotation (Slavonic, Turkish,
Central Alaskan Yup'ik). The delocutive functions would always seem
secondary in such combinations. There is a common semantic denominator in
causative and perhaps general transitive verb-deriving morphology on the
one hand and verbs of making/doing on the other (themselves a common source
of bound causatives): delocutives expressed by such means seem to
conceptualize what is said to perform the act in question as a sort of
effected object. Presumably, the link from the attested aspectual or
aktionsart and related functions to delocutivity is via typical semantic
nuances of verbs of sound production - iterative, frequentative, intensive.
Possible candidates for dedicated delocutive morphology are the suffix -kV,
-gV in Finnish and Estonian, forming verbs from interjections
(unaccountably similar to a stem extension of nouns), and relevant suffixes
in Diyari (-nga) and perhaps further Australian languages.
When a language uses bound morphology for delocutive acts, it may not
extend it to all kinds of bases distinguished above. Also, different
exponents may be used for different bases - as in German, where answer
words (d) and wishes (e) take no special verb-derivational suffix (with the
former also taking multi-purpose verbal prefixes be-/ver-), while all other
bases take suffix -z; or in Finnish, where -k suffixes are unique to
interjections, as opposed to the more general -t(t) suffixes.
(Incidentally, a suffix of some such shape as in German recurs with
delocutive verbs in several languages of Europe, perhaps pointing to
borrowing: German -z, French -toy, Older Italian -zz as in ti-zz-are 'say
"thou"', Late Latin -s as in tui-s-are 'ditto', Hungarian -z, Finnish -ttA,
Estonian -ta. Also, suffixes with a velar consonant recur in Slavonic and
Finno-Ugric.) Base types which tend to cluster are (a)/(b) on the one hand
and (d)/(e) on the other. Nouns of address, and especially of abusive
address, seem the most common bases for delocutive verbs. Other categories
seem less common, though they often enough are part and parcel of a
delocutive inventory. Of course pronouns of address only make sense here
if they come in pairs or larger sets in a language, differentiating degrees
of formality, politeness, etc. Greeting and wishing phrases (as in Yup'ik,
Turkish, Arabic) do not uncommonly form delocutives, though the
distribution of this type seems genetically and areally limited. Features
of dialectal pronunciation (as in Russian) are encountered least commonly
as bases of delocutives.
It would hardly seem appropriate to characterize delocutive formation in
general as playful or expressive rather than as regular morphology, as has
sometimes been suggested; but this last type may well require more
metalinguistic ingenuity than most everyday morphology does.
Grateful acknowledgment is made of the numerous responses to the original
query from Henning Andersen, Peter Austin, Denis Creissels, Mark Donohue,
Alex François, Zygmunt Frajzyngier, David Gil, Gideon Goldenberg, Tom
Güldemann, Geoffrey Haig, Johanna Laakso, Utz Maas, Matti Miestamo,
Marianne Mithun, Edith Moravcsik, Alberto Nocentini, Hans-Jürgen Sasse,
Peter Schmidt, Wolfgang Schulze, Hannu Tommola, Nigel Vincent, Bernhard
Wälchli, and Björn Wiemer. You'll see for yourselves what impact you've
had on my understanding of the matter.
Locus classicus:
Benveniste, Émile (1958). Les verbes délocutifs. In Anna G. Hatcher & K. L.
Selig (eds.), Studia philologica et litteraria in honorem Leo Spitzer,
57-63. Bern: Francke. Reprinted in E. Benveniste, Problèmes de
linguistique générale, I: 277-285. Paris: Gallimard, 1966. English
translation: Delocutive verbs, in E. Benveniste, Problems in General
Linguistics, transl. Mary E. Meek, 239-246. Coral Gables, Florida, 1971.
Assorted other references
Anscombre, Jean-Claude (1985). Onomatopées, délocutivité et autres blablas.
Revue Romane 20: 169-207.
Anscombre, Jean-Claude, Françoise Létoublon, & Alain Pierrot (1987). Speech
act verbs, linguistic action verbs and delocutivity. In Jef Verschueren
(ed.), Linguistic Action: Some Empirical-Conceptual Studies, 45-67.
Erlbaum: Norwood, N.J.
Cornulier, Benoit de (1976). La notion de dérivation délocutive. Revue de
linguistique romane 40: 116-143.
Dixon, R. M. W. (1977). Delocutive verbs in Dyirbal. In Paul J. Hopper
(ed.), Studies in Descriptive and Historical Linguistics: Festschrift for
W. P. Lehmann, 2l-38. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Hillers, D. R. (1967). Delocutive verbs in Biblical Hebrew. JBL 86: 320-324.
Letoublon, Françoise (1980). Le vocabulaire de la supplication en grec:
Performatif et dérivation délocutive. Lingua 52: 325-336.
Niinistö, Kati (2001). Älä muruttele minua! Suomen kielen delokutiivisesti
johdetut verbit. ["Don't you 'darling' me!": Delocutive verb derivation in
Finnish). M.A. thesis, Dept. of Finnish, University of Helsinki.
Tigay, Jeffrey H. (1999). Some more delocutive verbs in Hebrew. In Robert
Chazan, W.W. Hallo, & L.H. Schiffman (eds.), Ki Baruch Hu: Ancient Near
Eastern, Biblical and Judaic Studies in Honor of Baruch A. Levine, 407-410.
Eisenbraun: Winona Lake, Indiana.
Zagar, Igor Z. (1988). Aspect et performativité en slovene: Plaidoyer pour
une hypothèse délocutive. [Aspect and performativity in Slovene: Plea for a
delocutive hypothesis.] Acta Linguistica Hungarica 38: 275-287.
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Frans Plank
Sprachwissenschaft
Universitaet Konstanz
D-78457 Konstanz
Germany
E-mail: frans.plank at uni-konstanz.de
Tel: +49-(0)7531-88 2656, home +49-(0)7531-57450
Fax: +49-(0)7531-88 4190
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