Encoding of source in verbs of perception

Thu Mar 20 04:11:59 UTC 2014

If one follows the Structuralist methodology, and defines verbs as words that can be predicative and can take negation and aspect marking (there is no tense in Chinese), then the relevant forms count as verbs. Whether or not they can be further distinguished into a sub-class of verbs is irrelevant; if they fit the definition of verb, then they are verbs.

In reality I don't subscribe to this methodology. As Bill Croft has shown, assuming there must be abstract global categories that each word will fit into involves methodological opportunism, is unnecessary, and unhelpful. As Y. R. Chao showed in his 1968 Grammar of Spoken Chinese, the function of a word depends on the construction it occurs in:
In Chinese 怪 guay is an adjective in 可是這很怪 Keesh jeh heen guay ‘But this is odd’, an adverb in 怪難看的 guay nankann de ‘rather ugly’, and a transitive verb in 別怪我！Bye guay woo! ‘Don’t find me odd—don’t blame me!’ . . . (1968: 498)
We should then just go with the constructions, and see what function the form has in the particular function, and not worry about abstract global categories. See my arguments for this in the following paper:

LaPolla, Randy J. 2013. "Arguments for a construction-based approach to the analysis of Chinese". In Human Language Resources and Linguistic Typology, Papers from the Fourth International Conference on Sinology, edited by Tseng Chiu-yu, 33-57. Taiwan: Academia Sinica.
http://tibeto-burman.net/rjlapolla/papers/LaPolla_2013_Arguments_for_a_construction-based_approach_to_the_analysis_of_Chinese.pdf

Randy
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Prof. Randy J. LaPolla, PhD FAHA （罗仁地）| Head, Division of Linguistics and Multilingual Studies | Nanyang Technological University
HSS-03-80, 14 Nanyang Drive, Singapore 637332 | Tel: (65) 6592-1825 GMT+8h | Fax: (65) 6795-6525 | http://sino-tibetan.net/rjlapolla/

“Impressive as the progress has been, science has by no means worked itself out of a job. It is soberly true that science has, to date, succeeded in solving a bewildering number of relatively easy problems, whereas the hard problems, and the ones with perhaps promise most for man’s future, lie ahead.
  “We must, therefore, stop thinking of science in terms of its spectacular successes in solving problems of simplicity. This means, among other things, that we must stop thinking of science in terms of gadgetry.”  Warren Weaver, “Science and complexity”, E:CO 6.3 (2004): 65-74, p. 73.

On Mar 20, 2014, at 1:12 AM, Chunhui Wang wrote:

Maybe we can classify 腥臊羶香 into a marginal kind of verbs. But they still have a lot of syntactic features totally different from the examples in Garifuna and German:
1) 腥臊羶香 can be modified by degree adverbs, e.g. 很/非常+....
2) they can appear in a copula sentence with the degree adverb
3) they can modify a noun, e.g. ...味儿、气
4) they also ban be used as a noun
5) they can't take any valent in any way, and there's no way we can complement it with a valent like the examples in Garifuna and German.

On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 9:38 AM, Randy John LaPolla (Prof) <RandyLaPolla at ntu.edu.sg<mailto:RandyLaPolla at ntu.edu.sg>> wrote:
Adjectives are a subclass of verbs in Chinese (monovalent stative verbs).

Randy

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Prof. Randy J. LaPolla, PhD FAHA （罗仁地）| Head, Division of Linguistics and Multilingual Studies | Nanyang Technological University
HSS-03-80, 14 Nanyang Drive, Singapore 637332 | Tel: (65) 6592-1825 GMT+8h | Fax: (65) 6795-6525 | http://sino-tibetan.net/rjlapolla/

“Impressive as the progress has been, science has by no means worked itself out of a job. It is soberly true that science has, to date, succeeded in solving a bewildering number of relatively easy problems, whereas the hard problems, and the ones with perhaps promise most for man’s future, lie ahead.
  “We must, therefore, stop thinking of science in terms of its spectacular successes in solving problems of simplicity. This means, among other things, that we must stop thinking of science in terms of gadgetry.”  Warren Weaver, “Science and complexity”, E:CO 6.3 (2004): 65-74, p. 73.

On Mar 19, 2014, at 10:35 PM, Chunhui Wang wrote:

In Chinese, 腥臊羶香can be used as adjectives and nouns, but not verbs. Since what we're talking about is in verbs, I don't think these Chinese words are good examples.

Thanks.

On Tue, Mar 18, 2014 at 11:00 AM, Randy John LaPolla (Prof) <RandyLaPolla at ntu.edu.sg<mailto:RandyLaPolla at ntu.edu.sg>> wrote:
In Chinese there are at least three:

膻 (羶) shān 'smell like that of mutton'
腥 xīng 'smell like that of fish'
臊 sāo 'smell like that of urine or bad body odor'

And a combined expression, 腥臊羶香 xīng sāo shān xiāng, that refers to the smell of chicken, dog, mutton, and beef respectively.

Randy
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Prof. Randy J. LaPolla, PhD FAHA （罗仁地）| Head, Division of Linguistics and Multilingual Studies | Nanyang Technological University
HSS-03-80, 14 Nanyang Drive, Singapore 637332 | Tel: (65) 6592-1825 GMT+8h | Fax: (65) 6795-6525 | http://sino-tibetan.net/rjlapolla/

“Impressive as the progress has been, science has by no means worked itself out of a job. It is soberly true that science has, to date, succeeded in solving a bewildering number of relatively easy problems, whereas the hard problems, and the ones with perhaps promise most for man’s future, lie ahead.
  “We must, therefore, stop thinking of science in terms of its spectacular successes in solving problems of simplicity. This means, among other things, that we must stop thinking of science in terms of gadgetry.”  Warren Weaver, “Science and complexity”, E:CO 6.3 (2004): 65-74, p. 73.

On Mar 18, 2014, at 8:42 PM, Steffen Haurholm-Larsen wrote:

Dear subscribers,

It has been observed that such concepts as SEE, HEAR, TOUCH, TASTE and SMELL are in some languages encoded together in just a couple of verbs while other languages have more (see Åke Viberg's "Verbs of Perception" in Language Typology and Universals: An International Handbook (2001)). Furthermore, there may be a distinction between 'experience' and 'source' and for the latter, the source may be included in a peripheral NP, e.g. 'my hands smell of fish'.
    But how common is it for the source NP to be lexically encoded in the verb? In Garifuna, an Arawak language spoken in Central America traditionally by a fishing people, there are two verbs for the emission of (bad) smell: hingi- 'stink' and hase- 'smell of fish'. Is it common for languages to encode culturally salient NP smell sources (or other source NPs) into verbs of perception?

Best,

Steffen Haurholm-Larsen
Universität Bern

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