[Lingtyp] Universal trend: biclausal -> monoclausal?

[Nigel Vincent]

I discuss this issue briefly in a recent article about causatives in Latin and Romance - see J.N. Adams & N. Vincent (eds) Early and Late Latin: Continuity or Change?, CUP, 2016, especially pp. 310-312. I refer there to Michelle Sheehan's chapter 'Complex predicates' in A. Ledgeway & M. Maiden (eds) The Oxford Guide to the Romance Languages, OUP, 2016, pp 981-994. She offers a range of tests for bi-/mono-clausality. It looks very much as if the diachronic profile here is biclausal Latin becomes monoclausal across the Romance languages with some of these then showing signs of developing back into (a different kind) of biclausal construction.
Best
Nigel

Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE
Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics
The University of Manchester

Linguistics & English Language
School of Arts, Languages and Cultures
The University of Manchester



https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html

________________________________________
From: Lingtyp [lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] on behalf of Martin Haspelmath [haspelmath at shh.mpg.de]
Sent: Friday, November 30, 2018 12:01 PM
To: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Universal trend: biclausal -> monoclausal?

On 29.11.18 00:30, Adam James Ross Tallman wrote:
> It seems to be generally true that biclausal structures can become
> monoclausal structures over time and not the reverse.

This is indeed an interesting observation that has not been discussed
very widely, I think. Harris & Campbell (1995) (in their book on
diachronic syntax) discuss such phenomena at some length, but they don't
seem to explain the unidirectionality. So it would be nice to see a
convincing explanation.

But in order to make this claim fully testable, one needs a general
definition of "clause", and I don't know of a very good definition. My
working definition is in terms of negatability: If a structure that
contains two verbs can be negated in two different ways, it's biclausal,
but otherwise it's monoclausal:

She was able [to do it]. (biclausal)

(She was not able to do it / She was able not to do it)

She could do it. (monoclausal)

(She could not do it – there is no contrast between "she could [not do
it]" and "she could not [do it]")

This indicates that "want" clauses are monoclausal in English, because
"I want to not make a mistake" sounds bad. But the judgements are
subtle, and one may perhaps even have something like "The king ordered
the non-destruction of the city" (vs. "The king didn't order the
distruction of the city", which is normally considered monoclausal).

So the negation criterion isn't very good, but I know of no better way
of distinguishing in general between monoclausal and biclausal
constructions.

Martin

--
Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at shh.mpg.de)
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
Kahlaische Strasse 10
D-07745 Jena
&
Leipzig University
Institut fuer Anglistik
IPF 141199
D-04081 Leipzig





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