[Lingtyp] Universal trend: biclausal -> monoclausal?

[Martin Haspelmath]

I don't have access to Sheehan's paper (it's behind a paywall), but if 
she offers "a range of tests", then that's precisely the problem:

The very notion of a "test" (or diagnostic, or symptom) presupposes that 
there is some deep reality of "monoclausality" vs. "biclausality" – in 
other words, a natural kind or innate category.

As long as we don't have very good evidence that such distinctions are 
part of human nature, we need to operate with *definitions*, not with 
symptoms. (Doctors identify diseases on the basis of diagnostics or 
symptoms, but this makes sense only if they know that these diseases are 
part of nature, and not idiosyncratic to each patient.)

Balthasar Bickel has a discussion of some of these issues in this 2010 
paper:

Bickel, Balthasar. 2010. Capturing particulars and universals in clause 
linkage: A multivariate analysis. In Isabelle Bril (ed.), 
/Clause-hierarchy and clause-linking: the syntax and pragmatics 
interface/, 51–102. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Best,
Martin

On 30.11.18 14:02, Nigel Vincent wrote:
> 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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-- 
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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