[Lingtyp] Universal trend: biclausal -> monoclausal?

Fri Nov 30 15:16:56 UTC 2018

Thanks Mark, Nigel, Daniel, David and Martin!

Very helpful sources and things to consider!

On Martin's comments. Yes, I agree that building an analysis off of
symptoms will lead to cherry picking (I think that's what you are saying
here). There is a proposal on the theory/typology of case splits by Coon,
Laka and Salanova (and its an idea that I've explored in Chacobo), that
typological variation in the number of case splits (speaking strictly about
morphological encoding) can be reduced if we consider that some of the case
splits involve biclausal constructions. In all the reviewed cases there is
some clear marking of subordination (except Chacobo, which is why I got
interested in the proposal). Gildea and Castro, *from what I understand*,
argues that even if there is marking of subordination, we could still
understand a clause as monoclausal if the matrix verb's (now an auxiliary)
semantics has diverged from its source, because of the universal biclausal
-> monoclausal path. Implicitly this undermines the claims that case splits
can be related to a monoclausal/biclausal distinction.

Without presupposing the existence of a monoclausal/biclausal distinction
(or at least a discrete distinction), it seems like the correct line of
research is to see what the correlations are between the "symptoms of
biclausality" and the case splits (I think this would roughly follow the
methodology in Bickel that you mentioned, but Bickel doesn't deal with
complementation and auxiliary verb constructions). If we get a perfect (or
near perfect) correlation somewhere, then maybe the Laka-Coon-Salanova
proposal has something to it, regardless of whether we happen to regard
that symptom as definitional of the monoclausal-biclausal distinction.

best,

Adam

On Fri, Nov 30, 2018 at 8:38 AM Martin Haspelmath <haspelmath at shh.mpg.de>
wrote:

> 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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-- 
Adam J.R. Tallman
Investigador del Museo de Etnografía y Folklore, la Paz
PhD, UT Austin
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