[Lingtyp] NP + PP construction
Suzanne Kemmer
kemmer at rice.edu
Tue Oct 6 17:40:08 UTC 2020
I agree with Ian Joo that "zero copula should be distinguished from zero verb."
But the functions of these constructions need to be taken account of in a typology. In English and German, there is clearly a verbless hortative construction with a locative or other complement indicating a resultant state. I haven’t seen that function in the examples from the other languages - they all seem to be declarative. English does not have the same alternation as in German, between ‘heads off’ and ‘off with [their] heads’ as suggested by Ludwig Paul (although it’s worth exploring the range of the most similar English construction as in “Out with it!”). I agree with Siva that “Heads off!” in a meaning similar to ‘Off with their heads’ does not work in English. “Heads off!” is grammatical but only in situations parallel to the other body part examples - if the addressees were, for example, a company of toy lego soldiers who had to remove their heads instead of their hats, say, to show respect for their monarch in some animated film. As I said about English, "The command is for an unspecified simple manipulative action to be taken on a body part or other possessed item under direct control” of the addressee. The specific action is understood via typical frames.
Suzanne
> From: Suzanne Kemmer <kemmer at rice.edu>
> Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] NP + PP construction
> Date: September 29, 2020 at 11:09:49 AM CDT
> To: Lingtyp List <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
>
>
> I think there are different constructions involved here.
>
>
> Hortative:
>
> Hands up!
>
> Phones off.
>
> Shoulders out of your ears! (Yoga teacher’s constant command)
>
> And all the schoolroom commands I remember from grade school:
>
> Pencils down.
> Books closed.
> Feet flat on the floor.
> Shoulders back.
>
>
> The command is for an unspecified simple manipulative action to be taken on a body part or other possessed item under direct control. As Alex said, they have an exclamative flavor.
>
> The ‘missing’ verbs are interpreted with reference to known frames.
>
> There’s a version with simple motion actions, and in that case there is no patient:
>
> Everybody to the front of the room!
>
> Out!
>
> Quick! Into the building!
>
> To your positions!
>
> The other example is different.
>
> Superman to the rescue! isn’t hortative; it seems like a descriptive exclamation with an anticipated outcome.
>
> It seems similar in some respects to:
>
> [X] for the win.
>
> _For the win_ is from gaming: it expresses a choice that is expected to lead to victory. It’s common in computer gaming, but I think I remember it from
> game shows like Hollywood Squares where a contestant would pick a person to answer a question.
>
> I feel like I’ve read about the hortative one before, I don’t know where; but the ‘anticipated outcome’ one , if I can call it that, is something I haven’t thought about before. Maybe not a single construction. _For the win_ can be exclamative, but originally it doesn’t seem to have been.
>
> Suzanne
> On Oct 5, 2020, at 6:06 AM, Siva Kalyan <sivakalyan.princeton at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I'm not sure this particular example works in English: "Heads off!" is hard to understand, and the usual expression is "Off with your/his/her head!" (made famous by the Queen of Hearts in "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland").
>
> In fact, it's hard to think of other examples: "Down with the King!", but not "*King down!"; "Away with your nonsense!", but not "*Your nonsense away!".
>
> Siva
>
>> On 29 Sep 2020, at 10:40 pm, Paul, Prof. Dr. Ludwig <ludwig.paul at uni-hamburg.de <mailto:ludwig.paul at uni-hamburg.de>> wrote:
>>
>> What I find interesting is that in such verbless NP-PP (or NP-Adv) constructions, the NP can occur in a (sometimes colloquial) variety with an instrumental/comitative marker, at least in German and English, but obviously also in other languages, e.g.:
>>
>> 1.a. (Die) Füsse runter vom Tisch!
>> 1.b. Mit den Füssen runter vom Tisch!
>>
>> 2.a. Hände hoch!
>> 2.b. Hoch mit den Händen!
>>
>> 3.a. Kopf ab! / Rübe ab!
>> 3.b. Ab mit der Rübe!
>>
>> 4.a. Head(s) off!
>> 4.b. Off with the head(s)!
>>
>> Sometimes, there seems to be no "simple" version without the instrumental marker, e.g.:
>>
>> 5.a. 'Raus mit euch!
>> ("*Ihr 'raus (von hier)" would be possible but sounds odd)
>> ('raus is the colloquial abbreviation of "heraus" = "out of")
>>
>> Best,
>> Ludwig Paul
>> Hamburg
>> Von: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org <mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org>> im Auftrag von paolo Ramat <paolo.ramat at unipv.it <mailto:paolo.ramat at unipv.it>>
>> Gesendet: Sonntag, 27. September 2020 10:49:11
>> An: Alex Francois
>> Cc: Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org <mailto:Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
>> Betreff: Re: [Lingtyp] NP + PP construction
>>
>> 1) Ital. Superman alla riscossa ! (could be a head title in a newspaper. Very often journals announce their news in these form).
>> 2) Ital. Giù le gambe dal tavolo ! (imperat.)
>>
>> Actually, non verbal predication is known in many languages: see above all Kees Hengeveld, Non verbal predication. De Gruyter. And look in Google at "non-verbal predication" for further literature.
>>
>> Best,
>> Paolo
>>
>> prof. dr. Paolo Ramat
>> Università di Pavia (retired)
>> Istituto Universitario Studi Superiori (IUSS Pavia) (retired)
>> Accademia dei Lincei, Socio corrispondente
>> 'Academia Europaea'
>> 'Societas Linguistica Europaea', Honorary Member
>> piazzetta Arduino 11 - I 27100 Pavia
>> ##39 0382 27027
>> 347 044 98 44
>>
>>
>> Il giorno dom 27 set 2020 alle ore 07:24 Alex Francois <alex.francois.cnrs at gmail.com <mailto:alex.francois.cnrs at gmail.com>> ha scritto:
>> dear Ian,
>>
>> > I wonder if there has been any literature on the construction where there is no verb, but only an NP and a PP
>> Interesting question.
>> In English, those constructions are particular: they are arguably elliptical in some way, exclamative – or hortative – rather than declarative…
>>
>> Yet in many languages, including from the Oceanic (Austronesian) family, a construction {NP + PP} is simply the normal syntax for a declarative statement, where the PP is the predicate itself.
>>
>> Thus Mwotlap (Oceanic; Banks, Vanuatu) would have this:
>> (square brackets = limits of the predicate phrase)
>> (1) Imam mino [mi tēytēybē].
>> father my with doctor
>> “My father is/was with the doctor.”
>>
>> (2) na-tan̄ nōnōm [lelo siok].
>> Art-bag your inside canoe
>> “Your bag is in the canoe.”
>>
>> Likewise, Araki (Oceanic; Santo, Vanuatu) says:
>>
>> (3) Sari nene [m̈ar̄a m̈aji].
>> spear this for fish
>> “This spear is for fish.” (i.e. it's designed for fishing)
>>
>> Teanu (Oceanic ; Temotu, Solomons) would have:
>>
>> (4) Datilu [pe Iura].
>> 3dual from Vanuatu
>> “They were from Vanuatu.”
>>
>> These are all prepositional predicates, translated in English as BE + prep. (is with, is in, is for, were from…)
>> Their syntax is typical of languages of the "omnipredicative" type (cf. Launey 1994 about Nāhuatl), languages where the predicate slot can be headed by various lexical classes — unlike European languages, where the predicative function in declarative statements is basically restricted to verbs.
>>
>> Those languages which, like European languages, restrict predicativity to the class of verbs, need a copula (like a verb BE) to turn non-predicative phrases into a predicate: with > "I was with them"; happy > "she is happy"; rice > "this is rice"; home > "we were home".
>>
>> This operation (turning a non-pred phrase into a predicate) is arguably the main function of copulas (cf. Lemaréchal 1989, 1997); this is the raison d'être of être.
>> In omnipredicative languages, words like with, happy, rice and home would simply head the predicate, making the whole copula operation superfluous. This is why a typical property of omnipredicative languages is to lack a verb Be in the first place.
>>
>> NB: in languages where the predicate is clause-initial, you will have the reverse order {PP NP}. Example in Tahitian:
>>
>> (5) [Nō tō'u fenua] teie mā'a.
>> from my country this food
>> “This food is from my country.”
>>
>> Here again, the preposition (nō) is the head of the predicate.
>>
>> Some references:
>> Launey, Michel. 1994. Une grammaire omniprédicative: Essai sur la morphosyntaxe du nahuatl classique. Sciences du Langage, Paris: CNRS.
>> Lemaréchal, Alain. 1989. Les parties du discours, Syntaxe et sémantique. Linguistique Nouvelle. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
>> —— 1997. Zéro(s). Linguistique Nouvelle. Paris: Presses universitaires de France.
>> François, Alexandre. 2005. Diversité des prédicats non verbaux dans quelques langues océaniennes. In Jacques François & Irmtraud Behr, Les constituants prédicatifs et la diversité des langues. Mémoires de la Société de Linguistique de Paris. Louvain: Peeters. 179-197.
>> —— 2017. The economy of word classes in Hiw, Vanuatu: Grammatically flexible, lexically rigid. In Eva van Lier (ed.), Lexical Flexibility in Oceanic Languages. Special issue of Studies in Language. 41 (2): 294–357.
>> __________
>>
>> I realise that these Oceanic constructions look perfectly parallel to your English examples [Your legs off the table!], and yet the syntactic similarity is only superficial.
>> The contrast – whether syntactic, semantic or pragmatic – is worth exploring.
>>
>> best
>> Alex
>> Alex François
>> LaTTiCe <http://www.lattice.cnrs.fr/en/alexandre-francois/> — CNRS– <http://www.cnrs.fr/index.html>ENS <https://www.ens.fr/laboratoire/lattice-langues-textes-traitements-informatiques-et-cognition-umr-8094>–Sorbonne nouvelle <http://www.univ-paris3.fr/lattice-langues-textes-traitements-informatiques-cognition-umr-8094-3458.kjsp>
>> Australian National University <https://researchers.anu.edu.au/researchers/francois-a>
>> Academia page <https://cnrs.academia.edu/AlexFran%C3%A7ois> – Personal homepage <http://alex.francois.online.fr/>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, 25 Sep 2020 at 23:07, JOO, Ian [Student] <ian.joo at connect.polyu.hk <mailto:ian.joo at connect.polyu.hk>> wrote:
>> Dear all,
>>
>> I wonder if there has been any literature on the construction where there is no verb, but only an NP and a PP, such as:
>>
>> (1) Superman to the rescue!
>> (2) Your legs off the table!
>>
>> Of course, not only in English, but in any language. I would appreciate your help.
>>
>> From Hong Kong,
>> Ian
>>
>>
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