[Lingtyp] argument structure

Wed Aug 23 09:05:22 UTC 2023

Dear Christian,

thanks for your comment on my posting, ie my comment on Vladimir’s question. I couldn’t agree more; even though I do not use the categories mentioned by you (actants, valency and topic/comment), but that’s another debate. Also, I agree on your comment on Randy Rapolla’s posting, referring to Y.R. Chao and grammatical analyses of Chinese. But this latest issue raises the question of who may claim the ‘copyright’ to a technical term; and can tradition, origin and history justify such claims? I’m not sure that math is the best terminological role model for linguistics – even though one may legitimately do something labelled ‘mathematical linguistics’. It has to do with the philosophy of mathematics. It may surprise some linguists that most theoretical mathematicians are platonists (I don’t remember the reference; but you may check

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/platonism-mathematics/

Platonism in the Philosophy of Mathematics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)<https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/platonism-mathematics/>),

metaphysically believing in abstract objects. Anyway, a basic question is here whether it is correct (I don’t use the word true in this context) that

Mathematical truths are therefore discovered, not invented.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/platonism-mathematics/

Platonism in the Philosophy of Mathematics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)<https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/platonism-mathematics/>

In my view math deals with quantities in the form of numbers and only the natural numbers have an empirical basis, and therefore other parts of the math domain is stipulated (in the quote “invented”) as an artificial language following the rules induced from the natural numbers. So maybe functions and variables may not be the best 'parallels of' some phenomena in natural languages.

In the history of science (a word which in the modern sense is relatvely new, ie 19c.) it has been customary to ‘borrow’ terminology from the other ‘sciences’, and sometimes such analogies may be enlightning, sometimes they lead to confusion. Touching upon Chinese I have, in the field of dyslexia, seen papers that hold that ‘Chinese dyslexia’ can be explained by the phoneme/grapheme relation. My knowledge of Chinese (and varieties thereof) is scarce but I find it hard to ascertain these relationships; so I prefer other explanations of this diagnosis, and we may have debates about this. So, in what I see as the spirit of Christian Lehmann: let’s have an open mind about things and words.

All the best,

Hans

On 23 Aug 2023, at 03.43, Christian Lehmann <christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de> wrote:

Hi Randy,

thanks for this report. There would be no point in criticizing Chao, doubtless an eminent grammarian. However, it does not seem that his use of the term 'argument' throws much light on Mandarin grammar. Given your examples, nothing, of course, prevents you from defining a function die(x, y) such that x is a being touched by the death and y is the dying being. You then get a multiplicity of functions die(v,w), where v and w play different roles. I am not sure that this use of the word 'argument' helps in understanding how the Chinese constructions work. - On the other hand, the analysis in terms of topic and comment seems to have gained foot in the literature. It does not seem to necessarily involve the function-argument analysis.

Best, Christian

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Am 22.08.2023 um 18:52 schrieb Randy J. LaPolla:
Hi Christian,
Y. R. Chao argued that the arguments in Chinese are like the arguments of a mathematical function. He argued (1968:69-70) that Chinese clause structure is simply topic and comment, and “A corollary to the topic-comment nature of predication is that the direction of action in an action verb in the predicate need not go outward from subject to object.  Even in an N-V-N´ sequence, such as [gǒu yǎo rén (dog bite man)], it is not always certain that the action goes outward from N to N´.” (1968: 70).

Chao (1955, 1959) also argued that word order is not determined by, and does not affect the interpretation of actor vs. non-actor; he said the clause is analogous to a function in logic: the argument is an argument of the function, and the truth value is unaffected by its position in the clause (1959:254).

He used the terms “subject” for the topic and “object” for a reference phrase (regardless of the semantic role of the referent in the event), as in Chinese many sorts of semantic roles can appear after the verb (e.g. 'I eat rice’, ‘I eat restaurant’, 'I eat big bowl’,' I eat chopsticks’, 'this pot of rice eats ten people (can feed ten people), ‘He died father’ = 'he suffered the event of his father dying’,' fall rain CHANGE OF STATE’ = It is raining’. In all of these cases he would call the postverbal reference phrase the “object”.

Chao Yuen Ren. 1955[1976]. Notes on Chinese grammar and logic. In Aspects of Chinese sociolinguistics: Essays by Yuen Ren Chao, Anwar S. Dil (ed.), 237-249. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Chao Yuen Ren. 1959[1976]. How Chinese logic operates. In Aspects of Chinese sociolinguistics: Essays by Yuen Ren Chao, Anwar S. Dil (ed.), 250 259. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Chao Yuen Ren. 1968. A grammar of spoken Chinese. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press.

All the best,
Randy
——
Professor Randy J. LaPolla（罗仁地), PhD FAHA
Center for Language Sciences
Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences
Beijing Normal University at Zhuhai
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On 22 Aug 2023, at 11:19 PM, Christian Lehmann <christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de><mailto:christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de> wrote:

I am sure that what I am about to do here is completely inappropriate on this list. In the interest of improving communication among us, allow me nevertheless to use the message by Hans Götzsche as support: If you think you need to use the (mathematical and logical) term 'argument' in a context dealing with grammar, then please at least make it  clear whether an argument occupies a role in semantic relationality or a syntactic function in valency. Just one example: English dine has two semantic roles, the eater and the thing eaten (which may be called, i.a., agent and patient). It has one dependent controlled by its valency, taking the form of a subject and representing the eater. How many arguments does it have?

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Am 21.08.2023 um 08:03 schrieb Hans Götzsche:
Begin forwarded message:

From: Hans Götzsche <goetzsche at ikp.aau.dk><mailto:goetzsche at ikp.aau.dk>
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] argument structure
Date: 21 August 2023 at 15.44.46 CEST
To: Vladimir Panov <panovmeister at gmail.com><mailto:panovmeister at gmail.com>

Dear Vladimir,

allow me a late comment. I have no remarks on Christian Lehman’s comment, so I shall only mention that the notion of ‘argument’ in theoretical linguistics has, to my knowledge, ‘slipped through the back door’, via formal approaches, from mathematics, presumably 1865 (see *), and later computation theory; meaning

An independent variable of a function.

I first encountered the technical use of the word argument at my ‘first course in formal logic’ (many years ago), and the use of the term in linguistics is one of the reasons why I decided to develop ‘my own’ nomenclature in formal syntax. As is well known the way we, as linguists, use the myriad of technical terms depends on what club (guild, brotherhood, you choose) we are members of, and taken as a set of words covering all bits and pieces of (by some called) “the language sciences” the set is full of inconsistences, and sometimes contradictions. Thus, it is not quite true that “we all use the term “argument structure””, and I only use the word argument in the context of formal logic. The aim of my development mentioned above, which was published in

Deviational Syntactic Structures†

was to establish a nomenclature that was both consistent and would be able to cover all language domains, from speech sounds to semantics (but, so far, not pragmatics; which I prefer to see as a matter of cultural codifications). This was in line with the well known and acknowledged Danish tradition in Theoretical Linguistics (some scholars remember Rasmus Rask and Karl Verner, to name a few) and it was based on ideas by Otto Jespersen and Louis Hjelmslev – as for the formal systems – and the empirical achievements of the grammarian Paul Diderichsen. My suggestions were not all cheered by Danish linguistists, but the formal system – comparable to, e.g., Montague grammar – was the first and only amalgamation of Hjelmslev’s Glossematics and the descriptive tradition of Danish syntax.

I once read a ‘Dear Sir’ letter to a Danish newspaper in which the writer offered the opinion (in translation): “why don’t everybody use words the way I do; it would make everything much easier”. But, of course, adopting such a view would be impertinent.

Best wishes,

Hans Götzsche (MA,PhD)
Former President, NAL
Nordic Association of Linguists
Emeritus Associate Professor
Director, Center for Linguistics
Aalborg University
Rendsburggade 14
9000 Aalborg
DENMARK
goetzsche at ikp.aau.dk<mailto:goetzsche at ikp.aau.dk>
www.cfl.hum.aau<http://www.cfl.hum.aau/>

Dr Hans Goetzsche
Emerito Professore Universitario
Via S. Apollinare 19,2
36063 Marostica (VI)
ITALIA

*https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/144141/what-is-the-sense-of-using-word-argument-for-inputs-of-a-function
terminology - What is the sense of using word "argument", for inputs of a function? - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange<https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/144141/what-is-the-sense-of-using-word-argument-for-inputs-of-a-function>
† https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/deviational-syntactic-structures-9781472587961/

On 19 Aug 2023, at 12.11, Vladimir Panov <panovmeister at gmail.com><mailto:panovmeister at gmail.com> wrote:

Dear colleagues,

I have a very general question to you. We all use the term "argument structure" and we are used to semantic labels like A, S or P or syntactic labels like subject, direct and indirect object. Many linguistis, especially those adhering to "formal" approaches, would argue that there are also adjuncts which are not arguments.

Is anybody aware of any attempts to seriously challenge the adequacy of the very notion of "arguments" in general? After all, ir seems that there are languages which do not encode or encode little the "roles" of named entities (noun phrases, pronouns etc.) anywhere in utterance, especially in colloquial language, or encode entities like the addressee rather than the agent or the patient. My intuition tells me that there might be such critical works in the traditions of usage-based linguistics, interactional linguistics, conversation analysis or linguistic anthropology but I have found very little. Actually, I've only discovered the very recent Heine's book in which he argues for a broader understanding of argument structure which includes speech situation participants - a very interestinng view. So am looking for more research in this spirit.

I'm sorry if it sounds a bit confusing but if anything like that comes to you mind I'll be happy if you can share it.

Best,
Vladimir Panov

I condemn the Russian agression in Ukraine
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