[Lingtyp] argument structure
Randy J. LaPolla
randy.lapolla at gmail.com
Thu Aug 24 15:48:54 UTC 2023
Hi Chao,
Thanks for your message.
I just presented a paper on Chao’s analysis of the clause and argument structure on Monday at a conference in Tianjin on Chao’s academic legacy in honour of his 130th birthday, and am rushing to finish the full paper for publication, so I will first respond to your main assumption, and respond more fully once I finish the paper, in which I critique Chao’s view and present a more nuanced view.
> You have cited Y. R. Chao a few times and apparently you adopt the position that Chinese can be sufficiently explained with the notions of topic and comment.
No. I never said, that, and explained to Jianming in one of my earlier posts that that was not the case.
But this doesn’t negate Chao’s insights. As an early 20th century Structuralist, he worked inductively, and with natural spoken data, and so understood how important pragmatic factors were, such as information structure and prosody, and his analysis was original and innovative. He did most of his analysis in the 1940’s, 80 years ago, and so some of what he said about the language, based on the way people spoke at the time, may no longer be true (e.g. he talked about surnames as bound forms, but they are no longer bound). I never negate the work of those who have come before me, but try to build on it. All linguistic analysis is subjective, and so at different times and places and under different influences and for different purposes we will produce different analyses, as Chao himself pointed out in his 1934 “non-uniqueness of phonemic solutions" paper. He was a product of his time and should be understood in that way. There is an informal logical fallacy called the “Historian’s fallacy”, "when one assumes that decision makers of the past viewed events from the same perspective and having the same information as those subsequently analyzing the decision” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historian%27s_fallacy). We need to keep that in mind in talking about earlier scholars.
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
A302, Muduo Building, #18 Jinfeng Road, Zhuhai City, Guangdong, China
https://randylapolla.info
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6100-6196
邮编：519087
广东省珠海市唐家湾镇金凤路18号木铎楼A302
北京师范大学珠海校区
人文和社会科学高等研究院
语言科学研究中心
> On 24 Aug 2023, at 12:24 AM, Chao Li <chao.li at aya.yale.edu> wrote:
>
> Dear Randy,
>
> You have cited Y. R. Chao a few times and apparently you adopt the position that Chinese can be sufficiently explained with the notions of topic and comment. I do not think that anyone working on Chinese would deny the importance of the notions of topic and comment in describing and explaining the functioning of Chinese. Also, probably no one working on Chinese would deny the fact that Chinese exhibits flexibility in word order, as shown by the examples you cited in your messages. However, IF your position is that Chinese (essentially) has no argument structure or that word order has no place in Chinese grammar, Jianming (as can be seen from his earlier discussion with you), I, and very likely many others would think that this position is too extreme. Word order (and argument structure) actually has an important place in Chinese grammar. Otherwise, why (1) has to be interpreted as "the cat is/was chasing the dog" (even though in the real world cats are timid and it is more likely for a dog to chase a cat than for a cat to chase a dog), why (2b) is odd or bad (particularly when previous clauses in the same Chinese sentence, as can be viewed by clicking on the link, remain unchanged), or why 'that girl' in (3), not '(the) flower' or 'flowers' in the same sentence, has to be understood as the entity that was consumed? All the three examples contain a transitive verb and in spirit they are all of the "N-V-N’" format.
>
> (1) Māo zài zhuī gǒu.
> cat Progressive chase dog
> 'The cat is/was chasing the dog.'
>
> (2) a. ... wǒ hē-le nà bēi guǒzhī.
> I drink-Perfective that cup juice
> '...I drank that cup of juice.' (https://cn.nytimes.com/style/20170209/the-stir-fried-tomatoes-and-eggs-my-chinese-mother-made/zh-hant/)
> b. ??... nà bēi guǒzhī hē-le wǒ.
> that cup juice drink-Perfective I
>
> (3) Huā chī-le nà nǚhái. (name of a movie)
> flower eat-Perfective that girl
>
> Best regards,
> Chao
>
>
>
> On Tue, Aug 22, 2023 at 11:52 PM Randy LaPolla <randy.lapolla at gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks Christian,
> Chao’s point in using the analogy of the function in logic is just to explain how the position of reference phrases in the clause is not related to semantic role, as it is in English, so N-V-N’ (actually [Topic N]-[Comment V-N’]) can be almost any set of semantic roles, depending only on contextual factors for their interpretation, as long as the addressee can create a meaning from it. The examples I gave are only a few of the possibilities. This is also why he argued there is no passive/active distinction in Chinese. It is a matter of inferring the direction of action from the overall context/situation.
>
> It is common now for us to assign roles to positions of arguments of functions, but Chao was assuming (explicitly) that the order of the arguments of the function does not influence the interpretation.
>
> All the best,
> Randy
>
>> On 23 Aug 2023, at 9:44 AM, 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
>> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> 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
>>> A302, Muduo Building, #18 Jinfeng Road, Zhuhai City, Guangdong, China
>>>
>>> https://randylapolla.info
>>> ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6100-6196
>>> 邮编：519087
>>> 广东省珠海市唐家湾镇金凤路18号木铎楼A302
>>> 北京师范大学珠海校区
>>> 人文和社会科学高等研究院
>>> 语言科学研究中心
>>>
>>>
>>>> On 22 Aug 2023, at 11:19 PM, Christian Lehmann <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?
>>>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>> Am 21.08.2023 um 08:03 schrieb Hans Götzsche:
>>>>> Begin forwarded message:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> From: Hans Götzsche <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>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 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
>>>>>> 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://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/deviational-syntactic-structures-9781472587961/
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On 19 Aug 2023, at 12.11, Vladimir Panov <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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>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
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>>>> Prof. em. Dr. Christian Lehmann
>>>> Rudolfstr. 4
>>>> 99092 Erfurt
>>>> Deutschland
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>> --
>> Prof. em. Dr. Christian Lehmann
>> Rudolfstr. 4
>> 99092 Erfurt
>> Deutschland
>> Tel.: +49/361/2113417 E-Post: christianw_lehmann at arcor.de Web: https://www.christianlehmann.eu
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