[Lingtyp] base valency classes of verb roots
Christian Lehmann
christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de
Thu Dec 28 13:29:19 UTC 2023
Dear Randy, dear Alex (and whoever may be interested in this topical area),
the following may seem (justifiably) an attempt at safeguarding original
authorship and grinding my axe. However, more importantly, I would like
to use the occasion to lend additional weight to a linguistic concept
which I have found very useful and generally applicable and which I
think deserves to be known widely.
The concept of orientation was defined, under its German term
'Ausrichtung', in:
Lehmann, Christian 1984, /Der Relativsatz. Typologie seiner Strukturen -
Theorie seiner Funktionen - Kompendium seiner Grammatik./ Tübingen: G.
Narr (Language Universals Series, 2); pp. 151-153.
It was taken up in:
Himmelmann, Nikolaus 1987, /Morphosyntax und Morphologie - Die
Ausrichtungsaffixe im Tagalog./ München: Fink (Studien zur Theoretischen
Linguistik, 8).
And either Himmelmann or myself soon translated the German term into
'orientation'. It seems quite possible that Lemaréchal got it from
Himmelmann.
Adding to the definition from Lemaréchal, it may be worthwhile to
clarify that the term applies to nominalized verbal constructions. These
are either non-oriented or oriented. The non-oriented ones have the same
meaning as the verb stem itself, viz. the situation core (some call it
event type) in question, like /(Y's) employment/ or /that X employs Y/.
The oriented ones designate a participant in that situation type, like
/employer/who employs/ or /employee/whom X employs/. On the one hand, it
is profitable to analyze nominalized constructions with respect to how
their orientation is coded or left to inference. On the other hand, one
may ask whether orientation does presuppose nominalization (in the
widest, syntactic and morphological sense). Himmelmann at least argues
that the Tagalog verb forms are actually nominalized; they are
comparable to participles like /employing/ and /employed/.
Apologies, (and please don't forget my initial question!),
Christian
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Am 28.12.2023 um 13:59 schrieb Alex Francois:
> dear Randy, dear Christian,
>
> The term "orientation", in the context of Tagalog, was first proposed
> by Alain Lemaréchal:
>
> * Lemaréchal, Alain. 1989. /Les parties du discours: Sémantique et
> syntaxe/.
> Linguistique Nouvelle. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
> * Lemaréchal, Alain. 1991. Dérivation et orientation dans les
> langues de Philippines (exemples tagalog).
> /Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris/ 86-1, 317-358.
>
> (Unfortunately, the 1989 monograph is only partially reproduced
> digitally
> <https://books.google.fr/books?id=xsGzDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PT195&ots=lyEVZZ_jBQ&dq=tesni%C3%A8re%20orientation%20des%20verbes&lr&pg=PT120#v=onepage&q=orientation&f=false>;
> nor can I find a Pdf of the 1991 paper.)
>
>
> Let me copy this passage from my hardcopy of Lemaréchal (1989), p.102:
>
> “L'orientation d'un verbe est cette caractéristique qui associe
> aux différents participants en rapport avec lui à la fois un rang
> dans la hiérarchie et un rôle dans la situation, sachant que cette
> association est caractéristique de la sous-classe et de la voix de
> la forme verbale. [...]
> Ainsi l'orientation primaire du verbe transitif actif est une
> orientation vers un premier actant sujet agent, son orientation
> secondaire une orientation vers un second actant objet patient. [...]
> L'orientation étant une caractéristique qui relève de la valence
> des formes concernées, elle est soit stockée dans le lexique, soit
> marquée par des dérivations régulières — c'est le cas des
> phénomènes de diathèse.”
>
>
> The syntax of "orientation" is a major topic of Lemaréchal's research,
> in various languages (mostly Tagalog, Palauan, Malagasy, Kinyarwanda,
> etc.). He applies the concept to various parts of speech: orientation
> of verbs, of nouns, of clauses... (see the “Deuxième partie
> <https://www.google.com/books/edition/Les_parties_du_discours/xsGzDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=orientation%20tagalog&pg=PT6>”
> section of his 1989 monograph).
>
> 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>–PSL
> <https://www.psl.eu/en>–Sorbonne nouvelle
> <http://www.univ-paris3.fr/lattice-langues-textes-traitements-informatiques-cognition-umr-8094-3458.kjsp>
> Australian National University
> <https://researchprofiles.anu.edu.au/en/persons/alex-francois>
> Personal homepage <http://alex.francois.online.fr/>
> _________________________________________
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ---------
> From: *Randy J. LaPolla* <randy.lapolla at gmail.com>
> Date: Thu, 28 Dec 2023 at 02:47
> Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] base valency classes of verb roots
> To: Johanna Nichols <johanna at berkeley.edu>
> Cc: <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
>
>
> Hi Christian,
> In talking about what are sometimes discussed as voice or
> transitivity-marking affixes in Tagalog, Himmelman (2004: 1481) argues
> that the affixes “change the orientation of a given base in such a way
> that it may be used to refer to one of the participants involved in
> the state of affairs denoted by the base … In this view, -/um-/ is an
> actor orienting infix which derives from a base such as /tango/ ‘nod,
> nodding in assent’ a word /tumango/ which could be glossed as ‘one who
> nods, nodder’. This expression no longer directly denotes the action
> of nodding, but rather the participant who nods. That is, in the
> Tagalog clause …/tumango ang unggo /‘The monkey nodded in assent’,
> both /tumango/ and /unggo/ refer to the same entity. Imitating the
> equational structure of this clause it could be rendered as ‘nodd-er
> in assent (was) the monkey’ … Note, however, that Tagalog voice
> affixes are not nominalising in a morphosyntactic sense, since they do
> not change the syntactic category of the base . . .”. He considers
> them derivational, not inflectional affixes, as they apply equally
> well to action words and object words: “… there are no productive
> inflectional paradigms for voice, as suggested by the commonly used
> ‘paradigmatic’ examples in the literature. Instead, derivations from
> all kinds of bases are only partially predictable on the basis of
> their semantics and exhibit a large number of idiosyncrasies, which
> again suggests derivation rather than inflection.”
>
> So he has used orientation in this way. Not sure if you can see any
> parallels in the structure and use of the affixes.
>
> 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
>
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>
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>
>> On 28 Dec 2023, at 1:52 AM, Johanna B Nichols <johanna at berkeley.edu>
>> wrote:
>>
>> I use "ambitransitive" instead of "ambivalent" -- it's unambiguous.
>> "Flexible" is also used in this sense, but already has too wide a
>> range of meanings.
>>
>> I agree, ±oriented and ±directed aren't great. A few years ago,
>> searching through a thesaurus for possibilities, I tried out
>> "bearing(s)", which is a good replacement for "direction" or
>> "orientation" but not for directed/undirected, etc. (Well, we have
>> "rudderless", but that's too heavy on the connotations, and anyway no
>> related antonym.) I think the same problem comes up with anything
>> based on "Janus". Maybe "steered/unsteered" and "steering"?
>>
>> Alternatively, we could probably turn to an Oceanic language for a
>> precise, well-elaborated set of relevant nautical terms.
>>
>> Johanna
>>
>> On Wed, Dec 27, 2023 at 4:05 AM Christian Lehmann
>> <christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de> wrote:
>>
>> Dear colleagues,
>>
>> sorry for my exaggerated preoccupation with adequate terminology.
>> I have to name the Cabecar (Chibchan) verb root classes, but am
>> short of linguistic terms. Verbs form voice stems for conjugation
>> in active and middle voice. Middle voice involves a suffix for
>> all verbs; active voice involves a suffix in one root class.
>>
>> The criteria of the classification are:
>> - Does the root have an active voice? If not, it is a medial root
>> (a Classicist would call it /deponens/).
>> - Does the active voice stem involve a suffix (viz. the
>> causativizer)? If not, I call the root preliminarily 'directed'.
>> - Is the root transitive or intransitive in active voice?
>>
>> These are the classes:
>> 1. Directed roots: these directly conjugate in active voice:
>> a. intransitive roots: in active voice, the verb is
>> intransitive (e.g. 'laugh');
>> b. transitive roots: in active voice, the verb is
>> transitive (e.g. 'bend').
>> 2. Undirected roots: these do not directly conjugate in
>> active voice:
>> a. medial roots: these only conjugate in the middle
>> voice, and the valency of this voice stem is intransitive (e.g.
>> 'stay');
>> b. ambivalent roots: these alternatively take on the
>> middle voice suffix and then are intransitive, or they take on
>> the causativizer and then are transitive (e.g. 'melt').
>>
>> These four classes work satisfactorily. What I am unhappy with is
>> the names 'directed', 'undirected' and 'ambivalent'. The idea
>> underlying 'directed - undirected' is that undirected verb roots
>> have no base valency; this is, instead, conferred to them by the
>> voice suffix. The idea behind 'ambivalent' is that these roots
>> have either valency depending on the voice suffix that they are
>> provided with.
>>
>> I would prefer 'oriented - non-oriented' to 'directed -
>> nondirected'; but this term pair is taken by the contrast between
>> verbal constructions of the sort (English examples:) /actor/who
>> acts/ vs. /action/that he acts/. And 'ambivalent' is a very
>> ambivalent term; a more specific one (like 'Janus-headed') may be
>> more mnemonic.
>>
>> Have you seen appropriate term (pair)s in grammars? Or can you
>> think of terms that would fit?
>>
>> Many thanks in advance,
>> Christian
>> --
>>
>> 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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--
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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