17.114, Review: Typology/Syntax:Himmelmann & Schultze-Berndt(2005)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-17-114. Sat Jan 14 2006. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 17.114, Review: Typology/Syntax:Himmelmann & Schultze-Berndt(2005)

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1)
Date: 11-Jan-2006
From: Martin Schäfer < schaefem at server1.rz.uni-leipzig.de >
Subject: Secondary Predication and Adverbial Modification 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Sat, 14 Jan 2006 16:53:57
From: Martin Schäfer < schaefem at server1.rz.uni-leipzig.de >
Subject: Secondary Predication and Adverbial Modification 
 

EDITORS:  Himmelmann, Nikolaus P.; Schultze-Berndt, Eva
TITLE: Secondary Predication and Adverbial Modification
SUBTITLE: The Typology of Depictives
PUBLISHER: Oxford University Press
YEAR: 2005
Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/16/16-2413.html 

Martin Schäfer, Institute of Linguistics, University of Leipzig

INTRODUCTION

The book is a collection of 13 papers on the syntax and semantics of 
depictives and related constructions in a variety of languages. All but 
the introduction and the contribution by Valenzuela go back to 
contributions to a workshop on 'Depictives in Crosslinguistic 
Perspective', organized in 2001 by the editors (The editors' position 
paper for that workshop has since appeared as Schultze-Berndt & 
Himmelmann (2004)).  The investigation of depictives has a very 
peripheral status in linguistics. Stock examples for this type of 
secondary predication are adjectives like 'angry' in (1a), a subject 
depictive, and 'raw' in (1b), an object depictive.  

(1a) Peter came home angry.  
(1b) John ate the meat raw.  

Little is known about the exact semantics of depictives or about the 
ways depictives like those in (1) are expressed in other languages. 
The collection significantly enlarges the data available for the study of 
depictives and presents many new ideas with regard to their syntax 
and semantics. It is of interest to all linguists working on secondary 
predication or adverbial modification.

SUMMARY

The book starts out with the excellent introduction ''Issues in the 
syntax and semantics of participant-oriented adjuncts'' by the editors, 
N. P. Himmelmann and Eva Schultze-Berndt, pp. 1-67. In the first part, 
the authors introduce the basic terminology used throughout the 
volume. The following differentiations are made: 
a) 'participant-oriented adjuncts' denote a state or condition which 
temporally overlaps with the state of affairs designated by the main 
predicate. Examples for participant-oriented adjuncts are depictives, 
participant-oriented manner adverbials (e.g. 'angrily' in 'Peter left 
angrily'), and circumstantials.  
b) 'depictives proper' are participant-oriented adjuncts that are part of 
the focus domain of a sentence (cf. e.g. the adjectives in (1)).  
c) 'circumstantials' are participant-oriented adjuncts that are not part 
of the focus domain of a sentence (e.g. 'as a young girl' in H & SB's 
(24) 'As a young girl Sarah did not travel to Paris alone').  
d) 'depictives (in the broad sense)' compromise depictives proper and 
circumstantials.  In addition, the term 'depictives' is restricted to those 
expressions that can be distinguished from event-oriented adjuncts 
(e.g. manner adverbials like 'slowly' in 'Peter read the review 
slowly') on morphosyntactic grounds.  
e) 'general adjunct constructions' can receive event-oriented or 
participant-oriented interpretations.

In the second part, they present the range of semantic functions 
participant-oriented expressions can serve. This is illustrated with a 
semantic map for participant-oriented expressions.  The third part lists 
five parameters that play a major role in a morphosyntactic typology of 
participant-oriented adjuncts: the combinatorics of oriented adjuncts 
and main predicates, the syntactic function/semantic role of the 
controller of the oriented adjunct, the syntactic position of the adjunct, 
the word class/internal structure of the adjunct, and the morphological 
marking of the adjunct.

''Depictives in English and Warlpiri'' by Jane Simpson, pp. 69-106, 
argues that in Warlpiri depictives have clearly adjunct status, showing 
great flexibility with respect to word order and interpretation. In 
addition, there are only few constraints on what can serve as a 
depictive and of what the depictive predicates. In contrast, English 
depictives have more in common with resultative complements, 
exhibiting different properties depending on what they are predicated 
of and showing restrictions with respect to the lexicosemantic class of 
the main verb.

Thomas Müller-Bardey, in ''Adverbials and depictives as restrictors'', 
pp. 107-140, attempts to characterize depictives and adverbials with 
respect to their ability to be part of the restrictor in quantificational 
relations. He proposes to analyze depictives as two-place predicates 
of the form DEPICTIVE(x,e).

In ''Depictive agreement and the development of a depictive marker in 
Swiss German dialects'', pp. 141-171, Claudia Bucheli Berger 
describes predicative and depictive marking in Swiss German dialects. 
Of the three types of dialects she discusses, one behaves like 
standard German (i.e., exhibiting attributive agreement but not 
depictive or predicative agreement). In contrast, in the Wallis dialects, 
depictive and predicative agreement exist. Finally, the dialects of the 
Appenzellerland use a genuine depictive marker, apart from having 
attributive agreement.

''Quantifying depictive secondary predicates in Australian languages'' 
by William B. McGregor, pp. 173-200, discusses participant-oriented 
quantifiers in Australian languages, e.g. the usage of numerals 
like 'one' in the sense of 'alone'. The author argues that a 
dependency relation of attribution is essential to secondary predicate 
constructions.

Winfried Boeder's ''Depictives in Kartvelian'', pp. 201-236, gives a 
survey of depictives in the Kartvelian or South Caucasian language 
family, focussing especially on Georgian and Svan. It is shown that 
depictives expressing condition, state or concomitance and manner 
expressions, that is, adverbials, are used in similar contexts.

In ''On depictive secondary predicates in Laz'', pp. 237-258, Silvia 
Kutscher and N. Sevim Genc discuss the morphosyntactic, semantic 
and prosodic characteristics of depictive secondary predication in Laz, 
another Kartvelian language. They show that Laz does not have a 
unique segmental or distributional means to mark depictives, with the 
possible exception of reduplicated numerals functioning as distributive 
quantifiers. Prosody allows to distinguish depictives and manner 
expressions in pre-predicate position.

''Participant agreement in Panoan'' by Pilar M. Valenzuela, pp. 259-
298, examines participant agreement (PA) in Shipibo-Konibo, a 
Panoan language spoken along the Ucayali river in Peru. With respect 
to their PA morphology, the author distinguishes 5 adjunct types and 
correlates these with the degree of participant vs event orientation.

In ''Secondary predicates and adverbials in Nilotic and Omotic: a 
typological comparison'', pp. 299-321, Azeb Amha and Gerrit J. 
Dimmendaal investigate secondary predicates in Nilotic languages 
(spoken in Ethiopia) and Omotic languages (spoken in the north and 
east of lake Victoria). They discuss possible relations between the 
expression types used to encode participant-oriented adjuncts and 
other typological parameters of the respective languages.

Tom Güldemann's ''Asyndetic subordination and deverbal depictive 
expressions in Shona'', pp. 323-353, investigates deverbal secondary 
predicates in Shona, the major Bantu language of Zimbabwe. 'Free-
subject dependent predicates' constitute a general adjunct 
construction, allowing depictive and several adverbial usages. 
Güldemann also argues for the importance of assertive focus in the 
determination of depictives.

In ''Forms of secondary predication in serializing languages: on 
depictives in Ewe'', pp. 355-378, Felix. K. Ameka argues that Ewe, a 
Kwa language of West Africa, has nominal depictive secondary 
predicates. In addition, he discusses whether serial verb constructions 
can serve as depictives.

''Depictive and other secondary predication in Lao'' by Nicholas J. 
Enfield, pp. 379-391, gives a concise overview of expressions 
functioning as depictives and other secondary predicates in Lao, an 
isolating language. The structures discussed all can have various 
functions; Lao lacks a dedicated depictive construction.

The collection ends with ''A semantic map for depictive adjectivals'' by 
Johan van der Auwera and Andrej Malchukov, pp. 393-421. After a 
short introduction to semantic maps, the authors develop a semantic 
map for adjectival constructions.

DISCUSSION

The book makes a very compact impression in that all authors, 
although covering very different aspects of depictives and participant-
oriented adjuncts, discuss their findings in view of the positions held 
by the editors in the introduction or in Schultze-Berndt & Himmelmann 
(2004). Probably the most intriguing outcome of the book is that 
the 'traditional' view on depictives has been far too simplistic. As the 
editors argue in the introduction, it appears that many semantic 
adjunct types are both participant- and event-oriented, albeit to very 
different degrees. As a consequence, there exists competition as to 
whether the participant-orientation or the event-orientation is 
morphosyntactically encoded, that is, whether a depictive or an 
adverbial construction is used. An English example for this sort of 
competition is (2), where (2a) has the adverbial 'angrily', and (2b) the 
depictive 'angry'.
(2a) John angrily read the review.
(2b) John left the party angry.
= (11b-c), p.8

This kind of opposition between 'angry' and 'angrily' is one of the 
many cases which leave the non-native speaker of the respective 
language wondering about what kind of semantic contrast this 
possibly could encode (though at least (2) is amply discussed in the 
introduction and in Geuder (2000)).  That the English data do not 
represent an isolated case is shown in many examples throughout the 
volume, cf. (3) for another example revolving around 'angriness', this 
time from Shona.

(3a)
ndaka-mu-tuka              zvaka-shata 
1SG:SBJ:REM:PST-10BJ-scold 8MAN.RS.STAT-become.bad 
'I scolded him angrily.'  
(3b)
aka-taura       zv-ose    izvi aka-shatirwa 
1.REM.PST-speak 8INAN-all 8DEM 1.FS.STAT-become.angry 
'He said all these things in a state of anger.'  
= (42), p. 341

That several possibilities of encoding are not restricted to these kinds 
of 'psychological predicates' is shown in (4), an example from the 
Omotic language Turkana.

(4a)
e-pes-e-te    nesi    e-rono 
3-kick-ASP-PL 3SG.ABS 3-be.bad:SG  
'They kick him/her/it badly.'  
(4b)
e-pes-e-te    nesi    ni-aronon(i)
3-kick-ASP-PL 3SG.ABS REL-badly 
'They kick him/her/it in a bad way.'  
= (3), p. 303

Even 'raw' can in some languages be encoded as either depictive or 
adverbial, cf. (5) from Georgian.

(5)
xorc-i   um-i    / um-ad   miqvars 
meat-NOM raw-NOM / raw-ADV I.like.it
'I like meat raw.' 
= (116), p. 229

Boeder's comment on (5), ''Subtle differences in meaning remain to be 
investigated.'' can in fact be applied to many more examples in the 
book.

Another very interesting point raised in the introduction concerns the 
role of focus in defining depictives. Thus the introduction argues that 
depictives proper are always part of the focus domain whereas 
circumstantials are not, although both ''are participant-oriented 
adjuncts which convey a state of affairs which temporally overlaps with 
the state of affairs conveyed by the main predicate.'' (p. 19). It is not 
quite clear to me to what extent this differentiation makes sense, 
especially when the so-differentiated circumstantials and depictives 
proper show no further semantic difference. I would rather subscribe 
to the more cautious conclusion of the discussion of the role of 
assertive focus in T. Güldemann's contribution, namely that ''the 
inherent focal status of depictives [...] has heuristic potential for 
distinguishing such expressions from formally related ones.''

All in all, this book provides an excellent resource for anyone 
interested in depictives, adverbials and related constructions.

REFERENCES

Geuder, Wilhelm (2000). Oriented Adverbs: Issues in the Lexical 
Semantics of Event Adverbs. Ph.D. dissertation, Universität Konstanz

Schultze-Berndt, Eva & Nikolaus P. Himmelmann (2004). 'Depictive 
secondary predicates in crosslinguistic perspective', Linguistic 
Typology 8(1): 59-131 (Revised manuscript received in 2001!) 

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Martin Schäfer works at the Institute of Linguistics at the University of 
Leipzig. He recently completed his PhD thesis on "German adverbial 
adjectives: syntactic position and semantic interpretation".





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