27.1484, Review: Cog Sci; Discourse; Ling Theories; Semantics; Syntax: Huumo, Helasvuo (2015)
The LINGUIST List via LINGUIST
linguist at listserv.linguistlist.org
Tue Mar 29 20:04:54 UTC 2016
LINGUIST List: Vol-27-1484. Tue Mar 29 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.
Subject: 27.1484, Review: Cog Sci; Discourse; Ling Theories; Semantics; Syntax: Huumo, Helasvuo (2015)
Moderators: linguist at linguistlist.org (Damir Cavar, Malgorzata E. Cavar)
Reviews: reviews at linguistlist.org (Anthony Aristar, Helen Aristar-Dry, Sara Couture)
Homepage: http://linguistlist.org
***************** LINGUIST List Support *****************
Fund Drive 2016
25 years of LINGUIST List!
Please support the LL editors and operation with a donation at:
http://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/
Editor for this issue: Sara Couture <sara at linguistlist.org>
================================================================
Date: Tue, 29 Mar 2016 16:04:26
From: Kim Jensen [kim at cgs.aau.dk]
Subject: Subjects in Constructions – Canonical and Non-Canonical
Discuss this message:
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=36111997
Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/26/26-867.html
EDITOR: Marja-Liisa Helasvuo
EDITOR: Tuomas Huumo
TITLE: Subjects in Constructions – Canonical and Non-Canonical
SERIES TITLE: Constructional Approaches to Language 16
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2015
REVIEWER: Kim Ebensgaard Jensen, Aalborg University
Reviews Editor: Robert Arthur Cote
SUMMARY
Edited by Marja-Liisa Helasvuo and Tuomas Huumo, 'Subjects in Constructions –
Canonical and Non-Canonical' (henceforth SiC) is the sixteenth installment in
John Benjamin's influential book series, Constructional Approaches to
Language. As its title indicates, SiC is devoted to subjects and subjecthood
in cognitive linguistics and discourse-functional linguistics; more
specifically, the volume deals with constructions (in cognitive-linguistic and
discourse-functional-linguistic perspectives) with non-canonical subjects. An
edited book, SiC contains ten papers distributed over three thematic sections.
The first section focuses on non-canonical subjects in grammatical and
discursive perspectives, while the second section is devoted to the
characteristics of different types of non-prototypical subjects. Lastly,
section three contains papers that discuss constructions that contain subjects
and their statuses within the grammatical systems of the different object
languages that these chapters treat. In addition to these papers, SiC features
an introduction by the editors.
The introduction is entitled 'Canonical and non-canonical subjects in
constructions: Perspectives from cognition and discourse'. Written by the
editors, Marja-Liisa Helasvuo and Tuomas Huumo, the introduction presents the
agenda of the volume and provides an overview of the papers within. Moreover,
a discussion of different possible cognitive and discourse-functional
perspectives on subjects is provided, and a useful list of general topics
covered in the volume is also offered.
Section one is entitled 'Grammatical and discourse perspectives on
non-canonical subjects' and contains three papers. The first paper is entitled
'On the subject of subject in Finnish' and is written by Tuomas Huumo and
Arja-Liisa Helasvuo. In this article, they address a number of features of the
subject in Finnish, such as case marking, semantic role, and agreement.
Looking at different types of construction, the authors address, among other
things, referential relations. Operating mainly within cognitive grammar (e.g.
Langacker 1987, 1991, 2008), the notion of an eNP is introduced in this paper.
In the next chapter, Renate Pajusalu's 'Hidden subjects in conversation:
Estonian personless verb forms as referential devices', the author
investigates discursive aspects of implicit referents of the verbless and the
impersonal verb forms in Estonian. While the two constructions appear similar,
Pajasalu shows that they are functionally different in that they have
different contexts of use in conversation.
The last chapter in section one is Hanna Jokela and Helen Plado's 'Subjects
under generic conditions: Implied subjects in Finnish and Estonian
if-clauses'. The authors address generic reference in three constructions:
impersonal,, zero person , and the da-infinitive from Estonian. Focusing on
their use in generic conditional contexts, the authors address the differences
between these three construction types and their interactions with the
contexts in which they appear.
There are four papers in section two 'Stretching the limits of subjecthood'.
The first one is Michel Achard's 'Abstract locational subjects: Field and
settings in French and English', in which the author explores the French and
English abstract locational pronouns 'il', 'a', 'it', and 'there'. Anchored
in cognitive linguistics – primarily Langacker's (e.g. 1987, 1991, 2008)
cognitive grammar framework - Achard argues that the four forms serve to
profile abstract regions, where the referent of the complement appearing after
the verb is located. Moreover, it is proposed that the four pronouns form a
natural class of abstract locational subjects based on the above-mentioned
profiling function with each form profiling a different kind of region.
In the following paper, 'Subjecthood of the agent argument in Estonian passive
constructions', Liina Lindström looks at elative and adessive case marking of
agents in Estonian periphrastic passives. Taking a diachronic perspective,
Lindström compares the period 1800-1850 to the 1990s and finds, among other
things, that a change occurred in the elative in which it had become
restricted to inanimate actors in the 1990s, while it was the main
agent-marking device in passives in the period 1800-1850. Interestingly, the
author attributes this change partially to a diminishing influence of German
on Estonian, remarking that the elative is a semantic counterpart of the
German 'von'-passive. With the German influence waning, the elative has become
restricted to atypical low-animacy agents.
In Ilja A. Serant's paper 'Categorization and semantics of subject-like
obliques: A cross-linguistic perspective', the author investigates the
semantics obliques in subject(-like) functions. Drawing on functional
cognitive linguistics – more specifically on Langacker's (e.g. 1987, 1991,
2008) cognitive grammar and construction grammar (e.g. Goldberg 1995, Goldberg
2001) – Serant's is a typological study of non-prototypical trajector
constructions in a variety of languages. In this chapter, a three-way
classificatory system of such constructions is proposed, which consists of the
following categories: 1) lexeme-driven non-prototypical trajector
constructions, 2) gram-driven non-prototypical trajector constructions, and 3)
syntax-driven trajector constructions. Serant further suggests that these
constructions are organized in a radial category network (Lakoff 1987) as
subconstructions of a type of what she calls the consequency construction.
The final paper in section two is 'The world is raining: Meteorological
predicates and their subjects in a typological perspective', authors Pål K.
Eriksen Seppo Kittliä, and Leena Kolehmainen offer a wide-ranging typological
study of meteorological predicate constructions (such as 'it is raining', 'it
is snowing', 'it is thundering' etc.), arguing that the semantic peculiarities
of such constructions have linguistic consequences, some of which result in
their subjects behaving non-canonically. The authors suggest that three
patterns recur across languages: 1) the predicate type, in which the
meteorological phenomenon appears in the predicate but the subject does not
refer to the phenomenon (as in Palestinian Arabic 'ɨddunya tɨshti' [literally
'the world is raining']), 2) the argument type, in which the subject (or a
subject-like nominal) expresses meteorological phenomenon and the predicate is
semantically superfluous (as in Korean 'pika onta' [literally 'rain comes']),
and 3) the argument-predicate type, in which both the subject (or subject-like
nominal) express the meteorological phenomenon (as in Turkish 'yağmur yağiyor'
[literally 'rain rains']).
The third section of SiC is entitled 'Subjects in networks of constructions'
and contains three papers, the first of which is Jaakko Leino's 'The syntactic
and semantic history of the Finnish genitive subject: Construction networks
and the rise of a grammatical category'. Leino focuses on five constructional
contexts of Finnish genitive subjects and the non-finite verb forms that
accompany such subjects: the necessive infinitive, the permissive infinitive,
the temporal infinitive , the partint participle, and the referative
participle (and its respective subconstructions). Against this backdrop, the
author proposes three grammaticalization sources – namely, the dative genitive
path, the genitive attribute path, and the path of genitive-accusative
syncretism.
Aki-Juhani Kyröläinen's contribution 'From canon and monolith to clusters: A
constructionist model of subjecthood in Russian' takes Croft's (2001) radical
construction grammar and ideas from Langacker's (e.g. 1987, 1991, 2008)
cognitive grammar as its theoretical framework. Challenging the traditional
applications of syntactic tests of subjecthood, the author proposes a
clustered model of subjecthood, drawing on statistical cluster analysis
(Kaufman & Rousseeuw 1990). Based on a range of features, Kyröläinen applies
cluster analysis and a neighbor-joining algorithm to build a radial network
(Lakoff 1987) of subjecthood in Russian and finds that Russian the nominative
and the dative are the two clustered subject constructions in Russian.
Concluding the volume is Laura Janda and Dagmar Divjak's 'The role of
non-canonical subjects in the overall grammar of a language: A case study of
Russian'. Like the previous chapter, this study also proposes a radial
category network of constructions. Focusing on dative subjects, the authors
present an experiment based on discourse-cohesion and find the result do not
seem to support the hypothesis that there are differences in the thinking for
speaking of speakers of Russian and English.
EVALUATION
'Subjects in Constructions – Canonical and Non-Canonical' is well structured,
and the division of the contributions into three thematic parts makes sense.
Consequently, navigating through the volume for articles of specific interest
is quite easy for the reader, making the volume very reader-friendly. Speaking
of reader-friendliness, I should also point out that in addition to the
obligatory index of subjects, SiC includes an extremely useful index of
constructions, where readers can look up specific construction types and see
where in the volume they are discussed. This is a feature of the book series
that SiC is part of, and should, in my opinion, be made standard in all book
length publications within the framework of construction-based linguistics.
Content-wise, the volume is generally extremely interesting in that it
primarily addresses non-canonical subjects. Overall, this reflects a general
stance in the volume which moves away from the rigid, Aristotelian
category-based approach to syntactic categories embraced by formalist
approaches to syntax.. Prime examples of this are Kyröläinen's chapter, Janda
and Divjak's chapters, and Serant's application of radial category theory in
her study of non-canonical trajector constructions.. Moreover, Pajusalu's
chapter includes a range of discourse-pragmatic features which would otherwise
be completely ignored in traditional formal syntactic frameworks. Of course,
seeing that all contributions within SiC are anchored in functionalist
syntactic theory (such as discourse-functional linguistics, construction
grammar, and cognitive grammar), this orientation should come as no surprise,
but it does suggest that although there are obvious differences between
cognitive linguistics and discourse-functional linguistics, they are still
allies of sorts and seem to share a common foundation.
Although topic- and theory-wise, the volume is very interesting and should
appeal to most functionalist and/or cognitivist syntacticians, SiC strikes me
as a bit restricted in terms of the object languages that the chapters within
cover. While other languages are discussed in the volume, SiC does have a
special focus on Finnish and Estonian, with a secondary focus on Russian,
which means that it is probably of particular interest to researchers that
have those three languages as their object languages. Thus, it is a valuable
source to such readers, but it also means that parts of the book are
characterized by somewhat of an imbalance in terms of object languages. For
instance, the first section deals exclusively with Finnish and Estonian. To
me, it would have been interesting to see work on discursive features of
subjects in other languages as well. In any case, one can hope that the three
papers in section one will inspire future work on discourse-functional aspects
of non-canonical subjects in other languages in the future. Part two is a bit
more varied in terms of object languages with Achard's chapter comparing data
from French and English, and Serant's chapter and Eriksen, Kittilä and
Kolehmainen's chapter both, by virtue of being anchored in language typology,
make use of data from several languages. The latter in particular includes an
impressive catalog of cross-linguistic data. Part three contains one chapter
on Finnish and two chapters on Russian, again contributing to the imbalance of
the volume. Now, it is important to emphasize that this is not a critique of
the fact that the book contains reports on linguistic research into
non-canonical subjects in Finnish, Estonian, and Russian. Criticizing SiC for
that would be uninformed to put it mildly. The research presented in the
chapters devoted to these three languages, as well as in the remaining
chapters, is incredibly important, groundbreaking, and of high quality. My
point is just, as mentioned above, that it would have been interesting as a
reader to engage with research into non-canonical subjects in more different
languages. However, as I also mentioned above, one can hope that the research
reported in SiC will inspire linguists working with other languages to address
subjecthood in similar fashions.
SiC is a research anthology and, as can be expected, contains papers that
display a high level of sophistication and that address advanced and complex
issues pertaining to grammatical subjects. This means that the contents in SiC
are primarily useful for research purposes and not so much for pedagogical
purposes. That is, the chapters in SiC are not suitable as course readings –
at least not at undergraduate level. I can imagine that one or more of the
papers in SiC can be used in advanced courses in grammar and linguistic theory
a postgraduate level. For instance, Huumo and Helasvuo's chapter on Finnish
subjects could be used in an advanced course in Finnish syntax at postgraduate
level, and Serant's contribution could be used as reading material in a course
at postgraduate level in construction grammar (this applies to all three
chapters in part three, too) as well as in a course in cognitive-functional
language typology. Leino's chapter could be used in a postgraduate level
course in grammaticalization. However, the main target readership of this book
remains professional researchers in linguistics. Offering deep cognitive or
discourse-functional insights into aspects of non-canonicity in subjects,
every paper in the volume is a valuable contribution to the study of syntax.
Of course, those who will benefit the most from SiC are linguists within the
paradigms of cognitive linguistics and discourse-functional linguistics, but
linguists with an interest in argument structure who work within other
paradigms may also find parts of the volume interesting and useful. For
instance, Pajasalu's chapter should be relevant to linguists working at the
intersection between discourse-pragmatics and syntax, while both Serant's and
Eriksen, Kittilä and Kolehmainen's contributions should be of relevance to
language typologists.
Given the thematic scope of the volume and the groundbreaking nature of most
of the contributions within, I would not be surprised to see papers from SiC
appear on bibliographies in future publications on subjects, argument
structure constructions, valence and functional syntax.
REFERENCES
Croft, W.A. (2001). Radical Construction Grammar: Syntactic Theory in
Typological Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Goldberg, A.E. (1995). Constructions: A Construction Grammar Approach to
Argument Structure. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Kaufman, L & P.J. Rousseeeuw (1990). Finding Groups in Data: An Introduction
to Cluster Analysis. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.
Lakoff, G. (1987). Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal
about the Mind. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Langacker, R.W. (1987). Foundations of Cognitive Grammar – vol. 1: Theoretical
Prerequisites. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Langacker, R.W. (1991). Foundations of Cognitive Grammar – vol. 2: Descriptive
Application. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Langacker, R.W. (2008). Cognitive Grammar: A Basic Introduction. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Paradis, E, J. Clause & K. Strimmer (2004). APE: Analyses of phylogenetics and
evolution in R language. Biostatistics, 20(2): 289-200.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Kim Ebensgaard Jensen is an associate professor of English at Aalborg
University where he teaches courses in English linguistics and discourse
analysis. Research coordinator of the Languages and Linguistics Research
Group, his research interests include cognitive linguistics, construction
grammar, and corpus linguistics.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
***************** LINGUIST List Support *****************
Fund Drive 2016
Please support the LL editors and operation with a donation at:
http://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/
This year the LINGUIST List hopes to raise $79,000. This money
will go to help keep the List running by supporting all of our
Student Editors for the coming year.
Don't forget to check out Fund Drive 2016 site!
http://funddrive.linguistlist.org/
For all information on donating, including information on how to
donate by check, money order, PayPal or wire transfer, please visit:
http://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/
The LINGUIST List is under the umbrella of Indiana University and
as such can receive donations through the eLinguistics Foundation,
which is a registered 501(c) Non Profit organization. Our Federal
Tax number is 45-4211155. These donations can be offset against
your federal and sometimes your state tax return (U.S. tax payers only).
For more information visit the IRS Web-Site, or contact your financial
advisor.
Many companies also offer a gift matching program, such that
they will match any gift you make to a non-profit organization.
Normally this entails your contacting your human resources department
and sending us a form that the eLinguistics Foundation fills in and
returns to your employer. This is generally a simple administrative
procedure that doubles the value of your gift to LINGUIST, without
costing you an extra penny. Please take a moment to check if
your company operates such a program.
Thank you very much for your support of LINGUIST!
----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-27-1484
----------------------------------------------------------
More information about the LINGUIST
mailing list