Lessons on the Noun Phrase in English: From Representation to Reference 9780773576438

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface
1 What We Are Going to Talk about and How
2 Substantive, Adjective and Adverb: The Theory of Incidence
3 Parts of Speech and the Word
4 Case and the Substantive
5 Number: Toward the System
6 Number: Testing for -ø Morpheme
7 Number: Testing for -s Morpheme
8 Gender in the Substantive
9 The Substantive
10 The System of the Articles
11 A vs. the in Discourse
12 Bare vs. Articled -s Substantives
13 Bare vs. Articled -ø Substantives
14 Any as a Quantifier
15 Some and the System
16 The Demonstratives
17 Determiners as Completive Pronouns
18 -’s Phrase
19 Suppletive Pronouns as Noun Phrase
20 Personal Pronouns and the Expression of Gender
21 The Noun Phrase and Person
22 Syntactic Function
23 Concluding Remarks
Postscript
Glossary
Notes
References
Index
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
P
Q
R
S
T
U
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W
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LESSONS ON THE NOUN PHRASE IN ENGLISH

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Lessons on the Noun Phrase in English From Representation to Reference WALTER HIRTLE

McGill-Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Ithaca

© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2009 ISBN 978-0-7735-3604-3 Legal deposit third quarter 2009 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Funding has also been received from the Fonds Roch Valin using funds provided by la fondation de l’Université Laval. McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP )for our publishing activities.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Hirtle, W. H. (Walter Heal), 1927– Lessons on the noun phrase in English: from representation to reference / Walter Hirtle. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-7735-3604-3 1. English language – Noun phrase. I. Title. pe1201.h57 2009

425'.5

c2009-901703-2

This book was typeset by Interscript in 10.5/13 Baskerville.

To Hélène, Ann, Stuart, and Marie, who have taught me a lot

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Contents

Acknowledgments Preface

ix

xi

1 What We Are Going to Talk about and How 3 2 Substantive, Adjective and Adverb: The Theory of Incidence 16 3 Parts of Speech and the Word

36

4 Case and the Substantive 53 5 Number: Toward the System 68 6 Number: Testing for -ø Morpheme 89 7 Number: Testing for -s Morpheme

105

8 Gender in the Substantive 126 9 The Substantive

147

10 The System of the Articles 11 A vs. the in Discourse

160

175

12 Bare vs. Articled -s Substantives

197

13 Bare vs. Articled -ø Substantives

214

14 Any as a Quantifier 15 Some and the System

234 250

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16 The Demonstratives

270

17 Determiners as Completive Pronouns

292

18 -’s Phrase 302 19 Suppletive Pronouns as Noun Phrase

316

20 Personal Pronouns and the Expression of Gender 21 The Noun Phrase and Person 22 Syntactic Function

358

23 Concluding Remarks Postscript 376 Glossary 379 Notes

383

References Index

403

395

368

348

332

Acknowledgments

This study owes much to the congenial and stimulating seminars with my colleagues at the Fonds Gustave Guillaume at l’Université Laval, Ronald Lowe, Patrick Duffley, Joseph Pattee, Renée Tremblay, Pierette Vachon-L’Heureux and Louise Guénette. I am also indebted to my students over the years, particularly my graduate students who kept on raising questions I had no answer for. I want to express my gratitude for a publishing grant from the Fonds Roch Valin using funds provided by La Fondation de l’Université Laval. My thanks go to the McGill-Queen’s team, particularly Jonathan Crago and Joan McGilvray for their cheerful support and counsel. I also wish to thank the anonymous reader whose detailed and pertinent comments have made this study more readable. Finally, a word of thanks to my family, particularly my wife, whose understanding and encouragement have been a constant help.

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Preface … linguistics is knowledge, not of the physical universe within which man dwells and of which he is a part, but of a mental universe – tongue – that dwells within him. Guillaume 1984, 145

Like my 2007 study on the verb, these lessons began with a course I taught over a number of years and have grown far beyond it. The aim of the course was not to describe usage but to describe what explains usage. This obviously calls for a sufficiently varied and detailed observation of particular uses to provide the data required to infer the general conditions permitting the uses, to discern what there is in a noun phrase that enables it to function the way it does. Attempting to get to the root of the noun phrase, mentally to “stand under” it in order to descry what it is based on, is the only way to understand it and so to describe what explains. As in the course, this aim will not be fully achieved here simply because we do not yet know enough about the elements that constitute the noun phrase. For this reason, the present study is not a grammar, which would require a sufficient knowledge of all the elements involved, but merely a series of lessons since this provides a framework offering more leeway to bring in tentative approaches, hypotheses, speculations – in a word, to depict the state of our understanding and the direction of our researches at this point. Because so much is exploratory here, I have sometimes adopted the classroom practice of beginning a lesson by summarizing what has gone before both to recall the main points made in discussing different points of view and to show the link with the next step in the discussion. This repetition has an added advantage here since going over the steps that led to an explanatory hypothesis not only helps in understanding it but also provides another opportunity to question its validity.

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Some students’ reaction to the subject of this course was a mental shrug, a sort of “Who cares?” feeling which betokened a very healthy attitude toward their mother tongue. After all, we do not need to know how a computer functions to be able to use it effectively. And since we can all use our own language effectively enough to meet our ordinary needs, why should we be concerned about how it functions? Moreover, even having a grammarian’s knowledge of how it works would not necessarily enhance our ability to use our language, make us better speakers or writers. In brief, as long as an instrument works there is no need to take it apart, and our mother tongue is probably the most dependable of all manmade instruments. As the course progressed, however, a number of these students became more and more intrigued by the way the noun phrase functions when they saw how it could help them in their teaching. Other students’ reaction to the title was “I know enough about the use of noun phrases. I don’t need any more of the details.” This was perhaps a normal attitude for those who had already studied English syntax, but it soon changed when they saw the difference between the way something functions and what it is. That is, they realized that underlying usage in its endless variety is another reality, the noun phrase itself, and this led to a desire to explore its makeup in order to understand better how it functions. Finally, a number of students were intrigued at the outset by the prospect of exploring through analysis this entity with so many manifestations. Their curiosity beyond the directly observable indicated a desire to know, not just for the sake of knowing but in order to explain what they observed. It is hoped that these lessons will serve not only to whet the reader’s curiosity in this way but also to help satisfy it to some extent. I take for granted that readers are familiar with the basic vocabulary of grammar – noun, adjective, adverb, verb, and the like – and will try to present clearly other terms as they arise, indicating technical terms in small caps and listing them in the Glossary. In this way, I hope the book will appeal not only to the specialist but to the reader simply curious about what makes it possible to say things like The man you were talking to’s reaction, or zero degrees, or Small is beautiful. And perhaps reflexions on uses like these will make such readers, in Alice’s words, “curiouser and curiouser.”

Preface

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DISCERNING WHAT CANNOT BE OBSERVED

Since it adopts the point of view of the speaker, the analysis undertaken here is quite different from that found in studies aimed at formalizing language in order to process it mechanically for purposes such as translation. That is, instead of attempting to analyze written and oral texts, discourse, in terms of a limited set of machine recognizable rules, the attempt is made to break it down into a series of mentally recognizable elements, meanings. Meaning, the be-all and end-all of human language, escapes the grasp of the computer because it exists only in the mind of the speaker (writer) and, one hopes, of the listener (reader). And yet it is only through an analysis of meaning, of what the speaker expresses, that we will manage to understand and explain how the act of expression is achieved. “Here, as elsewhere, we shall understand things best if we consider them as they emerge from their origins.” Other sciences have long since taken this dictum of Aristotle to heart, as did the comparatists of the 19th century. And so, for a linguist who wants to probe the whys and wherefores of language usage, it is by no means an innovation to focus on the speaker who, with something in mind to say and the wherewithal to represent and express it, produces the required sentence or sentences to do so. The challenge here, the veritable challenge posed by language to scientific enquiry, is how to analyze meaning, which is little amenable to quantification and measurement, how to analyze it in terms verifiable by anyone else willing to acknowledge that our mental constructs have a reality of their own. The aim of these lessons is to explore what a noun phrase is. Describing it the way some linguists and grammarians have done in terms of what it does in the sentence or in terms of the words of which it is composed is important as a first step to show that there is something there – that the noun phrase is a grammatical reality in Modern English and not just a figment of some linguists’ imagination – but such descriptions of what is observed in discourse do not explain what is described. I adopt Guillaume’s approach to language to discern what cannot be observed. His Psychomechanics of Language1 views what is observed as resulting from an act of language and therefore as an invitation to work back to the prior conditions permitting the uses observed: imagining the operations that

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give rise to these results, and inferring the potential meanings of the grammatical items permitting these operations. This approach calls for a constant attempt to get beyond direct observation to discern the nature of the grammatical systems required to construct a noun phrase. To the extent that we manage to discern these systems, we can understand how the meaning components of a noun phrase are assembled by means of the different operations of syntax and, once assembled, how they function as a unit contributing to produce what, since antiquity, a sentence is said to express – “a complete thought.” In attempting to get beyond the limits of what is directly observable, Psychomechanics adopts essentially the same method as that exploited by linguists in comparative grammar, who work back by inference from the earliest attested forms in various languages to an even earlier form, reconstructing it as a prior condition to explain the observed forms. When successful, this method, which is ultimately that of any scientific enquiry based on observation, provides a description, not of what is observed but of what explains what is observed. Here this comparative method is applied to the act of speaking under the special circumstances this involves: both prior conditions and observable results are found in the present, the moment of speech. It is this that makes the analyzing of the mental systems of language a distinct discipline within linguistics. At the moment we want to speak, all the resources of our mother tongue – lexical, grammatical and phonological – are available, ready to be activated in order to produce a sentence, or sentences, representing and expressing what we have in mind to talk about. This is what is extraordinary about our mother tongue. It provides us with resources enabling us to speak about anything that comes into our minds, to form words and construct sentences “somehow appropriate to situations” as one linguist puts it. For anyone who pauses to think about it, this capacity makes human language an object of wonder and so both a proper object of science and an object of primordial importance for understanding why, in the words of Charles Taylor (1985/1999, 216), “the question of language is somehow strategic for the question of human nature.”

LESSONS ON THE NOUN PHRASE IN ENGLISH

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LESSON ONE

What We Are Going to Talk About and How All science is the search for unity in hidden likenesses. J. Bronowski (13)

THE PURPOSE OF THESE LESSONS

The reader with little or no background in English grammar may feel slightly mystified, and perhaps intrigued, by the expression “the noun phrase.” These lessons will, it is hoped, answer such expectancy since their main purpose is to give us a better understanding of what a noun phrase is. One of the best grammars of contemporary English gives the following functional definition: “The noun phrase typically functions as subject, object and complement of clauses and as complement of prepositional phrases” (Quirk et al., 245). This certainly helps one to recognize a noun phrase by means of its role in the sentence. On the other hand, it could rightly be objected that this definition tells us only what a noun phrase does, not what it is. That is, it does not indicate what there is in its makeup that enables a noun phrase to function in these ways. This is the purpose of the author who characterizes a phrase as a “unit” or “form” consisting of “a collocation of a head word with its adjuncts” (Strang, 67). That is, a noun phrase is a grammatical whole constituted by juxtaposing a substantive as the main word alongside subordinate words. (We will see in the next lesson why it is useful to use the traditional term “substantive” rather than the more common “noun” here). Again this description helps us to recognize a noun phrase, this time by means of its constituents, its makeup, but it does not tell us what a noun phrase is. What is it that forms different words into a unit? What is the nature of the relationship inherent in this collocation, this associating of a head with

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its adjuncts? There must be more to it than merely placing one word next to another in the sentence if, as one dictionary puts it, the adjunct “qualifies, amplifies or completes the meaning” of the headword. Furthermore, it is far from clear how juxtaposing a substantive with a determiner like this, any, the, etc., along with any required adjectives and adverbs, permits a noun phrase to fulfil its functions. Besides, one must account for the fact that a pronoun like she, without any collocation, is often considered a one-word noun phrase because it assumes one of the functions fulfilled by groups centred on a substantive.1 Questioning observation-based definitions in this way is not to deny their importance. Observing common functions (subject, object, etc.) leads to the conclusion that the word groups involved have something in common, by virtue of the fact that a function is determined, at least in part, by the nature of what fulfils the function. Furthermore, observing common components of these word groups leads to an initial view of their makeup and to calling them noun phrases since their most common component is a noun, a substantive. What is lacking in the above definitions is an understanding of the relations linking the different words into a syntactic whole, thus enabling it to function as subject, object, etc., a goal that will require us to examine each of the words constituting it – the substantive, the adjective, etc. – in an attempt to see how they relate to one another to form a noun phrase. This then is the purpose of these lessons: to understand what these endlessly varied word groups, and even a single word, used in diverse functions, have in common permitting us to call them all noun phrases. Although we will be able to accomplish this only in part, the results of research so far are of sufficient interest to merit presentation here in the hope that they will incite anyone intrigued by the workings of English to undertake further research. QUESTIONS TO BE DISCUSSED

We will begin by examining the substantive, comparing it with the adjective and the adverb, trying to distinguish them in terms of how they relate to one another within the noun phrase. This will lead to a discussion of parts of speech and the even more fundamental question of what a word consists of, the idea being that unless we have at least a general notion of what a word is, we cannot really

What We Are Going to Talk About and How

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grasp what different types of word, parts of speech, are. It is this approach that distinguishes these lessons from other studies of the noun phrase. One study on morphology has this to say in its conclusions: “At various times I’ve suggested that one of the key unresolved questions in morphology is ‘what is a word?’”(Spencer, 453). Since a sufficient understanding of what a word is provides the key to understanding how it functions, I think it appropriate, or rather necessary, to begin with this question. We will spend some time on the substantive, the principal word in a noun phrase, looking first at -‘s and the question of case. Then we look at the question of number, not just the well known-fact that the -s ending usually expresses ‘more than one’2 and the -ø ending3 ‘one’, but also some of the rarer uses, as when -s appears to express a singular (e.g. an impressive opening ceremonies, a new airlines) and -ø ending appears to express a plural (e.g. many caribou, three aspirin). We will also be examining the question of gender, trying to see if grammatical gender is represented in the English substantive. Moving beyond the substantive, we examine the articles, a and the, to see what meaning they express and why they are essential components in so many noun phrases. Then we look at any and some, which are quantifiers capable of expressing different quantities: thus any often has the sense of ‘every’ (e.g. Any student who registers late will …) but sometimes signifies the opposite quantity (e.g. Pick any card.). The next question will be the demonstratives: why for example that sometimes expresses greater distance from the speaker than this, but not always (e.g. This/that is what I told him). This will shed some light on the -‘s construction and on other determiners, and will bring out a need for further research. It will also give a basis for examining how a pronoun on its own can constitute a noun phrase and focus attention on the role of grammatical person. A question concerning the personal pronoun will be treated: we usually use it to refer to non-humans, but occasionally use she (e.g. referring to the weather, She’s a cold one tonight.) and he (e.g. on catching a fly: Got ‘im!). We will conclude with comments on how a noun phrase carries out its functions. The mere enumeration of these questions suffices to suggest that the facts involved are innumerable. Indeed, any one of these questions gives rise to such a quantity of data that all of these lessons could be devoted to it. That is, every time an article or a demonstrative or a substantive is used in discourse it can, if observed, figure as

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part of the data. Our aim however is not to have as detailed a knowledge of usage as possible for a given form – a question for more specialized studies – but rather to get a view of the range of senses some item like the substantive’s -s inflexion can express in order to discern what enables it to contribute different senses to the noun phrase. The challenge, then, is to get beyond the knowledge we have of facts through direct observation to obtain a view of the preconditions making these facts possible. To acquire knowledge of this second type calls for some means other than direct observation, means which are often called simply the scientific method. SCIENCE AS A SECOND WAY OF KNOWING

It has been claimed that “The scientific method itself would not have led anywhere, it would not even have been born without a passionate striving for clear understanding” (Einstein 1981, 328). The wonder engendered by some regularity (with variations) observed in phenomena led enquiring minds to ask “Why?”, to seek a cause governing what they observed, a cause which in itself could not be observed. This realization that knowledge arising from the senses is incomplete led curious people to seek by means of science what is hidden from the senses. It has often been pointed out that science begins with the curiosity that arises from recognizing our ignorance. Besides reassuring those of us who are aware of how little we know of the noun phrase, this view of science should bring out a postulate that often remains implicit, namely that reality stretches far beyond the limits of what is perceivable to include an area which is only conceivable. It takes for granted that the reality of our universe, and this includes the reality of human language, is binary, a diptych, one fold of which lies beyond the scope of our direct experience and can be accessed only by indirect means. Without this presupposition, science is not needed, nor is it even possible. On the other hand, postulating that there is more to reality than meets the eye is not sufficient to give rise to science because it can also give rise to explanations based on magic, witchcraft, spiritism and the like. Such “explanations” would strike most of us as arbitrary because, although they propose causes of a sort, we do not consider them to be based on a regularity in observed phenomena which can be verified by any qualified observer and so they cannot propose to our minds some orderly sequence of events permitting

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us to understand what we observe. (Presumably those who accept such accounts as providing an explanation do attribute to them a sufficient consistency or regularity to make them credible.) Without a repeatable, foreseeable (but not necessarily predictable) sequencing of events based on some necessary link between a hypothesized precondition and an observable consequence arising from it, the proposed explanatory element would strike us as lacking in any causal relation and so to be arbitrary. To get beyond directly perceivable phenomena and discern the order lying behind and conditioning them, an order that is conceivable but not perceivable, scientists have developed their wellknown three-phase method: observing, hypothesizing, testing. The first phase, observing the object of enquiry, must be carried out as carefully as possible not only to ensure that our first-hand knowledge of the object is as exact as possible but also to permit other observers to carry out the same observations and arrive at the same results. Without this consensus of competent observers with regard to the facts to be explained, i.e. the data, little of scientific worth can be accomplished. The observation of the object must also be as complete as possible because the greater our lack of pertinent data, the harder it is to get a clear view of the object’s inherent unity. It is obvious that for observation to be as careful and as complete as possible the means of observing must be adapted to the object under scrutiny: one cannot observe stars with a microscope, nor meaning with a computer search program. The next phase, forming a hypothesis to explain the data, is the crucial one for scientific progress. It involves conceiving a prior condition responsible for the various observed facts, i.e. understanding why. One writer on scientific method tries to make the point that induction, reasoning back from the data to a logically necessary premise, is not sufficient to form an explanatory hypothesis: When we come to the second stage, i.e. the formulation of an hypothesis, we have problems equally as great. How are we in fact led to formulate the hypothesis? To do so we must already know which parts of our “observation” are relevant; unless we already have some hypothesis in mind, we are unable to know which portions of our “observation” are relevant and which are not … It may be said that we “induce” an hypothesis from observations, but the fact remains that without some prior “theory” we are

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unable to select from the welter of experience presented to us by Nature. As Einstein himself remarked in The Method of Theoretical Physics: “There is no inductive method which could lead to the fundamental concepts of physics … in error are those theorists who believe that theory comes inductively from experience.” (Fowler, 95) It is as though the scientist had some hunch (= “prior theory”), some barely conscious intuition guiding the choice of data and bringing to the fore the crucial facts on which a hypothesis could be constructed. The same author (97–8) characterizes this process as one of imagination: at the hypothesis stage, the need for imagination becomes important: “Learn to dream, gentlemen”, one famous physicist once remarked to his students. “Only connect” was the instruction of another. The process of “connexion,” especially as advancing science becomes increasingly complex in form, needs, however, “trained minds as well as a fertile imagination.” Thus Whitehead remarked that the growth of a science was not primarily in bulk, but in ideas, and G.H. Warnock has aptly commented that “the post-Copernican astronomer was not in possession of new truths about the heavens, but of a new conceptual system for organizing the truths he already possessed.” The point here is that the awareness of a new relationship – what comes sometimes as the flash of intuition we express by the Greek “Eureka!” – appears to be the result of the work of the imagination, abetted by reason and memory (observations) but not limited to what these two faculties can attain at that point. That is, if the mind has a chance to “dream,” to practice abduction, as Pierce called it, it may be able to imagine a relation between apparently unconnected facts and so understand them. This is the germ of a new hypothesis, which must then be tested. Testing constitutes the third phase of the method. It involves seeing if a hypothesis can explain observed facts other than those on the basis of which it was originally conceived. To the extent that the hypothesis leads to an understanding of other data, its explanatory power is demonstrated and the hypothesis can be considered corroborated. For most physical sciences, testing takes the form of

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experimentation, but this is often not possible for linguistics. Whatever form testing may take, we can never consider any scientific theory as “proved” in the sense of absolutely certain, if only because we can never be sure of having all the data. Einstein makes this point, along with a number of the others we have been discussing, in the following well-known passage: Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world. In our endeavor to understand reality we are somewhat like a man trying to understand the mechanism of a closed watch. He sees the face and the moving hands, even hears its ticking, but he has no way of opening the case. If he is ingenious he may form some picture of a mechanism which would be responsible for all the things he observes, but he may never be quite sure his picture is the only one which could explain his observations. He will never be able to compare his picture with the real mechanism and he cannot even imagine the possibility of the meaning of such a comparison. (Einstein and Infeld, 31) The three phases come out quite clearly here as does the aim of scientific endeavours: “to understand reality.” This description of method may well appear naïve to someone versed in the experimental sciences but unfortunately not all linguists put it into practice. However for Gustave Guillaume, the linguist who has most influenced the present study, it was a constant concern to apply to language this method, which he summarized (1984, 69) as follows: “We can explain to the extent that we have understood. We can understand to the extent that we have observed.” LANGUAGE AS AN OBJECT OF SCIENCE

These remarks on method, general though they be, will enable us to deal with meaning, a question which has created a major cleavage in theoretical approaches to language today. We have seen that the means of observing must be adapted to the object under observation. This entails adapting our means of observation to the fact that language is in part physically observable, in part mentally observable. That is, spoken and written language involves not only audible or visible signs, signs that can be recorded on a tape or

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scanned onto a disc, but also meaning, which machines can never record because it is strictly mental. Since we can be conscious of both the signs and, through them, the meaning expressed by the sentence, we can gain knowledge of each through direct observation so that, at the outset, viewing language as an object of science poses the problem of how to observe as exactly and as completely as possible what is physically perceivable and what is mentally perceivable. In other words: “To be complete, observation in the science of language must take in both what is physically (and so immediately) visible as well as what is mentally (and so non-physically) visible beneath the physically visible part of language” (Guillaume 1984, 69). The idea of observing the sounds of language is probably quite familiar. Sessions of ear training to refine one’s sensitivity to nuances of sound are by no means rare. Less familiar, perhaps, is the idea of observing meaning, of becoming aware of the sense expressed, and yet this is what we all must do in ordinary discourse if we are to understand what people say to us. Much of the study of literature consists in learning to appreciate the subtleties of sense expressed by great writers. In linguistics this observation of mental entities can also be refined by practice so that we become more and more aware of the nuances of meaning expressed by sentences and by parts of sentences, by words and even by the components of words. It requires a constant effort to become ever more sensitive to expressive nuance, that is, to observe meaning as carefully and as completely as possible.4 That is, we must avoid being “boxed into the study of form in isolation from meaning, or of meaning in disregard of form” as Randolph Quirk puts it (Duffley 1992, vii). According to Michael (47), many of the grammars of past centuries were unsuccessful in their attempt to describe English because they neglected this basic fact of language. Turning now to the second phase of scientific enquiry, linguistics also requires the scientist’s act of faith that language consists of more than what emerges into consciousness where it can be directly observed: “Science is based on the insight that the world of appearances tells of hidden things, things which appearances reflect but do not resemble. One such insight is that what seems to be disorder in language hides an underlying order – a wonderful order. The word is not mine – it comes from the great Meillet, who wrote: ‘a language forms a system where everything fits together and has a wonderfully rigorous design’” (Guillaume 1984, 3). This belief in

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an underlying order is perhaps more difficult to hold in linguistics than elsewhere because of all the exceptions to the rules of usage with which we are familiar. For the analysis to be undertaken here, therefore, it is assumed that, as in Einstein’s example of the watch, there is – there must be – an order or system or mechanism hidden below the surface of consciousness in the preconscious mind. Moreover this system must be operational, must involve a mechanism, since it is conceived to be what produces all the effects observed in discourse, the texts, written or oral, produced by acts of speech. That is, the hunch, the assumption with which a linguist approaches the data, is that of a hidden, dynamic system underlying what is observed. The phonology proposed to account for the different sounds of a language is often just this: an attempt to “form some picture” of the hidden system underlying and permitting all the phonetic manifestations of the distinctive sounds, the phonemes. A similar task confronts those concerned with the mental side of language: attempting to describe the preconscious system permitting the different senses expressed by the grammatical components (morphemes 5) and lexical components (lexemes) of words. To the extent that these lessons succeed in describing the system underlying some of the morphemes occurring in the noun phrase in English they will provide a hypothesis for explaining the use of these morphemes and further our understanding of the nature of the noun phrase itself. Once a hypothesis about an underlying system has been proposed, a return to usage is required to test it: “A theory – any theory – must necessarily confront the facts. And this confrontation with fact is the critical moment for a theory” (Guillaume 1984, 22). If certain observed uses cannot be explained by the proposed system then the system must be modified or abandoned. On the other hand, the fact that the hypothesized system does provide a coherent view of the various facts of usage helps to confirm it. Even stronger confirmation is provided when a hypothesis both brings to light and explains hitherto unobserved facts, as happened, for example, during my research on the number system of the substantive when I realized that the -s can express the sense of ‘one, singular’, besides its more common ‘plural’ senses.6 The fact that experimentation as practiced in other disciplines cannot be used here as a means of testing makes it all the more important to observe usage as completely as possible. Granted this scenario of a data-oriented

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Lessons on the Noun Phrase in English

approach, it is obvious that quite infrequent uses of a given form can be particularly significant because of the light they can throw on the interface between theory and observation. Observation of usage (usually beginning with what other observers have found), reflexion to find an underlying system as a hypothesis to explain usage, checking the hypothesis against new data – these are the three phases of the scientific method as applied to language. One of the best discussions of the scientific method applied to language is found in Valin’s essay Le langage au prisme de la science. It begins and ends with observation, the type of observation any competent observer can undertake, but as was pointed out above, observation seeks pertinent facts and so presupposes some “prior theory” or initial hunch to guide it. It remains to describe this starting hypothesis, or rather postulate, in more detail. THE POSTULATE

We have already seen that any science assumes an “underlying order” behind the “chaotic diversity” (Einstein) of what is observed.7 It is a centuries-old tradition to present conjugations and declensions that reflect more or less adequately an underlying order, a system, in grammar. Attempts to describe the phonological system underlying the sounds of a language are more recent, but the lexemes of a language are less amenable to a systemic analysis. In grammar this order assumes the form of systems consisting of grammatical words like the two articles, or morphemes like the -ø and -s expressing number in the substantive, or sets of subsystems like tense, aspect, etc. in the verb. Each of these systems is an operational unit instituted in our mother tongue, the preconscious part of our language, what we will call tongue, that provides the resources, the potential for producing the words and sentences a speaker needs at any moment. To be noted in passing is the use of the term “tongue” to designate language as a potential – lexical, grammatical, and phonological – permitting discourse, actualized language. This use of “tongue,” an extension of its use in the expression “the mother tongue,” implies what is inherent in any potential, an operation of actualization. It thus brings a sense of operativity to the idea of a speaker’s language resources, a sense quite foreign to the idea expressed by Saussure’s langue with its ‘static’ connotation (cf. 119, 129, 143).

What We Are Going to Talk About and How

13

Like the lexemes of the vocabulary we have learned, grammatical systems exist in tongue as potentials enabling us to say what we have in mind. They provide us with the operational capacity, the mechanism, for representing any momentary experience we may want to talk about. That is, the meaning expressed by a word when used in a sentence is not something in the speaker’s experience but a representation of that experiential entity or process, and it is the lexical and grammatical resources of tongue that enable the mind to represent its own live experience in order to express it. As we shall see, this gives rise to the lexical import specific to each word of the language and to the general, grammatical meaning categorizing words in different types. Thus, like lexemes where it is more obvious, number morphemes are instituted in tongue for the purpose of representing some aspect of the experience a speaker has in mind as part of the meaning of a substantive. As we shall see later, other morphemes contribute to the forming of substantives, so that the substantive in tongue is itself a systemic unit, a permanently instituted mental program for forming a certain type of word. In fact, as a grammatical potential in tongue each part of speech is a systemic means for forming a given type of word. That is to say, our tongue is, on its grammatical side, made up of a set of word-forming systems systemically linked together. Guillaume expressed this view as follows: Any tongue taken as a whole is a vast, rigorously coherent system made up of several systems linked to one another by relationships of systemic dependence and together forming a whole. (1984, 104) He liked to repeat that one’s tongue is not just a system, but rather a system of systems and it is the job of linguistics to discover and describe the makeup of each of these systems in order to obtain a view of the all-embracing system for forming words. Thus the assumption of an underlying order in language gives fundamental importance to the notion of grammatical system instituted in the preconscious mind for representing. Like any other system, this implies two or more parts forming a coherent whole, but what distinguishes grammatical systems from many other systems, however, is that their parts are conceptual, like the notions ‘singular’ and ‘plural’. That is, the system of number opposes mental

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Lessons on the Noun Phrase in English

components, potential meanings, not sounds, and so its parts are mentally related in a way permitting them to represent in an abstract manner a certain aspect of our experience. We will see that, for a system to carry out its representational role every time we want to speak, not only does the basic relation between its morphemes involve an operation but the morphemes themselves are inherently operational. Moreover since each such system is itself part of the underlying order, it is related to other systems to form a network or system of systems. It is hoped that these lessons will provide some substantiation of this initial assumption of the theory on which these lessons are based. All of this led Guillaume to a remarkable view of tongue as a potential for whatever we can think and say: “Tongue is a systemic whole englobing the entire range of what is thinkable and containing systems each of which covers one specific part of the thinkable” (1984, 104). This may appear exaggerated until we reflect on the fact that the system of tongue is, in fact, the system of the word in any given language. In every language we find minimal sayable units of meaning, vocables, which can relate to other such units to form a sentence.8 These “voice-able” units, what we call words, are constructed differently in different languages. In fact no two languages put words together in exactly the same way. In some languages, like English, French, and German, the word-forming systems are very similar, but in others they are vastly different, to the point where anything approaching a complete dictionary of words is inconceivable. For example, in his Basic Siglit Inuvialuit Eskimo Grammar, Lowe comments on tuktu-, a wordbase signifying ‘caribou,’ as follows (16): “If one were to work out all the different possible words that could be formed from this single wordbase – quite understandably, no one has ever tried to do it – there is good reason to believe that the number of forms would come up to the hundreds of thousands.” This suggests the immense difference between word-forming systems like the one an anglophone has learned as an infant and the one learned by an Inuit infant. It also indicates that linguists cannot assume that words formed like English substantives and verbs are to be found in all languages. The importance of words, of the way we construct words in our language, becomes more obvious when we recall that whatever we think by means of language we have represented by means of words. It still remains to work out many of the implications of this.

What We Are Going to Talk About and How

15

Like any other system in a language, its all-embracing word-constructing system can never emerge as such into consciousness, and yet it is one of the “hidden things” found in all languages, albeit instituted more or less differently in each one. If it is true that “All science is the search for unity in hidden likenesses,” as Bronowski claims, then the perspective on the word evoked by Guillaume is indeed an exciting one, one we will explore in English. We will be examining the noun phrase in subsequent lessons against this general background in an effort to discern how the grammatical forming of each word enables it to fulfil its particular function in the noun phrase.

LESSON TWO

Substantive, Adjective and Adverb the Theory of Incidence A relationship of very general scope, the most general of all in language, is that which is instituted in the mind between import and support. Guillaume 1971, 152

TRADITIONAL DEFINITIONS

It is traditional in English grammars to classify words according to their part of speech and we shall examine those commonly found as components of a noun phrase: substantive or noun, adjective, adverb, determiner, pronoun. Leaving the discussion of determiners and pronouns until later, we will first examine those parts of speech that bring some appreciable lexical meaning, a lexeme, to the phrase. When we turn to the way these are traditionally described in standard grammars, we find some food for thought. No doubt the following, given as definitions in Curme 1935, are familiar to everyone: A noun or substantive is a word used as the name of a living being or lifeless thing. (1) An adjective is a word that modifies a noun or pronoun. (42) An adverb is a word that modifies a verb, an adjective, or another adverb. (72) Commonplace though they may be, these descriptions call for comment. The first thing to strike one here is the fact that the adjective and the adverb are described in terms of other words the type of word they can relate to syntactically, whereas the substantive1 is described, not in terms of words, but in terms of realities that are outside

Substantive, Adjective and Adverb

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language (living beings and lifeless things), the type of entity they can relate to through reference. This leads to characterizing the substantive by what it is, a noun or “name,” whereas the adjective and the adverb are characterized by what they do: they are used to modify, qualify, describe, etc. Based as it is on readily observed characteristics, this approach may have a value in recognizing parts of speech but it is hardly sufficient as a basis for analysis since it involves two different criteria without indicating what there is in common between them. That is, granted that adverbs, adjectives, and substantives are all words, they should be distinguished on the basis of what makes them words. Moreover, as they stand, these traditional definitions would lead one to think that substantives do not relate to other words and that adjectives and adverbs refer to nothing outside language. The problem is not limited to traditional grammars. In a recent study of the noun phrase based on a functional approach, Rijkhoff (10) finds that “there is still no general consensus among typologists on what constitutes a verb, a noun, or an adjective” so he bases his study on an approach where “crucial reference is made to the function(s) that a lexical item can fulfil without having to resort to special grammatical measures.” That is, nouns are viewed not as words with a particular grammatical makeup but as exercising certain functions. As a consequence, among the “most important findings” of this study of fifty-two languages (but not English), the first two are: “Nouns are lexically specified for a particular seinsart or ‘mode of being’ (just as verbs can be characterized in terms of Aktionsart or ‘mode of action’)… .” “The Seinsart of noun can be defined in terms of the spatial features Shape and Homogeneity.” (346) Characterizing a substantive in this way, i.e. in terms of the spatial features of whatever it designates or refers to, provides a far more general, and so more satisfactory, view than the usual “person, place or thing” type of description, but it is still a characterization based on what is designated and not on the grammatical characteristics of the word which would explain its syntactic functions. We will attempt below to describe what constitutes English substantives grammatically and show that it is their grammatical makeup that not only permits their use in a noun phrase but

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Lessons on the Noun Phrase in English

also enables them to represent the spatial “mode of being” of what they refer to. The problem is approached by cognitivists as well, but in a more abstract way. “Fundamental to cognitive grammar” is the distinction “between two kinds of linguistic unit: those that designate things, and those that designate relations. All linguistic units belong to one of these two categories” (Taylor 1996, 81).2 Here “thing” is understood as a “region” established by “a set of interconnected entities” and “relation” as the “interconnections” between entities (cf. Langacker 1987b, 68). In this view then, it seems that the difference between a substantive, seen as designating a space (region) containing a set of entities, and an adjective or adverb seen as designating a relation between entities is also presented in terms of what they designate, what they refer to outside language. This leads Taylor (1996, 84) to raise the question of what the “distinction between things and relations” is based on and prompts him to make the following pertinent comment: “A plausible answer is that it concerns conceptual autonomy vs. conceptual dependence, that is, the extent to which it is possible to conceptualize an entity without making necessary and intrinsic reference to another entity.” Taylor’s suggestion here is that the distinction lies not in the entity itself, but in the way we think it thanks to our language. That is, we should analyze a substantive not in terms of the experiential entity it designates, its designatum, but in the way it “conceptualizes” what it designates. This is an important observation since it brings in the fundamental distinction between the experience one has in mind to talk about and the meaning of the words one uses to talk about it. Through its meaning a word permits us to “conceptualize,” or as we shall term it here (following Guillaume’s terminology), “represent” our experience. We shall see that the way adjectives and adverbs represent experience entails the grammatical requirement of applying their meaning to the meaning of another word (or words), whereas with substantives there is no such requirement. That is, words are grammatical entities to be defined in terms of how they represent what they designate, in terms of their meaning and not in terms of the designatum itself. In order to bring this out we will examine each of these word types in turn, trying to see what the traditional descriptions can tell us.

Substantive, Adjective and Adverb

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ADJECTIVES AND ADVERBS AND HOW THEY “QUALIFY”

If we take an ordinary noun phrase like the subject in: A small dog makes a good pet.

the above grammar book definition tells us that small qualifies or describes or modifies the substantive. Are we to understand from this that dog is a small substantive? Obviously not. That is, taken at its face value this definition does not make sense because the adjective does not tell us about the substantive as a grammatical entity, as a type of word. This is not merely a quibble because it will lead us to grasp with more precision what grammarians have in mind, namely that the adjective tells us about something in the substantive. What is it then in the substantive that small qualifies? Obviously it is the meaning of the substantive that is involved here and not its sign: its mental side and not its physical side. However it must be recalled that, as with any other word, the meaning that the sign calls to mind when we hear or read the above noun phrase is twofold: lexical and grammatical. And it would make no sense to qualify as ‘small’3 the grammatical meaning of a word – in this case the grammatical elements constituting the part of speech substantive – since this does not vary in size from one substantive to another. If then ‘small’ qualifies neither the word dog nor its physical sign nor its grammatical makeup, this leaves only the lexical meaning of the substantive. Thus it appears that notion ‘small’ characterizes the notion or lexeme ‘dog’. Again we must proceed with caution because the adjective obviously does not describe the notion or lexeme as such: it does not tell us that the lexeme ‘dog’ is small (whatever that would mean). Rather, ‘small’ tells us about the manner of conceptualizing ‘dog’, how to form it in our minds on reading or hearing this particular noun phrase. That is to say, dog, like every other substantive in one’s vocabulary, makes its notion, its lexeme, available for representing what the speaker wishes to talk about. When, as a speaker, we call ‘dog’ to mind, actualizing it, we may find it is too abstract, not sufficiently precise to represent adequately what we have in mind, and so we call on another lexeme, ‘small’ to complete the picture. When this complementary notion is represented in the

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Lessons on the Noun Phrase in English

form of an adjective, it intervenes directly in the way the speaker actualizes the substantive’s lexeme to produce a more complex notion. And so as listeners or readers when we encounter the above noun phrase, the adjective imports the characteristic signified by small thus contributing to a more precise representation of the entity referred to by dog. This is how, in the terms of many grammars, an adjective “describes” or “qualifies” or “modifies” a substantive. We can depict this process of adding the lexical input of the adjective to that of the substantive as follows: ‘small’ ‘dog’ 'small' 'dog'

Thus the notion of the adjective is added to,4 integrated into, that of the substantive and as a result we get the impression of a sort of fusion between the two so that they are no longer seen as distinct notions in that sentence. This result can be diagrammed as follows: ‘smalldog’

The result of integrating the lexical import of small into that of dog in this way is to produce a single complex notion which corresponds to the extra-linguistic reality because in our experience the entity we are talking about and its size cannot be separated. This brief description of how small functions permits us to distinguish two elements in its makeup. In order to fulfil its function it must, obviously, bring in a lexeme, here the notion ‘of reduced size, of lesser magnitude than usual’, and it must also be able to apply this meaning to the lexeme of dog. That is to say, an adjective must both bring an appreciable lexical matter to the noun phrase and have the capacity to carry this import over to the lexeme of the substantive. This capacity is particular to the adjective: no other type of word has the capacity to intervene in the process of thinking the substantive’s lexeme, to influence the way we call it to mind. So we are led to distinguish in the makeup of the adjective a potentiality, a mental mechanism,5 for effecting this operation of transporting its lexical import and adding it to another lexeme, that of a substantive. Thus it seems that both a particular lexical notion and the means for transporting it to a lexical

Substantive, Adjective and Adverb

21

support in the substantive are inherent in the makeup of the adjective. This conclusion, which follows from those definitions whereby the adjective is said to qualify or describe a substantive, will suffice for now since the aim here is merely to distinguish the parts of speech on the basis of their makeup. We will return to the adjective below to examine some of the particular problems of usage it presents. Let us now turn to the adverb, which is said to qualify a verb, an adjective or another adverb. Thus in the phrase an extremely small dog, the adverb has a function similar to that of the adjective in that it “qualifies” another word, here the adjective small. Can we therefore assume that it has the same capacity as small, the same ability to intervene in the process involved in thinking the notion of another word? Yes and no. There is definitely something different in their capacity to qualify other notions because an adverb cannot qualify a substantive’s lexeme (*an extremely dog 6), and an adjective cannot qualify a verb or another adjective’s lexeme. On the other hand, although adverbs and adjectives do not qualify the same type of word, the way they help specify the notion of another word is similar. That is, our comments above on the adjective can be applied in large part to the adverb: it is neither small as a word nor its physical sign nor its grammatical meaning which is characterized by the adverb. Rather the speaker calls on extremely to represent an impression which small alone could not express: a particular degree of smallness. That is, ‘extremely’ specifies how the speaker thinks ‘small’ when applying it to ‘dog’. This can be suggested in a diagram showing the carrying of the adverb’s lexeme over to that of the adjective: 'small' 'dog' ‘extremely’ ‘small’

Thus the adverb tells the reader how to actualize the notion ‘small’ – to think smallness to the nth degree – in applying it to the notion ‘dog’. As in the case of small, we therefore distinguish in the makeup of extremely, besides its physical sign, both a lexical meaning and some operative means for carrying this meaning over to ‘small’. Since the adverb cannot add its meaning directly to ‘dog’, however, it is important to remember that there must be some difference between its mechanism and that of the adjective.

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Lessons on the Noun Phrase in English

This results in a complex qualifying notion being applied to the substantive, as in the following diagram:

‘extremelysmall’ ‘dog’ 'extremelysmall' 'dog'

In this way the combining of these three lexemes results in a sort of ‘dog-characterized-by-extreme-smallness’ meaning, the representation of a dog that could not be imagined smaller. Any paraphrase of the resulting meaning expressed by the phrase is inadequate because the three notions, no longer separate, form a single complex whole, as the following diagram suggests: ‘extremelysmalldog’

Thus the different lexemes of the three words are successively amalgamated into a single import constituting the lexical import of the noun phrase. It should be remarked that the physical signs do not amalgamate into one complex sound but rather maintain the distinctness each requires to call to mind its own meaning. That is to say, this fusion of the lexical imports of different words into one meaning-complex is a purely mental operation making it possible for speakers to express more adequately what they have in mind. In our extra-linguistic experience the dog and its size are inseparable, but they must be separated in thought for the purpose of representing adequately our experience by means of the lexemes available in tongue. The three lexical imports can be reconstituted as a single meaning-complex, the end-all of the noun phrase, thanks to the operative possibilities built into the grammatical makeup of each type of word. We can now see that the terms found in traditional grammars to characterize how adverbs relate to adjectives and adjectives to substantives – “qualify,” “describe,” “modify” – evoke the result of constructing a noun phrase. Even speaking in terms of “designating a relation” evokes the outcome observable in the sentence. To understand more adequately, we have been led to examine what precedes this result in discourse, to trace the bringing into relationship

Substantive, Adjective and Adverb

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of the words involved, to look for what permits one word to qualify another. We have seen that there must be some sort of operative possibility or mechanism that permits applying the lexical meaning of one word to another, a process depicted in the above diagrams by a curved arrow. We will see below that this operative potential lies at the basis of the adjective and the adverb as parts of speech, but before going on to that we must first introduce an adequate terminology and then take a look at the substantive. The process of applying one meaning to another is called by Guillaume incidence. This is a term, derived from the Latin incidere with the sense of ‘fall upon’, to designate the process whereby an import of meaning is transported to a support of meaning. That is, ‘extremely’ in the above example is an import made incident to, applied to, said about its support ‘small’, whose incidence to its support ‘dog’ can then be completed. This process of incidence making lexemes “describe” or “modify” their support is not limited to adjectives and adverbs. It is the grammatical process establishing the relation between any two components of a noun phrase and between the noun phrase and any other component of the sentence. The process of incidence is a mental operation – mental since it relates one unit of meaning to another – which in fact is always involved in establishing grammatical relations in the sentence because speaking always involves saying something about something (or someone). Thus for example, the relation we observe between a predicate and its subject has been established by an operation of incidence: the predicate is the import of meaning which, through the verb, is made incident to its support in the subject. That is, this process of relating of one meaning to another gives rise to relationships we can observe between words and between groups of words in a sentence. As a consequence, when examining the function of any word in discourse, we first try to discern, imagine, the operation(s) of incidence giving rise to the observed relations with other words, and then work back to the mechanism of incidence inherent in the word permitting it to establish those relations. This concern for discerning a word’s mechanism of incidence is particularly important when we turn to what is often called the headword of the noun phrase, the word providing the support for the import of adjectives and their adverbs.

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Lessons on the Noun Phrase in English THE SUBSTANTIVE

A substantive is defined above as “a word used as the name of a living being or lifeless thing.” How can this distinguish the substantive from the other two word types? After all, small names a quality and extremely names a degree, and, one might add, any word in discourse names whatever its meaning represents. If every substantive, adjective, adverb or verb is the name of an experiential “something or someone,” be it a person, place, thing, quality, degree, process or whatever, how can we distinguish one type of word, the substantive, by calling it a “name”? This objection is largely justified, but as we will see below the substantive names in a special way, and so the traditional definition can be more profitably criticized for not specifying how the substantive names. For the moment it is important to dwell on another question the above definition raises. The adjective and the adverb were defined in terms of what they do in a noun phrase: they qualify, describe, modify another word. Rather than defining a substantive in terms of what it is, “a name of …,” this should prompt us to raise the question of what it does in the noun phrase. And here, from what we have seen so far, it seems clear that the substantive, or rather its lexical import, serves as a support for those other lexical imports incident to it. In this way we can understand why the substantive is often called the headword of the noun phrase: it is at the end of the chain of lexical imports applied one to the other and does not require another notion as its own support. Traditionally, it has been called a substantive (cf. its Latin root substare = ‘stand under’) because it signifies the essence or nature of what it represents and so can stand by itself (cf. Michael, 88). This is the term adopted here, rather than the more common “noun,” because it designates more adequately the function in the noun phrase, making us think of a word whose notion, standing by itself, can act as a support, receiving the incidence of notions not standing by themselves, imported by adverbs and adjectives. The term “noun,” from the Latin nomen, ‘name’, is more general and so is appropriate to name the phrase with its adjectives and adverbs, which also help name something, as we have seen. As Guillaume (forthcoming) points out, “The noun is the genus, and substantive and adjective the two species” so that in older grammars we find the more precise expressions “substantive noun” and “adjective noun” as a manner of bringing out different ways of being a noun.

Substantive, Adjective and Adverb

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Observing that its relation with the adjective (and indirectly the adverb) is one of support in this way is only the first step in understanding the functioning of the substantive in the noun phrase. As in the cases examined so far, we must now explore what this presupposes in the substantive. What in the makeup of a substantive enables it to fulfil this function of a support which calls for no other lexeme as a support for itself? That is, by means of their lexical imports the adverb (indirectly) and the adjective (directly) say something about the substantive, characterize the import of the substantive. But what does the substantive’s lexical import characterize? It does not modify or describe anything else, yet it does say something. About what? Where does its lexical import find a support? The answer to this question will provide the key to understanding the makeup of the substantive, bringing out what is special about the way it names and throwing light on the functioning of the noun phrase. Reflecting on the way the adverb and the adjective bring an import of meaning to a support of meaning, Guillaume saw that the substantive does essentially the same thing – it too makes an import incident to a support. There is, however, a difference, a major difference. Whereas the adverb finds a support in an adjective (or another adverb) itself seeking a support, and the adjective finds a support in a substantive, the substantive finds its support within itself, within its own lexical import. This difference led him to characterize the adverb and the adjective as word types grammatically enabled to exercise incidence externally, the substantive as a type of word able to exercise incidence internally. That is, the grammatical mechanism making a word an adjective or an adverb is a capacity for external incidence; that making a word a substantive is the capacity for internal incidence. The notion of internal incidence brings us to the crux of the problem of the substantive. Once we understand how it works, how a word can be said of itself, we will have a basis for exploring the rest of the noun phrase. We will address this crucial question in the next section, but first I want to bring out an important point, one that will enable us to situate our discussion of incidence within a more precise framework. The threefold distinction of word relations in a noun phrase has often been observed, the three-rank classification in Jespersen (1954 II, 2) probably being the best known. Here we have seen that

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Lessons on the Noun Phrase in English

a) the adjective depends on a mechanism (a mode of operation) which makes its import directly incident to a support in the substantive, a first degree of external incidence; b) the adverb depends on a mechanism which makes its import indirectly incident to a support in the substantive, a second degree of external incidence; c) the substantive depends on a mechanism of internal incidence, which makes its lexical import incident to something in the substantive itself. To be able to discuss the three types or ranks of word with reference to the same operational parameter in this way is a major step in analysis since we can now distinguish them on the same grammatical basis. That is, being operational, incidence is a parameter common to all three and so provides a first view of what enables each of them to function, to fit in with the others to form a whole, a noun phrase. The adverb, the adjective and the substantive really are “parts” of speech, parts of the spoken (or written) language, because each is grammatically formed to fit together with the others, like the parts of a watch, to form a larger unit, a phrase ending in a headword said of itself. INTERNAL INCIDENCE

We can explore the concept of internal incidence most easily by recalling a distinction concerning the substantive that was worked out centuries ago in logic. It was observed that we can name a fourlegged creature that barks a dog or an animal. We can also name a four-legged creature that meows an animal, but not a dog. Observations of this sort led philosophers to wonder why it is that animal can name many more four-legged creatures than dog can, whereas collie cannot name as many. Upon reflexion, they came to the conclusion that the determining factor is the word’s lexical import, what I have called its lexeme, which they understood to consist of a set of attributes, characteristics, or traits included or comprehended in the word’s meaning, called the word’s comprehension. On comparing them, they realized that the comprehension of dog is not the same as that of animal: that is, the lexeme of dog includes whatever is in the comprehension ‘animal’ but also comprehends whatever characteristics are specific to canines. In like

Substantive, Adjective and Adverb

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fashion, the comprehension of collie includes whatever is in the comprehension of dog plus what specifies its own species. Such observations led them to the following conclusion: because the comprehension of collie is greater, more fully specified, than that of dog, the range of entities it can name is less, not so extensive; because the comprehension of animal is less, includes fewer specifying characteristics, than the comprehension of dog, its range of application, or as they termed it, its extension is greater. In short, the less a word’s comprehension (i.e. the more general its meaning), the greater its extension; the greater a word’s comprehension (i.e. the more specific its meaning), the smaller its extension. The makeup of a word’s comprehension determines its extension. What interests us here is the idea of a word’s extension, or better, its range of representation.7 The comprehension of a substantive, verb, adjective, or adverb constitutes a lexeme, a meaning potential that is permanently available to speakers to represent something or someone they wish to talk about. On the other hand, because a substantive’s lexeme categorizes it imposes a limit on the range of entities in our experience that the substantive can represent8; the lexeme ‘dog’ cannot represent a quadruped with horns or one that neighs. A substantive’s extension is delimited by its comprehension. However what I want to dwell on here is not what a substantive cannot name, but what it can name, the fact that a lexeme like ‘dog’ is a potential for giving us a linguistic representation of many four-legged animals, large or small, young or old, wild or tame. A substantive has this capacity because its lexeme represents the nature of whatever it names – the nature as understood by the speaker of course.9 This is what determines the breadth of a substantive’s extension: a substantive can be said of anything or everything within its extension, whatever is perceived as having the nature depicted by the lexeme. On the other hand, within its range of representation there is considerable variation in what a substantive actually does represent. It can be used to represent our experience of a single dog (this dog), of any number of dogs (these dogs), of all dogs (Dogs are carnivorous), of any set of dogs (A dog in the city must be walked), of any subspecies of dog (The German shepherd is an intelligent dog) and even of the species itself (The dog is related to the wolf ). That is, dog can be used to designate any one, any subset, or all of the dogs that exist, that have existed or that ever will exist. This suggests the

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Lessons on the Noun Phrase in English

extraordinary potentiality of a substantive’s comprehension: it can be extended to cover its total range or extension, as when it is used to represent the species, or a minimal portion of its range, as when it represents a single animal, or some intermediate portion, as when it represents a set. In brief, the extension is a potential permitting a variability in usage whereby only that portion the speaker wants to talk about is called to mind. Although we probably do not realize it, we exploit this extraordinary capacity every time we use a substantive, determining how much of its extension we need in order to represent what we have in mind to talk about. I insist on this because it gives us the key to the problem we are trying to elucidate, the key to internal incidence. By considering the relation between comprehension and extension, we have brought to light what the lexical import of a substantive is incident to: it is incident to that part or portion of its own extension – its “degree of extension” (Webster’s Third) or extensity – which is represented in the particular noun phrase being constructed. Since extension is a potential determined by its comprehension in tongue, it is an integral part of the lexeme. As a consequence, in a given act of speech, making its lexical import (or comprehension) incident to its extensity (that portion of its extension called for) constitutes an operation of internal incidence. In this way, a substantive is said about itself. Moreover, since this internal incidence is carried out each time a substantive is used, it provides a grammatical characteristic for defining the part of speech. The idea that a substantive’s extensity provides the support for internal incidence was put forward by Guillaume after reflecting on the distinction between comprehension and extension. He realized that, to represent the extensity required, a substantive’s extension has to be actualized each time the substantive is used. The idea of extensity as the actualization of extension required to represent a particular experiential entity is often neglected in grammars in spite of the fact that it reflects a necessary component of every use of a substantive. This can be illustrated by recalling the traditional distinction between proper nouns and common nouns. Various syntactic facts – for example, we normally need no article or other determiner to form a noun phrase with Shakespeare or Canada – suggest that we have here a particular type of substantive. Without any other lexical import or determiner they call to mind

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not just the idea ‘poet’ or ‘country’ but rather a specific poet or a specific country. It therefore seems that their comprehension consists not just in the characteristics for representing a class or category but also in sufficient particularizing characteristics for representing a specific individual belonging to that category. That is, because its lexical matter has been particularized to the point of being qualitatively singular, unrepeatable (and so not found as such in the plural10), a proper noun can characterize an individual without any outside help. Since it always signifies a single individual, the extensity of a proper noun used as such is invariable. From this we infer that its extension, its potential in tongue, is also minimal in scope. The difference between this sort of syntactic behaviour and that of common nouns is striking. When one and the same substantive, like dog, can be used to designate different individuals, it is said to be a common noun. The term “common” should be understood as applying not just to the physical sign but also, and primarily, to the mental significate, which provides a representation common to a whole series of individuals: the meaning is sufficiently general to represent and refer to any number of individuals without differentiating between them. It is the linguistic characterization of a category, the representation of an abstraction (something based on, but not found as such in, what we perceive of external reality), namely the nature of the entity so represented. Note that in common-noun usage the substantive can designate only the abstract category. In fact, a substantive has, as we have just seen, the potential of designating anything from the category to an individual, including some or all the individuals in the category as well as one or more types (sub-categories) within the category. In practice, the substantive is probably more frequently used to represent an individual or a number of individuals, but the remarkable thing is that it always represents them as belonging to the category. It is this remarkable representational range made possible by their lexical matter, this designating potential inherent in common nouns, that opposes them to proper nouns. Being invariable in its minimal extensity and so unable to designate a category as such, the proper noun is considered by Mill (cf. Jespersen 1948, 65) and others to be without comprehension, whereas here it is maintained that its minimal extension is the consequence of a maximal comprehension. This brings out that

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common and proper nouns have this in common: their lexical potential delimits a range, an extension albeit minimal in the latter case, within which their representing potential can operate. This brings us to the way a notion is instituted in tongue as a potential ready for use. This meaning potential consists of a lexeme for representing certain impressions arising from one’s ongoing experience, a comprehension that, when formed as a substantive, imposes its extension, the field within which it can be applied. As a consequence, when a substantive’s potential is actualized in a noun phrase, both the nature of something and its extensity – how much of its field the lexeme applies to in that particular use – are expressed. In this way, by representing both the extensity and the nature of what is contained in that space a substantive can “conceptualize an entity without making necessary any intrinsic reference to another entity” (Taylor 1996, 84) and so can designate its entity as a “thing,” in the terminology of the cognitivists. Because a substantive represents its own extensity as its own support, the incidence of its import of meaning to its support of meaning occurs within the substantive itself, or more precisely, during the process of substantivization, the process of forming the notion as a substantive. This opposes it to the adjective and the adverb, which, as we have seen, can not provide a representation of their actual field of application,11 of the support to which their meaning import is to be applied, since they are formed grammatically as words with external incidence. To have a more complete understanding of internal incidence, it remains to explore what in the substantive provides the abstract representation of extensity as the support of meaning. We have seen how the comprehension of a proper noun is particularized to the point that it cannot extend to more than one individual: its extension is minimal and as a consequence its extensity is invariable, so a proper noun is singular. This suggests that grammatical number has a role in quantifying the extensity of the substantive. When we examine number in later lessons we shall see how the system in English helps represent the spatial support of every substantive we use. Similarly for the system of gender that also appears to play a role here. Examining these two grammatical categories will give us a better idea of how the support of meaning, the extensity, finds an internal representation in the substantive, and this in turn will lead us to a clearer view of the role of the substantive’s grammatical person.

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Because of its internal incidence, a substantive can provide a support for other lexical elements in the noun phrase and so is called the headword. Moreover, it can designate the entity being talked about and so is said to be the name of something. That is, it can direct our attention to the extra-linguistic entity by applying its meaning (and that of the whole noun phrase) to the appropriate entity in the speaker’s momentary experiential field, the designatum. This too is a process of incidence, and to distinguish it from the grammatical incidence involved in syntax, we will call it referential incidence because it is the process of referring the meaning of the noun phrase to its extra-linguistic referent or designatum, to what the speaker has in mind to talk about. Again, the proper noun provides a clear picture: a substantive like Moscow by itself suffices to apply the import of meaning to the extra-linguistic support, the referent, so that a listener knows what the speaker is talking about. In the case of the common noun however, where there is a wide variety of possible applications for any lexical import, things are usually more complicated. The substantive dog by itself is usually incapable of making explicit the particular referent the speaker has in view and so adjectives and adverbs are often required to make its lexical import more specific. As we shall see, this is also where the various determiners are called for – to represent and express in a more explicit manner the form of the support, with the result that the lexeme of the substantive is itself incident to this more explicit, formal representation of its own support depicted by a determiner. And so, insofar as the support of the lexical matter is concerned, it can be argued that the determiner is the headword of the phrase (cf. Hewson 1991), whereas from the point of view of the import of lexical matter, as we have seen, the substantive is generally considered the headword. We will return to this in the lessons on determiners. EXTERNAL INCIDENCE

We have examined the substantive in a general way to show how its lexical import, formed by its grammatical import, results in a word with internal incidence, the defining trait of substantives as a part of speech. On the other hand, an adjective puts us in the situation of representing something without telling us what this import of meaning is said about. For this reason, the adjective is said to have

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external incidence and it is this manner of effecting incidence – saying something about another lexical import which has internal incidence – that defines what the adjective is as a part of speech. Being incident to something it does not call to mind, the adjective characterizes by representing a property (or quality or attribute) of that entity. Since a property depends on something else for its existence, the adjective representing it is a “relation” word “making necessary and intrinsic reference to another entity.” This contrasts with a substantive, which, as we have seen, characterizes an entity by representing what is seen as inherent to its existence, its nature, whereas an adjective like small can call to mind impressions of ‘restricted size’, but cannot indicate what this property characterizes, what the nature of its support in the noun phrase is, since the multifarious entities it can be used to characterize (a small boy, a small city, a small mistake, etc., etc.) are not grouped as a category or class in tongue. This way of regarding the adjective is basically quite commonplace, being little more than the common definition explicated in terms of what this definition leaves implicit. Since any result presupposes some process leading up to and producing it, we have inferred that here too there is a prior mental operation of applying one meaning to another. (It has to be inferred because, like most mental processes, it does not emerge into consciousness and so cannot be observed.) Like any other operation, this one implies a capacity or potency, something inherent in the adjective: a mechanism of external incidence which gives its meaning the form of an import calling for a support of meaning in a substantive. This discussion of external incidence is based on simple examples. Of course many uses are much more complicated, as in the following from a newspaper ad: … a brand new selection of elegant one bedroom with den adult lifestyle condominium suites.12

The noun phrase object of the preposition of consists of two adjectives and two noun phrases (one including a prepositional phrase) all incident to the final substantive. This raises two questions: how condominium, generally considered to be a substantive, can function as an adjective, a question to be discussed in the next lesson when word formation is to be examined, and how

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noun phrases can function as adjectives, a question to be discussed when case is examined in lesson 4. To complete this presentation of incidence within the noun phrase it remains to comment on the external incidence of the adverb. Whereas the adjective requires a support characterized by internal incidence, the adverb requires one not characterized by internal incidence. Thus the adverb’s import can only find its ultimate support in what is being talked about through some intermediate support or supports. For this reason, we speak of the adverb as a word with external incidence of the second degree to distinguish it from the adjective, which is said to have external incidence of the first degree. This means that we find adverbs incident to the import of various kinds of word but not of substantives: adjectives (a highly explosive substance), other adverbs (a very handsomely paid job), verbs (You work quickly), prepositions (rather near the fire), all words that themselves call for an external support. That is, an adverb’s import is applied to the import of a word that is itself being applied to another support. For this reason, an adverb is sometimes said to be “incident to an ongoing incidence,”13 by which one understands incidence to a support that is itself involved in an operation of incidence to a support. The adverb’s diversity of use includes characterizing the relation between the imports of different word groups and even sentences (He felt ill. However he refused to consult a doctor.) In fact, according to Quirk et al. (438), “Because of its great heterogeneity, the adverb class is the most nebulous and puzzling of the traditional word classes.” This remarkable diversity of usage is examined in some detail in Guimier 1988, a study based on the idea of external incidence of the second degree. THE THEORY OF INCIDENCE

This then is the theory of incidence proposed by Guillaume insofar as it applies to substantives, adjectives and adverbs. Since it permits us to distinguish the three parts of speech on the basis of a common criterion it is more satisfactory than the usual way of treating them in grammars. And since it describes the process enabling each of them to play its role in the noun phrase, the theory gives a grammatical explanation of why adjectives and adverbs are said to “qualify” or to “designate relations” whereas substantives are said to

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“name” or to “designate things.” It was the realization that a substantive’s import is made incident to its own extensity, whereas an adjective’s import and an adverb’s import find a support in another word, that brought to light the different modes of operation involved here and led to a clearer view of the notion of incidence itself. That is, built into each of these parts of speech is a mental mechanism permitting incidence, different for each one in the way it operates, and this is what enables it to be a part of speech and so to take its place as a component of the noun phrase. Thanks to this operational potential we can understand how a word can enter into relation with other words. For Guillaume (1971, 152), this reflects a characteristic of words in general: “A relationship of very general scope, the most general of all in language, is that which is instituted in the mind between import and support.” Although all languages establish relations between the words of a sentence – “any word is an import of meaning, and it is destined for a support” – it cannot be assumed for all languages that this potential for incidence is built into the words themselves as in English and the other Indo-European languages, where it is this intended support and the mechanism of incidence integrated into a word “which make what is called the part of speech, i.e. which categorize words.” Reduced to the essentials in this way, the theory of incidence raises a number of issues, one of which is the importance it grants the part of speech. This view of a word implies that its use is determined by its part of speech, whereas it might be objected that when we observe usage it is rather the position a word occupies that tells us its function. In an example like a station bus we understand that bus is the headword representing what is being talked about, whereas station is the qualifier, because of their relative positions. If their positions are reversed, so are their functions: a bus station. This shows that position in the noun phrase is an important way for indicating to the listener or reader the relations of incidence involved, the function of a word, and so, by inference, how a word has been formed in the mind of the speaker or writer so as to enable it to carry out that function. In order to understand either of these phrases, the listener must be able to reconstruct the words mentally, not just by calling up their lexical import but also by forming this import grammatically the way the speaker did in the first place. And for us, trying to analyze and become consciously aware of the

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grammatical makeup of the phrase, we too must get back to the way the words are provided with a capacity for incidence enabling them to function as a particular part of speech. Thus it is the capacity for incidence, the part of speech with which the speaker forms the lexeme for each particular use, that determines the grammatical nature of bus and station and enables them to fulfil their function in the phrase being constructed. The position in the noun phrase is the perceivable sign that indicates this function thereby implying the word’s grammatical nature for the listener. Another objection to conceiving a word in English as a part of speech has sometimes been raised: if bus is by nature a substantive in the first of the above phrases, how can it function as an adjective with external incidence in the second one? Similarly for station. This practice, very common in English, is considered by some grammars to involve converting a substantive into an adjective. We also find just the opposite “conversion,” as some grammars call it, in examples like the well-known book title Small Is Beautiful, where small functions as a substantive, the subject of the sentence. The phenomenon is not, of course, limited to adjectives and substantives, but the very fact that it is found would seem to be clear evidence that parts of speech are less important than the function of a word. After all, the objection goes, if a word is found in different functions, how can it occur now as one part of speech, now as another? This has led some grammarians and linguists to reject the very idea of the parts of speech as an overall system and classify words according to their function. This objection poses a real problem and calls for a clear answer. I am going to argue that it is based on a misconception of what a word is, of how a word exists when we are not using it in a sentence. In order to do this, however, we must first look at the structure of a word in English. The next lesson will be devoted to this general question with further consideration of the problem of “conversion” just raised, and will permit us to focus on particular problems arising in the structure of the substantive in subsequent lessons.

L E S S O N T H RE E

Parts of Speech and the Word … the syntactical function of a word is part of its meaning. Michael, 46

INTRODUCTION

The problem that came up in the last lesson, the categorizing of words, is by no means new since it has always posed a problem for linguists and grammarians. Not satisfied with the traditional acceptance of parts of speech, one linguist in the last century, C.C. Fries, analyzed a large number of recorded telephone conversations in English without reference to parts of speech. He classified words according to a single criterion, their position in the sentence, in an attempt to establish word classes on a strictly objective basis, i.e. making no appeal to tradition or to the subjective side of language, meaning (other than his understanding of what each sentence meant, of course, since this criterion permitted him to distinguish which groups of words constituted a sentence and which groups of sounds constituted a word). The interesting thing about his findings is that the word classes he established correspond to a high degree with the traditional parts of speech. From this it can be concluded that, as far as we are able to ascertain, the parts of speech traditionally found in grammars correlate in large measure with something in the reality of English speech. It follows that, if we manage to discern what this “something” is, we will be able to obtain a more adequate understanding of parts of speech, alias word classes, and so have some hope of throwing light on our problem of the relation between a word and its function. While both expressions, “word classes” and “parts of speech,” can be used to designate this phenomenon, the latter is used here, not because it dates from antiquity but rather because of the postulate of

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Psychomechanics outlined above, to the effect that a language in its fundamental structure, in its formal or grammatical makeup, is systemic. The word “parts” is commonly used in the sense of components systemically related to one another, as when we speak of the parts of a mechanical device like a watch or a computer. Taken in this sense, then, “part” reminds us that the relationships between words of different types in any unit of speech, any sentence, are somehow orderly, systemic, coherently organized in terms of function. The word “class” on the other hand suggests a more contingent, less constraining type of relationship between individuals, such as a common characteristic or membership, but no interplay of diverse relationships between classes enabling the whole to function. In speaking of parts of speech, therefore, there is the implication that each word relates its lexical import to that of other words in such a way as to form a coherent grammatical whole, a sentence.1 When we consider how English grammars have presented the parts of speech, however, there appears to be little grounds for assuming that they constitute a system. In his study of the English grammars published up to 1800, Michael finds (208) the “diversity of systems … surprising.” In the 259 grammars concerned, there are 275 classifications of the parts of speech which “fall into no fewer than 56 different systems.” This leads him to conclude (280) that grammarians were dissatisfied with the tradition because “the components of the systems, the parts of speech, were imprecise, inadequate and unstable.” It seems that the situation has changed little since 1800. The reason for this state of affairs? According to Michael (274), the parts of speech had originally developed, and had almost without exception subsequently been used, as a comprehensive set of word-classes: all words could be put into one of them. Even within the tradition, however, these classes had not been mutually exclusive … Grammarians were, in our eyes, inconsistent in their use of wordclasses. Their belief that the classes were comprehensive could be justified only if the classes were mutually exclusive. If some words could be considered as belonging to two or more classes there was always the possibility that the characteristics which permitted this alternative classification were the criteria by which a new class should be determined. Until this question had been answered it was not possible to say how many word-classes there

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were. That these uncertainties were not understood by the early grammarians is another consequence of the fact that they had not yet distinguished between formal, structural and syntactic criteria. Michael had already (47) pointed out that what lay at the basis of this problem of criteria was the failure to recognize a twofold meaning component within the word: “The renaissance grammarians made no use of the two most important ideas about the word available to them: Dionysius Thrax’s description of it as a minimum unit of discourse, and the speculative grammarians’ distinction between semantic and syntactic units.” The Modistae or speculative grammarians of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries were concerned with finding the causes or “proper principles” of what they observed, as their name suggested: “Traditionally speculative was derived from a speculum (a mirror): seeing something in a mirror (per speculum) is perceiving cause through effect, because in an effect ‘the similitude of the cause shines forth’.” (Kelly, 1) They pointed out that when a physical sign is associated with a meaning to form a word, it is given a double power of signifying. It signifies its notion or lexical meaning and “consignifies” its formal or grammatical meaning (for the detail see Kelly, 31–8). Michael (46) gives the example a green jacket, where green signifies the colour and consignifies that “it attributes the colour to the jacket.” That is to say, “the syntactical function of a word” – what arises from its part of speech – “is part of its meaning,” to be distinguished from what the word signifies, its notional or lexical meaning. Or, as Humboldt put it (128): “Languages like Sanskrit”, i.e. Indo-European languages, “already weave into the unity of the word its relations to the sentence.” Unfortunately, the discovery in the Middle Ages of this feature of words, “which is more easily recognizable in English than in Latin” according to Michael, was not handed on by the renaissance grammarians. As a consequence, in the analysis of words in English grammars there has been no consistent attempt to distinguish between their lexical meaning and their grammatical meaning, between what they signify and what they consignify. Even today, the term “semantics” is often used in grammars with no indication as to whether it designates lexical meaning only or both types indiscriminately. This brief historical excursus is valuable because it suggests that perhaps what has been lacking in the discussion of the parts of

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speech over the last 400 years is an attempt to discern what words consignify. That is, it implies that there is a need to describe the syntactic function of a part of speech in terms of meaning, of grammatical or formal meaning, to the exclusion of the particular lexical meaning that a word signifies. In the last lesson this was undertaken for substantive, adjective, and adverb by outlining a theory of incidence for these three parts of speech. It is now time to examine what this theory, which also provides a basis for examining the other parts of speech, implies for the way words in general are constructed. That is, having proposed a mechanism of incidence as a component for every word in English and the criterion for distinguishing different parts of speech, we have now to make explicit what this presupposes for the makeup of words in general, for the system of the word in English. TWO TYPES OF MEANING

As in most other analytical approaches to language, a word will here be considered a composite entity consisting of a physically perceivable sign – a sayable sound or set of sounds arising from the phonological system of the speaker – linked to a mental entity, its meaning or significate (the technical term), within which what the word signifies is distinguished from what it consignifies. That is, I assume that the mental component of any substantive, verb, adjective, or adverb in English is made up of a lexical meaning and a grammatical meaning. This can be illustrated by simple examples. Thus in They walked down the street and They were walking down the street both walked and walking express the same lexical significate or lexeme, but their grammatical significates (past tense vs. present participle) are different. On the other hand the lexical significate of running in They were running down the street is different from that of walking, whereas their grammatical significates are identical. It is important to notice that these two types of meaning are not related to the word in the same way: the lexical meaning is proper to a given word or small set of words, whereas the grammatical meaning is common to a whole series of words. Thus since there is no other word in English that expresses exactly the same notion as, for example, small, smaller, smallest, the lexical meaning represented by small is considered to be unique, whereas in a small dog it is grammatically indistinguishable from so many other words with external

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incidence exercising the same adjectival function that nobody has ever counted them. Having observed this difference, Guillaume concluded that lexical meaning particularizes a word, discriminating it from all other words, whereas grammatical meaning generalizes a word, puts it in the same functional category as some, perhaps many, other words. This first step in analyzing word meaning raises the question of the relationship between its two components, lexical and grammatical. It should be kept in mind that recognizing a word to be in a functional category is not merely a matter of grouping it with other words on the basis of some common characteristic such as position, observable in a sentence. Rather, it involves giving it the ability to function syntactically, building into it the same capacity for incidence as other words playing the same role in a sentence. That is, the grammatical meaning categorizes the lexical import of a word, imposes on it a categorial form, a part of speech, that permits it to fulfil the function foreseen for it. Unless it is categorized in this way, a lexeme cannot form a word that functions as part of a syntactic unit. Consequently a word like Wow!, which functions as a sentence but, as an interjection, cannot relate to other parts of a sentence, is sometimes considered not to be formed as a part of speech. Forming a lexeme as a given part of speech thus gives it the potential for playing a given syntactic role, the capacity to relate its import in a given way to the imports of other words in the sentence. This is why we are led to view the relation between lexical and grammatical significates dynamically, as a process whereby the lexical matter is shaped by the grammatical form. And this process of forming the lexeme grammatically is a necessary one in the construction of a word since every word, outside of interjections, is capable of relating to other words. The general, categorial meaning gives to the particular, notional meaning a mental form, a part of speech, that determines what kind of word it is – determines it in view of the function the word is to fulfil in the sentence being constructed. Adopting the view that syntactic function is somehow built into the word as part of its grammatical meaning entails an important point, namely that shaping the lexical matter by means of the grammatical form is an essential phase in constructing the meaning of a word. That is, every time we use a word these two meaning components must be combined mentally to constitute a unit of meaning adapted to the needs of the sentence in which the word is to be

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used. Before going on to explore further this step of our analysis, however, I want to illustrate it more fully in order to bring out the importance of understanding how a word’s meaning is put together. This will take us back to a problem already raised. CONVERSION VS. CONSTRUCTION

The problem was raised in the last lesson by Small Is Beautiful and the station bus. The type of usage exemplified by small and station has been analyzed respectively as an adjective “used substantivally” and a substantive “used attributively” (cf. Schibsbye, 90–2), but there is no indication of the process involved in adapting a word with a given grammatical form, say a substantive, to function like a word with a very different form, an adjective or, as we shall see shortly, a verb. It is as though the way one uses a word were quite independent of its part of speech, as though its function had nothing to do with its makeup or nature. Others consider that some words “can be both adjectives and nouns” (Quirk et al., 410) thanks to a process of “conversion” (1558–63), an approach which does imply that the function is determined by the part of speech. This approach involves “the derivational process whereby an item is adapted or converted to a new word class without the addition of an affix.” Giving a word a new part of speech in this way is understood “not as a historical process, but rather as a process now available for extending the lexical resources of the language.” On the other hand, the grammarians make no attempt to describe how the process of changing a word from one grammatical category to another would be carried out. The problem with this approach is that a word’s grammatical function, the capacity for incidence arising from its part of speech, is viewed not as something inherent in its very makeup but as something accidental, a variable which can change without affecting the nature of the word. It is as though the word existed independently from its grammatical category, as though it could change its part of speech as we can change our clothing. Others have maintained (cf. Huddleston and Pullum, 1640–4) that conversion creates a new word, like the verb humble, which is a homonym of the original word, the adjective humble. In fact, English “has a great deal of homonymy between nouns and verbs.” Although one hesitates to consider words with the same, or at least

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similar, lexical meaning to be homonyms, the implication here is that the outcome of conversion is a different word and not just giving the same word a different grammatical garb for a different use. On the other hand, there is no attempt to describe the process involved in creating the new word. Underlying each of these approaches is the idea that our vocabulary is a set of items stocked in our unconscious mind as in a dictionary, i.e. as words fully formed, lexically and grammatically, ready to be used in a sentence. In fact, the term “lexicon” is often used to designate this conception of our vocabulary as an inventory or storehouse. From this point of view then, words are ready-made items that need only be called to mind and inserted into sentences, and when some lexeme does not appear in its usual, prototypical function, this is interpreted as indicating either that its part of speech has somehow taken over the function of another part of speech, or that it has somehow been converted into another part of speech, or that a new word has been created. Considering words to be stocked in a lexicon ready for use in this way is a static view. There is no dynamism, no room for adapting a lexeme for a particular use, in brief, no suggestion that a word must be constructed every time we use it. In one respect this static view is surprising since in these approaches there is a provision for constructing the word when the sign indicates an addition. For example smallness is considered to result from integrating the meaning of the suffix -ness to make a substantive, and stations results from integrating the meaning of the -s inflexion to make the substantive plural. But word formation of this sort is limited to cases where the visible morphology makes the process obvious. No such constructional process is proposed for words whose physical sign does not reflect the binarity of the significate. Because there is nothing in the sign to indicate what makes small an adjective or station a singular substantive they are considered to exist in the speaker’s subconscious lexicon already formed as an adjective and a singular substantive. Hence the confusion, as described by Michael above, when small appears in the role of a substantive: is it an adjective used as a substantive or a convert or a homonym? Similarly for an -s substantive used as a singular; for example is crossroads, in a crossroads, a plural, a singular or, as one dictionary puts it, a “plural used as a singular,” whatever that may be – a question to be discussed in lesson 7. In teaching grammars such

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cases are generally called “exceptions,” a term providing as little insight as “conversion” when trying to explain a use that does not fit into our preconceived ideas of how a lexeme or a morpheme should behave in discourse. The problem we are dealing with here is manifold. Some lexemes are far more versatile than ‘small’ in discourse, as the following examples indicate: She is a forward on the volleyball team. a flashy, forward young man They moved forward. I will forward the mail tomorrow.

In the static, “ready-made word” approach, forward poses the problem of determining how many entries in the “lexicon” it requires. Likewise for unusual uses such as: A smooth landing. That was very key for her. (Commentary on a figure skating performance at the 2002 Olympics) Is better always good? Let’s have a go at it. Petruchio is Kated. Shall sweet Bianca practice how to bride it?

Is key a substantive here or an adjective, the support of the adverb very? Should we consider better an adjective, as it is usually used, or a substantive since it is functions as subject here? Should we analyze go as a verb, its prototypical part of speech, or as a substantive with the article a in a noun phrase? Or should we imagine some sort of Harry Potter situation where substantive, adjective, and verb are suddenly transformed and endowed with the power to function as something else? Examples like the last two are not in the usage of the ordinary speaker – they are from The Taming of the Shrew and show Shakespeare’s imaginative way of depicting marriage. They are nevertheless understandable by us and so pose basically the same problem: how can the lexemes of Kate and bride, used respectively as proper and common nouns up to this point, be suddenly categorized as verbs with such striking expressive effects? The solution to this problem, as suggested in the previous section, is in the realization that the dictionary is not a valid

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analogy for imagining the way our vocabulary exists in the mind. In our memory we do not have an inventory or lexicon of ready-made words but rather “an expanding idea-universe,” as Guillaume (1984, 157) called it, a set of notions or lexemes confronting the expanding universe of our experience. Each of these lexemes is a meaning potential that exists in tongue independently of any use that may be made of it in a sentence. That is, lexemes in tongue are quite detached from any part of speech and so have no capacity for syntactic relationships. They are quite unsayable as such, but do serve as “viewing ideas,”2 providing both the semantic categories that make our ordinary experience understandable when we are not speaking and, when we are speaking, the potential meanings for representing something in the speaker’s message. Once actualized, these meanings constitute the lexical component to be grammaticized to form a word. In short, there are no ready-made words in tongue. That is, there are no sayable units of meaning in the permanent resources of our language potential, but there is something far more useful for the mind: tongue provides all the means we need for constructing sayable units of meaning with their signs when we need them – everything we need to construct words in the moment of speech, words we have already heard and used, as well as, far less often, words we have never heard or used before. To be sayable, to be part of the sentence being constructed, a lexeme must, as we have seen, have a syntactic potential provided by a part of speech. From this it follows that in tongue there is not only a universe of viewing ideas consisting of all the lexemes that a person has learned but also a system of parts of speech confronting the universe of ideas and ready to categorize a lexeme in such a way that it can play the role required of it in the projected sentence. This grammaticizing of one of the ideas in tongue must take place every time we want a substantive or an adjective or an adverb or a verb. That is, every time we want to have a word for use, we have to recreate it, or better, reconstruct it from the idea representing what we want to express and the part of speech permitting the function it is to fulfil. Thus when the lexeme ‘small’, out of all the possible notions available in one’s tongue, is called upon to contribute to the discourse being constructed, its role in the sentence is already foreseen. If it is slated to modify some other lexical import it will be given the general form of external incidence, first degree, and

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appear in the resulting sentence as an adjective, whereas if it is intended to designate that which is being talked about in the sentence, it will be grammaticized with internal incidence and appear as a substantive. In neither case is there a recategorizing or converting from one part of speech to another since the lexeme is formed for its function in that particular sentence while the word is being constructed. Neither is there any problem of a word belonging to several parts of speech because the lexeme in tongue, before being caught up into a word, is not grammatically determined, and in discourse, in any particular sentence, it embodies only one part of speech. From this point of view, therefore, I would not consider that in examples like an away game, in after years, the then chairman, we have premodifying adverbs (cf. Quirk et al., 453), an analysis that would dissociate the part of speech from its function and links it rather with the lexeme, making away, after and then always adverbs, regardless of what their function is. This arises from the failure to recognize that what permits “the syntactical function of a word is part of its meaning,” and the consequent failure to distinguish between the lexical meaning that a word signifies from the grammatical meaning it consignifies. This is not to say that grammatical meaning is completely independent of lexical meaning since the particular makeup of a given lexeme does help determine its syntactic versatility. Thus ‘small’, representing a property of something, is predisposed to becoming an adjective and is only rarely categorized as something else. On the other hand, a lexeme like ‘backward’ may be readily formed as either an adjective (a backward step) or an adverb (to fall backward). The case of the viewing idea ‘forward’, found as four different parts of speech in ordinary discourse, is far less frequent. Even when, in practice, a lexeme is found formed by just one or two parts of speech, the others are at least theoretical possibilities to be exploited if the situation requires it. This is where the speaker’s inventiveness comes into play, as in the Shakespeare examples, or Small Is Beautiful or the phrase into the dark backward of time to express the past, or the blurb on a bottle of vegetable oil: It fries, it bakes, it salads. Quite obviously, when invented, such uses are processed during the act of language, at the moment of speech. They are the result not of “a historical process, but rather … a process now available for extending the lexical resources of the language,” as Quirk et al. point out.

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Thus we can get a first view of this process if we consider that the lexeme of every word we have learned exists in our universe of ideas, but it exists there as a lexeme, as lexical matter without any grammatical strings attached. To make it sayable, before calling its sign to mind the lexeme must be actualized to represent something in the speaker’s experience and formed grammatically, thereby rendering it capable of the use foreseen for it in the sentence. What is being proposed here then is that the process of constructing a sentence presupposes for the speaker a process of word-forming for each of the words to be integrated into the sentence. Since it is the grammatical input of each word that preconditions the syntactic relations giving rise to the resulting sentence, this implies that morphology conditions syntax. As a consequence, we (as linguists, but fortunately not as ordinary speakers) must first understand how each word is constructed if we are to understand how the sentence is constructed. This is why a large part of these lessons will be concerned with observing words, their semiology and syntax, and trying to infer from these observations the grammatical makeup of words, their morphology, what they consignify. Before going on to this, however, I want to continue working back from what has been proposed to what it presupposes in order to bring out the general structure of the word in English and get a clearer view of the process involved. IDEOGENESIS AND MORPHOGENESIS

To suggest that a lexeme is formed grammatically for a given function in the sentence being constructed implies two things. The first is that this function exists, at least intentionally, before the sentence exists as a spoken whole. This in turn implies a commonplace: that the intention to construct a sentence arises before the sentence is constructed and spoken. It is a commonplace because it claims that an act of language, like any other properly human activity, is intentional, has a purpose. It does not, however, mean that before setting about constructing the projected or purposed sentence the speaker already has it in mind with all its components or even as a structure or framework, a sort of tree on which to hang the lexical imports. This would be a contradiction. Rather it means that we want to express some message so we set out to provide a discourse that will express as adequately as possible the content and contours of the message we have in mind, and constructing a sentence or

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sentences is the only linguistic means we have to achieve this end. That is, the aim of an act of language is not to construct sentences but to express a message, to say something about someone or something we have in mind. And this brings us to the second thing presupposed by our view of how a word is constructed during the act of speech, the intended message. If speaking (or writing, of course) is undertaken to express a message, then obvious preconditions are that the speaker have both a message and the intention to express it. The intended message may consist of anything one is aware of, any content of consciousness – a passing perception or feeling, a memory, a dream, a well thought out maxim, the message resulting from what someone has just said, etc. Since it is always present when we speak, we may not realize that the intended message is a prerequisite for speaking, but we do realize it when it is lacking, as when someone says “I forget what I was talking about.” Diver (74) speaks of “the intended message” as that which “the hearer makes a guess at” thanks to “the collections of hints offered by the speaker,” i.e. the meaning of the sentence(s). In the following passage Taylor (1996, 16) appears to be getting at the same thing from the point of view of the speaker: “A person has conscious access only to what Jackendoff (1983, 29) calls the ‘projected world’, i.e. ‘the world as unconsciously organized by the mind’. Consequently, we can talk about things only insofar as they have achieved mental representation through these processes of organization.” The point is simply that we cannot talk about something that we are not at least minimally aware of at the moment of speaking. As such the intended message is necessarily in the speaker’s mind before an act of speech and it is still in the speaker’s mind at the end of an act of speech when the meaning of the sentence is referred back to it. The intended message is thus always some part of our stream of consciousness, some content of experience we have in mind – and want to talk about. Fortunately we are not obliged to speak of everything that goes through our mind because in that case we would not be able to stop talking when awake and conscious. On the other hand it seems that our language does intervene continuously during our waking hours to give us a view of the world “unconsciously organized by the mind,” as Jackendoff puts it, and this even when we are not speaking of something and have no intention to do so. Neurological research3 indicates that visual perception

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involves an appeal to the higher functions of the brain and calls for a “semantic” input to permit us to recognize what a given sensory configuration is – a bird or a flower or an insect, etc. In the same vein, Guillaume proposed some years ago that the lexical resources of our language are unconsciously activated to conceptualize anything arising in our stream of consciousness. By bringing the most appropriate lexeme to focus on a given experiential element, our mind can situate it in our universe of ideas and thus “re-cognize” it. For this reason he speaks, as we saw above, of the lexical resources of our language as a “universe of viewing ideas” constantly scanning the input of our experience of the universe around us (and within us) and ready to provide a linguistic representation of whatever arises there, should we want to talk about it. In this way, lexical categorization supplies a conceptual lens for viewing ordinary experience thus permitting us to know what we are looking at, hearing, dreaming, etc., and this without any intention to speak about it. When one determines to speak of some such content of experience, say the memory of a dream, it becomes an intended message but is in no way modified because one thus resolves to express it. Furthermore it may remain in the state of an intended message for some time – until it is our turn to speak, or until we meet a particular person, etc. – but usually we speak when we have something to say. In all cases, whether immediately or subsequently, the intention to speak prompts an appeal to the systemic resources of tongue to construct a sentence (or sentences) that will express the intended message as adequately as possible. In view of the projected sentence, words corresponding to the already activated lexemes must be formed, each with the required syntactic potential. Thus the forming of a word is first and foremost a process wherein the part of speech (through its subcategories, if any) grasps and forms the lexical matter, which corresponds to and represents something in the intended message. Here it is important to recall that the intended message, itself a “mental representation” as Taylor points out above, does not constitute as such the meaning of a word. Rather, a word’s lexical meaning is a linguistic representation of the intended message, or something in it. As Guillaume frequently stressed, we cannot express any meaning by means of language without first representing it by means of language: no expression without representation. The point is important because it concerns the very basis

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ideogenesis ideogenesis

morphogenesis morphogenesis

part partof of speech speech

universe universe of ideas ideas

of semantics, the need to discern what led up to the sense expressed by a word and its visible morphology. Guillaume often expresses this process of representing the mental contents of a word as a binary operation whose first phase is the process of actualizing the particular lexical import, a process he called ideogenesis, and whose second phase, called morphogenesis, is the process of categorizing the result of ideogenesis which ends up with the most general category, the part of speech.4 He depicted this in a two-phase diagram, the first phase bringing out the particular lexeme, and the second phase carrying the lexeme to its categorization in a part of speech, as follows:

The narrowing vector of the first phase is intended to suggest that the effect of ideogenesis is one of particularization, of discriminating the lexeme from all others, and thus of making the word different from all others. The widening vector of the second phase is to suggest that the effect of morphogenesis is one of generalization, of categorizing the lexeme and thus bringing out what is common to other words with the same part of speech. This manner of constructing words applies to all parts of speech, even pronouns and other grammatical words, whose meaning is so abstract that one can hardly call it a lexeme. This led Guillaume to distinguish between the predicative parts of speech (substantive, adjective, adverb, and verb), whose ideogenesis produces a lexeme representing something in the intended message, and the transpredicative parts of speech (prepositions, conjunctions, pronouns, auxiliaries, articles), whose ideogenesis produces an abstract notional content representing how the speaker mentally situates something. We will look at some of the transpredicatives in the lessons on determiners. This is an eminently dynamic conception of how a speaker constructs a word to be part of the sentence under construction because it is based on the idea that there are no words available in

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tongue, no sayable units all ready to be used, and that a word can form part of a sentence only when provided with a syntactic potential, a part of speech. On the other hand, the materials and knowhow for making words are available in tongue, but they have to be exploited so that the particular lexemes corresponding to the message fit in and contribute to the projected sentence. This is what leads Guillaume to say: “Everything in tongue, in fact, is a process. And the results that we observe are, if I may say so, illusions of sorts. There is no substantive; in tongue there is simply a substantivation that is arrested early or late in its movement. There is no adjective; rather, there is an adjectivization that has run a certain part of its course when the mind prehends it. There is no word; rather, there is an extraordinarily complicated genesis of the word, a lexigenesis” (1984, 133) This way of viewing parts of speech operationally as a mechanism – something like a stapler, which cannot function without staples, i. e. a lexeme – will provide a basis for analyzing the noun phrase and examining the different problems it gives rise to. CONCLUSION

The idea that every word must be constructed at the moment of speech by means of ideogenesis and morphogenesis is basic to a theory of the word in English. Although it does not solve all the problems of usage, a general view like this does provide a starting point for reflecting on them. Two cases will be mentioned here to illustrate this advantage of having a general theory when approaching a new problem. Words like empty, special, final, hopeful, found as ordinary adjectives, are to be compared with the full-fledged substantives in a few empties, many specials, two finals, various hopefuls. The adjective expresses its lexical sense as a property of some entity, whereas the substantive expresses the more restricted sense of some subcategory of entities (bottle, object for sale, examination, human being) with this property. What is interesting here is that in the substantive the lexeme evokes an extensity, a support, permitting internal incidence but it does not evoke this in the adjective. The ease with which certain lexemes like these can be formed as either adjective or substantive appears to be an historical development, one which apparently depends on accidents of usage. One gets the impression that an important factor here is the sort of

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experience the lexeme is called on to represent with any frequency because in specialized areas of activity surprising usage may be heard. I can remember workers in the soft fruit industry talking of the overripes and the greens as distinct from apricots and peaches picked at the proper degree of maturity. In the same situation, it would not be unacceptable to speak of the smalls as opposed to fruit of suitable size to be marketed. As yet, uses like these have not been studied from the point of view presented here in order to discern what they tell us about the viewing idea in tongue. On the other hand the very fact that speakers far from the grammar books spontaneously forge such uses is evidence that the lexeme is available to be grammatically shaped in this way when the situation calls for it, that ideogenesis and morphogenesis are distinct processes in constructing the word. Another problem concerns certain lexemes that are usually formed as adjectives but also found as substantives: the rich, the poor, the young, the old, the learned, the ignorant, etc. Like the preceding examples, these words call to mind both a property and a subset of entities, here human beings, which provides an internal support, an extensity, and so they have internal incidence. On the other hand they are readily used as generics or internal plurals5 but not, to my knowledge, with the -s ending (*a few poors) or in the singular (cf. *a rich). Furthermore, their lexeme appears to be adjectival since it can be characterized by an adverb of degree: the very rich, the extremely old. These and other particularities of usage, such as Two men: the rich in silks the poor in cotton suggested by a reader (where I would use the pronoun one) call for further observation and reflexion in the light of the theory of the parts of speech resulting from morphogenesis in order to see if the notion of incidence can throw any light on them. This dynamic way of conceiving words makes possible a wide range of variation in the usage of a given lexeme, variation that is restricted by the notional limits of the lexeme, the grammatical limits of the system and, of course, the experience the speaker has in mind to talk about. By the same token, Michael’s criticism of the traditional view, cited above, does not apply: the parts of speech are “mutually exclusive” and no word “could be considered as belonging to two or more classes” because, whenever observed in a sentence, a word has been grammaticized for that particular use.

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This constantly calling to mind of the constructional operations required to produce the words observed in a sentence has the disadvantage of requiring unfamiliar terms to talk about them – ideogenesis, morphogenesis – but it also has the immense advantage of depicting the parts of speech without recourse to lexical notions. It does not therefore lead one to consider them as a means of classifying words on the basis of some trait of lexical meaning (‘person’, ‘place’, or ‘thing’ for substantives; ‘quality’ for adjectives), but rather as categories enabling words to fulfil the same function(s) in the sentence. That is, since realizing any function presupposes the potential to do so, for any word observed as part of a sentence we are led to postulate that its part of speech pre-exists in tongue. In tongue a part of speech is to be thought of as a mental form with no links to any particular lexeme, a form notionally as abstract as one can conceive it, the outcome of generalizing particular relations between words observable in sentences. As such, a part of speech, or rather of tongue, is able to provide a given lexical matter with the capacity to relate in a certain way to the imports of other words. Another advantage of this approach is that it leads us to focus on the operational phase of syntax. That is, it makes us work back from the static relation between words or groups of words observed in a sentence, to the process of establishing that relationship, to the mental operation of making an import incident to a support in order to form a larger unit of meaning better representing what the speaker has in mind. Analyzing data in the light of what produced it is normal procedure for seeking an explanation. This theory of incidence for explaining the functioning of adverbs, adjectives and substantives will give us a basis for analyzing other relations in the noun phrase, particularly those involving a determiner, but first we must examine in some detail the type of word on which a noun phrase is based, the substantive.

LESSON FOUR

Case and the Substantive Whatever we may be told of Cases in modern Languages, there are in fact no such things. James Harris, Hermes, 1751

INTRODUCTION

The theory of word construction proposed in the last lesson made the claim that we must construct each word we need. The constructional process involves providing a word with both the appropriate lexeme to represent something in our intended message and the appropriate part of speech enabling it to play its role in the sentence being constructed. Implied in this theory is the view that syntax is conditioned by morphology, that the relation a word establishes with some other word(s) is a consequence of its part of speech. In our study of the noun phrase, this entails discerning first how forming a lexeme into a substantive, a word with internal incidence, enables it to play its role of headword but makes it often dependent on a determiner. Moreover this enables a substantive on its own to fulfil the different syntactic functions of a noun phrase – subject, object, etc. Our first preoccupation then will be to examine the makeup of the substantive, because without something to replace it like a suppletive pronoun (as we shall see in later lessons) there is no noun phrase. And we will begin with a question which may well appear to provide evidence that the substantive is not characterized by internal incidence. This is what is often called “the possessive case” or “the genitive case,” as expressed by -’s in, for example, the farmer’s dog. Here, it is clear that farmer’s is said about dog. Consequently it appears to follow that in such expressions the first substantive has

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external incidence, applying its lexical meaning to the second substantive. We cannot examine the substantive’s internal incidence until we have dealt with this apparent counter evidence, and so we will begin with the question of case. According to one study (Schlesinger, 29), “the current conception of cases rests on the implicit assumption that it is possible to categorize relations that are ‘out there’.” The assumption that cases express what is outside and independent of language has led to viewing them as “semantic primitives” and even as universals. Guillaume’s view of case on the other hand assumes that it is a grammatical system providing for the relating of a noun phrase to some other sentence unit. We will therefore examine it as a closed system concerned with establishing the relations between linguistic entities in order to construct a sentence. CASE: HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT

In order to get a clear view of the role of -’s in Modern English, it will be useful to have a general idea of the development of the system of cases since Proto-Indo-European. As reconstructed in ProtoIndo-European, the substantive was declined for eight cases, and there are, in fact, still seven cases in some Indo-European languages today. The remarkable thing about the historical development of this system in the Indo-European languages is the consistent reduction of the number of cases over the millenia. Two other phenomena are pertinent here. In Proto-Indo-European there were no prepositions, if we can judge by the earliest texts of Greek (cf. Hewson and Bubenik). That is to say, the reduction of the number of cases was accompanied by the introduction of prepositions, whose role is precisely to establish and characterize the relation between a noun phrase and some other component of the sentence. Likewise, word order was freer in the earlier stages of the Indo-European languages: students of Latin, for example, know how disconcerting it can be when the subject does not precede the verb, or when an adjective is not juxtaposed to its substantive as in Modern English or French. Thus the reduction of the number of cases was also accompanied by a more stringent word order. A glance at the substantive in Old English will help bring out the role of -’s in Modern English. In Old English, the inflexions of the substantive expressed distinctions of number and case. The

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following example is the paradigm of the Old English word which gave Modern English stone, the long vowel [a] having become [o]:

Nominative Accusative Genitive Dative

Singular st a n-ø st a n-ø st a n-es st a n-e

Plural st a n-as st a n-as st a n-a st a n-um

Thanks to this and other declensions, four cases were distinguished in Old English, the -es of the genitive singular being considered by many as the ancestor of our -’s: – the nominative, found when the substantive is used as subject, as complement of the copula or as vocative; – the accusative, found when the substantive is used as direct object, after certain prepositions, etc.; – the genitive, found when the substantive is represented as the possessor, after certain prepositions, etc.; – the dative, found when the substantive is used as indirect object, after certain prepositions, etc. Thus the different cases permit different functions in the sentence. On the other hand, the three oblique cases permit uses after a preposition but not the nominative. From this declension it can be seen that in Old English the number of the substantive was indicated in its inflexion. This is similar to Modern English, where just looking at the signs, stone vs. stones, tells us how the speaker/writer has formed the notion grammatically: -ø as ‘mass’ or ‘singular’, -s as ‘plural’. Likewise, the case of the OE substantive was indicated in its inflexion: just looking at the physical sign of the substantive tells us how its notion was formed grammatically in view of a certain function in the sentence. This is very different from Modern English because looking at the physical sign of the substantive does not give any indication of whether it is going to be used as subject, direct object, indirect object, object of a preposition, etc. This signifying of syntactic function by means of the sign does however survive in the personal pronoun. It will help us get an idea of the way cases worked in Old English if we glance at the personal

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pronouns in Modern English. Grammars tell us that first and third person pronouns (masculine and feminine) still indicate two of these cases, whereas the second person pronoun indicates only one: 1st person N. I/We like the cat. A. The cat likes me/us.

3rd person He/She/They like(s) the cat. The cat likes him/her/them.

That is, in order to call to mind one of these personal pronouns, it must be formed with a morpheme representing its function in the sentence. In order to call to mind a substantive, on the other hand, it need not be given a particular physical form to be subject, or to be object or object of a preposition. From this it would seem that when we want to think a substantive we form its lexical matter, the lexeme, independently of the function in the sentence. The only apparent exception to this is the -’s. Is it a case inflexion of the substantive? The picture that emerges from these observations is one of the gradual coming into being of the noun phrase as we know it today. In Proto-Indo-European, the substantive’s function in the sentence was expressed by means of case. In English today, prepositions help fulfil this function, their role being to establish and characterize the particular relationship between a noun phrase and some other sentence component. It should be noted that a preposition does not designate a relation within the noun phrase, i.e. between adverb and adjective and substantive, but rather relates a noun phrase to some other part of the sentence. Furthermore, word order became grammatically significant and so more constraining: situated before the verb a noun phrase is normally seen as subject, situated after the verb as direct object and situated after a preposition as object of the preposition. That is, although the number of case inflexions in the substantive was reduced, the signifying of function in the sentence was not jeopardized because other means, outside the substantive, were instituted. From all this, it appears that the substantive no longer has the role of signifying functions in the sentence like subject or direct object. These functions are now signified by the noun phrase thanks to its position in the sentence, just as other functions are signified by prepositions. That is to say, the noun phrase is now a grammatically constituted unit of meaning in English, formed during the process of sentence construction, with the grammatical role of signifying function in the sentence.

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This is a major development in Indo-European languages like English and French, where the number of cases has been reduced to the point that there is no further trace of case in the inflexions of the substantive, except, according to some, for the -’s in English. This development entails an important distinction of function in Modern English between what the word does, and what the phrase does. The syntactic function that a word exercises in the constructing of a noun phrase – providing a support or an import for another word – must not be confused with the syntactic function that the noun phrase exercises in the constructing of the sentence – acting as subject, direct object, etc. As a constituent of the noun phrase, a word’s function is determined by its mode of incidence, by what makes it grammatically what it is – a substantive, an adjective or an adverb. That is, in order to become part of a noun phrase, an adverb must fulfil its word function of second degree external incidence, an adjective its word function of first degree external incidence, and a substantive its word function of internal incidence. Once the noun phrase is constituted as a grammatical unit, it can become part of the sentence under construction by fulfilling the sentence function – subject, object, etc. – intended for it by the speaker. It will be important to distinguish between these two types of function, that of a word relating to its support within the phrase, and that of a noun phrase relating to another component of the sentence, especially in cases where the phrase consists of a single word. THE CASE OF

- ’S

Some grammars consider -’s “a relic of a former case system comparable to that of Latin or of modern Russian” (Quirk et al., 318). Other scholars have suggested that it arises from treating an unstressed use of his as a clitic: the farmer his dog > the farmer’s dog. Taylor (1996, 126–8) considers both these to have influenced its development. Whatever the historical development may have been, many grammarians consider -’s the possessive or genitive case, implying thereby that the substantive has two cases in Modern English, the genitive and the non-genitive or “common” case. Other grammarians, taking a cue from the pronoun, also distinguish the nominative and accusative cases (and one, Nesfield, even proposes (3) the vocative and the dative cases as well). This

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of course disregards the fact that the sign provides no visible indication of their existence in the substantive. All this obviously raises a question: does the fact that in some of its uses this -’s resembles the genitive case in OE provide grounds for saying that the substantive in Modern English is declined for case? Certain grammarians and linguists who have taken a second look at the -’s give a different interpretation. Quirk et al. (318–31), in the light of examples involving postmodification such as the teacher of music’s room and the University of Minnesota’s President, remark that “it is necessary to revise the idea … that the genitive is a noun inflexion. The -s ending is not a case ending in the sense which applies to languages such as Latin, Russian, and German” (328) and, we might add, OE. They go even further when, in commenting on the example The palace was the King of Denmark’s, they maintain that “In postmodified noun phrases … the genitive ending is added to the end of the phrase, not to the end of the head noun” (319). This, of course, raises the question: what is this ending? Can a noun phrase be inflected for case? Let us first bring out the basis of this remarkable proposal that the ‘s is added, not to the substantive but to the noun phrase. In the teacher of music’s room we of course understand that the room belongs to the person referred to, the teacher, and not to the subjectmatter that person teaches. The only way we can get this meaning from the example is by postulating that once the content of the first noun phrase ‘theteacher’1 has been constituted, the meaning of the prepositional phrase ‘ofmusic’ is made incident to it to constitute a complex notion ‘theteacherofmusic’, the lexical content of a new noun phrase to which the meaning expressed by -’s is added. That is to say, the meaning of the suffix (inflexion, clitic?) adds something to this complex notion because without the suffix the incidence between the complex notion and ‘room’ cannot be established: *the teacher of music room would not make sense because the relation between ‘room’ and the rest of the expression would not be comprehensible. What the -’s adds then enables the complex notion ‘theteacherofmusic’ and ‘room’ to combine through incidence, thus constituting the even more complex notion ‘theteacherofmusic’sroom’. Similarly, the expression the University of Minnesota’s President designates someone as president, not of Minnesota (the state) but of the university, so we have to operate the incidence of ‘ofMinnesota’

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to ‘theUniversity’ and amalgamate them into one notion to form a single noun phrase before the -’s can intervene and the incidence be effected between ‘president’ and ‘theUniversityofMinnesota’. One can almost feel this process of combining different notions into a whole in marginal uses sometimes heard in speech (Quirk et al., 1345): the man in the car’s ears Have you seen that man standing at the corner’s hat? Someone has stolen a man I know’s car.

Quirk et al’s proposal that the -‘s suffix is “added to the end of the phrase” is thus based, not on what was done in Old English, but on the meaning expressed by these complex noun phrases with postmodification of the substantive. It is in effect an analysis of the resulting noun phrase to show that incidence is established between room, president, ears, etc. and an already formed noun phrase. This is important for our attempt to understand the ‘possessive’ construction because we can see that incidence is established between the whole noun phrase and the following substantive, not just between the word bearing the -’s and the following substantive. Furthermore we can see that without the -’s, incidence between the noun phrase and the following substantive would not be possible. The same explanation can be applied to examples involving no postmodification, such as the elderly woman’s glove. Here, thanks to the external incidence of the adjective elderly, the internal incidence of the substantive woman, and the article (which we have yet to examine), the complex notion ‘theelderlywoman’ is constituted as a noun phrase to which is added the import of -’s. This makes possible the incidence between ‘glove’ and the noun phrase notion to constitute the new noun phrase notion ‘theelderlywoman’sglove’. Thus in this example and similar ones like Many people’s ambition is to own a house “the genitive … is not a single word, but a noun phrase in its own right,” as Quirk et al. point out (326). That is, it is not just the notion of the substantives woman and people but rather the complex notions of the noun phrases the elderly woman and many people, which, thanks to -’s, establish a relationship with the substantives ‘glove’ and ‘ambition’, a relationship often described as one of ‘possession’. Again it is the noun phrase, not the substantive bearing the suffix, which carries out the function signified by -’s.

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If observations up to this point are valid, it can be seen that even when the noun phrase consists of only article and substantive, as in the farmer’s dog, the article must play its role as a determiner with regard to ‘farmer’ thus constituting ‘thefarmer’ before the suffix’s meaning can intervene to permit relating the noun phrase and ‘dog’. The view that any “prenominal possessive” constitutes a noun phrase is in fact considered by Taylor (1996, 109) to be “uncontroversial” and “not in need of any demonstration.” The same would then apply to a minimal noun phrase where there is not even a determiner, as in John’s wife. Here, a bare substantive, the proper noun John, first exercises its internal incidence and is constituted a noun phrase. Only then does -’s intervene so that the relation of incidence between ‘John’ and ‘wife’ can be established. That is, here too it is the noun phrase and the following substantive that are related by means of -’s. The point of this discussion is to show that the ‘possessor’ construction’s substantive, whether postmodified, premodified, preceded by a determiner, or bare, effects its internal incidence in order to constitute a noun phrase notion to which the import of the suffix is added, thus permitting it to fulfil the sentence function foreseen for it. Such uses thus provide no counter evidence to the analysis of the substantive as a word which is by nature incident to itself. In the examples discussed above I have not attempted to define in terms of support and import the relation of incidence between suffixed noun phrase and following substantive. Quirk et al. (326) characterize this relation as follows: “Most commonly the genitive functions as a determinative …: it fills a slot in the noun phrase equivalent to a central determiner such as the …. We therefore see the genitive construction as a noun phrase embedded as a definite determinative within another noun phrase.” Commenting on similar examples, such as my daughter’s (new) desk, they point out that the determiner my applies to daughter, not to desk, just as many in the above example applies to people not to ambition, and that the -’s phrase could be replaced by a determiner: her desk, their ambition. Since we have yet to examine the relation between determiner and substantive, a question to be taken up once the analysis of the substantive itself has been dealt with, we will not explore the incidence involved in -’s constructions at this point. In a far less frequent use of -’s Quirk et al. observe a different relationship, one “where the genitive acts as a modifier rather than as

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a determinative” (327). Examples such as a women’s college illustrate how the lexical import of women’s has “a classifying role similar to that of noun modifiers.” Such uses will not be examined here. For my purpose at this point, the aim of mentioning them is to indicate how they contrast in meaning with determiner uses of -’s, as manifested by the ambiguity of an example like this cow’s milk (‘milk from this cow’ vs. ‘this milk from a cow’). The contrast suggests that the relation of incidence is not the same in the two types of use. This and a number of other questions remain to be explored in the use of the -’s: its independent or absolute use (This is Mary’s), its quasi-equivalence to an of-phrase in many uses, the various relations it can represent other than strict possession (cf. Quirk et al., 321–2), etc. I cannot deal with these questions here. A prerequisite for approaching them is to analyze the relation of incidence established between suffixed noun phrase and following substantive and this will require discerning the potential meaning of -’s in tongue such that it can give rise to these various manifestations in discourse. Since the syntactic relation appears to be similar to that of a determiner, I will return to this problem in lesson 18, after examining several determiners. Equally important from the theoretical point of view is to understand the status of -’s in tongue. In the grammatical system of English how are we to conceive of it? According to one study, “poss ‘s in Present-day English qualifies neither as a genuine inflexion nor as a genuine clitic” (Rosenbach, 10). What is a morpheme which is neither a word nor an element in the morphogenesis of a word? Semiologically it appears be a relic of a former declension, but the examples just examined where it is affixed to a noun phrase seem to involve an innovation in the way function is expressed. As we saw above, in OE function in the sentence was designated by a morpheme within the substantive, whereas today it is usually designated by a preposition or by position in the sentence. The -’s suffix cannot be analyzed in either of these ways. As observed in usage, it appears to have been extrapolated, carried from within the word to what contains it, the phrase. But does it make any sense to suggest that a noun phrase can take a suffix? Huddleston and Pullum (479–81) discuss the problem from the point of view of word inflexion. They distinguish between two genitive inflexions, one for constructions where the head substantive

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takes the suffix (e.g. the farmer’s dog), and one for constructions where some other word in the phrase takes it (e.g. a man I know’s car ): “We conclude that both head and phrasal genitives involve case inflexion. With head genitives it is always a noun that inflects, while the phrasal genitive can apply to words of most classes.” In this approach it is the word, not the noun phrase, that carries the -’s. This of course raises the problem of explaining how a verb, a preposition, etc. can take a nominal inflexion in “phrasal genitives.” The alternative approach, the one adopted here, poses the same problem for the noun phrase: how can a noun phrase be suffixed with -’s? As with the other grammatical problems examined in these lessons, we will approach the problem of -’s from the point of view of the parts of speech involved, the conceptual systems in tongue for forming words. That is, we will begin by considering constituents of the noun phrase itself, particularly the substantive and determiners, and this will bring us to the basic question explored in these lessons. What is involved in forming a set of words into a syntactic unit that functions like a noun? Only then will we be in a position to examine how this unit can be given the capacity to take a suffix, an element of morphology. Thus, leaving aside for now the question of -’s, we will return to the discussion of case in the substantive. CASE AND THE NOUN PHRASE

These exploratory reflexions concerning the use of -’s have certain implications for other noun phrases. Forming one noun phrase to function as part of another is also found in expressions where the relation between the two is expressed by means of position rather than a suffix. A good example is found in the following conference title: The Fourth Annual Kid Power Marketing Conference.

In the sequence of operations of incidence involved in constituting this complex noun phrase, the phrase kid power (‘the purchasing power of youngsters’) provides an import to the support in conference. In order to do this, it must first be constituted as a noun phrase: ‘kid’, grammaticized as an adjective, must be made incident to ‘power’, grammaticized as a substantive, to form ‘kidpower’. This phrase then exercises the same role as ‘fourth’, ‘annual’ and

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‘marketing’, all grammaticized as adjectives: all are incident to ‘conference’. The interesting thing here is that kid power exercises external incidence as do the three adjectives. Noun phrases are common in adverbial usage as well: She arrived the following day. They rode single file. It’s not much good my spending half an hour writing to your uncle if he changes his mind the next letter he gets from you.

One grammarian (Schibsbye, 92) analyzes single file and the next letter as cases of “nouns … used adverbially,” a view based on defining a substantive lexically, by what it names, and dissociating the notion of what it is from what it does. For our approach, where the substantive is defined not by what it names but by its mode of incidence, this analysis would involve a contradiction: it could not be argued that a word which is grammaticized to exercise internal incidence exercises external incidence. Rather I would analyze ‘day’, ‘file’, and ‘letter’ as substantives providing a support for ‘following’, ‘single’, and ‘next’ respectively and then effecting their internal incidence, forming thereby the noun phrases ‘thefollowingday’, ‘singlefile’, and ‘thenextletterhegetsfromyou’. It is this new entity, the noun phrase, which is “used adverbially.” For Guillaume (1973, 228), such expressions are “adverbs of discourse” exercising external incidence of the second degree to carry out their syntactic function in the sentence. The point of these examples is to show that what functions like an adverb or an adjective is not the substantive but the noun phrase, a construction of discourse which makes its import incident to something else in the sentence. As subject, of course, the noun phrase functions like a substantive by providing within the sentence a final support for the import of the rest of the sentence. What enables a noun phrase to fulfil these three different functions? To avoid the difficulty implicit in speaking of nouns used adverbially or adjectivally it is important to keep in mind that there are two grammatical constructs, the word and the phrase. Through morphogenesis, a lexeme is formed into a substantive, an adjective or an adverb by means of a part of speech. This enables the word to fulfil its word function within the noun phrase by exercising internal incidence, external incidence of the first degree or external

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incidence of the second degree. The result is a new grammatical entity, the noun phrase, enabled to fulfil a certain function within the sentence, its sentence function: relating its import to another component of the sentence in the manner of an adjective or an adverb, or, as subject, receiving the import of the rest of the sentence in the manner of a substantive. Thus it can be seen that there is no contradiction in proposing that a noun phrase exercises external incidence, since internal incidence is what characterizes the substantive, not the noun phrase. Granted the grammatical distinction between word and phrase, it is even possible to envisage a bare substantive forming a noun phrase which is “used adverbially,” i.e. constitutes an adverb of discourse. This is the case of miles in: He’s miles better than his brother.

This brings out the immediate purpose of my discussion: to reconcile the idea of the substantive’s internal incidence with the diverse functions of the noun phrase. There is no contradiction provided the word function of the substantive, exercised within the noun phrase, is distinguished from the sentence function of the noun phrase, exercised outside the phrase in relation to some other component in the sentence. This provides a means for settling the problem of variable function insofar as the substantive is concerned, but poses it anew for the noun phrase. Granted that a noun phrase is a distinct grammatical unit in English, how can this variation of function be explained? Some scholars have suggested that it can be explained by attributing different cases to the noun phrase. This suggestion has the merit of respecting the semiology involved: sentence function, or case, is indicated by the noun phrase – its position in the sentence or a preposition linking it to some other component of the sentence (or perhaps by -’s). On the other hand it raises a question which is not often addressed: where does the noun phrase get its case from? Do the words composing it provide its case, or is there a separate grammatical system for case in the noun phrase? In studies of the expression of case by the noun phrase, the problem is often envisaged without taking into account the grammatical makeup of the words involved. That is, there is no examination of substantives, adjectives, and adverbs as grammatical constructs in order to see if their contribution to the noun phrase provides it

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with its case. On the other hand, if it is valid to assume, as I have done here, that the makeup of a phrase (or of any instrument) determines the way it can be used then it would seem necessary to begin with an examination of its components. That is, from the point of view adopted here the first question raised by attributing case to the noun phrase is to determine what permits the noun phrase to exercise its different functions. What is there in the words making up of the noun phrase that makes this possible? This question brings us back to the status of case within the substantive itself. Does the morphogenesis of the substantive include case as a categorizing morpheme? Only after examining this, and the other questions raised by the internal incidence of the substantive, will we be in a position to explore the relation between the substantive’s word function and the sentence function of the noun phrase. CASE IN THE SUBSTANTIVE

Is there case in the substantive? Since there are no inflexions consignifying case in the substantive in Modern English, the answer to the question is obvious: there is no case in the sense of “an inflexional form indicating a sense relation to another word in the context” (Webster’s Third). On the other hand, the answer is not so obvious if we take case in the sense of “the relation itself whether indicated by distinct form or not” (O.E.D.). We have already seen that a substantive exercises its word function of support through the mechanism of internal incidence and this is a constant with the substantive. On the level of the noun phrase however we observe a variation in the relations with another element in the sentence. How can this variability be explained? Confronted with a similar problem in French, Guillaume envisaged case as follows: “In the single case of French, these three functions are in synthesis. They are discriminated only in the sentence” (ms. November 6, 1941, B; f. 12). That is, on the level of the potential in tongue the one case includes as possibilities the three cases he perceived in discourse.2 This implies that the noun phrase has no operative program of its own instituted in tongue but is constructed by exploiting the grammatical possibilities made available by its constituent words, so that it is their operative program, or morphogenesis, that makes possible the forming of a noun phrase, “providing it with its formal and functional properties,” as Valin

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points out (1981, 26). A similar reasoning applies to English. To explain what makes it possible for a noun phrase to have case as a variable we are led to infer that the system of case is a phase in the substantive’s morphogenesis, a system understood as an operative potential providing for the various cases observed in discourse. Unlike the system of number, whose potentiality is exploited while the substantive is being formed in order to configure its support with number, the system of case is exploited after the substantive’s morphogenesis is completed in order to provide the noun phrase with one or other of its possible cases. Thus to answer the above question about case in the substantive, it is not just a quibble to say that it all depends on what we mean by “case.” The substantive does not have case in the sense of a set of inflexions (-’s having being excluded above). On the other hand, we can say that the substantive’s morphogenesis includes case as a formal means of promoting the lexeme to its final partof-speech categorization and to enable the subsequently formed noun phrase to establish a relation through incidence with another sentence component. Adopting this view of case is not just a matter of preserving a traditional category of the substantive, but of attempting to discern the grammatical link between the noun phrase in its different functions and its essential component, the substantive. Not that this makes the link fully explicit because it remains both to work out just what cases are expressed by the noun phrase in English and then, in the light of what is observed in discourse, to discern the parameters of the system of case in tongue. This view does however help us to understand why different cases are indicated not by the substantive, but by the noun phrase, mainly through position in the sentence and prepositions. As for the question raised above – what enables the noun phrase to function like a substantive, and an adjective, and an adverb? – this view provides at least the basis for an answer: it is the system of case in the morphogenesis of the substantive which makes this possible. However a more complete understanding of the makeup of the noun phrase is needed before this lead can be exploited, so we will return to it in lesson 22. Case, then, is one way of categorizing a lexeme to form a word capable of internal incidence, a substantive. But this is not the only

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way. To see what else is required to permit the operation of internal incidence, to understand how the support is formed and how the import is formed, we must examine the other categories, number and gender, arising in the substantive’s morphogenesis. We will look at grammatical number first.

LESSON FIVE

Number: Toward the System number might appear to be one of the simplest natural categories, as simple as ‘two and two are four.’ Yet on closer inspection it presents a great many difficulties, both logical and linguistic. Jespersen 1924/1948, 188

INTRODUCTION

The defining characteristic of the substantive is not what it names but the way it names, internal incidence, which makes the substantive’s lexeme or comprehension incident to a support found within its own extension, and not within the extension of some other lexeme. The substantive’s extension, a constant determined by its comprehension, is actualized in each use as a particular extensity and so a substantive’s import, along with all the other lexical imports incident to it, is always said about its own extensity. To see how this is carried out, we are examining the grammatical morphemes of the substantive. In the last lesson, case was proposed to permit the different syntactic functions of the noun phrase, a discussion to be continued in a later lesson. In this and the next three lessons we will explore the way the other grammatical components of the substantive, number and gender, form the lexical import for defining its own support. The role played by number is predominant here and will be examined first. Keeping in mind the general principle that there is order or system behind the data, we will examine the apparent inconsistencies of usage and the preconceived notions sometimes found in grammars. Most grammars give us a rudimentary view of the system of number when they state that substantives can be either singular or plural, depending on whether they end in -ø or -s. They generally go

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beyond describing the physical signs in this way to describe the meaning of each one: the -ø inflexion expresses the sense of ‘one’, ‘singular’, whereas the -s inflexion expresses the sense of ‘more than one’, ‘plural’. Even linguists tend to accept the findings of traditional grammars as “without question substantially correct,” as Chomsky (64) puts it, and most would probably agree with Langacker (1991, 180n) that, insofar as “number markings” are concerned, “their meaningfulness is reasonably apparent.” Like Jespersen, I would tend to consider such a view rudimentary, and this for two reasons. First of all, the use of the terms singular and plural is ambiguous, referring sometimes to the physical sign, sometimes to the quantitative sense expressed by it. This inevitably leads to confusion, as in the following description from a dictionary: “bleachers: pl but sometimes sing in constr.” At first this appears to be a blatant contradiction – how can something be its opposite? A moment’s reflexion however suggests that “pl” here designates the sign, the fact that this word has the -s inflexion, whereas “sing” designates the sense it expresses in a noun phrase like a bleachers. To avoid confusion of this sort, I intend to use these two key terms to designate only the meanings expressed: singular = ‘one’ and plural = ‘more than one’. I will designate the signs as -ø (zero) and -s, and so speak of a -ø substantive, an -s substantive, etc. Thus I would express the above description of bleachers as follows: an -s substantive sometimes ‘singular’ in meaning, or rather in sense (as we shall see below). Although a bit cumbersome, this terminological precision will help us avoid the second, even more serious, shortcoming of most grammars, the fact that their treatment of number is based on a superficial observation of actual usage which omits much of the data. That is, the only uses they consider are the most obvious (what comes readily to mind) and frequent (those appearing in a corpus) so that less frequent uses like that of a bleachers are often simply ignored. When we turn to these rarer uses another problem arises: how to interpret conflicting data. This can be illustrated by means of the substantive people. An expression like primitive peoples clearly expresses ‘plural’, whereas this people expresses ‘singular’. However the following book title appears to give conflicting signals: How a People Die

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Although the title makes perfectly good sense, the -ø substantive and the article indicate ‘singular’ whereas the verb suggests ‘plural’. People cannot be both grammatically ‘singular’ and ‘plural’ in the same use.1 This would be a contradiction. Although we cannot explore the agreement of verbs in these lessons, we will examine the basis of the problem in the substantive. To determine the number of the substantive in each use we will focus on the evidence within the noun phrase in attempting to infer the potential meaning of each morpheme.

-Ø MORPHEME: ‘ SINGULAR’, ‘MASS’, AND ‘GENERIC’ It is surprising how many discussions of number fail to treat even common uses where -ø does not have the usual sense of ‘one’ and where -s does not mean ‘more than one’: no attempt is made to see if the two morphemes can express different senses, and if so, what the relationship between them is. For example, most grammars point out that -ø substantives like coffee, water, or bread are used to express, as one grammar puts it, the sense of “a bulk or mass or quantity of matter,” designating something which is not countable, as in: There is coffee on the table. We need more water. He makes good bread.

The observation that this sense is quite different from that usually expressed by the -ø morpheme, ‘singular, one’, seems to pose no problem for most grammars. In fact many do not treat this fairly frequent use, usually called “mass” or “noncount,”2 in the section dealing with number but in a quite different section, as though -ø morpheme had nothing to do with grammatical number here. It is true that, in this use, the -ø substantive expresses neither ‘singular’ nor ‘plural’, as Jespersen suggests (1954, II, 114). And if one accepts the traditional idea (coming from Latin grammars?) that grammatical number is limited to expressing ‘singular’ and ‘plural’, then it follows that substantives in a ‘mass’ use are not declined for number. This conclusion is apparently acceptable to many grammarians, in spite of what it entails, namely that the -ø morpheme of “mass nouns” is different from the -ø morpheme of “count nouns.”

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On the other hand these ‘mass’ uses of substantives did pose a problem when regarded from the point of view adopted here because of the principle of seeking hidden order behind conflicting data. This principle led us to look for an explanation of this apparent disorder in the data, to understand how what appears to be the same -ø morpheme can, in different uses, express two quite different senses. For example, in the above sentence coffee expresses a vague amount of an uncountable substance, liquid or grounds or beans, spilled or in one or more containers. On the other hand, the noun phrase in: There’s a coffee on the table for you.

makes us think immediately of a cup of coffee, a certain quantity, one serving, because coffee has a sense of ‘singular’ here. This difference is quite easily observed, and it is generally pointed out in the grammars that to a ‘singular’ sense corresponds a ‘plural’ sense with -s, as in: two coffees. When the lexeme ‘coffee’ is called to mind in a ‘mass’ sense it cannot be thought as a plural, but when actualized in a ‘count’ or ‘bounded’ sense it can, and so when we hear coffees it makes us think of a number of cups or types of coffee. The point here is obvious, even though it has not been generally accepted by most linguists and grammars: -ø can express both a ‘singular’ and a ‘mass’ sense. It is not limited, as tradition would have it, to the former. Once this is granted as part of the data, as a fact to be explained, it leads us to ask if there is anything in common between the two senses. The question is important because if there is no connection between them, if a sign can express two quite unrelated senses, we would have to consider them homonyms, separate morphemes with the same physical means of expression. Here, however, there is a clear link between the two senses of -ø: both express quantity. More than that: Quirk et al. (246) point out that in ‘mass’ uses the substantive designates “an undifferentiated mass or continuum.” This is significant because it brings out that -ø can express quantity in a particular way – as ‘continuate’ – and as we shall see below this opposes it to -s, which also expresses quantity but as ‘discontinuate’. However this is getting ahead of our story. For the moment I want to insist on another important point. The observation that -ø substantives express ‘continuate quantity’ in

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their ‘mass’ uses gives us what they have in common with -ø substantives in ‘singular’ uses: both express quantity as ‘continuate’. Although it has not been brought out in grammars, perhaps because it is considered a commonplace, any notion represented as ‘singular’ by a -ø substantive, say a pencil or a coffee, is necessarily represented as continuate, as occupying a single place in space. That is, the two senses of -ø have something in common, namely, ‘continuate quantity’, and this assures us that we are dealing with the same morpheme in both cases. On the other hand we cannot say that the two senses are identical. What differentiates them is how the size or magnitude of the quantity is represented: in the ‘mass’ use -ø expresses a vague, undetermined amount, whereas in a ‘singular’ use it expresses a determined or limited amount, a unit. All of this to establish as a fact of observation – observation of meaning expressed – that the -ø morpheme helps express different senses for the lexeme ‘coffee’. Having observed that coffee can express ‘continuate quantity’ as either undetermined in extent (‘mass’) or as limited to one (‘singular’), we naturally wondered if there are any other ways of expressing ‘continuate quantity’. Extending observation beyond these two most frequent uses, brings to light cases like the following: Coffee is a stimulant.

Here coffee does not express a ‘one unit’ sense and it could not be understood in a ‘vague amount’ sense since the sentence applies to all coffee. Rather, it expresses the sense of ‘coffee in general’, what is called a ‘generic’ sense. Again we find the common element of meaning expressed ‘continuate quantity’ but the magnitude of the quantity represented is far greater than in the previous two uses, and in fact is as great as possible for the lexeme ‘coffee’, applicable to everything the lexeme can designate. In this ‘generic’ use, then, the notion is thought in such a way as to be applicable as widely as possible, to the full range of its extension. The point here is that we have a third sense of the -ø morpheme with the same basic meaning of ‘continuate quantity’ but differing in magnitude, in the quantity of quantity (if I can put it like that) expressed. In fact coffee here carries the difference of magnitude observed between the first two senses – between ‘a minimal amount’, ‘one’, and ‘an indefinite amount’, ‘mass’ – to the extreme, to the point where it expresses ‘all’, a sense quite opposed to the ‘minimal’ or ‘bounded’ sense.

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This relation between the different senses expressed by -ø morpheme has been so little commented on that it is worth giving other examples. Thus in: Aspirin is an analgesic.

we get the sense of ‘aspirin by its very nature’, a ‘generic’ sense, whereas in: Is there much aspirin in this medication?

the sense is ‘indefinite amount’ and in: I took an aspirin this morning.

the ‘singular’ sense is expressed. The important point here is that the same lexeme is formed quantitatively in different ways to provide different manners of thinking it. Different lexemes can give different results when quantified by grammatical number. Thus: Butter is made from cream. (‘generic’) There is butter on the table. (‘indefinite amount’) I tried a butter without salt. (‘singular’)

The interesting thing here is that, as a ‘singular’, butter here suggests a type or brand of butter, not a tablet as in the case of aspirin. With a less concrete lexeme: Light travels faster than sound. (‘generic’) We need (some) light in this room. (‘indefinite amount’) There is a strange light in this painting. (‘singular’)

Here, the ‘singular’ makes us think of a particular quality or type of light, though ‘singular’ light can also be used to designate a particular object. And with a substantive like injustice, the quantifying effects are slightly different, suggesting the extent to which the abstract lexeme is manifested: Injustice disrupts society. (‘generic’) He attacked injustice in the school system. (‘undefined extent’) This is a flagrant injustice. (‘singular’)

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While the substantive evokes the general notion in the first sentence, in the second sentence it suggests ‘wherever it was found’, whereas in the third sentence we understand ‘a particular case’. These examples will suffice to show that the -ø morpheme can signify three different quantitative senses with substantives capable of expressing, in certain uses, a ‘mass’ notion. The following diagram might help to illustrate these different quantitative effects:

Here the largest circle depicts the greatest possible scope of the substantive’s lexeme, the smallest circle the smallest possible, and the intermediate circle any extent between these two, whence the impression of vague or undetermined quantity. This interpretation of the examples is based on the view that it is the same morpheme in each case. It is a pity that most grammars treat these uses separately since they do not seek the link between the three senses, especially the most common ones, ‘singular’ and ‘mass’. It would seem that, if one does not look at -ø morpheme as systemically opposed to -s – when a substantive has no -s it has -ø, and vice versa3 – there is no incentive to look for what it expresses in diverse uses. Lacking sufficient data, an observer cannot appreciate the morpheme’s versatility and so sees no reason to analyze it. The assumption of an underlying order, however, leads one to observe from a systemic point of view, and it then becomes apparent that -ø can form the substantive’s lexical import quantitatively in three different ways: as expressing the widest possible scope to include everything the lexeme can designate, as expressing the narrowest possible scope to include only one entity, and as expressing a scope somewhere between the widest possible and the narrowest possible to include a vague quantity. In brief, to be fruitful, the observing of usage must be carried out with some idea, however general, of the underlying order or system one is looking for. Observing usage in this way does make an important assumption about the meaning of -ø, namely that the sense it expresses can be varied to contribute to the effect of the noun phrase. That is, it would contradict observed usage to postulate that -ø is always ‘sin-

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gular’ in sense, even when the noun phrase expresses a ‘generic’ or a ‘vague amount’ sense. To my knowledge, Reid in his detailed study of the meaning of verb and noun number (an approach with much in common with these lessons) is the only one to recognize this when he proposes (80) that in ‘mass noun’ usage a -ø substantive is “employed faute de mieux to communicate messages for which it is not ideally suited.” To account for this, I am proposing that the morpheme actualizes its meaning of ‘continuate quantity’ in different ways to express the sense best corresponding to the entity in the intended message represented by the substantive. This brings out a characteristic which is found in many, if not all, morphemes: the ability to express more than one sense, what is called polysemy. And as we shall now see, to explain this ability we are led to infer a potentiality inherent in the morpheme as it exists in tongue. THE CHALLENGE OF POLYSEMY

Polysemy poses a major problem, that of understanding how one sign can express various senses and yet be an effective instrument for communicating. The problem is to explain how communication is possible if signs can have more than one sense, how, with a polysemous morpheme like -ø, a listener manages to get the appropriate sense, the one the speaker has in mind. In fact, the same problem arises for the speaker: how is it that the only sense that emerges into our consciousness when we speak is the one appropriate to what we are talking about? When speaking, we have absolutely no idea that other senses are also possible. The problem raised here by the -ø ending is not only general but also of basic importance since it calls into question the distinguishing characteristic of any morpheme, its meaning. One way of explaining polysemy that has been suggested is as follows: when we speak we mentally run through a list of separate senses to pick out the one that fits best. Since we are not aware of choosing from a pre-established list, this way of explaining presupposes that we somehow have these different senses stocked as meanings ready for use in our preconscious minds, the essential thing being to choose the appropriate one. This way of meeting the problem does not take into account that the different senses are related, that they have something in common: ‘singular’ and ‘mass’ and ‘generic’ are different manners of expressing ‘quantity’, ‘continuate quantity’. And having neglected this important factor, such

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an approach amounts to proposing that there are as many different -ø morphemes as there are senses expressed. If each sense is distinct, separate, unrelated to the others, then -ø with the sense of ‘singular’ is a homonym of -ø with the sense of ‘vague amount’ and both are homonyms of -ø with the ‘generic’ sense. That is, we end up with three morphemes, each with the same sign. This would give rise to the enormous practical difficulty of explaining how communication can take place in such a scenario. It would also lead to the serious theoretical difficulty of explaining why only a given set of senses is expressed by the same sign. If, on the other hand, the different senses are linked to one another in a common relationship, then each of them and the morpheme itself must be analyzed in reference to this relationship. This provides the basis for considering -ø as the sign of a single morpheme and not as the sign common to a set of homonyms. That is, taking into account the fact that all the senses expressed by -ø have something in common, namely the notion of something ‘continuate’, we can postulate this as a constant element in the meaning of the morpheme. As we have just seen, what differs between the different senses is the magnitude of a quantity: ‘all’, ‘vague amount’, and ‘one’ are quantities of different sizes. Hence we can add another element to the meaning of the morpheme whenever it is used: a positive quantity of some particular magnitude, which may be the greatest possible or the least possible or anywhere in between. Our problem thus comes down to this: how to explain that -ø, the morpheme of ‘continuate quantity’, can express three different senses. To find a solution to this general problem of polysemy, which is, I repeat, posed by most if not all morphemes, called for much reflexion and imagining over many years. First worked out some years ago by Guillaume for a very different problem, the articles in French, the solution he proposed consists essentially in postulating that the meaning of the morpheme is not a representation of this particular quantity or of that particular quantity or even of a bundle of particular quantities tied together by a common sign but what can give rise to these different particular senses. This involves starting with the element of meaning common to all uses, ‘continuate quantity’ in our case, and then imagining what mental process would be required to produce from it a representation of any particular quantity. That is to say, the meaning of the morpheme is

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hypothesized as a meaning potential, as a set of conditions for producing, for actualizing the different senses observed in usage. Conceived in this way, the potential constitutes the single meaning of the morpheme and the observed senses in discourse are the various ways it can be actualized. This provides an elegant solution to the problem of polysemy, if it works. How does it work in practice? In the case of the -ø ending, what is this meaning potential, the conditions required to produce a representation of any particular quantity? We can describe them quite simply as first, the semantic field of quantity, more precisely continuate quantity, which, in order to include all positive quantities, must stretch from the greatest possible to the least possible, from the maximum to the minimum. The second necessary condition is the possibility for the mind to move through this field, mentally scanning it until the right quantity, the quantity corresponding to what the speaker has in mind, brings that particular experience into focus. A third condition, implicit in the second, is the possibility for the speaker to intercept the movement, holding it up at the point where the quantity bringing the experiential entity into focus is represented by -ø morpheme and expressed as part of the word’s import. The field of quantity containing all possible magnitudes we can diagram as stretching from maximum (M) to minimum (m):

‘continuate quantity’

..........................................................

M

m

The dotted line here is to suggest that all quantities are possibilities but no particular quantity is actually in view. The possibility of the speaker mentally scanning this field can be suggested by an arrow:

-ø ‘continuate quantity’

..........................................................

M

m

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This diagram depicts the meaning of -ø morpheme as a potential in tongue permitting all possible variations of ‘continuate quantity’. Notice that, besides the field of ‘continuate quantity’, we are here postulating as part of the potential meaning a possibility of movement, just as we postulated above for the parts of speech the possibility to effect a process of incidence. To depict how the speaker actualizes this potentiality of movement and so brings to mind one particular sense of -ø in, say, its usual ‘singular’ use (e.g. I see a light), we can show the actualized movement by means of a solid vector proceeding through the field of quantity and intercepted at its final position (m), that corresponding to minimal quantity, as in:

-ø -ø 'continuate quantity' ‘continuate quantity’ M M

m m

Similarly, to actualize the meaning of -ø in its ‘generic’ sense (e.g. Light travels faster than sound), the actual movement through the field of quantity must be intercepted at its very beginning, leaving all the rest of the movement unrealized, at the position (M), corresponding to maximum quantity, as in:

-ø -ø 'continuate quantity' ‘continuate quantity’ .............................................. m M m

Finally to actualize a ‘vague amount’ sense (e.g. We need some light in here) the movement of -ø must be intercepted at a mid-point somewhere between its beginning and its end, corresponding to an intermediate quantity as in:

-ø -ø 'continuate quantity' ‘continuate quantity’ ......................... m M m

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Viewing meaning operationally in this way can meet the challenge posed by polysemy. It shows why -ø is a single morpheme, not a set of homonyms – because its potential meaning is the possibility of one movement through the field of quantity. It also helps us understand how it is possible for the senses expressed to vary – because ‘light’ or any other substantive’s lexeme is formed to provide a representation of something occupying more or less space. Thus the particular sense signified by -ø ending is obtained by intercepting its movement at the position best according with the lexical import the speaker has in mind and representing the quantity corresponding to this position. In this way, it contributes to forming the lexeme as actualized in a give use. And of course a listener, attempting to reconstruct what the speaker has in mind, can activate the morpheme’s potential meaning whenever a -ø substantive arises in order to obtain, in the light of other elements in the context and situation, the appropriate reading for that particular use. Thus meaning conceived of as an inherently operational potential in tongue permits us to understand how the morpheme, when activated, can, in different uses, help represent various particular experiences designated by the same lexeme. Moreover, this way of theorizing meaning gives us a way of understanding its status when we are not engaged in an act of language: it is a potential in tongue, something like a computer program when it is not in use. Furthermore, this hypothesis makes clear what emerges into consciousness and thereby makes communication possible: the particular sense number gives a lexeme in a given use. It follows that observation of language must not be restricted to the visible sign as Diver (48) would have it, but must extend to what is “mentally visible” as Guillaume (1948, 69) puts it. All this amounts to saying that -ø morpheme is ready to be made operative and bring to awareness a particular quantitative sense of the lexeme whenever the speaker wishes to construct a substantive. Indeed, since polysemy appears to be the general rule, this leads to postulating that each morpheme and lexeme exists as a permanent potential for any speaker, ready to be put into operation to form words and produce a stretch of actual language, discourse. It remains, of course, to test the hypothesis proposed for -ø morpheme by confronting it with as wide a range of usage as possible. This will be undertaken in the next lesson, but first we will examine uses of -s morpheme, the other component of the system of number, looking for any evidence of polysemy.

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- S MORPHEME All grammars indicate that -s morpheme expresses the sense of ‘plural, more than one’, and this is indeed its most frequent use by far. Thus in: Whales can be seen here during the early summer.

the sense is ‘more than one’ or rather ‘indefinite number’. Unfortunately, most grammars do not focus on the morpheme to see what other senses it can express and so they sometimes fail to mention a less frequent use like: Whales are mammals.

Here the impression evoked is not ‘more than one’ or even ‘an indefinite number’. A moment’s pause suffices for one to observe that the sense expressed here is closer to ‘all’. That is to say -s expresses a ‘generic’ sense applicable to all possible entities perceived as having the nature represented by the lexeme ‘whale’. Thanks to the morpheme, the lexeme ‘whale’ is formed in such a way as to express something different from when it is merely ‘plural’ in sense. This use of -s is by no means uncommon: Cars pollute. Crossroads are dangerous. Bears hibernate. I don’t like hamburgers.

In all such uses, the speaker’s intent is to talk about all entities to which the lexeme can be applied, about the full range of its extension. Observing the two senses brings out two facts. Firstly, like -ø morpheme, -s morpheme is polysemous. Secondly, there is a parallel between the senses expressed: ‘indefinite amount’ and ‘all’ for -ø, ‘indefinite number’ and ‘all’ for -s. This close similarity cannot be pure coincidence and of course turns attention toward the third sense of -ø, ‘singular’, raising the question: can -s express any other quantitative senses? The answer is affirmative, but because this type of usage is relatively rare, it required a great

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deal of careful observation to find a sufficient number of examples to convince anyone that this involves more than just an obscure dialectal usage or historically inherited ‘singular’ forms like a lens and a summons. Typical examples of this use are: The travellers reached a crossroads marked by a signpost. (cited in a dictionary) It was an excellent opening ceremonies. (TV commentary on the Olympic Games) He got one heads and three tails. (from a book on games of chance) The weather is quite pleasant – plus one degrees on the ground. (pilot’s comment)

These uses will be examined in detail in lesson 7. For the time being the important point is to observe the use of crossroads, ceremonies, heads and degrees with the indefinite article and the numeral one, and so to recognize that -s can express a minimal quantity, ‘singular’. This is by no means easy to admit because of tradition. The habit formed by grammars is to consider -s a monosemous morpheme, expressing only ‘plural’. In the light of the data,4 however, this use of -s must be admitted, and with it a clear parallelism with -ø morpheme. Granted this parallelism in usage, the next step is to examine the three senses of -s, ‘singular’, ‘plural’ and ‘generic’, to see if they are different actualizations of a single meaning potential in tongue. All three are concerned with quantity, but the latter two in a different way from the ‘continuate quantity’ of -ø. The ordinary ‘plural’ sense, an accumulation of a number of individuals, is, as opposed to ‘mass’ noun usage, clearly a case of ‘discontinuate quantity’. Similarly for ‘generic’ with -s, which is an accumulation of all individuals of the same nature (Whales are mammals) and not the nature of a substance (Coffee is a stimulant). How about -s ‘singular’? Can the notion of ‘singular’ be viewed as somehow ‘discontinuate’? The answer is yes. In the first two examples above, crossroads and ceremonies both present a composite entity as one unit. They designate as a single reality something made up of a number of components. And in the other two examples, where one heads designates one side of a coin, one degrees a position on a scale, the substantive represents as discontinuate something with an inseparable counterpart, discriminating something

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which has no separate existence from its neighbour. These impressions of composite or discriminated entities, which will be examined more fully in lesson 7, suggest that in such cases a single reality is represented in terms of discontinuate quantity. In the light of such observations it was concluded that, as with -ø morpheme, there is an element of meaning common to all three uses, namely ‘quantity’, but in the case of -s it is always ‘discontinuate quantity’. Furthermore, assuming, as with -ø morpheme, that -s in the substantive is the sign of a single morpheme, not a set of homonyms, it was hypothesized that in tongue, outside of any particular use, -s morpheme has as its potential meaning the possibility of a movement throughout the mental field of discontinuate quantity. The following figure will help to clarify this manner of conceiving the potential meaning of -s in the substantive, as the possibility of a mental process or operation which can be activated whenever needed by depicting it as a dotted vector:

-s-s ‘discontinuate quantity’ 'discontin uate quantity' ................................................ m M m M

As it is carried out, this operation can be intercepted at the position most suitable for representing what the speaker has in mind. This makes -s capable of producing the three senses observed in discourse, each at a different position in the movement. To actualize the meaning of -s in its ‘singular’ sense (a crossroads), the actual movement through the field of discontinuate quantity must be intercepted at its very beginning, leaving all the rest of the movement unrealized, at the position (m), corresponding to minimum quantity, as in:

-s-s-s 'discontin uate quantity' ‘discontinuate quantity’ ‘discontinuate quantity’

. . . . ........................................................................................ . . .

m m m

M M M

In this position -s can provide a representation of space for something composite (‘discontinuate’) constituting a single unit

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(‘minimum quantity’). To actualize the meaning of -s in its ordinary ‘plural, more than one’ sense (Whales can be seen here during the early summer), the actual movement through the field of discontinuate quantity must be intercepted at some mid-point, leaving the rest of the movement unrealized, as in:

-s-s 'discontin uate quantity' ‘discontinuate quantity’ ......................... m M m M

In this position -s can provide a representation of space for a multiplicity of individuals (‘discontinuate’) constituting a quantity between one and all. To actualize the meaning of -s in its ‘generic’ sense (Whales are mammals), the actual movement through the field of discontinuate quantity must be intercepted at its final point, leaving none of the movement unrealized, as in:

-s-s 'discontin uatequantity’ quantity' ‘discontinuate mm

M M

In this position, -s can provide a representation of space for all individuals that the substantive can designate. As with -ø morpheme, this view of the meaning of -s excludes a static conception and calls for conceiving meaning as a potential, that is, as something dynamic which can actualize a minimal space, an intermediate space or a maximum space in any particular use. One of these particular quantities must be actualized each time this morpheme is used but only one of them can be actualized at a time, depending on where the movement is intercepted – at its beginning, in the middle somewhere, or at its end – and so the potential meaning itself can never be actualized and observed in discourse. What is proposed here as the meaning of -s, like that proposed for -ø above, is a theoretical construct which cannot be directly observed. This brings out the difference between a potential meaning and what is sometimes called a “basic” or “underlying” meaning,

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which is usually thought of as an element of meaning common to all uses and so always observable in discourse. A similar distinction exists between a prototypical meaning, understood as a commonly observed sense of a morpheme, and the potential meaning of a morpheme. Being a theoretical construct, a potential meaning can be verified only by confronting it with as many different uses as possible to see if it helps explain them. This will be undertaken in the next lessons, but first the analysis must be completed by comparing the two morphemes and trying to get a view of the dynamic system they constitute in tongue. THE SYSTEM

The similarities between the two morphemes, to the point where one is the mirror image of the other, is no accident. Both meanings, in fact, consist of a movement through the field of quantity from one extreme to the other. But their movements are in opposite directions: one (-ø) from maximum to minimum, the other (-s) from minimum to maximum. One might be tempted to conceptualize these as to-and-fro movements, from a maximum position to a minimum position and back to the maximum, but this would be a purely spatial way of looking at them, as though a scanning movement carried out by the mind required no time. When viewed dynamically, unrolling in time, the two movements necessarily occupy different positions. One must come after the other; the -s movement must follow the -ø movement. This conclusion was reached because of the senses expressed, and particularly the common ‘plural’ sense of -s: the only way to obtain a ‘more than one’ representation is to go beyond the position of ‘singular’, i.e. by multiplying ‘one’. In fact, this holds true for all the senses expressed by -s. As was seen, -s represents the lexeme with ‘discontinuate quantity’, as designating a number of distinct (or at least distinguishable) entities of the same nature, a representation which presupposes the unit view obtained at the end of the -ø movement. Such considerations led to the proposal that the movement signified by -s succeeds that of -ø, beginning at the point where the other ends. The system of number thus consists of these two dynamic meaning potentials, depicted by dotted vectors as possible movements in the following diagram:

Number: Toward the System

-ø-ø ‘continuate quantity’ 'continuate quantity'

...................................................

M M

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-s-s ‘discontinuate quantity’ 'discontinuate quantity'

..................................................

m m

M M

Grammatical number is thus a dynamic system, the mechanism for a single biphasic operation through the field of quantity from maximum to minimum and from minimum on to maximum. Like any other operational entity, this system requires time when activated, time which, like that required by any other preconscious mental process, is so short that we cannot possibly be aware of it. It is because of this micro-time that the movement “back” to the position of maximum quantity is not simply a return to the starting point, since there is no going back in real time. In fact, what has been defined by the end of the -ø movement, a minimal or unit view of the entity, is repeated or multiplied throughout an ever larger space as the -s movement proceeds. This is what gives each movement its distinct way of representing quantity, as a continuate (-ø) or as a discontinuate (-s), whatever the magnitude actualized. Since the micro-time involved makes possible the intercepting of the operation anywhere in order to obtain the magnitude intended, it can be seen that this is a system not just for expressing ‘singular’ and ‘plural’ but for quantifying the lexical matter so that it corresponds to the scope of the particular experience to be represented. In other words, it is a system for giving a form to the substantive’s lexeme, its comprehension. It is this lexeme, formed by number as well as gender and case in the morphogenesis of the substantive, that will seek a support in that portion of its own extension that corresponds to what the speaker has in mind to talk about. To bring out the basis of this analysis more clearly, it is worth comparing it with that proposed by Langacker (1991, 76–81). For him the ‘plural’ substantive is “a subclass of mass nouns” since it “designates a mass (unbounded region)” albeit “consisting of indefinitely many instances.” On this basis he explains why they both “behave alike in numerous respects.” Neither ‘mass’ nor ‘plural’ substantives are “susceptible to further pluralization” or occur with the indefinite

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article. On the other hand, both can occur without a quantifier or with quantifiers “not permitted by count nouns.” Thus, “a singular noun and its corresponding plural represent distinct categories” since “plurals themselves fall under the mass-noun category.” Perhaps the most obvious difference of Langacker’s analysis is that it does not take into account the morphology of the substantive, -ø vs. -s, in establishing its categories. “Mass-noun” includes both -ø and -s substantives and “singular noun” includes -ø substantives (but when his analysis is extended to nonprototypical ‘singular’ substantives like a crossroads it will presumably be led to include some -s substantives here as well). That is to say, because this analysis is aimed at elucidating the “grammatical structure of nominals,” not the structure of the substantive, it leads to interpreting a ‘mass’ sense, not as ‘undetermined continuate quantity’ as was done above, but simply as an “unbounded region,” a trait it has in common with a ‘plural’ sense, and to basing a category on this common trait. In short, this is a syntax-oriented analysis, focusing on the noun phrase, whereas in these lessons we are developing a wordoriented analysis focusing on the morphology of the words involved in order to explain how they are put together. This word-based approach, where syntax is seen as a consequence of the morphology built into words, can be brought out even more clearly by contrasting it with the very different type of approach found in Carlson (1977). Carlson deals with noun phrases consisting of an -s substantive without determiner, what the author calls the “bare plural.” His aim is to account for the difference between two uses of a “øNP,” the ‘generic’ use as in Dogs bark, and the ‘indefinite plural’ use as in He threw oranges at Alice. His “chief contention” (414) is that “in all cases the differing interpretations can be attributed in an entirely predictable manner to some aspect of the context in which that particular instance of øNP occurs. If this hypothesis is correct, and the null determiner is in fact unambiguous, then we can generate the øNP in a rather straightforward manner syntactically, assigning it a constant interpretation in all instances.” Here the senses expressed (“differing interpretations”) by the noun phrase are “not to be accounted for by an ambiguity in the NP itself, but rather by explicating how the context of the sentence acts on the bare plural to give rise to this distinction” (413). He thus attributes the expression of grammatical number not to the -s morpheme but to something else in the context to avoid

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having to deal with the polysemy (“ambiguity”) of the morpheme. Not only does this ignore the symbolic nature of -s – morphemes do signify something – but it leads to the conclusion of a “constant interpretation in all instances,” the originally observed distinction between ‘generic’ and ‘indefinite plural’ senses (the data to be explained) being reduced to “the seeming variety of interpretations” (415; my italics). In neither Langacker’s nor Carlson’s approach is the evidence provided by the substantive’s visible morphology taken into account, presumably because of the problem posed by the polysemy involved here: how to explain that -s can express both ‘plural’ and ‘generic’, -ø both ‘mass’ and ‘singular’. The problem is resolved in these lessons by the basic principle that senses observed in discourse are actualizations of an underlying meaning potential, and “letting the theory arise out of successful analysis”, as Diver (46) aptly puts it.5 This implies that the potential meaning is dynamic, offers the possibility of a movement interceptible at the appropriate point, as illustrated in the above diagrams. In this way the polysemy of morphemes like -s and -ø, far from posing a problem, provides data for inferring the nature of their potential meaning. It is then the way the speaker forms the lexeme, by means of a number morpheme in order to represent something in the intended message, that determines the sense expressed by the noun phrase. Thus it is assumed here that morphology conditions syntax, that what a noun phrase expresses is the consequence of what is built into its words, their makeup. And since the visible morphology of the substantive expresses grammatical number there is no need to do violence to this observed fact to explain why the noun phrase expresses number in different ways. Recognizing the systemic connection between the two morphemes helps to explain a number of facts, including a similarity between ‘mass’ and ‘plural’ substantives as observed by both Carlson (455) and Langacker, who characterizes both as expressing an “unbounded region.” This similarity arises, as was pointed out above, from intercepting the morpheme’s movement, whether through ‘continuate’ (-ø) or ‘discontinuate’ (-s) space, at some midpoint between the extremes of minimum and maximum magnitudes, the distinction between the two being due to their respective fields. In each case this can depict an undetermined quantity and so give rise to a use of the substantive not calling for a determiner

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and resulting in a noun phrase with the “unbounded region” expressive effect. Besides the fact of recognizing the visible morphology of the substantive, an advantage of the system proposed here is that it can throw light on the syntax of the noun phrase. Being conceived as a system of potential meanings, the theory of number presented above is intended to be general enough to give rise to all the uses, both prototypical and nonprototypical. In this respect, then, the system of number includes all possibilities for any lexeme within the field of positive quantity. A number of these possibilities, some of them quite surprising, will be examined in the next two lessons. Like a program in a computer, it is always ready to be put into operation, to provide within the limits of its movements whatever result is called for to represent the intended message. Furthermore, since no substantive can enter into discourse without its lexeme having been formed by one or the other of its morphemes, the system is a necessary phase in the “software” of the substantive. As a consequence, only one of the movements requires a positive sign, since its absence (-ø) necessarily signifies that the lexical matter has been formed by the other movement. Although both can provide the same range of magnitudes, the two movements do not represent quantity in the same way. This, then, is the system of number in the substantive, the theory for explaining usage. Its function is to further the word’s morphogenesis giving a grammatical form to the particular lexical matter. It gives a shape or form to this matter representing the experiential entity the speaker has in mind by quantifying it, that is by giving it both the contours of a space which is either continuate or discontinuate and a certain scope, minimum, intermediate, or maximum, with regard to what the lexeme can designate. The difference between the two morphemes constituting the system is most clearly seen by comparing their two most frequent uses: the ‘singular’ sense expressed by -ø necessarily gives a view of the lexeme involving an undivided space, whereas the ‘plural’ expressed by -s gives a view of it involving a divided space. That is to say, in an apple -ø morpheme provides a view of the lexeme’s inner space as continuate, whereas in some apples the -s gives a discontinuate view of its inner space. The theory can thus explain these commonplace uses, but it is time to examine a wider range of uses to see if it can explain the expressive effects observed there. This will be the subject of the next two lessons.

LESSON SIX

Number: Testing for -ø Morpheme Next, we have what are here called mass-words…. Here such notions as singular and plural are strictly speaking inapplicable. Jespersen 1954 II, 72–3

INTRODUCTION

In the last lesson, the examination of the substantive’s morphogenesis focused on the system of number and brought out three common quantifying senses expressed by -ø substantives: ‘one’, ‘indefinite amount’, and ‘all’. To avoid the dilemma of having three separate morphemes, one potential meaning capable of producing these three senses was proposed: the field of ‘continuate quantity’ stretching from a maximum (‘all’) sense through intermediate (‘indefinite quantity’) senses to a minimum (‘one’) sense, along with a focusing mechanism permitting the mind traversing this field to fix on the point best representing what the speaker has in mind to express by means of the substantive’s lexeme. It was noticed that quantifying the substantive’s lexeme in this way helps bring out its two different versions – ‘unbounded’ (‘mass’) vs. ‘unit’ or ‘bounded’ (‘count’) – in discourse.1 Three different senses expressed by -s substantives were also observed: ‘one’ (fairly rare), ‘indefinite number’ and ‘all’. Again the polysemy of a morpheme led to hypothesizing a potential meaning, i.e. a meaning involving an operativity capable of giving rise to different actualizations in discourse. For -s, the meaning postulated is the field of ‘discontinuate quantity’, stretching from a minimum (‘one’) sense through intermediate (‘indefinite number’) senses to a maximum (‘all’) sense, with the same focusing mechanism permitting the mind to scan the field from beginning to end in order to line up the quantity best

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corresponding to the way the substantive’s lexeme represents its correlate in the intended message. The two morphemes are thus distinct because of their potential meanings. In the first place, their fields, ‘continuate’ vs. ‘discontinuate’, are opposed so that they represent differently the space occupied by the lexeme. Furthermore the scanning movements through these fields are opposed in direction, maximum (M) to minimum (m) and vice versa: Mm vs. mM

Combining them into a single dynamic system so that one follows the other in the microtime required for a mental operation provides the possibility of representing for any lexeme all possible quantities in either a ‘continuate’ or a ‘discontinuate’ mode. This is why every substantive appearing in discourse is declined for number and why any use can pose a test case for this theory. From a methodological point of view, this examination of number has brought out three points: – the importance of observing all the data, both the visible signs (-ø and -s) and all the senses expressed by a morpheme (not, for example, leaving out ‘mass’ nouns when considering -ø substantives); – the understanding provided by postulating for each morpheme a single meaning potential involving an operativity capable of producing the observed senses in an orderly fashion, as opposed to either ignoring infrequently observed senses, or simply listing observed senses without indicating the relations between them (tantamount to proposing a series of homonyms); – the explanatory value of regarding every observed sense as a new actualization resulting from putting the meaning potential into operation each time a substantive is called for. All this amounts to saying that the system of grammatical number exists as a potential in tongue, which, like any software, is ready to be made operative whenever the speaker needs it. This hypothesized system was established largely on the basis of the most common uses of -ø and -s. It is time now to examine it in the light of other uses, some of them less common. In each case,

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the aim will be to discern whether the space implied in the lexeme is ‘continuate’ or ‘discontinuate’ and whether it is ‘maximum’, ‘intermediate’, or ‘minimum’, with regard to the lexeme’s field of application. In this lesson uses of -ø morpheme are discussed.

’ UNDETERMINED QUANTITY’ USAGE To begin with, several examples to illustrate the different ways that the movement of -ø morpheme can form the same lexeme: Stone is durable. Stone for the new building arrived some time ago. A stone fell into the pool.

From the ‘generic’ to the ‘indefinite amount’ to the ‘one’ sense it can be seen that the morpheme represents different stretches or scopes involved in the lexeme as ‘continuate’. In the first example ‘stone’ calls to mind a ‘generic’ representation, the nature of the substance, rather than any particular manifestation of it. In the second sentence ‘stone’ represents an ‘indeterminate amount’, the experiential reality as building material. And in the third it depicts something ‘singular’, a single object with a limited stretch of uninterrupted inner space. Similarly for: Sound travels quite slowly. The interplay of sound and light was quite effective. There wasn’t one sound to be heard.

Here again the three quantitative senses are expressed in a ‘continuate’ mode. It might be recalled that on reading or hearing examples like these, a person has to pick up clues (like the determiners a and one) from the context and even from the speaking situation to know how to interpret the substantive in order to get the speaker’s message. The person speaking or writing however has just the opposite task, that of constructing the context, the sentence. Being aware of the intended message beforehand, the speaker actualizes the lexeme to represent the experiential reality and forms it accordingly by means of the system of number, and it is this grammatically formed lexeme which calls for a determiner, as will be seen in a later lesson. A more abstract example:

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Truth is the opposite of error and falsehood. He accepts only the truth of empirical investigation. This is a truth that is easily forgotten.

To characterize the use of abstract notions like ‘truth’ in the first example, the term “mass” is, as Christophersen (25–6) points out, far less appropriate than with more concrete notions like ‘stone’, and this is one reason why the term “unbounded” use of a notion is preferred here (a point to be discussed more fully in lesson 13 on article usage). Worth noting in these examples is the ease with which their lexemes arise as either ‘unbounded’ (‘generic’ and ‘indeterminate amount’) or ‘bounded’ (‘singular’) representations. Some grammars have interpreted this as indicating that there are two classes in the “lexicon,” and that substantives such as these belong to both classes, whereas most others are presumed to belong to only one class since they are found almost exclusively designating either homogeneous substances or individual entities. Classifying lexemes before usage in this way raises a problem when, as in the following examples, a substantive is not used according to its presumed class: Considering the size of the site, there is simply too much house on it. (Christophersen and Sandved, 85) The price may seem a bit high, but you get a lot of car for your money (loc. cit.). masters of poems and small magics, who could make… spells and runes. (Webster’s Third, s.v.) The classical theory of universality, of relevance to men of all times and places, assumes certain permanences in human character and in human situations which are illuminated by the best literature. (reference lost)

In such cases, they are supposed to have been “reclassified” or “recategorized” or “converted.” This manner of considering our vocabulary – as consisting of words already formed and ready to be inserted into a sentence – was criticized above as too static. It can easily lead to taking the most common use as the only possible, like Wierzbicka (555), who classifies water as “singularia only” although the following sentence from her study (538) indicates otherwise:

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I don’t want to claim that the waters between the different islands which are jointly called “the New Hebrides” are clearly included in the concept ‘the New Hebrides’, but I don’t think that they are clearly excluded either.

One must rather consider any use of a word, frequent or infrequent, to be a result, and to examine the sense it expresses in the light of the process leading to that result. When discussing ideogenesis and morphogenesis (lesson 3) it was proposed that our vocabulary should be viewed as a universe of ideas for viewing our ongoing experience, ideas which have no built-in grammatical form. In like fashion, a viewing idea of tongue has no built-in features assigning it to a lexical class but is available for either realization, as Hewson (1972, 78) points out. It remains, of course, that, because of their makeup, lexemes like ‘permanence’ and ‘magic’ are only rarely called on to give a ‘bounded’ representation, whereas for ‘house’ and ‘car’ it is the contrary. Granted the variety of human experience and the possibilities of viewing ideas in English and the imagination of speakers, however, even if some lexeme has never been found in a ‘unbounded’ sense or another in a ‘bounded’ sense, it would be rash to argue it cannot be actualized in that way. From the dynamic point of view proposed here, any lexeme has the potential of being actualized in either way. Our approach is, therefore, quite different from an approach which considers that “nouns as lexical entries” are divided into two classes. It also differs from approaches based on the “assumption that countability is not in fact a characteristic of nouns per se, but of NP’s” (Allan 1980, 546). The assumption that countability is indicated, not by the -ø substantive but “by its falling within the domain of a denumerator” like the indefinite article, is based on what listeners or readers or linguists do in order to understand the noun phrase: through the article and other such clues in the context and situation they must discern whether the speaker has actualized the lexeme in a ‘unbounded’ sense or a ‘bounded’ sense. The problem with that quite widespread approach to syntax is that, in order to explain usage in a sentence one must try to adopt the speaker’s point of view, not the listener’s; that is, to explain one must explore the preconditions or causal factors that give rise to the sentence, not what results from it. For the speaker, the substantive’s lexeme is actualized in the way best representing its correlate in the intended

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message. As such it is the substantive’s import, itself determined by the speaker’s intended message, that conditions whether or not a determiner is called for in the noun phrase, and not vice versa. Only by assuming that a lexeme is actualized either ‘bounded’ or ‘unbounded’ each time it is used can one explain, in an ambiguous case like the following, how the speaker knows what he or she is saying: The salmon is too expensive.

Here, where the article does not disambiguate the noun phrase, only a knowledge of the situation – say, someone buying a fish or ordering a meal – could indicate whether the speaker had a ‘bounded’ view, a fish, or an ‘unbounded’ view, a portion of flesh, in mind.2 Infrequent uses like some of the above examples usually have a striking effect. Other examples, also with ‘intermediate’ or ‘indeterminate’ quantity, are: There isn’t enough telephone booth here for me. (conversation) This is one of the few trivial tricks – I cannot call it power – left to me now that I am old and stripped at last down to man.3 “It’s not brutality,” murmured little Hartopp... “It’s boy, only boy.”4

In the first example, where it is a very tall person speaking, one gets the impression of him making the lexeme fit his experience of physical space, similar to the above example of house. In the second, spoken by a wizard, and in the third, ‘man’ and ‘boy’ are reduced to the very nature or essence of the human types, just as in the case of car above. This is relatively rare for animates and particularly so for humans, according to Corbett (2000: ch. 3), who suggests a link with gender here. To emphasize how readily many lexemes can be realized in either an ‘unbounded’ or a ‘bounded’ version, it is worth mentioning a few more common uses. The difference between made of oak and an oak is that between a ‘material’ sense based on an ‘indeterminate continuate’ representation of the wood and an ‘entity’ sense based on ‘minimal continuate’ representation of a tree. In a forest of oak one hesitates between the sense of a species and that of trees. Similar

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expressive effects can be found with other names of trees, and indeed with a large number of other notions (cf. Hewson 1972, 78): to have character vs. an underworld character to pick up glass vs. to pick up a glass to watch television vs. to buy a television to buy hamburger vs. to eat a hamburger to have more potato vs. to have another potato.

In some cases it is more difficult to discern the expressive effect. Hewson (1972, 123–5) gives a number of such uses: Interest in Shakespearean comedy ... Tension in France over the incident ... Furniture damaged in the fire was worth more than $100,000.

Interest and tension suggest little more than ‘indefinite in scope’ as compared with an interest and a certain tension. Similarly for furniture: although it cannot take the indefinite article here, its scope is, as in the other two expressions, indicated by the postposed modifier damaged in the fire. Another sort of expressive effect is obtained in uses like the following: Rumour has it that ...

Rumour here does not call to mind a particular rumour, or rumour in general but rather an indefinite impression of role or function that rumour has played in the particular situation. Similarly for usage in expressions like: To go to church To like school To be in hospital.

These substantives express the function or role of the institutions, and so the expressions do not call to mind the building itself (one can go to church in a gymnasium, etc.). Expressions like by letter, by word of mouth, by bus, and on foot call for a similar analysis.

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Considering -ø substantives from the point of view of the system, i.e. as always expressing ‘continuate quantity’, brings to light many such expressive effects and shows how effective it can be to represent one’s experience by means a lexeme formed by -ø. More examples of this sort will be discussed in lesson 13. In all cases of usage examined so far, the expressive effect of the substantive can be seen to result from the lexeme focusing on the intended message and the morpheme bringing out the space involved to give an ‘indeterminate continuate’ sense, as opposed to both the ‘unit continuate’ (‘singular’) sense and the ‘total continuate’ (‘generic’) sense. Besides uses of -ø substantives with these three senses, which correspond to the three characteristic moments (beginning, middle, and end) of the movement permitted by the number morpheme, there are occasional examples of -ø substantives with a sense differing from all of them, a ‘plural’ sense.

- Ø MORPHEME EXPRESSING ‘ PLURAL’ It is not uncommon in university circles to speak of three faculty in the sense of three individual members of faculty, three professors. From a grammatical point of view, for a -ø substantive to express ‘plural’ is a remarkable fact, so much so that some grammars would simply call this an exception and leave it at that. I have heard it argued that faculty here expresses ‘singular’ and it is because of three that we understand ‘plural’, but this argument, based on how a listener interprets the expression, leads to the difficulty of explaining why a speaker would represent as ‘singular’ what is to be understood as ‘plural’. From a systemic point of view there must be some reason for the speaker to form a substantive representing several individuals in continuate space by means of a -ø substantive. This is the question to be explored here. One of the first things to be noted is that the ‘singular’ a faculty represents a single administrative unit, not a single professor. Moreover faculty takes an -s as well, faculties, to express an ordinary ‘plural’ sense, i.e. more than one administrative unit. Faculty then has two ways of expressing ‘plural’ but they do not mean the same thing: with -ø morpheme it expresses several members of a group constituting the teaching body of a university, whereas with -s it expresses several such groups. This use of certain substantives poses a problem for any analysis of grammatical number in English.

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The fact that -ø morpheme in three faculty expresses not ‘continuate’ or ‘singular’ or ‘generic’, but ‘plural’ appears to introduce a ‘discontinuate’ representation into its senses. This of course would contradict our ‘continuate quantity’ explanation for -ø and so calls for a closer look. Some light is thrown on the problem by a grammarian’s comments on this kind of use in the following examples: With him were nine police and a corporal. The Declaration ... was signed by 1725 Anglican clergy.

Here, “police and clergy suggest that we are referring to the persons in their official capacity” (Wood cited in Erades 1975, 73). For Sweet (II, 46) this use of clergy suggests their “being members of one organization.” These comments are of interest because they seem to describe the same sort of relationship implied by three faculty. As members of faculty (which is not the same as members of a faculty) they are represented in their competence to teach, just as clergy and police represent persons through the official capacity endowed by belonging to a given body or group. Juul (30), commenting on clergy in this type of use, points out that the ‘plural’ sense is “arrived at by a division” of the group designated in its ‘singular’ use (such as a married clergy). Other substantives found in this use (cf. Juul, 33–9) are five hundred light infantry, about two hundred cavalry, how many militia, five crew, five thousand personnel, four staff. A similar link between the individual and the group providing the competence or function may well be behind these examples. That is, being in the infantry, the cavalry, etc. identifies the individuals through the function or role it enables them to carry out. In two other words found with -ø ‘plural’ the relation between individuals and collectivity is a bit different: all these people, both her offspring. One author comments that “people denotes merely human beings, whereas persons denotes human beings with characters, feelings, etc.” (Wood, 176). This suggests that it might still be the individual’s link with a group or collectivity, the human race – or with the family in the case of offspring – which is involved here. Such observations may seem rather tenuous, but another area of -ø ‘plural’ usage brings the individual-group link into clearer focus. These are cases like 2000 Eskimo, these western Carrier, many Micmac. Names of tribal and ethnic groups are often found in

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-ø ‘plural’ usage, especially in more scientific or specialized writings. Reading The Maya as a title in a magazine a few years ago brought to mind the idea that the article would treat these people as constituting the ethno-linguistic group, whereas The Mayas as a title would have suggested an article about their contemporary conditions, social situation, geographical location, and the like but where the ethnicity element was not dominant. One gets the impression that in -ø ‘plural’ uses Eskimo, Maya, etc. bring out the inherent, innate characteristics of the group, the ethnic roots linking individuals to one another. With the -s ‘plural’, however, the link between individual and group is not felt to be the same. The fact of being Canadian, for example, does not define one’s ethnicity as inherent in one’s makeup. It is the ordinary association of one individual to another through more accidental characteristics, as is borne out by the fact that substantives expressing nationality like Canadians, Danes and Brazilians are not found with -ø ‘plural’. This analysis explains why a speaker familiar with a native people would be more likely to use the -ø plural than someone having no particular familiarity with them. It also shows that this area of -ø ‘plural’ usage is similar to the three faculty type of example in that it brings out that the individual-group relationship is crucial here. This will also help us understand the next type to be examined – the use of -ø morpheme to express ‘plural’ with animals, as in 200 gazelle, several elk, two bear. According to one study, this is found with “nouns that refer to members of the set of animals and birds hunted for food or sport, but not as vermin” (Allan 1976, 100). That is, it is not found with domestic animals,5 a fact that the same author brings out by contrasting the following pair: The farmer shot some duck. ?/*The farmer fed some duck.

While the first sentence depicts the subject doing some hunting, the second suggests a domestic chore (feeding) with wildfowl and so strikes one as a questionable if not unacceptable sentence. It would of course be quite acceptable with -s ‘plural’ ducks since this would depict domesticated animals. The reason for this restriction to wild animals was by no means obvious, and it was only after considering that this usage has been

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extended “in more recent times ... to cover hunting with a camera and game conservation” that it was realized the key lay not with the activity of hunting but with the person viewing the animals. In fact this use is often found, according to Allan, “in reports of animals observed in nature reserves particularly by game rangers and cognoscenti.” Cognoscenti of all sorts – hunters, rangers, zoologists, etc. – are those who are knowledgeable of the species, and in observing one or more animals view them as typical exemplars or specimens, i.e. as species-animated individuals. For speakers who are not particularly knowledgeable in this way, the impression of the species, of something continuate, does not predominate so they see the animals as separate entities and use the -s morpheme. As Allan points out, a sentence like: We observed three elephant in the game park.

suggests a knowledgeable observer of elephants in their natural environment, but if an ordinary tourist said: ?We saw three elephant in the game park.

it would sound pretentious. Furthermore, zoos “have a rather different status,” presumably because that environment restricts to a large extent an animal’s species-animated behaviour. Reid (120 ff) attributes variation between -s and -ø plurals with wild animals to “cognitive salience” and evokes a number of factors influencing speakers. This analysis in no way conflicts with that proposed here, except when -ø plurals are interpreted as a “signal for one” (169), rather than as evidence that -ø expresses a different sense than in -ø singulars. All this suggests why -ø ‘plural’ usage is not found with domesticated animals: to the extent that they are domesticated their behaviour is no longer perceived as species-animated. The only terms designating domestic animals that are found in this use are cattle, swine, and head, all of which name animals as members of a herd. And when goat or dog is heard in -ø ‘plural’ usage (There aren’t many goat this year) we understand the wild animals. In spite of what some grammars maintain, usage with substantives naming insects cannot be excluded since examples like the following are not uncommon in specialized situations:

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These green-fly get in everywhere. (Jespersen 1954 II, 489) Not many codling moth this year. (conversation) For control of red spider. (advertisement) To control gypsy moth, inch worms, tent caterpillars, cabbage looper. (advertisement)

Such examples show that the names of vermin are found in this use “denoting insects &c. as the cause of diseases &c.” (Ekwall, 61). Again it is apparently the impression of a species-animated effect that motivates this use. On the other hand the juxtaposition with -s ‘plural’ substantives in the last example, from an ad for insecticide, remains to be explained – a task for cognoscenti. The use of -ø to express a ‘plural’ is not limited to humans and animals. As already seen, aspirin can be used with an ‘unbounded’ sense to denote a chemical substance, and with the ‘bounded’, ‘singular’ sense to denote the chemical in a tablet. It is also quite common to hear both two aspirins and two aspirin, expressing ‘more than one’ with either the -s or the -ø substantive and only the slightest difference of sense distinguishing them. In the former case the speaker names two tablets which contain the chemical; in the latter case, the speaker names the chemical as contained in two tablets. It is six of one, half a dozen of the other – two ways of looking at and representing the same reality. The nuance between the two is slight, but real, that between separate entities of the same nature as opposed to a substance or continuum manifested in separate entities. Another source of usage where -ø expresses ‘plural’ is found in restaurants and bars when orders are given: two beer, two roast beef, etc. Here the sense is obviously ‘two portions or servings of’. This use is probably to be analyzed as in the case of two aspirin, i.e. two realizations of a given substance in a known quantity. Also calling for analysis is the case where a single serving is itself made up of a plurality: on hearing Two French fries! or Two lamb chops! the kitchen would understand not ‘two strips of fried potato’ or ‘two individual chops’ but two portions. This area of usage, which also arises in a specialized situation, needs to be explored more fully. Expressions of measure provide perhaps the clearest cases of -ø expressing ‘plural’. In examples like: He wants five percent. How many horsepower will it take?

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the -ø substantive depicts the total quantity by means of the lexemes ‘percent’ and ‘horsepower’, while the quantifier indicates the subdivisions. These are to be contrasted with the plural obtained by multiplying a singular in: Manufacturing and mercantile rates are both percents of the fire insurance rates. (Webster’s Third, s.v.) Engines with different horsepowers.

Even clearer are ordinary examples like a twelve-inch ruler. The quantifier twelve indicates so clearly that inch is thought as a ‘plural’ that many ESL learners are tempted to use inches, which for an anglophone would simply not be English. Here the lexeme ‘ruler’ is formed as a support and then ‘twelve’ and ‘inch’ are constituted as a complex notion to characterize ‘ruler’. That is, ‘ruler’, a ‘singular’ substantive, provides a continuate space to be measured, to be divided into inch-long parts. Inch then is formed as a ‘plural’ to subdivide the space of ‘ruler’, but since this space is seen as ‘continuate’, ‘inch’ cannot represent it as a ‘discontinuate plural’ with -s but must represent the space as a ‘continuate plural’ with -ø. It then combines with ‘twelve’ to form a noun phrase ‘twelveinch’ which is made incident to ‘ruler’. A final example will help bring out this effect of a -ø ‘plural’. The following name was seen on a sign for a motel: Ten Acres Cabins

One understands here that the cabins are situated on a property called Ten Acres. If the sign had read Ten Acre Cabins, the sense would be radically different because we would understand this to indicate an interior measure of the cabins. All these details of usage raise a problem for the ‘continuate quantity’ explanation put forward for -ø morpheme. How can a ‘plural, more than one’ sense be reconciled with a ‘continuate’ representation of quantity?

’INTERNAL PLURAL’ Each case of -ø ‘plural’ usage examined brings to mind a number of individuals but within the context of the group, tribe, people,

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species, herd, total, etc. That is, the individuals distinguished are represented as forming part of a whole, as integrated into or constituting a single mental space. This impression does not arise with the -s ‘plural’. Three faculties may or may not be in the same university; 2000 Eskimos, like 2000 Canadians, are individuals who happen to belong to that group; two ducks are separate animals having the same nature. The difference is by no means obvious nor easy to describe, but it can be felt when one examines variations in usage. Where the two morphemes express comparable plurals, as in the case of two bear vs. two bears, the species or underlying continuate is always prominent with -ø, whereas with -s it is the individuals, not the category grouping them, that is expressed. Where they are not comparable, as in the case of faculty, the lexeme with -s ‘plural’ expresses the whole, the group, not the individual. And where there is no comparison possible, i.e. where there is no -s inflexion as in the case of cattle, the individuals cannot be represented apart from the herd. In all cases of -ø ‘plural’, the basic ‘continuate’ representation is discernible. The diverse comments of grammarians are suggestive – “the persons in their official capacity,” “arrived at by a division,” “people denotes merely human beings,” “observed by game rangers and cognoscenti,” “the cause of disease.” For Lyons (1968, 282) “hunters tend to use such words as lion, elephant, buffalo, etc., as ‘semi-mass’ nouns.” In one way or another these all bring in the underlying whole or continuate view, and the notion of a ‘plural’ is arrived at by division within this continuate. This gives the most general manner of contrasting with -s ‘plural’, which, as was seen in the last lesson, arises from multiplying the view of a ‘singular’. And this leads us to contrast these two means of representing plurality as ‘internal plural’ and ‘external plural’ to bring out that the former results in a set of individuals inhering in a whole or continuate, whereas the latter defines a set obtained by extrapolation beyond a unit view. This provides a general way for describing the data seen so far and shows that representing certain lexemes as grammatically ‘continuate’ (-ø morpheme) can give rise to an ‘internal plural’ sense. It remains to try to situate the ‘internal plural’ in the system of number as one of the possible realizations of the movement permitted by -ø morpheme. It will be recalled that from a position (M) for representing ‘maximum, generic’ the interceptible -ø movement through intermediate

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positions tends toward a position (m) defining ‘minimum, singular’ in the field of ‘continuate quantity’ as depicted here:

-ø -ø 'continuate quantity' ‘continuate quantity’ ................................................. m M M m

Being neither ‘maximum’ nor ‘minimum’, the ‘internal plural’ must arise when the morpheme’s movement is held up at an intermediate point. That is, it is obtained by intercepting the movement before it reaches its term, in the same way as an ‘unbounded, mass’ sense. Thus the ‘indefinite number’ (‘internal plural’) sense and the ‘indefinite amount’ (‘unbounded’) sense both result from the same intermediate interception of the -ø movement. This of course raises the question of what distinguishes them since they are certainly distinct senses. As in the case of ‘unbounded’ vs. ‘bounded’ notions, it appears that it is the particular lexical makeup of the substantive which permits an ‘internal plural’ representation. When a lexeme can represent both a continuum (whole, species, ethnic group, substance, etc.) and its individual manifestations, this use becomes possible. Moreover it appears that the ‘internal plural’ sense originated and spread in ambiguous contexts, where either the ‘bounded’ or the ‘unbounded’ sense of certain substantives could be understood. According to Ekwall (27), the first uses arose with fish, eel, herring, etc., and this is quite understandable in an everyday situation where, in speaking of having fish, eel, herring for supper, one might be referring to the flesh or the several individuals that provide it. The following example makes good use of this double possibility: The south side [of the island] swarmed with turtle – they covered the whole beach – but the man who had the south side couldn’t eat turtle – it made him sick. (reference lost)

From these remarks it can be seen that the use of -ø substantives to express ‘plural’ is by no means a rare phenomenon. Ekwall found -ø ‘plural’ usage gaining ground in the nineteenth century, and judging by the various words examined above which do not

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appear in his study, its spread continued in the last century. This development would depend on a speaker recognizing for each such lexeme the capacity to represent the impression of a continuate background with a number of individuals emerging from it, and for the number morpheme to provide a form for this implied space. Making this usage dependent on the lexical makeup of the substantive permits us to understand why it arises so often with speakers particularly familiar with the species, group, etc. Cognoscenti are frequently confronted with a variety of experiential reality that others are not familiar with, and so the frequent use of a term in scientific, technological and other specialized situations can lead a speaker to exploit its lexeme in ways unknown to those not confronted with this varied experience. This then is the hypothesis proposed to explain how -ø morpheme can have not only ‘generic’, ‘indeterminate’ and ‘singular’ senses but also an ‘internal plural’ sense, all arising from its ‘continuate’ representation of space. This would also explain why some words of English can express ‘plural’ in two ways, signified by -ø and -s. Since experimentation is not possible with this type of hypothesis, it will take an extensive examination of usage, particularly in specialized areas of discourse, to collect the empirical evidence showing whether or not the hypothesis is well-founded. This examination, yet to be undertaken for -ø, has been carried out for -s morpheme and some of its results will be brought out in the next lesson.

LESSON SEVEN

Testing for -s Morpheme The analysis of the category of number in particular languages may be a very complex matter. Lyons 1968, 283

INTRODUCTION

Our knowledge of the uses of -ø ending is relatively limited, no indepth study of it having yet been made from the point of view of the different expressive effects it contributes to. Fortunately our knowledge of -s ending is less limited thanks to Wickens’ study bearing on many of its uses in an attempt to determine whether an impression of discontinuity can always be discerned. This lesson will examine many of the observations of usage and examples cited in his study to see if the hypothesis for -s morpheme can explain them. It will be recalled that the most common use of -s as in: Whales can be seen here during the early summer.

expresses an ordinary ‘more than one, plural’ sense, an expression of quantity which is neither the smallest possible, ‘one’, nor the greatest possible ‘generic’. That is, the space involved in the lexeme here, its implied extensity, covers a greater than minimal part of the substantive’s possible field of application. This commonplace use of -s need not be discussed further here since there is general agreement as to this intermediate ‘plural’ quantity and its ‘discontinuate’ mode of representation – as opposed to the two common uses of -ø with its ‘continuate’ mode of representation to express ‘singular’ and, for ‘unbounded’ notions, ‘indefinite’ quantity. However problems do arise in several specific areas of usage because the -s does not always express the multiplication of a

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‘bounded’ sense as in the above example. Since this calls into question the very ‘discontinuate’ meaning proposed for -s, uses will be examined here taken from three such areas – ailments, binary objects and relationships – as well as a few words where it would seem that an ‘unbounded’ sense is pluralized. The ‘generic’ sense in: Whales are mammals.

illustrates how the -s movement is carried as far as possible to categorize the lexeme to cover a maximum field of application equivalent to the lexeme’s extension in tongue. The corresponding treatment of the lexeme in the -ø movement as in: Butter is made from cream.

expresses an equally broad extensity in the ‘continuate’ mode. The fact that this use implying maximum extensity does not require an article or other determiner will be discussed when the use of the article is examined. The third sense of -s observed in lesson 4 was that of ‘singular’, as in: We came to a crossroads.

a use arising from intercepting the -s movement as early as possible to categorize the lexeme to cover a minimum field of application, equivalent to a single, multipliable unit. A number of examples of this less common use will be examined below. It was these three senses that provided the initial data for proposing as a potential meaning for -s a movement through the field of ‘discontinuate quantity’ from minimum scope to maximum scope, as in the following diagram:

-s-s ‘discontinuate quantity’ 'discontin uate quantity' m M m M …………………………………………

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This interceptible movement permits the speaker to express ‘one’, ‘more than one’, or ‘all’ as magnitudes of the space implied by the lexeme it is called on to form. Because of the extraordinary variety of lexemes and the diversity of situations a given lexeme may be called on to represent there are numerous uses where its explanatory capacity is not obvious. One such area of usage is found in names of ailments. AILMENTS

Many grammars mention that although a majority of ailment names are ordinary -ø substantives, some of them take an -s suffix, as in: I have the measles. You have the hiccups.

Some 170 examples of these names have been found (Wickens, ch. 1). To determine whether this -s should be considered the grammatical suffix, it was necessary to examine each of these ailment names to see if they express anything ‘discontinuate’. In all cases an impression of multiplicity was discerned, the examples falling into two groups as exemplified by the above two examples. After examining the various uses of measles and the different diseases it can name, Wickens concludes (39) that the -s “corresponds to the experience of the small spots, pimples, swellings and the like which characterize the designated ailments.” This conclusion is confirmed in the discussion of a number of other names such as: milker’s nodules, summer sores, freckles, grapes, lumps, bumps, diamonds, scratches, hives, yaws, sibbens, leeches, cruels, vives, clyers, clams, glanders, glands, strangles, mumps. Each of these ailments is manifested by a number of welts, protuberances, excrescences, spots, and the like, and in most cases the -ø substantive could name a single such entity. In the case of blight(s) and clap(s), which can name different diseases, the -s appears only when the disease named gives rise to these characteristic symptoms. Thus it appears to be an impression of possible multiple manifestations (only two in the case of mumps) which calls for representing a ‘discontinuity in space’ by means of the -s morpheme.

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This analysis is confirmed by a different set of ailment names which, like hiccups, involve not a set of spatial entities but the repetition of some activity or state. This impression of multiple manifestations of some condition again calls for the -s morpheme to represent ‘discontinuity’ but in time, not in space. Other examples like the sneezes, the sniffles, and the like involve a series of oral manifestations, as do the gimmies, the gripes, and the giggles. A large number of words involve various movements: the staggers, the shakes, the drops, the runs, the munchies. To be included here are even words expressing episodic periods of melancholy such as the blues. Thus there appears to be an impression of recurrence here calling for the grammatical -s to express ‘discontinuity in time’. Although an impression of multiplicity in either space or time is clearly expressed in the various cases examined, it does not give rise to the usual ‘plural’ sense of something countable because these substantives name an ailment, i.e. a condition, in a way that suggests how it spreads in space and in time. In this respect these words resemble three substance names which are occasionally found with -s but which do not give rise to an expressive effect corresponding to the usual ‘more than one’, ‘countable’ sense. SANDS, SNOWS AND WATERS

In the expression a lot of car for your money, the lexeme ‘car’, which is usually actualized in a ‘bounded’ sense, expresses an ‘unbounded’ sense approaching ‘car quality’, or something of the sort. There are several cases of substantives in just the opposite situation. That is, their lexemes are used almost exclusively in an ‘unbounded’ sense, but are occasionally formed by -s, giving rise to expressive effects that are very hard to describe but which are certainly not ‘more than one’, i.e. something countable. Quirk et al. (299) give the following examples: the sands of the desert, sailing on the great waters, the snows of Kilimanjaro. They point out that these words in -s “express intensity, great quantity or extent.” For Sweet (II, 47), in expressions like the waters of the Nile and the dews of heaven, “there is no suggestion of definite parts, and the plural seems to suggest indefinite extension or repetition.” If one compares the expressions with their -ø counterpart (the sand of the desert, the water of the Nile, etc.), one can appreciate the expressive

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effects described, as though the morpheme carried the mind beyond the usual amount evoked by the -ø form. Other expressive effects are also observable. The following comment was heard after an avalanche: We were predicting that the snows were unstable.

Snows here suggests not so much a great quantity as various areas and even levels of snow. And in footprints on the sands of time, besides endless extension there is a suggestion of change, of movement. We also find waters “with reference to flowing water or to water moving in waves” (OED), as in the limpid waters of a mountain brook, And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore. These may be examples of repetition in time as we saw in the case of certain names of ailments. In any case, these effects are not the same as those expressed in the season of snows or Wash in two waters and dry. With the sense of ‘snowfall’ and ‘quantity of water required for a wash’, the substantives here express an ordinary ‘plural’ sense with the lexeme reduced to a known unit as in an example already mentioned, a coffee. Sand, water and snow are thus found with -s expressing an impression of ‘discontinuity’ which is not a ‘plural, more than one’ sense as usually understood. One can perhaps bring in an example like … the ruins of their city here, an example where there is no impression of something countable, of ‘more than one ruin’, and yet it does suggest “decayed and broken fragments” (Webster’s Third, s.v.) of what was once a unit. A suggestion of different traces of what was once a state of beauty, a continuum, might be understood in … a female of advanced years with the remains of irresistible beauty. It is more difficult to describe the suggestion of plurality evoked by remains recalling what was once a human person in … the custom of filing past the open casket to view the remains. Each of these uses, however, evokes a discontinuity of some sort. Such observations tend to support the hypothesis, but before any conclusion can be drawn each of these words must be observed more extensively in its various uses with -s. Only a detailed examination of a good number of examples permits distinguishing clearly the morpheme’s contribution to the expressive effects of a given lexeme, as will be seen in analyzing uses with binary objects, the next area of usage.

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A large group of words name binary objects, including tools such as pliers, clippers, shears, tongs, forceps, scissors, garments such as trousers, jeans, shorts, slacks, pyjamas, and optical instruments such as glasses. Quirk et al. (300) consider these “summation plurals” to be “plural invariable nouns” which “differ from ordinary plural nouns in that they are not generally thought of as denoting plural number. Yet usage varies.” Thanks to this variation of usage, Wickens (Ch. 4) has been able to throw considerable light on these words. Those in the first group refer to a single tool. In most ordinary usage, as when speaking of a pair of pliers, these scissors, etc., these words express a ‘more than one’ sense, so the -s does appear to be the number morpheme. Many grammarians attribute this to the two-part construction of these tools, but since one also says a pair of spaghetti tongs when referring to the instrument made of a single band of metal there seems to be another impression calling for the -s. What is common to all these tools, according to Wickens, is the way they function, the movement of one end or surface or edge against the other to grasp, hold, cut, etc. Because of this functional opposition, there is an impression of separation in space, of binarity, calling for a ‘discontinuate’ representation by means of -s. Many grammarians and linguists present these words as invariable, as “defective, in that they have only one number form, and the other is missing” (Corbett 2000, 174). While this may reflect the common usage of most speakers, for cognoscenti in catalogues and other trade publications the -ø form is quite common. The following examples are typical: Choosing the right plier helps you do the job at hand more easily … Our number for this new elastic placing mosquito forcep is … This scissor reportedly requires the use of only one hand to grip, cut and remove suture material.

The distinction of meaning expressed here is clear. The -ø substantive arises when the speaker has in mind, not a particular tool as a functional entity, but a type or model of the tool. That is, the dominant impression is the makeup or nature of that model, not the functioning of an individual tool. This is why the -ø substantive is by no means rare in historical treatises, encyclopaedias and trade

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literature, whereas in practical situations where the tool’s functioning, bringing to the fore the spatial opposition involved in grasping, holding, cutting, etc., calls for the -s morpheme. Again it can be seen how the system of number responds to different experiential impressions represented by the same lexeme to express either a ‘continuate’ or a ‘discontinuate’ view. A good illustration of this comes from a catalogue where the two uses are found in consecutive sentences: You may not ever need to cut a heavy rope with a pair of shears … the “Knife Edge” Shear performs equally well on thin and flimsy material.

Turning now to the names for garments, a clear difference between -ø and -s can be seen in two examples from the OED (cf. Wickens, 119): He was dressed for the most part in shabby corduroy. A fellow in corduroys.

Where the lexeme in the first sentence expresses an ‘unbounded’ sense to depict the material, “a kind of coarse, thick-ribbed cotton stuff,” in the second sentence it depicts an object, “corduroy trousers,” expressing a ‘bounded’ sense, grammaticized with the curious ‘discontinuate’ sense just examined in names of tools. One hesitates to describe corduroys as ‘countable’ here, but not in an example from a volume on textile designs referring to “kinds of corduroy material” (Wickens, 146): Figs. 383 to 397 are other designs for corduroys showing various modifications in their construction as regards their foundation weaves …

Among all the names of garments, it is only with names of pants, trousers, and the like that this curious use of -s is found. Thus, his overalls can designate a pair of bibbed trousers, but a laboratory worker in a white overall would designate a long coat or smock. In view of the fact that all such -s uses designate garments that encase the legs more or less (from tights to shorts), the same problem arises as for binary tools: is it the constructional binarity or the functional opposition that calls for the morpheme? The evidence of various uses suggests that it is the alternating leg movements which give the impression of two parts occupying different spaces.

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One of the clearest indications of this comes from the use of the -ø substantive in the ‘type’ or ‘species’ sense. Although one dictionary claims that slacks and trousers “exist only in the plural form,” Wickens (122–36) has observed some 1500 examples of the following sort: From 1884 a modified ‘Peg-top’ trouser … was revived…. Ever wondered, as you struggled to pull a pair of jeans up over a pair of long underwear, why on earth someone can’t design a flannel-lined jean? COTTON BREECHES The cool comfort of pure combed cotton in a selfreinforced breech. Best selling was the above-knee-length short in rayon gabardine.

Here there is no suggestion of individual garments but rather a style or model, the dominant impression being the makeup or design. Mencken’s remark (558) that such uses “belong to the argot of tailors and clothing salesmen” reflects the fact that once again we are confronted with the usage of those in the trade, speakers whose experience of garments is far more varied than that of the average person. As in the case of the names of wild animals, of ethnic groups, and of tools, cognoscenti call on the system of number to help represent the different impressions they encounter. This use, which dates from the seventeenth century, is thus found in historical studies of garments: Two striking elements of male colonial dress were the cabbage-tree hat and the duck trouser. Logan is said to have devised a trouser that buttoned down the sides.

and even in a medical journal, as in the title Prehospital Use of the Military Anti-Shock Trouser. Those in the trade have of course exploited it most, as evidenced by the following ad from a billboard in London: Grr… for people who admire a good jean when they meet one.

These examples illustrate the -ø substantive expressing ‘singular’ sense to designate a type of garment. It is even found expressing various nuances, some of which can best be described as ‘mass’, others, more abstract, as an ‘unbounded’ sense in:

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All the rest was mustache, pelisse, and calico trouser. The dog had a bit of trouser in its mouth, said the constable. With old favourites like the jitterbug and the jive … the girls spun like tops and everyone got fast flashes of knicker. … a lot of jean for a little price Legs flash through a slit-skirted dress or move out fast in a peggedin ease of trouser.

Again, these examples are not run-of-the-mill uses but they do show how a writer can exploit the potential of a lexeme and the dynamism of a morpheme to achieve, in the appropriate context, quite special effects. They also show how risky it is for grammarians and linguists to trust to their own limited experience when describing usage. RELATIONAL

-S

The expression “relational -s” is sufficiently general to cover an area of usage which is more abstract than those seen so far. Here words that designate something implying the existence of something else will be considered. As such they evoke an abstract, mental type of discontinuity, that implied by the two terms of a relationship, and so call for the -s morpheme. One of the clearest examples of this is provided by the word damage, which in its ordinary -ø use designates some loss or injury suffered: Flood damage is not covered by the insurance.

However in the expression to sue for damages, it does not suggest ‘a damage + a damage + …’; it does not express something ‘countable’, as Wickens points out (149). Rather damages here designates “a loss to be compensated, a damage to be made good.” That is, there are two things involved here, the loss suffered and the retribution claimed, and the -s is required to represent the binarity involved in this relationship. Similarly when it is used in expressions like: What are the damages for the lubrication job on my car?

there is the idea of a remuneration for a service, not the idea of several compensations.

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Another example of this ‘compensation’ sense is found in to get one’s just deserts, where the idea of some behaviour meriting reward or punishment is involved. Similarly in the service he undertakes to do in exchange for the wages he is to receive, wages implies remuneration for work done, whereas the -ø substantive is generally used for the rate of pay, as in the minimal wage. Other examples include to make amends for something, to pay one’s dues for the year, where the notions of compensating for a failing and a sum of money to meet an obligation involve the same sort of relational situation. Other words that can be analyzed in this way for certain of their uses are thanks, congratulations, earnings and perhaps greetings, compliments, and respects. It has been pointed out1 that these words (and a number of the others) express “whatever is necessary to thank, congratulate” etc., which could involve more than one thing. In a given situation this may well be the case, but frequently these words are used without any hint of plurality, in which case the ‘relational’ sense, common to both uses, would explain the presence of -s. Another use where the -s evokes a binary relation between two linked but opposed entities is found when someone is asked: Would you like seconds?

Since only one helping can be considered the second one (a subsequent one would be thirds), the morpheme does not express an ordinary ‘plural’ sense. Rather it expresses the offered helping as related to a prior, first helping, just as in: Who hasn’t had firsts of pudding yet?

the morpheme depicts a first helping as related to a prospective second helping. The same analysis applies to starters and openers since they necessarily designate something with something else in prospect. Another case where the -s calls to mind a necessary relationship with a different entity is found on containers of a liquid: Contents: one litre.

Quite obviously, the liquid itself cannot be represented as ‘plural’, but it cannot be designated as being contained unless there is a

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container. By way of contrast, ingredients on a container suggests ‘one ingredient + one ingredient + …’, that is, an ordinary ‘plural’ sense of what makes up the substance contained. How should Contents, in the sense of ‘table of contents’, be analyzed? Since the expression designates a plurality of chapters and sections in a book or document it might be argued that it is an ordinary ‘plural’ -s. On the other hand, there is no notion of ‘one content + one content + …’ so this could well be a ‘relational’ use. A few words imply a necessary relation between persons, as in the following example from Jespersen (1954 II, 167): I am friends with him.

This use designates one person in terms of a mutual relationship with another person. Other examples are: I was shipmates with fifty dead men. I was great pals with a man called Hicksey.

Turning to a slightly different use, Wickens (167–8, 277–8) cites a large number of claiming terms in the language of youngsters, the most common being dibs as in: (I’ve got) dibs on that bottle!

He points out that these terms either establish or confirm one’s claim to an object. Other examples are: Halvers on your candy. I’ve got corners on that! I’ve got seconds on your soda!

Since all these uses of claim words designate a relationship between a person and some object, it would again seem to be the binarity involved which calls for the ‘discontinuate’ representation of -s. Wickens mentions a number of other uses, such as heads and tails to name the two sides of a coin, where the necessary relationship with the other is clearly what calls for the morpheme. All these uses bring out the role of -s in monitoring impressions arising in our experience of the moment. Some words like quits remain problem

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cases here and call for further examination. (Can it be compared with beginnings in the sense of ‘rudimentary stage, early period’ (Webster’s Third, s.v.), both implying a relationship with another, prior or subsequent, phase?) Granted the weight of the evidence, however, it is clear that many names designating binary relationships are explained by the hypothesis that -s morpheme reflects the fact that two different entities are involved in a relationship. This explanation, like that for binary objects, brings out another manifestation of the basic impression of discontinuity. A different expressive effect arising from a ‘discontinuate’ representation is found in the last type of use to be examined here, that involving a ‘singular’ reading.

‘ SINGULAR’ - S Concerning the examples a new clippers, a garden shears, an oldfashioned curing tongs, Quirk et al. (300–1) remark that “Many of the summation plurals can take the indefinite article, especially with premodification.” The difficulty arising from calling these “plurals” is that it implies a discrepancy between the import of the substantive, ‘more than one, plural’, and that of the article, ‘singular’. A discrepancy of this sort between a substantive and its grammatical support in the determiner, i.e. linking a (or one, this, every, etc.) with a substantive expressing ‘plural’, would prevent one obtaining a view of the noun phrase as a coherent grammatical unit, a point to be discussed in lessons on the article. It will be recalled that, confronted with this impasse, the hypothesis that -s in such cases expresses ‘singular’ was explored, and the full range of the morpheme’s potential meaning was thus brought into view. This use is obtained at the very outset of an expanding movement which begins outside the ordinary -ø ‘singular’ and extends beyond it to give ‘plural’ and, ultimately ‘generic’ senses. Examples like the above bring out that -s ‘singular’ is found where the unit signified represents an entity consisting of a number of components. Although to my knowledge no other treatment of the English substantive has proposed that -s can express ‘singular’, what is said about this usage seems to point toward it. Quirk et al.’s term “summation”, like Jespersen’s “composite objects” (1954 II, 90), suggests that the speaker prehends the two parts of the above tools as constituting a single entity, that “the tool is thought of as a unit” in

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Curme’s words (1931, 544). And speaking of uses like a crossroads and a headquarters (to be examined below), Erades (1975, 12) considers that their “collective meaning makes the plurality originally suggested by their component parts, which is responsible for the plural form of the words, recede into the background.” Granted this double input – several parts and one entity – on the experiential level of the intended message, it is not surprising to find a diversity on the representational level corresponding to which impression is dominant in a given situation. And granted its meaning potential permitting polysemy, the possibility of -s expressing ‘singular’ is not to be excluded. It has already been shown that when these new clippers designates a single tool it brings out an impression of the opposed movements of the two parts. In a new clippers, however, what comes to the fore is rather the unit or whole capable of the function. For example in: Then use a hawk-bill snips or a similar-shaped compound-lever snips.

the suggestion is one of a tool which can do the job in view. Similarly in: Just the thing for an everyday summer pants which will wash perfectly. Venetians were a wide-topped breeches narrowing to button or tie below the knee.

the substantive suggests a garment that will serve a given purpose or wear in a given way. This sense of a tool or garment ready for a certain role is very close to the ‘model’ or ‘type’ sense observed above for -ø substantives, and in fact this -s use occasionally lends itself to a non-individual interpretation. To sort out the different impressions involved here, or those distinguishing an example like A 7 x 42 binoculars with an angle of field equal to 10 degrees … from these binoculars or even a binocular will take more observation of the usage of specialists in the different fields where these binary objects are common. A number of other words in -s can express a binary unit as ‘singular’. The following example describes a three-day tennis tournament two singles on Saturday, a singles and a doubles on Sunday, and two singles and one doubles on Monday. The -s in a singles expresses a ‘singular’ sense bringing in an impression of discontinuity so that the

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phrase designates one match between two players. Similarly for a doubles and one doubles, where the -s substantive designates a single match involving four players. The -s in two singles on the other hand is an ordinary ‘plural’ use expressing ‘one singles + one singles’, two matches. That is, the example brings out clearly two different interceptions of the -s movement corresponding to ‘one’ and ‘more than one’ senses. The next set of examples2 is concerned with substantives naming units consisting of a number of parts in a series, as in ascended a stairs and a bleachers filled with VIPs. Here the arrangement of parts one after the other gives an impression of discontinuity calling for -s, whereas the impression of a whole is predominant and so the substantive is ‘singular’. In like fashion, we find: Is there a contents in this book?

where the series of chapters and sections is evoked as constituting a whole, usually called “a table,” not quite the same as the title Contents discussed above. Other examples of the same sort include: every holidays, an excellent opening ceremonies, a small cutlery works, an innings, each bringing out a series, respectively, of days, of formal acts and displays, of industrial operations, of cricket players at bat. One might consider that a small rapids evokes a series since it suggests a section of a river with different stretches of rapidly moving water. In the context of the Olympics, often referred to as this Olympic Games, the following comment was heard on television: We are five hours from the end of these games and what a games they have been!

Here the commentator, at first focussing on the series of events, represents games as ‘plural’ and then, viewing the whole as a single phenomenon, represents games as ‘singular’. For some words like stairs we also find both the -s ‘plural’ and the -ø ‘singular’ to designate an entity. Wickens comments (193): The prevailing impression in a stairs is that of a unit, though one formed of obvious parts, in these stairs that of the unit-forming parts themselves, and in a stair that of a unit, without a nuance of its components.

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Again it can be seen how the system of number combines with the lexeme to provide as adequate a representation as possible of the speaker’s impression in the intended message. Some -s substantives expressing ‘singular’ designate entities whose components are arranged spatially rather than in a series. For example a crossroads is the place where two or more roads meet or intersect, whereas a crossroad is “a road that crosses a main road.” And in a figurative sense, to be at a crossroads suggests different possible courses one might take at a given moment. An example like: Father makes the den his headquarters.

shows that a single room can serve as headquarters. This suggests, as Wickens (196) points out, that a headquarters, as in: Brigands use it as a headquarters. (Erades 1975, 12)

involves the focal point of lines of communication, and in this resembles a crossroads. In each case, both the unity and the multiplicity of the speaker’s message are captured by the lexeme formed by the number morpheme. Several words designate a building with a number of rooms or divisions: housed in a converted stables, When a licensed premises are situated in a public market, like an army barracks. Others depict areas or enclosures with divisions, sections and the like, as in a fine Zoological Gardens and We passed a stockyards. The party reached a picnic grounds.

In all such cases the impression of a unit dominates while the morpheme of ‘discontinuity’ indicates that it consists of a number of components. The following use of the ‘singular’ -s, cited from a book on chance, is different from those examined so far in that it does not name a composite entity: Henry is certain to toss two heads or one heads or no heads.

The use of heads to designate one side of a coin and imply the other side and so the whole coin has already been seen. That is, in

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relational words naming one part of a binary unit as in one heads, the morpheme implies its counterpart by calling to mind the separation between the two. Similarly for: A continuous belt is a means of power transmission. (Webster’s Third)

In this sense, the substantive means names a measure or activity implying something else, namely the end or purpose toward which it is directed, and it appears to be the division between the two which calls for the number morpheme. Other examples of ‘singular’ relational words to be analyzed in the same way are: He took every pains to arrive at a proper conclusion. Meetings like these would make a fair amends. He asked for an alms.

Perhaps the most surprising example of this use was heard over the intercom of a plane: This is the first officer speaking. We are beginning our descent into Calgary … The weather is quite pleasant – plus one degrees on the ground.

Here again the substantive names something which is not, in itself, binary or composite, i.e. a degree, which at first sight does not appear to imply anything else. This posed a problem: what calls for the -s? The first clue to the explanation was the fact that both -ø and -s are possible here but that without plus only -ø would be possible. The effect of using plus is to suggest a position on a scale with regard to zero, and the same would be true for minus. On the other hand, to say simply one degree indicates how warm it is. If instead of simply giving the temperature reading the first officer had been thinking of how warm it is on the ground he would have said plus one degree. That is to say, there are two ways of thinking ‘degree’ here: as a quantity of heat or as a position on a scale. The latter sense necessarily implies delimiting it from adjacent positions and so gives rise to an impression of discontinuity, whence the -s morpheme expressing an ‘internal singular’. This explanation of the -s also permits us to understand why we say zero degrees, with no possibility of the -ø substantive: in this noun phrase,

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‘degrees’ represents a position on a scale, not a quantity of heat.3 Examples like this show how the software, the program for representing quantity provided by the system of number, always forms the lexeme to bring out the way the speaker’s intended message is represented. There are many more examples of the ‘singular’ -s (cf. Wickens 213) but this will suffice to show the variety of usage. In a few cases examined the impression that the entity named is related to an implied counterpart is sufficient for the -s to appear. In most of these uses, however, it is an impression of components, of complexity, within the entity designated which calls for the -s morpheme to express a unit involving parts. In all examples the substantive evokes a unit either as a space involving discrete entities (a stairs), or as involved in a space with other discrete entities (plus one degrees). That is, it expresses a ‘singular’ but a sort of ‘discontinuate’, which is the curious counterpart of the ‘continuate’ or ‘internal plural’ observed when examining -ø usage. Finally, from a more general point of view, it would seem that what calls for a ‘singular’ use of -s is the impression of a necessary arrangement between the components in the composite entity – one against the other as in a singles, one after another as in a games, one beside another as in a barracks, or converging on one another as in a crossroads. Even in a shambles in the sense of ‘confusion, mess’ a certain arrangement is evoked – one of total disorder. In an ordinary ‘plural’ use such as these books or some houses, the morpheme brings in a ‘discontinuate-in-space’ view of the units but suggests no arrangement, order or disorder, no composite entity. This then may be what calls for the -s ‘singular’ – an impression of arrangement or (dis)order linking components into a unit. CONCLUSION

This completes our survey of usage to check the explanatory value of the theory proposed. As in most scientific theories, there remain problem cases calling for further reflexion. Assuming it is the number morpheme in expressions like: She’s bananas. He’s nuts.

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what is the impression of something ‘discontinuate’ based on? Is it a suggestion of the recurrent manifestation of a mental state, like the ailment names discussed above? Likewise, in: Did you go bathrooms?

is it the number morpheme to suggest something repeatable or is it the hypocoristic suffix (as in Bugs, Pops) or an adverbial -s (as in upwards)? Certain areas of usage such as substantives ending in -ics have yet to be examined in the light of the above system, and there are no doubt other uses that have not yet been perceived. As already indicated, a detailed observation of ‘internal plural’ usage has yet to be undertaken and will likely produce some unforeseen problems of interpretation. “The analysis of the category of number in particular languages may be a very complex matter,” as Lyons points out, because usage is endlessly varied and only painstaking observation can bring to light the range of data a theory must confront. So far the data has corroborated this description of the English substantive’s system of grammatical number, which was first proposed in my 1982 study. Wierzbicka (499–560) analyzes the use of a large number of -ø and -s substantives from a different point of view, that of their lexical meaning, establishing fourteen classes of substantives according to how a speaker thinks of the referent – whether or not the entity is conceived of as involving different things, parts or kinds. In general, this criterion, with variations in particular lexemes, reflects the abstract ‘continuate’ vs. ‘discontinuate’ opposition of the two morphemes presented here. That is, regarded from the point of view of the morpheme, most of the examples4 given in Wierzbicka’s study lend support to the analysis presented here by showing the effect of forming the lexeme by -ø or by -s. Some grammars consulted provided many examples of unusual uses but made little attempt to explain them, whereas linguists consulted gave little attention to unusual uses and even neglected the morphological evidence. A notable exception is Reid’s study of the agreement of the verb describing many subtleties of usage resulting from the way the substantive’s lexeme formed by number conditions the verb form, a problem which cannot be treated in these lessons. The attempt here has been to explain as many uses as possible on the basis of the grammatical evidence within the noun phrase. That is, the

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explanation of the sense expressed has taken into account both the morphological (-ø vs. -s) and the syntactic (number-sensitive determiners) data. This led to rejecting the belief, based on grammatical tradition rather than on observation, that -ø expresses only ‘singular’ and -s only ‘plural’, and accepting the polysemy of the two morphemes in discourse, but hypothesizing that they are monosemous in tongue and systemically related by the far more general opposition of ‘continuate’ vs. ‘discontinuate’, two modes of construing space which can be represented by its morpheme in any positive quantity. While the data explained by means of the proposed system helps confirm its well-foundedness as a basis for examining further data, it remains that this system is a theory, and no matter how feasible it may appear in the light of the data it should always be held accountable for any newly observed sense expressed by the visible (or audible) morphology. In actual usage, then, number is a system ready to quantify the space implied in a substantive’s lexical matter in order to express the scope of the particular experience represented. In technical terms, it is a system for giving a form to the substantive’s lexeme, its comprehension, so that it will find as a support that portion of its extension that corresponds to what the speaker has in mind to talk about. It is therefore a necessary phase in preparing a substantive for internal incidence. As a consequence, only one of the movements requires a sign since the fact of its absence (-ø) necessarily signifies that the lexical matter has been formed by the other movement. Viewing number as a necessary phase in forming a substantive is not accepted by all. Corbett, for example, considers it a “false” assumption to say that “all nouns would show number” since we find that “for instance English honesty does not mark plural” (2000, 1–2). Even assuming that honesty, like cattle, is never found with -s (a hazardous assumption to make, as above examples have shown), his argument implies that -ø does not “show number” in English, a surprising position to say the least. As in the case of Langacker previously noted, Corbett’s position seems to be due to his not seeing why ‘unbounded’ and ‘singular’ uses have the same means of expression, i.e. to his not recognizing the polysemy of -ø. This limits number in English to ‘singular’ vs. ‘plural’, with the consequence that there are “nouns … outside the number opposition” (2000, 85). Ultimately this position indicates a failure to recognize that a word is a systemic

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construct, and that no systemic entity like a substantive can be formed without its subsystems. It is worth reiterating that at the root of the analysis in these lessons is the postulate of the primacy of the word. Syntax is conditioned by what is built into words. The visible morphology of a word cannot be neglected because it is a sign of how a word has been formed grammatically. As a consequence our analysis was centred on the two inflexions, and syntactic evidence was called on only to help bring out the meaning they expressed. This made it possible to discern what an ‘unbounded’ sense and a ‘singular’ sense, the most common senses expressed by -ø, have in common, and similarly for the ‘singular’ and ‘plural’ senses expressed by -s, thus obtaining for each morpheme a first view of that “unity in hidden likenesses,” the goal of any scientific endeavour. To gain a more complete view of this unity, the different quantities expressed and the ‘continuate’ vs. ‘discontinuate’ modes had all to be combined into one system. This required abandoning the ordinary way of thinking of meaning as something static, and trying to conceive of it as dynamic. As speakers, we are accustomed to thinking of meaning as something static because this is how it emerges into consciousness, as an actualized sense in discourse. To think of meaning in terms of an operation, as inherently dynamic in tongue, takes some getting used to. Not only this: from the point of view of its meaning, each morpheme is being proposed as a potential, as the possibility of an operation, and here again thinking about something as really existing even though in a state of potentiality takes some getting used to. There are however familiar examples of this, like the potential of a hydro-electric installation, which, when put into operation, has the capacity to provide various amounts of power up to a certain limit. Any of our own physical potentialities can illustrate the idea of a potential movement: the ability to open our mouth can be exploited to different degrees. This is a single capacity or potential which, although we never see it, really exists. It can only be observed indirectly, through its actualizations, which vary according to the point where we intercept the movement of the muscles in view of what we have in mind (to whistle, to eat, to give the dentist access to our mouth, etc.). Similarly for the meaning of the two number morphemes: what can actually be observed in discourse is one or other of their actualizations but never the potentiality making it possible.

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All this led to conceiving of the system of grammatical number as a psychomechanism, or dynamic mental system, making possible a double movement between limits. The two movements, the relation between them, and their possible interceptions were shown by means of the following diagram:

-ø-ø ‘continuate quantity’ 'continuate quantity'

....................................................

M M

-s-s ‘discontinuate quantity’ 'discontinuate quantity'

..................................................

m m

M M

The fact that these movements, like any other human operation, require time, operative time, permits the mind to intercept them at the beginning or in the middle or at the end, at whichever moment gives the sense best suiting the intended message. This diagram is a schematic representation situating the two morphemes in such a way as to show how they give rise to the senses observed in discourse but it is not intended to depict what actually exists in the mind “for the scientific method can teach us nothing else beyond how facts are related to and conditioned by, each other” (Einstein 1956, 17). This, then, is the system of number in the substantive, the theory for explaining usage. Its function is to give a grammatical form to the particular lexical matter as it arises from ideogenesis, shaping or forming this matter to conform it to what the speaker has in mind by spatializing it, that is by giving it the contours of a space which is either continuate or discontinuate within a certain scope, minimum, intermediate, or maximum, with regard to the range of the lexeme in tongue. The next task will be to examine gender in the substantive to see how it contributes to forming the lexeme.

LESSON EIGHT

Gender in the Substantive Gender is one of the least logical and most surprising of grammatical categories. A. Meillet

INTRODUCTION

Of the grammatical forms in the English substantive, gender is the most difficult to analyze because it is the least visible. In languages like French, it is far more visible thanks to the agreement of adjectives and determiners, but even in French gender in the substantive itself is by no means always overt. That is, nothing in the physical sign of most substantives indicates its gender (cf. feminine eau ‘water’ vs. masculine sceau ‘seal’). As a consequence, Guillaume was led to distinguish two types of gender in French: what he called “fictive gender,” which can be observed only in the semiology of adjective and determiner and so is often called the gender of agreement; and “real gender,” which arises from the lexeme of the substantive and so can be called notional gender.1 For example, everyone knows that the masculine vs. feminine difference observable in an adjective like bon /bonne (‘good’), or the article un /une (‘a’), is not determined by the meaning of the adjective or the article itself, but by agreement with the gender represented in the substantive. That is to say, the very fact of agreement within the noun phrase, as in un bon journal (‘a good newspaper’) or une bonne journaliste (‘a good journalist’), shows that the substantives have been grammaticized for gender even though there is no visible morphology in the substantive to indicate this. Furthermore, between journal, designating a thing, and journaliste, designating a person, there is an important observation to be made concerning gender: journaliste can be either masculine or feminine (un bon journaliste, une

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bonne journaliste) depending on the representation of the individual it designates, whereas journal cannot vary in gender (*une bonne journal). We can thus distinguish between substantives whose lexemes permit a variation in gender and those that are invariable for gender. This distinction is not dependent on the agreement of another word but, quite the opposite, conditions that agreement. It shows that even where there is no visible morphology, gender is inherent in the substantive itself, a grammatical consequence of its lexeme. These two types of gender, gender of agreement (“fictive gender”) and notional (“real”) gender, are clearly present in French, but in English the agreement of adjectives and articles within the noun phrase has disappeared. As a consequence, because English no longer has a gender of agreement some scholars maintain that there is no grounds for proposing\ gender as a grammatical morpheme of the substantive. However, on the basis of certain pronouns – he, she, it, etc. – others claim that English still has gender of agreement, and so there must be gender in the substantive with which the pronouns agree. We shall therefore examine this question first before going on to examine gender in the substantive itself. THE CASE FOR GENDER OF AGREEMENT IN ENGLISH

The problem here arises from the fact that the category of gender is largely covert in the semiology of the substantive. Whereas number can be first observed through the -ø vs. -s semiology, and function can be observed through word order and certain function words, there is no word order or visible morphology (except the waiter vs. waitress type) to indicate whether a substantive is formed for gender as it is for number. What evidence is there for gender in the English substantive? In his examination of gender in over 200 languages, Corbett begins by discussing the definition given by Hockett (231): “Genders are classes of nouns reflected in the behaviour of associated words,” and concludes: “All this means that the determining criterion of gender is agreement” (1991, 4). Langacker also considers that “The basis for a gender-type system is some marking that is sensitive to the class of a co-occurring noun” (1991, 181) and discusses gender in languages with adjective and article agreement. In English as

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we have just seen the only gender-sensitive “associated words” are certain pronouns arising outside the substantive’s noun phrase. Should these pronouns be considered to agree with the substantive generally called their antecedent? Does she in: A journalist called. She wants you to call back.

agree with journalist? There is no consensus on the question. According to Corbett (1991, 170): “Whether or not gender is recognized in languages like English … depends on … one’s view of agreement,” i.e. on whether one considers that pronouns agree anaphorically with their antecedent. One view concerning English is presented by Erades. He advances the argument that there is nothing in the substantive itself to indicate gender. That is, the fact that there is no visible morphology or word order to provide consistent evidence for gender as a grammatical category leads him to conclude (1956, 5) that “English nouns qualitate qua have no gender.” Adopting the opposite view with regard to gender in the English substantive, Joly argues that pronouns such as he, she, and it refer to a substantive and their morphological variation is determined by the gender of that substantive, just as the gender of an adjective in French is determined by the gender of the substantive it is incident to. Joly (235–8) counters Erades’ approach by arguing that gender is a covert category in the substantive. He notes (280) that “Comparative linguistics has established that, originally, Indo-European did not express gender in the noun isolate, which is precisely the case in Modern English according to Erades and others,” and cites Meillet: “… the distinction between masculine and feminine was not expressed in the substantive, but only in the adjectives related to it… Without the agreement of the adjective, the distinction between masculine and feminine would not exist in Indo-European.” That is, since this gender distinction is accepted in other languages without visible morphology in the substantive, we can accept gender as a covert category in the English substantive as well, particularly since, in Joly’s view, this is corroborated by pronoun agreement. Corbett also decides to “follow the widespread usage according to which agreement covers areas such as the determination of the form of anaphoric pronouns” (1991, 112). Similarly for Huddleston and Pullum (486): “We will say, therefore, that English does have gender, although it is only weakly grammaticalised, being based purely on

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pronoun agreement.” In this approach then, a substantive in English does have gender which can be identified anaphorically by the agreement of pronouns. On the other hand, the assumption that we can identify the gender of the substantive by means of the pronoun has been called into question. Leech and Svartvik (230) for example maintain that “nouns have no grammatical gender” in English. Similarly, Lyons (1968, 283–4) remarks: “There is no gender-concord; and the reference of the pronouns he, she and it is very largely determined by what is sometimes referred to as ‘natural’ gender – for English, this depends upon the classification of persons and objects as male, or female or inanimate.” That is, for Lyons the gender of personal pronouns depends on what is being talked about, the referent, and not on a preceding substantive, the antecedent. Erades also argues against the agreement assumption by pointing out that there are cases of variable agreement where this assumption is not so straightforward in its application, where in fact it would lead to a problem with the substantive. One such case is the well-known use of referring to a ship, a car, a cat, and many other things and animals by means of she, whereas we usually use it to refer to them. The problem then is to determine the gender of the substantive. According to Corbett (1991, 183) such “boat nouns” constitute a class of “hybrid nouns,” presumably because if she agrees in gender with the substantive, then we must consider ship ‘feminine’ in this use, whereas it is neuter when referred to by it. Grammarians who have explored such nonprototypical uses more fully encounter examples like the following: Not a bird is visible. Yes, one! – a goose – he is swimming straight this way. (Jespersen 1954, VII, 209)

Here goose names an animal which, like other animals, is generally referred to by it. What complicates the issue is that when contrasted with gander, the substantive goose refers to the female of the species, and yet in this example, according to the agreement approach, goose must be masculine. Joly (261) gives the following example of a mother speaking of her little girl, where the substantive with which the pronouns agree presumably arose in the preceding dialogue: It hasn’t got a warm coat for next month, so I’m making one for her.

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To account for this variety of usage observed for a single substantive, grammarians are led to establish a number of “gender classes” of substantives on the basis of the pronouns referring to them. For example Quirk et al. (314), taking into account personal, reflexive and wh-pronouns, list nine such classes of substantives. But as Joly (234) points out, such classifications amount to grouping syntactic effects in discourse and so can vary according to the examples observed by the grammarian or linguist. They do not describe the way gender is represented in the substantive, i.e. what the pronoun is supposed to agree with. Thus the varying gender of pronouns associated with a given substantive in different uses constitutes a real challenge to the agreement assumption. To meet this challenge and account for variable gender agreement, Joly (238) makes the “reasonable inference” that a substantive “has potentially all three genders,” masculine, feminine, and neuter, something like adjectives in Latin or German. This view of gender in tongue would imply that grammaticizing a lexeme to form a substantive involves actualizing it in one of the three possibilities offered so that in discourse the substantive would be either masculine, feminine, or neuter. It would therefore provide an explanation of the fact that, from one use to another, pronouns with different genders may agree with the same substantive. Even this manner of presenting the agreement approach, however, seems to be contradicted in cases when a given substantive is the antecedent of more than one pronoun. This is one of the most difficult problems of usage for the agreement approach as a whole: to explain how pronouns expressing different genders can agree anaphorically with the same substantive “in one and the same sentence,” as Erades (9) puts it. For example: This young leopard was about to try his teeth on the dead body of a gazelle, which its mother had just captured. (Jespersen 1954 VII, 210)

According to the gender of agreement approach, leopard is to be considered ‘masculine’ because of his and ‘neuter’ because of its. How a substantive can be both ‘masculine’ and ‘neuter’ in the same sentence is far from clear. Even supposing with Joly that leopard has both genders as potentials, this would imply the impossible situation where two (and even, in the occasional example, all three) of a substantive’s gender possibilities are actualized for the

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same use – something like proposing that a substantive in a given use can be both grammatically singular and plural, or a verb both past and nonpast at the same time. Such uses are not frequent but until they can be explained they constitute counter-evidence to the pronoun agreement approach. As things stand, this approach leads to a grammatical impasse in such cases. Another, more common use of pronouns which cannot be explained by the agreement assumption arises when the pronoun has no substantive-antecedent, as in (Joly, 231) Gosh! She’s windy!

There is no substantive for she to agree with, not even an implied one. The expected expression would be It’s windy!, but one can hardly argue that she agrees with implied it. Similarly, in popular expressions like Let’er rip! Here she goes!

there is obviously no basis for agreement. Clearly there is some other explanation for the gender of the pronoun in such cases. Some grammarians discuss these in terms of agreement with the experiential referent, with “variable extra-linguistic factors” as Joly (253) puts it. But this is quite different from the agreement of adjectives with a substantive and in fact raises the question of what determines the gender of pronouns in such ordinary uses as It’s raining. And this brings us to the crux of the problem: what is the difference between adjective agreement observed in other languages and the proposed anaphoric agreeing of pronouns with a substantive antecedent in English? Adjective agreement, no longer found in English, arises during the construction of the noun phrase, i.e. while the substantive is being configured for internal incidence, whereas the anaphoric agreement attributed to pronouns, must occur between one noun phrase and another, i.e. after the substantive’s noun phrase has been constructed and taken its place in the sentence. Does this difference disqualify pronoun agreement and justify adopting the no-agreement approach in English? Can this difference be safely ignored in adopting the agreement approach? According to Joly

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(247) it can: “Noun-phrase external grammar is as old as the language and there is no reason why it should be treated differently from noun-phrase internal gender. Both imply concord.” On the other hand, the examples just discussed suggest that the difference between the two syntactic relationships involved here – adjectivesubstantive vs. personal pronoun-substantive – is significant and calls for closer scrutiny. We will find that the above use of pronouns like it, where it constitutes a minimal noun phrase, calls for a very different approach. Before treating this question however we will need a more complete analysis of what is involved in constructing a noun phrase, and particularly in relating a substantive to its determiner. We will therefore have to postpone examining the question of whether or not pronouns agree in gender with their antecedent to lesson 20. The outcome of our discussion so far, then, is to call into question the idea that a pronoun “agrees in gender” with its co-referring substantive. Although what this entails for these pronouns will be outlined in the later lesson, here one important point implied by the notion of agreement should be brought out. The (in my view) mistaken assumption that certain pronouns derive their gender from the substantive, as adjectives do in French, is based on the (in my view) valid notion that substantives incorporate gender in their morphogenesis. That is, the (yet to be examined) relation between a substantive and its co-referring pronoun will provide evidence that the substantive’s lexeme is grammatically formed for gender. The effect of using she when speaking of a car, or he when speaking of a goose, or it when speaking of a person tells the listener not to think of the referent in the usual way, in the way suggested by the lexeme focusing on that entity. In short, if there is no gender of agreement, this does not oblige us to go to the other extreme and declare that, because there is no grammatical morphology expressing it, there is no gender in the substantive. Occam’s razor should be wielded like a scalpel not a scythe, or in contemporary idiom: let’s not throw out the baby with the bath water. THE CASE FOR NOTIONAL GENDER IN THE SUBSTANTIVE

If the idea of phrase-external agreement between pronoun and substantive is at least suspect because it occasionally leads to an

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impasse, what phrase-internal evidence is there for proposing gender in the substantive? We encountered a similar situation above when discussing number: because determiner (phrase-internal) and verb (phrase-external) agreement sometimes give conflicting evidence – recall the example How a people die – it was decided to take into account only phrase-internal evidence when determining the number of the substantive. Since the discussion in the last section has shown that phrase-external evidence can also lead to conflicting interpretations for the gender of the substantive, here too we will base our examination of gender in the substantive on evidence arising within the noun phrase. In the case of number, the semiology of both the substantive and certain determiners provides clear evidence, but there is no such evidence for gender so all that is left for exploring gender is the way a substantive expresses its lexeme. That is to say, if there is grammatical gender in the substantive it must be discerned through its relation to the word’s notional content. This is why, as mentioned above, the expression “notional gender” is used here: to remind us that gender as a grammatical category in the English substantive arises from the manner of representing something or someone by means of a lexeme in tongue. This implies that a substantive’s gender does not arise directly from a physical thing (sexless) or person (sexed) as they exist outside our minds. Nor, unlike the lexeme, does it arise directly from our momentary experience of that thing or person, i.e. from the intended message – though we shall see that the gender of he, she, it, etc. does arise directly from the experiential entity in the intended message. Rather the substantive’s gender arises from its lexical import, from the way the potential lexeme in tongue is actualized to represent the nature of the experiential entity. However gender is not a lexical category but, as Guillaume points out, “a fact of grammar because it goes beyond the particular mental import of a word and in tongue extends to a multitude of notions, in a way, tracing through its extension their generic limit” (1999, 4). In the next section we will explore how grammatical gender contributes to the forming of the substantive in English, but first we will attempt to see what evidence there is for this notional approach to gender, this view that it is the lexical import that determines the grammatical category. Evidence for notional gender can be found in observing certain consequences in discourse. Thus we do find a few substantives

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where the masculine and feminine are distinguished by means of a suffix – waiter/waitress, hero/heroine, widower/widow, and the like – and such cases suggest that a single lexeme is treated for gender in two different ways. In a number of other substantives different roots mark the distinction – boy/girl, uncle/aunt, etc. For these words, the interesting thing is that, given one word we readily think of the other: boy, makes us think of girl, niece makes us think of nephew, king of queen, etc. The pairing of two editions of similar lexemes in this way does not hold for most substantives: book, house, fear, etc. do not call to mind a counterpart in another substantive. Thus the very existence of notionally paired words like these suggests that the two lexemes are at least closely linked to one another in tongue, and that perhaps the two words have a common notional basis capable of denoting persons of similar age or relation or position, etc. but of different sex. Such paired words, however, are not very numerous in English (cf. Quirk et al., 315). Most words denoting human beings – student, doctor, foreigner, cook, cousin and the like – do not mark in their semiology the distinction between masculine and feminine and can be used without this distinction being realized. Thus in A teacher should encourage discussion, the substantive is understood to denote persons whether male or female. On the other hand, when we think such words in such a way as to designate a specific individual, as in My teacher said that …, we are confronted with the same duality between masculine and feminine as in the pairs just noted, and the speaker is obliged to think either ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ in such cases. This is why we say these words have animate gender: they permit the distinction between two subgenders, masculine and feminine, reflecting a natural difference of sex between living beings of the same species (though not only this, as we shall see when we come to the pronoun). Animate gender in the substantive is sometimes called “personal gender” because for most of us it is found only with substantives denoting persons. In the usage of people who have technical or scientific expertise, however, we also find distinctions of ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ when speaking of animals – dog/bitch, stallion/mare, ram/ewe, etc. It is quite understandable that those who raise horses, for example, or have considerable experience with them, cognoscenti, should automatically distinguish between an individual animal as male or female in their everyday experience,

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and so should conceptualize them differently from ordinary speakers. Because of the greater experience of cognoscenti, it is not surprising that the male vs. female distinction should figure in their representation of the nature of a given species so that they view them as ‘animate’ with the possibility of making the subgender distinction for individuals. That is, for most of us substantives designating animals have inanimate gender because in our limited experience we do not make the male/female distinction for them and so the grammatical ‘masculine’ vs. ‘feminine’ duality does not arise when we speak of a single animal.2 The majority of substantives in English are ‘inanimate’. This gender is often called “neuter,” the original sense of which, ‘not either’, signifies that the lexeme permits no opposition between two subgenders. This is the basic grammatical trait distinguishing an ‘animate’ substantive, as perceived by Guillaume (1992, 65): “two terms alternating as a duality of representation.” Thus the lexeme of an ‘inanimate’ substantive has only one edition in discourse, whereas the lexeme of an ‘animate’ substantive can be realized as either ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’, though this possibility need not be exploited, as in A teacher needs a lot of patience. Viewing gender in this way – as two possible ways of categorizing a lexeme being formed as a word – implies that, in usage, every English substantive is understood as either ‘inanimate’ or ‘animate’ in gender. We have arrived at this hypothesis by observing the relatively few paired words that express similar or identical notions distinguished by subgender (waiter/waitress), and by observing that certain substantives designating a specific individual (my teacher) are thought with a subgender whereas other substantives (my book) are not. This is hardly enough to confirm the hypothesis, but when we look at usage from this point of view other facts become comprehensible. That is, assuming, as we have just done, that this system of notional gender applies to all substantives entails several consequences. A consequence for the speaker is that once ideogenesis produces a substantive’s lexical import, its gender is immediately apparent because it arises as a direct consequence of the lexeme. The situation can be quite different in languages with agreement gender. Native speakers of French, for example, occasionally have to check in a dictionary to ascertain the agreement gender of a little used substantive even though they may be familiar with its lexeme. The fact that there is no need for anglophones to learn the gender of

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any substantive whose meaning they know can be explained if we assume that its gender is determined by its lexical import. This understanding of gender explains why ‘animate’ gender is limited to lexical imports actualized in the ‘bounded’ mode. That is substantives expressing an ‘unbounded’ (‘mass’) notion are necessarily ‘inanimate’ because the ‘unbounded’ mode of actualizing a lexeme allows for no internal divisions or duality as required for ‘animate’ gender. This distinction will help clarify certain uses of man and boy to be discussed below. The hypothesis of notional gender in English also has an important consequence for the semiology of the substantive. Every substantive has a distinctive lexeme signified by a distinctive sign.3 If we assume that the actualized lexeme determines the gender, it means that there is no need to have a separate sign to express gender for the listener. The moment we understand the notion a substantive imports into its noun phrase we become aware of its gender because this follows as a consequence, as we will see below when discussing words like printer. The situation is quite different with number which, being variable from one noun phrase to another for the same lexeme, requires the -ø vs. -s semiology for expression. That is, the lack of a grammatical semiology for gender in the substantive is a direct consequence of the fact that gender is notionally based. A fourth consequence of the proposed hypothesis involves the different effects of co-referring pronouns. Since these pronouns will be discussed in lesson 20, the point will be evoked summarily here. If we assume the representation of a lexically determined gender in a substantive, we can understand why pronoun usage gives rise to so many expressive effects in English. For example, representing an experiential entity by means of the lexeme ‘teacher’ leads to categorizing it as ‘animate’ in the morphogenesis of the substantive. As a consequence, referring to the same entity by means of she or he is commonplace whereas referring to it by means of it, i.e. categorizing the experiential entity as ‘inanimate’ or neuter, gives rise to a striking expressive effect by way of contrast. That is, because the substantive itself brings a recognizable gender or subgender to the sentence, a co-referring pronoun expressing a different gender or subgender will have a very different expressive effect from a pronoun expressing the same gender or subgender as the substantive. In fact, all the discussion concerning substantive and pronoun and the relation between them – whether the pronoun is

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anaphoric (as some scholars maintain) or co-referring (as will be argued here) – is based on the assumption that a substantive expresses gender and this cannot be ignored in any treatment of the question. Thus the case for notional gender in the substantive is based on those relatively few paired words which express it through semiology and on the meaning, ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’, expressed by substantives designating a specific person (or animal, for cognoscenti) as opposed to substantives designating a specific thing. Adopted as a hypothesis, notional gender helps us understand why there is no need for a speaker to learn the gender of a substantive, why ‘unbounded’ notions are ‘inanimate’, why gender requires no visible morphology and why the relations between a substantive and co-referring pronouns can give such different expressive effects. Each of these factors is observable in discourse and together they provide sufficient evidence for proposing that substantives in English are formed for gender arising from the lexeme. That is, this hypothesis accounts for the data, but like any other hypothesis must meet the additional requirement of coherence with the other components of the more general theory, that of the part speech. To explore this requirement involves trying to see where gender arises in the morphogenesis of the substantive and what it contributes to this phase of the word-forming process. GENDER IN THE SUBSTANTIVE

From the discussion so far, then, the situation of the substantive in Modern English appears to be as follows: the lexeme representing the experiential entity is given either ‘inanimate’ or ‘animate’ gender, the latter permitting the distinction between two subgenders for the same lexeme, ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’. Assuming then that gender, like number and case, is part of the substantive’s grammatical software, it must contribute to the forming of every substantive, to “mediating between its particular being [the lexeme] and its general being [the part of speech]” (Guillaume forthcoming, 23 November 1939, f. 3–4). To pursue our attempt to understand the makeup of the substantive, we will now attempt to discern what the representation provided by gender contributes to the forming of a word so that it can exercise internal incidence in the noun phrase.

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Gender, like number, is not concerned with the function foreseen for the substantive in the sentence. That is the role of case. On the other hand, gender contributes, along with number, to giving a grammatical form to the lexical matter so that it will represent what the speaker has in mind. We have seen how, by internal incidence, the substantive is formed in such a way as to predicate its notion of its own extensity and that the system of number prefigures the extensity by depicting the space implied by the actualization of the lexeme as either continuate or discontinuate and by quantifying it. In what way does the animate/inanimate dichotomy of gender contribute to the grammaticizing of the lexeme in the making of a substantive? In her study of gender in English, Morris gives an interesting reply to this question. That study is based on the same view of word formation as presented above in lesson 3, namely as a binary process consisting of ideogenesis and morphogenesis. Ideogenesis results in calling to mind a lexeme distinguished from all other lexemes. In the substantive this lexeme represents the nature of some entity in the speaker’s momentary experiential panorama, thus providing the lexical matter to be formed by morphogenesis. After pointing out this particularizing effect of ideogenesis, Morris (218) remarks: “Gender then categorizes it, i.e. represents its space.” That is, gender provides a formal representation of the mental space the lexeme occupies as opposed to that occupied by any other lexeme in the speaker’s universe of ideas. This manner of understanding gender, based on the view that each lexeme has its own mental space, implies that, like any other grammatical form, gender involves a process of generalization: it abstracts from the particularities of a given lexeme to represent what is most general. In this way gender gives a first grammatical form to the outcome of ideogenesis, simply depicting the space occupied by the particular lexeme. Since this space, represented through abstraction by gender, is inherent in any lexeme to be substantivized we can understand why gender is a categorizing form in all substantives. Thus this insight is revealing because it helps us to understand why gender is common to all substantives – every substantive brings to the sentence a lexeme which occupies its own mental space in tongue. This insight can also throw light on the reason for two genders. Through its particularizing effect, ideogenesis mentally distinguishes a given lexeme, say ‘book’, from all others by representing

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the nature of its referent. For most lexemes, this suffices to characterize any specific entity perceived as sharing that nature. In some cases however, distinguishing the lexeme from all others in this way does not suffice for characterizing individual entities sharing that nature, so that for lexemes like ‘teacher’, ‘immigrant’, etc. a further distinction pertaining to the nature, male or female, of an individual is required, a distinction which has the effect of dividing the lexeme’s mental space. Guillaume expressed the close link between gender and number as follows: “real gender” (as opposed to the fictive gender of many words in French) “is a state of singular number…. If the singular is not drawn from a dual of difference, but from a dual of identity, it has the form of the neuter”4 (1999, 25). That is to say, to represent a particular individual, a lexeme’s notional space must be represented as either simple or dual, giving rise respectively to an ‘inanimate’ or an ‘animate’ substantive in discourse. In the latter case, the lexeme may be actualized as epicene, i.e. only to the point where the two subgenders are possibilities, neither of which is actualized. On the other hand where the intended message calls for exploiting the duality of the ‘animate’ through a subgender, the speaker will think the substantive either ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’. (Paired substantives suggest a third possibility for ‘animate’ substantives, as we shall see in the next section.) Thus gender represents the space inherent in any lexeme to be formed as a substantive, configuring it as either simple or dual. Once configured in this way by the system of gender, this space, with its notion, can then be quantified by the system of number to depict its disposition in the intended message. What is interesting in this view is that it discusses gender in terms of space, notional space. Thus conceived, gender provides a first link between the lexical and the grammatical, between the notion and the part of speech. This link is based on something inherent in the very act of representation, whether lexical or grammatical: as Guillaume often pointed out, we always represent by means of space (so that even a time-word, a verb, represents time grammatically by spatializing it). It is therefore no surprise that a substantive’s lexical import involves space, and it is this space, abstracted from the particularities of a given lexeme, that gender represents. Moreover the substantive is, as opposed to the verb, a space-word,5 and so, as morphogenesis proceeds, the notional space already depicted by gender as ‘animate’ or ‘inanimate’ is treated by number

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to give it a form, ‘continuate’ or ‘discontinuate’, corresponding with the intended message. In this way gender and number provide a spatial form, a “spatialization of space,”6 needed as support for the lexical import so that the substantive can effect its internal incidence. In the subsequent phase of morphogenesis, case will provide this partial construct with the potential to play a role in the sentence. As Morris (224) puts it: “Without this first delimitation of the space involving the lexeme itself, the subsequent mental operations resulting in the assignation of number, case and person would have no raw material with which to work.” This then is the place gender occupies in the theory of the substantive. It provides a first configuration of space as raw material for the morphemes arising subsequently in morphogenesis, number, and case, to further configure. Being the grammatical category, the morpheme, most closely linked to a substantive’s lexeme, gender reflects the way it has been actualized and so requires no specific semiology, being therefore a covert category in most substantives, one which can be discovered only by observing their meaning in usage. This view may not satisfy those who accept only grammatical inflexions as evidence for a grammatical morpheme, but it does avoid the difficulties inherent in the agreement and no-gender approaches mentioned above, a point that will come out more clearly when we turn to the use of pronouns in lesson 20. GENDER IN DISCOURSE

In the light of this hypothesis of gender in tongue some of the points of usage mentioned above are worth recalling before bringing in new cases. When we represent an entity as ‘inanimate’ by means of a substantive such as a mosquito or a book, it permits no distinction between the individual animal or object we have in mind and all the others that could be named by the same lexeme. With most ‘animate’ substantives, however, the lexeme can be represented as either ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’, or as epicene (without actualizing the subgender). That is, for immigrant, teacher, adolescent, and the like, as long as the distinction between ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ is not realized, the lexeme can apply to any individual within its semantic range, as in A teacher does not have an easy job. But the very fact of thinking the notion as ‘animate’ adds the possibility of actualizing this distinction, as when speaking of a particular

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individual (cf. My math teacher said …). This binary construal of notional space, whether or not it remains implicit, divides the lexeme’s extension, giving it a form that is not the same as that of inanimates. On the other hand, when we represent an entity as ‘animate’ by means of a ‘masculine’ substantive such as a waiter, or a ‘feminine’ substantive such as a heroine, it represents a distinction between the individual we have in mind and perhaps half the other persons that could be named by means of the same lexeme.7 That is to say, the very fact of forming a substantive as either ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ limits the range of the lexeme to about half its extension. The role of suffixes like -ess, -ine and -ette (usherette) is lexical rather than grammatical: they bring in a lexical element which has the effect of limiting the ‘animate’ gender to ‘feminine’. In the case of paired substantives with different roots, e.g. mother/ father, boy/girl, king/queen, the situation appears to be different. Their distinct semiology suggests that the two members of a pair have different lexemes. Furthermore the lexeme itself appears to involve either a male or a female characterization with the result that each of these paired lexemes has only one possible subgender in discourse. This opposes them to words like parent (One parent must sign this) which evokes what ‘mother’ and ‘father’ have in common notionally and shows that each member of a pair has only half the extension of the epicene. Such pairs raise the interesting question for lexical semantics of describing how the two are linked in the universe of ideas. As we have seen, the binarity proposed for ‘animate’ gender on the level of the lexeme can perhaps be most clearly seen in situations where the speaker has a certain expertise. For a person working in a kennels or in a game park, the notion of dog or lion may take on, besides the species sense of the ordinary speaker, a ‘masculine’ sense which opposes it to bitch or lioness. Cognoscenti have a more complete understanding because their characterizing of any individual animal goes beyond the mere ‘member-of-the-species’ sense to a more particular designation of belonging to a subgender. When used in this sense, neither term can extend to the whole species. However when used simply as epicene substantives, with no actualization of subgender, lion and dog can designate the whole species. There is another case where ‘animate’ substantives do not offer the possibility of ‘masculine’/’feminine’ alternance, that of proper

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nouns to denote humans. As the name of a single individual, James or Mary or Napoleon has no counterpart expressing the other subgender, nor can it be used simply as an ‘animate’, i.e. without realizing the specification of one of the two subgenders. This of course arises because of the over characterization of the lexeme in the proper noun limiting its extension in tongue to a minimum so that it has the potential of designating only one individual. That is to say, in usage both James and Mary refer to a specific individual known to the speaker; in each case the individual is represented with sufficient particularity to permit unique reference, and this includes having the same (human) nature differentiated according to subgroup (male or female). On the other hand, although the ‘inanimate’ Montreal refers to a particular entity with the same citynature as other such entities, it is not differentiated according to subgender. Thus thanks to the meaning expressed by proper nouns we can see a link between gender and the determination of the support of signification within the substantive. The hypothesis of gender presented here can be clarified by words like speaker and printer. These substantives can be used to call to mind a person, in which case we understand them to be ‘animate’, but they can also denote an electronic or mechanical device, in which case they would be ‘inanimate’. The interesting thing about words like these is that they indicate how abstract the lexeme in tongue must be – simply the notion of a process – with no grammatical strings attached. When completed with the lexical import of the suffix -er, it can depict either the agent, and so be categorized as ‘animate’, or the instrument, and so become ‘inanimate’ in gender. This shows that the lexeme in tongue (‘speak’, ‘print’) has no gender and that the way it is actualized for usage through ideogenesis, including suffixation, determines the gender it will be formed with in morphogenesis. The word guest gives rise to a slightly different situation. Although often understood as designating a person, it is also used to name “an organism sharing the dwelling of another,” usually an insect. One feels a link between the two senses, as though the insect were named by a figurative use of guest. Since metaphor is presumably the historical source of this sense it would not be surprising to find that, at least for non-cognoscenti speakers like myself, it still involves a metaphorical derivation from the ‘animate’ lexeme. On the other hand, for

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anyone working on such organisms, cognoscenti, the lexeme in tongue may well have been generalized to include both senses as possible actualizations. In either case, guest shows that a lexeme in tongue can give rise to either gender in discourse. Another substantive with uses that can be analyzed in a similar fashion is inhabitant (cf. a normal inhabitant of the intestines of both man and animals). The interesting point illustrated by these two words is that when ideogenesis results (for me) in a metaphorical sense, this may call for a gender not usually found with that word. Another case which may appear on a first reading to offer different gender readings is in the sentence: The enemy is approaching.

Enemy here can be understood as denoting a person or group of persons, or as denoting a thing, a ship, and so it would seem to be a case of a lexeme in tongue actualizable in two ways, one ‘animate’ and the other ‘inanimate’. On the other hand, enemy would not be used in a sentence like this to denote a guided missile, a fact suggesting that when denoting a ship, enemy (something like a collective) perhaps calls to mind the personnel on board. If further observation of usage confirms this, in both senses enemy can be considered an ‘animate’ here. This suggests that collectives like committee, used to designate both a group and the individuals composing the group, might also be examined from the same point of view. Although many other uses will have to be examined in the light of the proposed hypothesis, we will finish this survey by evoking a question yet to be explored. Proposing that a substantive’s gender is predetermined by the lexical import it brings to the sentence raises the question of the conditioning factor. What in the lexeme determines gender? The original senses of animate and inanimate, viz. ‘living’ and ‘nonliving’, are no longer applicable as such in English, where we might be tempted to interpret these grammatical terms as ‘human’ vs. ‘non-human’, but this would exclude cognoscenti usage with animals mentioned above. Moreover it is not obvious how a distinction based only on biological differences could explain a use in two examples already seen. In: “It’s not brutality,” murmured little Hartopp…. “It’s boy, only boy.”

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the expressive effect is something like ‘the nature of boy’, i.e. what makes a boy do things like that, what animates him. Similarly in: This is one of the few trivial tricks – I cannot call it power – left to me now that I am old and stripped at last down to man.

The lexeme of man here suggests ‘the power of a human’, as opposed to that of someone with magical powers. In these examples, as was pointed out in a previous lesson, the lexeme in tongue has been actualized not as a ‘bounded’ notion but as an ‘unbounded’ notion and so calls for ‘inanimate’ gender. That is, the way the lexeme has been actualized appears to condition the gender applicable, as it does in the case of number. CONCLUSION

It follows from the foregoing discussion that a lexeme as a potential in tongue is not categorized for gender but, when actualized to be part of a substantive, it is provided with a gender category. Although in ordinary usage there is little variation for most lexemes, when it is observed (as in the last two examples) there is no need for a lexeme to be “re-categorised” (Wales 165) to explain this variation. That is, it is not necessary to suppose some sort of mental lexicon where words pre-exist as grammatically categorized entities if, as proposed here, we assume that ideogenesis, actualizing a lexeme, is followed by morphogenesis, which for substantives begins with categorizing the lexeme for gender. Having rejected the idea that the gender of personal pronouns agrees with that of a substantive-antecedent, we are left with little more than the lexeme itself to provide a data base for analyzing the system. Initial observations suggest the hypothesis that a substantive’s lexeme, when actualized non-metaphorically to represent the nature of the entity the speaker has in mind, expresses a gender, either animate, with its two possible subgenders, or inanimate – each reflecting the lexeme’s spatial disposition. The above discussion of examples suggests how this hypothesis can be validated. There are, of course, many other substantives that will have to be examined from this point of view, and particularly all those that appear capable of denoting both persons and things. To the extent

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that the lexeme in each use is shown to be either ‘animate’ or ‘inanimate’, this examination of usage will lend support to the hypothesis. The fact that observing gender involves us in lexical semantics in this way should not be surprising since any analysis of data leads to examining the prior conditions giving rise to what is observed, and in a notional approach to gender this necessarily involves seeking the conditioning factor in the lexeme. Although this type of verification will likely call for examining a large number of words one by one, it may well be the only way of discerning the system of gender since, as I have tried to show, there is no longer gender concord in English. Our attempt to analyze gender in the substantive has not reached the point where we can describe the underlying system but it has cleared the ground for examining its manifestation in pronouns. It has also, I hope, made the point that gender is a grammatical formative in the substantive’s morphogenesis, providing a general characterization of the lexical import’s mental space as either simple or binary, a generalization constituting the first step on the way to the total generalization provided by the part of speech. This exploratory lesson can perhaps best be ended with a few general comments from Guillaume which may provide a basis for further reflecting on the grammatical system of gender. In his lessons of February 1939, Guillaume considered the question from the more general point of view of a substantive’s morphogenesis, which ends by situating all the word’s import, lexical and grammatical in “an immobile, continuate and undifferentiated space universe” (1992, 114–5), space being, in our experience, “the support of all that exists” (cited in Lowe 2007, 321). In his view, the animate, as opposed to the inanimate, is characterized by “internal mobility” which operates by external movement or “activity” in the masculine whereas in the feminine it operates by internal movement, “vital movement.” He suggests (1992, 121–2) that the proper role of gender and number in forming a substantive is “to resolve the final problems involved in the incidence of the word, the lexeme, to the spatial universe.” Being immobile, the spatial universe “receives differently the animate and the inanimate, and this is at the very origin of gender.” Thus for Guillaume (140), “Space is inert, immobile. The animate, especially the personal animate [as in English] incident to it, contrasts with this. The solution

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of the contrast is gender.” Such comments, which may provide useful avenues for reflexion on the system in English, have the merit of situating the question within the broader framework of the part of speech, but they should be considered no more than possible leads since gender remained “the most obscure of grammatical categories” for Guillaume (1999, 26).

LESSON NINE

The Substantive Substantive standeth by hym selfe, and loketh not for an other worde to be joyned with hym. Lily 1527 cited in Michael, 289

INTRODUCTION

It is time to summarize our view of the substantive in the light of the three formative phases constituting its morphogenesis. Albeit incomplete, our knowledge of the most visible one, the number morpheme, is sufficient to provide a view of its system as an operational potential providing various effects in discourse. Our analyses of gender and case, on the other hand, are as yet insufficient to give even a preliminary view of the mechanism underlying their respective systems. These are areas calling for further observation and reflexion within the framework of Guillaume’s method of system analysis, particularly by examining the personal pronouns for a clearer view of gender and the noun phrase as a unit for a clearer view of case. Limited though our present knowledge is, we will see in this lesson that it is sufficient to give us a first understanding of how the part of speech grammaticizes a lexeme through its subsystems, the different phases of morphogenesis, to produce a word capable of effecting internal incidence. It is important to have an overall view of how the substantive, considered as “software,” as a systemic mental program in tongue, exercises its formative role because it throws light on the ideogenesis/morphogenesis relationship, fundamental to the mental genesis of a word. Viewing the genesis of a word’s meaning as the process of forming its lexical matter grammatically by the part of speech system will help us come to grips with the question of “conversion,” mentioned previously as a problem which

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has led many to consider parts of speech as merely functions, or at best, word classes. This in turn will lead us to view a given substantive, neither as a lexical item which can occupy a certain number of positions in the sentence, nor as one member of a certain class of lexeme, nor merely as a set of sound waves, but as a word, a systematized grammatical-lexical import enabled by its built-in “software” to play its role in a noun phrase, and enabling the noun phrase to play its role in the sentence. FORMATIVE ELEMENTS AND INTERNAL INCIDENCE

Gender, number, and case each contribute to forming a substantive as a space-word. Notional gender transcends whatever is particular in a lexeme by representing the space implied in it, giving this “semantic space” a general form, either simple or binary, inanimate or animate. Number configures the lexeme to its correlate in the speaker’s experience by forming it spatially, continuate or discontinuate, and quantifying it. Case forms the lexeme in such a way that, besides playing its own role in the noun phrase, it enables the noun phrase to play its role in the sentence. Looking at the forming of a substantive from the point of view of the lexeme in this way is important for discerning the different elements contributing to the resulting word. But there is another point of view, one which can bring us closer to the reality of what actually happens during the act of language: that of the speaker. As speakers, our aim is not to grammaticize lexemes in order to produce a substantive, a verb, an adjective, etc. Our intention is rather to express as discourse1 something we have in mind, to translate a momentary content of experience into something said, an intended message into an understood message. To carry out this intention to express something in discourse, we have only one means: to form a sentence (or sentences). What prompts us to undertake an act of language is therefore the intention to make a sentence in order to express through discourse our intended message.2 This is why the sentence is of crucial importance: it is the unit of discourse, the largest grammatically formed unit of expression.3 It remains, however, that forming a sentence (and perhaps a number of sentences) is the means, not the end. The end is to express adequately the experiential content focussed on by the

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intention to express it, and to do this we must first represent that momentary experience by means of words,4 whence the fundamental importance of the word and the way it is formed in a given language. The remarkable thing here is the impression that the moment we undertake an act of language the required words begin to emerge into consciousness, words representing the particular experience we have in mind and appropriately formed for the particular syntactic function each one is to assume in the projected sentence. To understand how this happens, how our minds can produce the appropriate words instantaneously, as if by magic, we have assumed that the processes of word-formation involved are regularly repeated operations unrolling in a microtime that precludes any possibility of our being conscious of them, and that the appropriate process or operative program is triggered each time a given type of word like a substantive is required. Now that we have at least a preliminary understanding of the three formative elements contributing to the morphogenesis of a substantive, we are in a position to explore its mental genesis as a whole to form a unit of meaning ready to take its place in a noun phrase. The very fact that we speak to express something, to fulfil an expressive intent, presupposes that even before the intention to speak arises we have that something – a perception, a feeling, an idea, a message from previous discourse, etc. – in mind. As was pointed out in a preceding lesson when we focus on something in our experience with the intent of speaking about it, it is already viewed by the corresponding viewing idea(s) of tongue, so an act of language consists of actualizing and forming these lexemes to constitute a sentence. Calling on the system of the parts of speech to realize this sentence intent entails providing for the necessary sentence components such as subject and predicate, components that can fulfil the function of saying something about something or someone. Producing a subject, which usually involves constructing a noun phrase, in turn usually calls for constructing a substantive. I have recalled all this in order to bring out the idea that constructing a word begins with providing for its syntactic role in the projected sentence, that is, with calling on the system of tongue to provide the particular part of speech which will enable the word to exercise the operation of incidence to be required of it. Guillaume expressed this by saying that “A word takes its place in the sentence through its general form: noun (substantive, adjective), verb, adverb, pronoun, etc.

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The sentence [intent], at the outset, evokes the word-form; the word-matter (meaning) follows, without any discontinuity” (1964, 118n). A simple example will help show what Guillaume has in mind. Observing our cat standing by the door – the very fact of observing implies that I have already categorized the strictly sensory input by means of viewing ideas like ‘cat’ and ‘door’ – I might say: The cat wants out. Confronted by an ordinary experience like this, my intended message (what my expressive intent focuses on) concerns, not the cat’s position or some other detail, but what I presume to be its desire. To represent and express this (the sentence intent) first involves appealing to the software of tongue to form a noun phrase, which in turn entails forming a substantive and therefore calling on the system of the substantive in order to configure the viewing idea ‘cat’ into a word with internal incidence. That is, in forming a word the first element to be put in place is its part of speech. Once the system of the substantive in tongue is activated, the subsystem of case is called on to make available the syntactic possibilities open to a word capable of internal incidence. In this way what is required to construct the sentence is ensured. The subsystem of number is then evoked to provide a representation of the space occupied by the entity viewed by the lexeme. To complete the formal genesis of the substantive, the subsystem of gender is called on to provide a representation of the space inherent in the lexeme itself. Finally the lexeme provides the matter to be spatially configured by this system of forms. To be noted is that the formative elements have been made to measure, each in its own way: case to provide for word function and, through it, to permit the noun phrase to play its foreseen function in the particular sentence being constructed; number, continuate or discontinuate, according to the particular experiential entity to be designated; gender, animate or inanimate, according to the particular lexeme. All these elements are required because a substantive in discourse must bring to the sentence a lexical import, spatially distinct from all others, which is both configured spatially to the extra-linguistic designatum it represents and enabled to function, through internal incidence, as the headword of a noun phrase. Gender is the form connecting the substantive to the lexeme, number the form connecting it to the intended message, case the form connecting it to the rest of the sentence.

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Once constructed, a substantive is expressed in discourse where it first presents its lexeme with its consequent gender and its number, and then its role in the sentence (usually signified through its position relative to other words). One may well wonder why Guillaume says that a substantive enters the sentence in just the opposite order, beginning by its general form, the part of speech determining its function, and ending with the lexeme. He is concerned with its constructional phase, the way a speaker forms a lexeme grammatically with a view to its role in the sentence, and this calls for activating the appropriate part of speech at the outset of its mental genesis. Since case provides the capacity for fulfilling this role it is activated first within the substantive’s program, but it can be effective only in a word capable of internal incidence, and this calls for number and gender. Thus, viewing the substantive’s mental genesis the way Guillaume does brings us to examine it in the light of internal incidence. How do these three formative elements, case, number, and gender, produce a word with a support for its own lexical import? Case as we have seen permits certain intra-sentence relations, which, to be effective, require a word with internal incidence. Number and gender on the other hand are word-internal, concerned with the makeup of the word itself. Number connects with the intended message providing an abstract spatial representation of the experiential correlate to which the substantive is to be referred. That is, number represents the lexeme’s actual range of application in a given use by depicting the extra-linguistic reality in its spatial parameters. In short, it appears that the spatial representation produced by the system of number provides the support of signification required by internal incidence. How about gender? Does it contribute to the substantive’s type of incidence? For a scholar like Meillet to consider gender “one of the least logical and most surprising of grammatical categories” indicates the difficulty encountered in analyzing it (cited in Joly, 244). Guided by usage in English, we have been able to leave gender of agreement aside and concentrate on notional gender, attempting to discern the relation between the lexeme and the gender of the substantive. We have seen that gender connects with the import of meaning seeking a support, to the point where it is the actualized lexeme which determines the gender, inanimate or animate: actualized in an ‘unbounded’ sense, a lexeme is inanimate and cannot be formed by animate gender; actualized in a ‘bounded’ sense it

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can be either animate or inanimate, but only as an animate does the notion permit a subgender division, feminine or masculine. These two indications suggested a spatial relation between gender and the lexeme’s extensity, and led to the proposal that gender depicts space inherent in the actualized lexeme, its “semantic space,” a hypothesis that would indicate a first representation of space, one yet to be formed by the system of number to prepare for the substantive’s incidence. Viewing the place of gender in constructing a word with internal incidence in this way makes it more “logical” and less “surprising,” but until a more extensive examination of gender is undertaken, particularly in the pronoun, this hypothesis can be considered little more than a conjecture yet to be explored in its theoretical ramifications and a more extended observation of usage. However let us assume that the system of gender provides in this way a spatial representation of the lexeme-import which the system of number forms in correlation with the experiential entity, and the system of case provides the means required for effecting the substantive’s syntactic relations through the noun phrase. This genesis of mental content culminates in the lexeme-matter receiving the form of a substantive. That is, a substantive’s mental or “psycho-” genesis (as Guillaume would say) results in its comprehension, as actualized in the lexeme, being made incident to its extension, as actualized in its extensity. If number represents this extensity as, say, ‘discontinuate, plural’, this does not of course involve thinking the lexeme itself as somehow discontinuate and pluralized. The lexeme is one, but it can be used to represent the same nature in separate entities in the speaker’s intended message. This is why the lexeme in tongue, the unchanging comprehension, is incident to its extensity, to its field of actual application, and it is this field which is ‘discontinuate, plural’, or ‘continuate, singular’, etc. In brief, the internal incidence of a substantive is effected by the lexeme’s incidence to its extension, once the extension has been actualized as a particular field of application corresponding to its correlate in the intended message. Guillaume’s manner of viewing the process of substantivizing a lexical import thus brings out the link between the internal incidence which characterizes the part of speech and its three subsystems. Gender represents the lexemeimport’s semantic space which, formed by number, permits the substantive’s incidence. Once effected, this incidence permits the word to function in the sentence thanks to its case.

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Such considerations give us a better appreciation of the nature of the substantive and help us understand its role in the noun phrase, of which it is traditionally considered the head. Some linguists, however, question this role, claiming that the determiner should be considered the head. In the next lesson we will turn to these grammatical words which bring in no lexeme of their own but which play various grammatical roles. First, however, I want to come back to a question which can pose a major problem if the operational nature of word formation is not kept in mind. SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL AGAIN

The problem posed by examples like: Small is beautiful. Handsome is that handsome does.

is worth recalling in the light of our analysis of the substantive’s morphogenesis to emphasize that the grammatical form of a word is a distinct but essential part of its makeup. Just the opposite is implied when such uses are described as resulting from “conversion,” defined as “the deliberate transfer of a word from one part of speech to another” (Zandvoort, 265), so that we have an adjective “used as a noun,” i.e. as subject in the above examples, a view implying that a word’s grammatical function is quite independent of its grammatical nature. The same is implied when adverbs can “function as subject” (Quirk et al., 736) as in: Slowly is exactly how he speaks. Today will be fine.

Here slowly “is a fragment of an understood clause,” and in this use of today there is “blurring of nominal and adverbial functions.” Similarly, when verbs are “used as nouns,” as in: I like a quiet read after supper. If he thinks he can fool me, he has another think coming.

according to Sweet (38–9), “the mere change of a verb into a noun can hardly be said to make a new word of it” because “conversion

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does not involve any alteration in the meaning of a word.” Substantives can also be “converted,” as in: They eyed the prisoners with curiosity.

Here, “the noun eye is converted into a verb by merely giving it verb inflexion” (Curme 1931, 534). On the other hand, in the boy king, “boy is a noun and an adjective at the same time” (Zandvoort, 266), being only partly converted because it is used attributively but cannot take the comparative or the superlative. “Nouns may also function as … restricted amplifiers” (i.e. as adverbs) as in the expressions stone cold, rock hard, and brand new (Quirk et al., 447). The attempted explanations offered – blurring of functions, two parts of speech at the same time, conversion by adding an inflexion and not changing the meaning, an understood clause, etc. – strike one as little more than makeshift expedients indicating the awareness of a problem but not explaining anything. In any case, this brief survey suggests that these grammarians do not have a clear view of what a part of speech is, of its relation to sentence function. They have not recognized that “the syntactical function of a word is part of its meaning,” as Michael (46) puts it, and so fail to distinguish the lexical meaning a word signifies from the grammatical meaning it consignifies. In short, to explain this type of usage we must describe how the lexical and grammatical meanings are brought together to form a unit of meaning capable of a certain function in the sentence. As we saw above, this idea of reconstructing a word each time we need it has been ignored because no attempt has been made to develop a theory of the word. The very term “conversion” is based on the naïve assumption that we learn words and stock them in our subconscious minds the way they appear in a dictionary. It takes for granted that a word like small exists as an adjective for the speaker in tongue and so, in order to appear as a substantive, must be converted, recategorized. However once one distinguishes between lexical and grammatical meanings and between the processes giving rise to them, ideogenesis and morphogenesis, it becomes clear that what exists in tongue is not a set of words, but a set of grammatical formatives, or parts of speech, and a set of agrammatical lexemes, viewing ideas which have to be grammaticized to constitute the mental import of words and so be usable in a sentence.

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Thus to be used in the above sentence the notion ‘small’ had to be categorized as a substantive, i.e. formed, or “grasped” as Guillaume used to say, by case, number, and gender in order to constitute a word whose lexical import is incident to an internal support. This explains why small in this use can call to mind not only the notion of ‘little in size’ but also what this is applied to, i.e. ‘whatever can be characterized as small’. When used as an adjective as in a small dog, on the other hand, small alone cannot call to mind the notion of what it is applied to, ‘dog’. Similarly for handsome in the above proverb: to function as the subject of is, ‘handsome’ is substantivized and so the proverb expresses the idea ‘someone handsome (= ‘magnanimous’) is someone that acts handsomely’. To consider slowly above as an example of adverbs that “function as subject” implies that there is no necessary link between part of speech and function, implying thereby that the part of speech merely groups a certain type of lexeme, that it is a class of words, not a grammatical formative. On the other hand, to consider slowly here, regardless of its lexical import, as a substantive calling to mind both the notion of ‘not quick’ and its support ‘manner, how’ obviates the need to invent an “understood clause” to explain why it suggests “Speaking slowly is exactly how …” Similarly, Today in the above example is not a word “blurring nominal and adverbial functions” but a substantive whose notional import, representing a period of time, is incident to its own support and so can fulfil a nominal function. Likewise, read and think are not verbs changed into or “used as nouns,” but words formed with gender, number, and case, i.e. substantives made to measure for that particular sentence to express what the speaker had in mind – a particular notion characterizing the activity or process inherent in its own makeup. This certainly makes a word whose grammatical meaning is quite different from a verb. Although each of these lexemes, because of its particular makeup, is prototypically used as an adjective, an adverb or a verb, they are available in less usual situations to be formed by another part of speech. The same is true of lexemes one considers as prototypical substantives. Thus ‘eye’ is not “converted into a verb by merely giving it verb inflexion,” i.e. by adding -ed. It is grammaticized by means of what the inflexion consignifies – the different subsystems of the part of speech verb situating its lexical import in time and requiring a subject as external support. And boy is not “a noun and an

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adjective at the same time” in boy king – this would be a contradiction – but an adjective, a word which must find an external support for its import. Nor are stone, hard, and brand above nouns used as adverbs, but words constructed with external incidence of the second degree calling for a support in another word, which is itself seeking a support outside itself. The point here is that the part of speech is not inherent in any viewing idea, any lexeme in tongue. It is true that the particular makeup of a given lexeme may well predestine it for a certain part of speech, and this suggests why, for example, ‘boy’ is usually found as a substantive whereas ‘think’ emerges as a verb in most of its uses, but the above examples show that even such prototypical lexemes can be grammatically routed through the program of a different part of speech. To provide an explanation for all uses, we must view the substantive as a system in tongue instituted quite independent from lexemes. It exists as a grammatical formative, that is, as an abstract mental form for shaping or configuring lexemes to make them capable of playing a specific role in a given noun phrase. Although there are a number of problems yet to be confronted, the above examples serve to illustrate how the view of the substantive proposed here – as a part of speech and not a class of words – can explain variability of function for the same lexeme. This existence of the substantive as an abstract form in tongue can perhaps be best illustrated by its use to form an import which is not a lexeme in tongue, for example: Under the bed is dusty.

Here the import of the prepositional phrase appears to be incident to its own support, not to something else in the sentence, but just how this is brought about, how a prepositional phrase can have internal incidence, remains to be analyzed. Similarly, according to Zandvoort (276), “a complete sentence may occasionally be used as a noun” as in: Young what’s his name has got into a bad scrape, I hear.

Again, although the process of nominalizing a lexical import not provided by a lexeme in tongue has yet to be analyzed, such examples do indicate that the formative capacity of the substantive

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extends to imports constituted during the construction of the sentence. This shows that, independent of lexemes, the substantive does have an existence in tongue as an operative system to form any notional import called on to fulfil a function requiring internal incidence. THE SUBSTANTIVE IN TONGUE VS. A SUBSTANTIVE IN DISCOURSE

We can finish this lesson by drawing attention to the underlying distinction between the substantive as a mental program, i.e. a part of speech instituted as an operative system in tongue, and a substantive as output, i.e. a word in discourse with a particular lexeme and function in a given sentence. To be operative and produce a word, the substantive (the mental program) must be provided with a specific lexical matter as input. Bringing together the formative possibilities of the part of speech and the expressive possibilities of a lexeme provides the means of forming a given substantive and explaining its different uses, but it must be kept in mind that in tongue, these uses are merely possibilities. In tongue, when we are not speaking, the substantive does not form anything; it is a grammatical system with the potential of forming any lexical import presented to it during an act of sentence construction. In tongue, a lexeme does not represent anything; it is a complex of characterizing traits with the potential of representing any experiential entity that correlates with its particular makeup. In discourse a substantive expresses one of the possibilities allowed by the lexeme and plays a role permitted by the part of speech. Between the hidden potential and the observable actualization, the complex process of psycho-genesis brings together the grammatical and the lexical components to provide the mental content signified by the physical sign and its position in the sentence. The type of word-forming process proposed here thus provides for the uses of any lexeme formed as a substantive without resorting to some sort of “conversion” because it distinguishes between ideogenesis and morphogenesis. Furthermore it helps us understand the different ways a substantive in discourse has been described or defined (cf. Michael, 283–93). For example Lily’s view that a substantive “standeth by hym selfe, and loketh not for an other worde to be joyned with hym” (cited in Michael, 89) is a

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traditional way of characterizing one syntactic effect of internal incidence, permitting a grammarian to distinguish a substantive from an adjective. Many others in the tradition (cf. Michael, 54–9) distinguish a substantive from a verb on the grounds of its morphology by describing it as a word inflected sine tempore, without tense, a result of its being formed spatially. Perhaps the most common way of describing a substantive is through its lexical import, as in “the name of a person, place, or thing,” a definition reflecting the spatial character of the substantive but limiting it to physical entities occupying space and failing to bring out that a substantive can designate anything (an event, an idea, a dream) represented spatially. Because such traditional descriptions are based on an inadequate view of word formation they are incomplete and so unsatisfactory as a definition, but to the extent that they reflect the observation of usage they provide data to be explained, and so involve no counterevidence for the theory of the substantive presented here. Unless the distinction between ideogenesis and morphogenesis is kept in mind, the process of word formation remains hidden (except where visible inflexions makes it obvious) and this usually leads to a static conception of words as lexico-grammatical units stored in a lexicon, a mental dictionary. A static view of words creates the problems illustrated above because it does not allow the part of speech its proper role. Reduced to a class of words with either a certain type of lexeme in common or a certain sentence function, the part of speech has no formative role to play and so becomes an accidental feature in the linguistic landscape. And inevitably the word as a grammatical form suffers the same fate, as a glance at the entry “word” in the index of most any contemporary grammar or linguistic study will show. In this way the crucial problem for linguistics, analyzing the makeup of words, is bypassed in the attempt to explain how words are used, with the result that linguists invent ever more complicated conversion and syntactic rules to account for observed usage. The conception one has of a part of speech is therefore of fundamental importance in the analysis of English, and this conception is in part at least dependent on one’s conception of language itself. Without the realization that language consists of more than meets the eye, that tongue really exists as a systemic potential hidden in the pre-conscious mind, the conception of the substantive outlined above will remain, at best, an interesting bit of mental fireworks

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which has little to do with the reality of language. On the other hand, accepting at least as a hypothesis the tongue/discourse view of language on which these lessons are based, one can attempt to discern through analysis the grammatical conditions built into a word which govern its use. To the extent that the analysis is successful, a word’s syntactic function can be explained as a consequence of its lexical matter and grammatical form, not in terms of rules. Thus it is only by describing a part of speech as a formative, as a grammatical form capable of shaping a lexeme in view of a certain function, that its primordial role in a word’s mental genesis can be shown. The above attempt to describe how the different subsystems of the substantive act on the lexeme has, I hope, provided at least a first view of how the substantive fulfils this role. A parallel outline of the workings of the verb system has already been made (cf. my 2007a study), and Guimier 1988 provides an excellent description of the syntax of the adverb. However, much work along systemic lines remains to be done on the adjective and the adverb to bring to light how they endow a lexeme with first and second degree external incidence respectively. In the meantime, we will pursue the object of these lessons by examining how the substantive thus constituted relates to another type of word in the noun phrase, the determiner.

LESSON TEN

The System of the Articles The problem of the article, quite overwhelming in its banality, is essentially this: underlying an actuality there is a potentiality; consequently, if we follow the necessary sequence of commonplaces involved here, an element of tongue such as the substantive exists as a potentiality before existing as an actuality. Guillaume 1984, 4

INTRODUCTION

In order to gain a clearer understanding of the noun phrase, I began by outlining the functioning of the adverb and the adjective as parts of speech with external incidence, and that of the substantive with internal incidence, what permits it to “stand alone.” This led to describing the meaning of a word as consisting of both a lexical and a grammatical import, the result of ideogenesis and morphogenesis, respectively. We saw that any adjectives or adverbs in the noun phrase provide a lexical import which is incident to the lexical import of the substantive and so join in the substantive’s incidence to its extensity. We then examined the three formal subsystems of the substantive, gender, number, and case. For those accustomed to other approaches to grammar, this may well appear to be an over-lengthy preliminary to the syntactic analysis of the noun phrase. Indeed, the scant attention usually paid to the mental genesis of the word as a lexico-grammatical construct reduces morphological analysis to little more than trying to account for the relatively few inflexions of English, whereas the fact that a noun phrase is a construct made of differently functioning parts should lead to an attempt to analyze each of them, and particularly the substantive, to understand what in its makeup permits it to carry out its particular role. Only by understanding how a

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substantive (or any other instrument for that matter) is made can we explain how it is used. And since an import with internal incidence is an essential element of a noun phrase, an analysis of the substantive, as detailed as possible, provides the only way of understanding how internal incidence is effected and so the best starting point for understanding how the noun phrase functions. DETERMINERS

Equally necessary in many noun phrases is an article, a demonstrative, a quantifier, etc., and to understand how they function we will examine several of them in an attempt to see what they bring to the noun phrase. Only on this basis can one hazard a hypothesis concerning this group of words, usually called determiners. These grammatical words do not bring in a readily grasped lexical matter, a lexeme, which is incident to the substantive’s lexeme. That is, they do not function as adjectives and as a consequence they are often considered morphemes. They are not however on a par with inflexional morphemes because, being words, they must have something in the place of a lexeme, some material import however abstract it may be, to be formed by their grammatical formatives. We will try to discern this largely dematerialized import, this lexical residue, by observing what a determiner expresses, usually by permuting it with another, systemically related, determiner, or with the bare substantive. As in the case of the substantive, the determiner’s formal import can be discerned by observing how it functions and trying to imagine what general grammatical conditions make this possible. Here as elsewhere this involves the delicate analytical process of moving back from what is observed in discourse to what this presupposes in tongue, i.e. to the conditions permanently instituted in the preconscious mind permitting speakers in the instant of speech to call up and use a determiner with unerring ease. To understand why determiners are so often required we will try to see how they relate to the substantive with its internal incidence. According to Quirk et al. (253) “noun phrases refer to the linguistic or situational context. The kind of reference a particular noun phrase has depends on its determinative element.” This manner of viewing determiners is of considerable interest because it links them with a process which we have largely taken for granted so far, but which is involved in every act of language, that of reference, of

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referring the import of a noun phrase to an extra-linguistic referent. This referential incidence is what permits us to relate the linguistic representations constituting the meaning of a phrase or sentence to “mental spaces”1 outside language, i.e. to our experience (which in turn keeps us in contact with reality outside our own minds).2 Referential incidence is different from grammatical incidence, which is concerned with relating one component of the sentence to another, a distinction we will come back to when we examine the role of the noun phrase in the sentence. That is, regarded in this way a determiner indicates how the noun phrase is made incident to something outside language but in the speaker’s intended message (the speaker’s experience of the “situational context”3). Reference is not the only factor that has been proposed to characterize the use of determiners. In another grammar we read: “determiners are words which specify the range of reference of a noun in various ways” (Leech and Svartvik, 225). That is, as Lowth observed for articles in 1762, they are used with substantives “to shew how far their signification extends” (cited in Michael, 361). This suggests that, besides making referential incidence possible, determiners permit “specifying” a substantive’s actual extent of reference within the total range made possible by its lexeme. That is, they depict whether the lexeme is to be taken in a very general sense (A dog needs exercise), in a very specific sense (That dog needs exercise), or in some intermediate sense (A dog like this needs exercise). Considering it as a specifier in this way would link a determiner with what I have called the substantive’s extensity, that portion of its extension that correlates with the referent. A third factor that grammarians have proposed as a basis for the import of determiners is definiteness: “the basic semantic function of the determiner is to indicate whether the phrase is definite or indefinite (whether it denotes something assumed to be identifiable)” (Huddleson and Pullum, 357). This observation, which also dates from the 18th century for the articles in English (cf. Michael, 359), suggests that, besides referring to the speaker’s message, a determiner expresses whether or not the referent can be located in one’s mental world. Thus in This was prescribed by some doctor, only one doctor is involved but we understand that the speaker is not able to (or perhaps does not wish to) identify which one, whereas my doctor in this example would indicate that the particular doctor

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is known. Although my is not always “definite” in this way, nor some always “indefinite,” considering a determiner in terms of definiteness does link it with another constant, the speaking situation, which includes, among other elements, knowledge shared by speaker and listener. Any analysis of determiners must take into account these and any other factors observed in usage. We will begin with the articles because they are undoubtedly the most abstract of the determiners, so dematerialized in fact that they do not “determine” anything, do not add any perceivable notional element (the way determiners like numerals, possessives, etc. do) that would limit our way of thinking about the notional import of the noun phrase. For this reason some would prefer not to call them determiners, but this is perhaps no problem if we realize that they are a special type of determiner distinguished by their degree of dematerialization. Besides, the articles developed historically from determiners, a from the OE numeral ‘one’ and the from an OE demonstrative. The advantage of beginning with the articles is that, being so dematerialized, they provide a view of how, without bringing in the idea of a possessor, a number, etc., determiners can indicate the definiteness of a noun phrase, evoke its specificity or “range of reference,” and permit its referential incidence. THE INDEFINITE ARTICLE

Quirk et al. (265) point out that the articles help indicate “specific and generic reference” in the noun phrase. We shall first examine the indefinite article to see how it operates to produce such different results. ‘Specific’ and ‘generic’ are contrary notions and this remarkable fact – that in different uses the same word can bring to the sentence diametrically opposed notions – calls for an explanation. In examples like: (1) A tiger is sleeping in the cage.

“we have in mind particular specimens of the class ‘tiger’” and so this type of usage is described as expressing “specific reference.” On the other hand, in an example like: (2) A tiger can be dangerous.

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“we are thinking of the class ‘tiger’.” Since the noun phrase in (2) applies to any tiger whatsoever it is an example of what they call “generic reference.” Notice how different the senses expressed by these two types of use are: a specific animal as opposed to the “species generally.” The most remarkable thing about these two examples, however, is that in each case the substantive is numerically ‘singular’. There is nothing noteworthy about obtaining specific reference with a ‘singular’ substantive since one would expect a numerical ‘singular’ to represent a single entity in one’s intended message. But to obtain generic reference by means of a ‘singular’ calls for an explanation. What permits the indefinite article to make a numerically ‘singular’ substantive refer to the species as a whole? The answer to this question will give us a first view of the workings of the article. Before going on to explore it, however, I want to mention a third case of reference which is neither specific nor generic, a case that is not explicitly brought out by Quirk et al. It can be illustrated by the following example, which might be said at the beginning of a safari: (3a) My project is to photograph a tiger in the wild.

Here the speaker envisages photographing a single tiger but, having no specific animal in mind, thinks something like ‘any tiger we happen to see’. This is not however a ‘generic’ reference since we understand, not the species sense, but ‘any tiger in that particular area’. Uses like this have been called “non-specific” (cf. BurtonRoberts, 441) to distinguish them from both ‘specific’ and ‘generic’ uses. Similarly in an example like: (3b) A tiger in captivity is a sorry sight.

Although the speaker may well be looking at a particular animal, the extent of reference is more general, extending to any tiger in captivity, but it is not general enough to include the whole species. In both these examples, then, the ‘singular’ substantive is somehow referred to, or involved in, a subset of tigers, those in a particular area, those in captivity. Again the question arises: what is there in the indefinite article permitting it to apply the ‘singular’ substantive’s lexeme to a much wider group of animals?

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In order to discern what permits the article to function referentially in the three different ways we have just observed, we shall turn from the point of view of referential incidence and focus on the meaning of the noun phrase itself, comparing the three uses. Quite obviously they differ in scope: in the ‘generic’ use the noun phrase expresses as wide a scope as possible for the lexeme, a universal scope, so it is referable to all possible tigers; in the ‘specific’ use the noun phrase expresses as narrow a scope as possible for the lexeme, referable to a single tiger; and in the ‘non-specific’ use the noun phrase expresses some scope in between these two extremes, referable to a subset of tigers. (We are reminded here of the variation in sense we observed when examining -ø and -s in the system of number.) But what ties these three uses together? What is this common element “scope” that varies from maximum through intermediate to minimum? In each case, the scope tells us what to apply the numerically ‘singular’ notion to, how much of the extension of the lexeme it is applicable to. In these three uses, then, we have different extensities of the lexeme ‘tiger’. That is to say, the fact that in different uses a + ‘singular’ substantive can express all possible scopes indicates that the lexeme’s extensity, although determined by the way the lexeme is actualized, is represented outside the substantive, in the article. Granted, then, that the substantive is numerically ‘singular’ in all three cases, it seems clear that the meaning expressed by a is the momentary extensity of tiger. That is to say, the dematerialized import of the indefinite article is a representation of an area or portion of the lexeme’s extension, an area varying in extent according to what the speaker is talking about. This area is actualized from the extension to serve as a support for the lexeme. Since the extensity is drawn from the substantive’s own extension as one of its possible actualizations, the support the article provides is internal to the substantive, thus permitting the incidence of the lexeme to its own internal support. Furthermore, since any particular extensity is actualized in order to represent the extent of reference, once the internal incidence of substantive to article is made effective, the noun phrase can realize its referential incidence to the referent in the intended message. The article is therefore an indication of the internal incidence of the substantive because it represents the extensity-support of the lexeme. How does this incidence of the substantive’s notional

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import to its own support work in the three uses we have observed, uses which correspond to the three types of extensity, maximum, intermediate, and minimum, available to any lexeme? There is no difficulty imagining how the lexeme ‘tiger’, actualized as numerically ‘singular’, can be made incident to an extensity actualized as minimal. That is to say, the ‘singular’ number of tiger and the minimum extensity of a are coextensive and result in (1). When, however, the lexeme ‘tiger’, actualized as numerically ‘singular’, is made incident to an extensity actualized as maximum, the relation between import of meaning and support of meaning is quite different. The article a actualizes as the support the whole breadth of the lexeme’s extension so that ‘tiger’, actualized as ‘singular’, could be incident to any point within this field, whence the sense of ‘any tiger whatever’ arising from (2). And for the cases where the extensity actualized by a is between the two extremes providing an ‘intermediate’ support, the ‘singulartiger’4 import could be incident to any individual in the subset of animals, whence the resulting sense of ‘any tiger within the set’ observed in (3a, b). Thus it can be seen how the observed senses arise from the incidence of the numerically ‘singular’ substantive to the article, if we postulate, as Guillaume did for the article in French, that the dematerialized meaning of a is a representation of the substantive’s extensity in any given use. We are here confronted with a variation in extensity and it is with this variation for the substantive’s lexeme that the article a is concerned. The substantive’s lexeme in tongue, where its comprehension determines its extension, is an unchanging potential. In order to be used in discourse, however, the lexeme must have a particular extensity corresponding to what it represents in that use. (In any given use a lexeme cannot express all its possibilities – a ‘species’ sense, ‘subset’ senses, and an ‘individual’ sense.) Since there is only one indefinite article, it must be able to express all these different extensities. Confronted with this polysemy, we can apply the same technique as when examining the system of number, namely, imagine an operation of the mind which, if intercepted at the appropriate point, will give rise to the desired extensity. This leads us to postulate as the potential meaning of the article a the possibility of a mental process whereby the speaker can represent the appropriate extensity. That is to say, as a potential in tongue a signifies a mental operation consisting of a movement through the field of

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the substantive’s extension from a point corresponding to the widest possible extensity, the ‘generic’ or ‘universal’, all the way to a point corresponding to the narrowest possible extensity, the ‘specific’ or qualitatively ‘singular’5. This is depicted in the following diagram, where the movement unrolls from the ‘universal’ (U) to the ‘singular’ (S):

aa …………………………………………

U U

SS

Notice that what is being proposed here is the status of a in tongue, its potential meaning, and so the movement involved is depicted as a possibility by means of a dotted line, interceptible at any point. For every use of the indefinite article, speakers must undertake this operation of actualization to obtain the particular sense required for the noun phrase being constructed. Similarly for listeners: every time they hear a it calls to mind this potential operation, and they require whatever clues they can get from the linguistic context and their knowledge of the speaker, the situation, etc. in order to intercept the operation of a at the appropriate point. This can best be brought out by means of an example often discussed for its possible ambiguity (cf. Quirk et al, 273): (4) Leonard wants to marry a princess who speaks five languages.

If we know that Leonard is a young man who has just returned from a visit to some exotic kingdom, we would probably interpret the remark in the sense that Leonard has chosen his future wife. That is, we would understand the sentence by intercepting the operation of a at its final limit to represent the extensity of the substantive as ‘singular’, as applied to a particular individual. On the other hand, if we know that Leonard is a precocious six-year-old who has just been listening to a fairy tale involving princes and princesses, we would interpret the same remark to mean that he has determined the group among whom he intends to choose his wife. That is, we would understand it by intercepting the operation of the article at some mid-point, before its final limit, to represent

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the extensity as ‘intermediate’, and so giving a ‘non-specific’ reading to the noun phrase. Without any such knowledge of the real situation in which the sentence was actually spoken or written, we find it ambiguous, i.e. we hesitate between the two possible interpretations made available by the article.6 This theoretical view of the indefinite article explains how it can represent different extensities, a representation which, being the correlate of the mental space occupied by the entity in the intended message, permits the referential incidence of the noun phrase to that entity. It also provides a vantage point from which to examine uses of a, which are many and varied. Before undertaking this task, however, it is important to get a view of the definite article in order to have the whole system in mind. To get an adequate understanding of either article it is necessary to see its place in the system. THE DEFINITE ARTICLE

The striking thing about the article the is that like a it can express the full range of extensities with a -ø substantive. Thus in: (5) The tiger is sleeping in the cage.

the lexeme is incident to its minimum extensity, giving a ‘singular’ sense. On the other hand in: (6) The tiger in captivity is a sorry sight.

the lexeme is incident to an intermediate extensity, giving rise to a ‘subcategory’ sense, the sort of tiger the speaker is talking about. Finally, in: (7) The tiger can be dangerous.

the sense is ‘universal’ or ‘generic’ because the -ø substantive is incident to the lexeme’s maximum extensity. It appears, then, that the definite article has the same range of senses, the same meaning potential in tongue, as the indefinite article, and its polysemy can be analyzed in the same way: as the diverse

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realizations of a movement through the field of the substantive’s extension. It is this similarity in potential meaning which confirms the impression arising from observing discourse that a and the belong to the same system. On the other hand we know that the two articles do not express exactly the same thing. We shall, therefore, attempt to see how they differ in order to obtain a view of how they are related within the system. We can begin with two examples given in a grammar (Leech and Svartvik, 53–4): (8a) A tiger is a beautiful animal. (8b) The tiger is a beautiful animal.

The grammarians consider both examples as “generic,” as referring to “the whole class of tigers,” but they bring out a slight difference: “the tiger (generic) refers to the species as a whole, while a tiger (generic) refers to any member of the species.” This distinction is important because it tells us that the articles do not treat a numerically ‘singular’ substantive the same way. We have seen that a in this use calls to mind the maximum extensity and so makes the ‘singulartiger’ notion applicable to any point, i.e. any individual, within this extensity. Guillaume interpreted a similar use in French as indicating that the indefinite article involves a ‘universal’-to-’singular’ movement whose end-point remains in prospect as long as it is not reached. Thus when the movement is intercepted at some point before it reaches its term the ‘singular’ representation is seen as a possibility throughout the extensity represented. And when, as in (8a) it is intercepted at its very beginning, at (U) in the above diagram, it gives rise to the expressive effect of “any member of the species.” For Guillaume the expressive effect of the definite article in ‘generic’ uses is evidence that it results from the reverse process, i.e. a ‘singular’-to-’universal’ movement because the individual member is lost sight of and the “species as a whole,” the category, is evoked. Interpreted this way, the signifies a movement of generalization through all the possibilities offered by the extension of a lexeme, beginning with its minimum extensity corresponding to a ‘singular’, ‘individual’ sense, and ending with its maximum extensity giving a ‘universal’ or ‘categorial’ sense. This view of the definite article as a potential in tongue can be depicted as follows:

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the the …………………………………………

S

U

In (8b) then the movement of the is intercepted at its final instant (U) to give rise to the ‘universal’, “species as a whole” sense. This also explains why, as Leech and Svartvik point out, we can say: (9a) The tiger is in danger of becoming extinct.

but not: (9b) *A tiger is in danger of becoming extinct.

We speak of a species becoming extinct but not of individuals, even “any member of the species,” the expressive effect of a, as we have seen, when its particularizing movement is intercepted at its beginning, leaving the individual (S) in prospect as its end-point. This diagram thus helps explain why the incidence of a numerically ‘singular’ substantive to the definite article representing maximum extensity calls to mind the species or category. Thanks to its expansive movement, the definite article provides a support for the lexeme represented as numerically ‘singular’ by extending it, generalizing it, throughout the greatest extensity the comprehension permits. Similarly for intermediate extensities: the tiger in captivity suggests a type or subcategory of ‘tiger’, rather than a subset of individual animals, because it results from a partial generalization of ‘singulartiger’. That is, the definite article can provide as a support for the lexeme-import different extensities: ‘singular’ (5) or ‘partigeneric’ (6) or ‘universal’ (7, 8b, 9a). In each case, the extensity is obtained in the perspective of the generalizing movement’s endpoint (U), corresponding to the most general setting possible. THE SYSTEM OF THE ARTICLE

It remains to determine the systemic relation between the two articles in tongue. By virtue of the fact that all systems in tongue are

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instituted to permit an operation of representation, Guillaume views the relation between any items in the same system as operational, as sequential in time. In the case of the articles, he finds an indication of this sequence in the well-known difference between them, “indefinite” and “definite.” Thus where a gives the impression of something being introduced, made known, located in the intended message, the often suggests a referent which is already present, familiar, located. These effects, most noticeable when the articles express minimum extensities, are illustrated by (1) and (5) above, A/the tiger is sleeping in the cage. Guillaume observed an obvious temporal relation between the two types of effect, namely the state of being already present, known, etc. is necessarily subsequent to that of being introduced, made known, etc. From this he inferred that the follows a in the system. That is, the contrast between “indefinite” and “definite” implies a temporal relation between a and the: something must be unknown before it is known, indefinite before it is definite. This necessary relationship is the basis for proposing that the movement signified by a precedes that signified by the, and that the two constitute a single operational system in tongue. This is illustrated in the following diagram:

-øa 'continuate quantity'

....................................................

UM

the -s 'discontinuate quantity'

..................................................

Sm

U M

This schema depicts the movement of a as particularizing, i.e. as beginning at (U) corresponding to the greatest extensity possible for the lexeme and tending toward a determination of the space required for an individual within that total extensity, whence the resulting impression of locating something, of making it known, when the movement is intercepted at its end-point. The movement of the is depicted as generalizing, i.e. as beginning at (S), the point corresponding to the least extensity possible for the lexeme, and tending toward a representation of the space occupied by the greatest extensity, whence the resulting impression of something already present or familiar – its space already determined in the perspective of the species or category – when the movement is intercepted

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as it starts. Thus for a numerically ‘singular’ substantive both articles can provide a ‘singular, specific’ extensity as support, but the movement of a ends by focusing on this minimal space to the exclusion of the rest of the extension, whereas the movement of the starts by presenting this space as already located in the perspective of the total extension. Likewise, both articles can represent a ‘universal’ extensity for a numerically ‘singular’ substantive: a represents it at the starting point (U) of a process of particularization as the total set of possible individuals including the one in prospect, whereas the represents the ‘universal’ extensity at the end-point (U) of a process of generalization as an abstract category, the individual being lost from view. And finally both can represent an intermediate extensity, a as a ‘non-specific’ subset of individuals, the as a ‘partigeneric’ type or subcategory of the species or general category. This is what enables the article in its varied usage with substantives “to shew how far their signification extends.” This theory of the article, based on Guillaume’s views of the article in French and on Hewson 1972, raises a number of questions about the substantive’s lexeme as instituted in tongue, some of which will be brought out in subsequent lessons. It also raises some grammatical questions, the most striking being that arising from the similarity between this system and that of number as seen in lesson 5. Guillaume realized that both systems permitted a configuring of space as a means of providing a support for the lexeme and of relating it to the intended message, but they do it differently: where number configures space as either continuate or discontinuate quantifying it with regard to the referent, the articles configure it by situating the space of actual reference (extensity) with regard to the space of possible reference (extension). This similarity suggested to him that, in a language like Latin where there is no article, it is the system of number which is largely responsible for expressing the extensity of a substantive, and that when an article appears, over historical time it gradually takes over this function. Moreover this historical development occurs when the substantive itself is sufficiently disengaged from its function in the projected sentence (as reflected in a decrease of the number of case inflexions) for the lexeme as a potential in tongue to have, with regard to usage, a certain autonomy before the mind. This is one reason why Guillaume always considered the article a sign of the transition of the substantive’s lexeme from a state of potentiality in tongue to a state of actuality in discourse.

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Perceiving a parallel between the systems of grammatical number and the article constituted a major breakthrough for Guillaume in his efforts to get to the root of the systemic side of language. The bi-phase nature of both systems, and particularly the similarity of their respective phases – a particularizing movement followed by a generalizing movement in each case – led him to seek a similar type of system elsewhere (in the process of word formation, for example). He ultimately recognized that each of these systems calls into play the same basic mechanism of thought, a mechanism he called the radical binary tensor. He considered it “radical,” i.e. at the root of language systems, because for him it was the manifestation in language of a fundamental mechanism of human thought, the innate capacity of all humans to generalize and to particularize. In proposing this as the extra-linguistic fundament of all language systems, Guillaume offered a general basis for reflecting on language development and acquisition. As a presupposition, it is sufficiently general to provide for all systemic developments and so avoids the complications less general postulates entail. Furthermore it is widely accepted to the point of being a commonplace that human beings have the innate ability to generalize and particularize. For the linguist, however, it remains a presupposition to be verified in the analysis of each of the mental systems we recognize in a given language. Finally this theory brings in the three parameters of the article discussed in the literature, as mentioned above. The point of interception of either movement determines the extensity’s degree of specificity or generality; representing the extensity in the first or the second phase of the system determines the ‘indefinite’ vs. ‘definite’ expressive effect; moving through and adopting a position in the field of extension provides a support for internal incidence, thus permitting reference, as will be made clear in the next lesson. In fact, viewed in this manner, these “most frequent of English determiners” are no longer “problematic for the determiner as head thesis” (Taylor 1996, 317) because they give the final support for constituting the noun phrase as a grammatical unit, just as the substantive’s lexeme gives the final support for constituting it as a lexical unit. In this way the theory describes conditions of which the three effects observed in discourse mentioned above are consequences. To present the theory as clearly as possible I have limited examples to numerically ‘singular’ substantives. Although not all uses

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are so readily explained by this system, it does provide a sufficiently general basis for analyzing them. In the next lesson the article’s support role will be outlined and a number of examples examined to illustrate each of the three extensities made possible by the system. In subsequent lessons we will go on to some of the problems of usage that arise with -s substantives and with -ø substantives (“mass nouns” and proper nouns). Confronting these problems will provide a means of validating the theory.

LESSON ELEVEN

A vs. the in Discourse A respects our primary Perception, and denotes Individuals as unknown; the respects our secondary Perception, and denotes Individuals as known. Harris 1751 cited in Michael, 359

INTRODUCTION

Perhaps the most novel aspect of the above manner of conceiving a system is to view the potential meaning of each article as a possible movement. We have already seen this in the system of number, but it is worth emphasizing again here because thinking of meaning as a process takes some getting used to. It requires a conscious effort because once meaning emerges into consciousness, as observed in discourse or in a dictionary, it is always resultative, static. Operationalizing meaning in this way involves introducing a temporal parameter, operative time, because any operation, mental or physical, requires time. Furthermore, actualizing the meaning potential involves realizing the movement it permits and intercepting it at the particular moment – beginning, middle, or end – that represents the extensity best reflecting the extent of reference in the intended message. That is to say, every use of an article, besides calling to mind the system, tells us: 1) that movement through the field of the substantive’s extension is involved; 2) that the form of movement involved is either U→S (a) or S→U (the); 3) that this movement has been intercepted at some moment in its development.

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As Guillaume puts it, every use of the article presupposes “movement, form of movement, quantity of movement.” Imagining an article’s potential meaning as part of a mental program provides a basis for explaining the different results observed for it in discourse. Because for Guillaume this explanation of polysemy is based on a mechanism inherent in the human capacity for thought, the radical binary tensor, he postulated it for other morphemes, thereby laying out an extensive program of research to see if his insight actually corresponds to the reality of other grammatical systems. This postulate proposes simply that, granted observed polysemy, some preconscious mental process underlies all morphemes. Moreover, this postulate helps explain how the listener arrives at the intended sense: for every use of a morpheme the listener activates its system and actualizes the morpheme’s movement, intercepting it at the appropriate point – appropriate in view of the intended message and anything in the extra-linguistic situation that may be pertinent (knowledge of the speaker, messages from conversation up to that point, etc.). Thus the two articles can express equivalent extensities. The first tends toward a qualitative ‘singular’ or minimum-extensity representation, zeroing in on, and finally depicting out of the total extension a spatial support sufficient to accommodate a numerically ‘singular’, ‘bounded’ view of the lexeme; the second movement tends toward a ‘universal’ or maximum-extensity representation, extending, or better, generalizing the ‘bounded’ view so that it finally occupies the total extension, actualizing the greatest possible extensity. An extensity arrived at by a particularizing movement is not the same as the equivalent extensity arrived at by a process with the opposite form, a generalizing movement. This, then, is the theory of the article system in English arrived at by reflecting on the observations of usage found in grammars in the light of Guillaume’s general postulate that meaning exists as a potential in tongue, as the possibility of a mental operation. If valid, this view of what the articles can signify, their potential meaning, will permit us to understand and explain the various senses they actually do signify in discourse, but before going on to this examination of examples, the role of the article in the noun phrase must be outlined.

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THE ARTICLE AS A SUPPORT

In the discussion so far, I have tried to show that an article is always used in a noun phrase to provide a spatial support for the substantive’s import of meaning. More explicitly, in order to have a word with internal incidence, its lexeme, formed by the systems of gender, number, and case must be made incident to some support within its own extension. The article provides this support by representing the extensity required for the lexeme in the particular noun phrase being constructed. The internal incidence of the substantive can then be effected by making its lexeme incident to this actualized portion of its extension. The remarkable thing in this way of considering the role of the article is that it provides for effecting internal incidence by making the substantive incident to another word. At first sight this might appear contradictory, as though the substantive were a sort of adjective with regard to the article, but it is clear that it does not characterize (describe, modify) the article lexically in the manner of an adjective or adverb, just as the article does not characterize the substantive’s lexeme. Rather, the relation here is one of formal incidence, of a form (the substantive’s lexeme-matter as formed by number, gender, and case) finding support in another form (the extensity represented by the article). This is not therefore a type of external incidence as defined above for the predicative parts of speech adjective and adverb, but a means of signifying and making explicit an operation which is inherent in any substantive. Although the support for internal incidence is a word outside the substantive, it should be noted that this word must be inside the noun phrase. This fact throws a new light on the noun phrase since it implies a distinction between the way internal incidence is effected in a noun phrase consisting of article + substantive and one consisting of a bare substantive. When a substantive occurs without an article (or other determiner), its necessary internal incidence is carried out within the substantive and so remains implicit, has no external manifestation. This suggested to Guillaume that the article has developed historically to signify this all-important operation for the actualization of a substantive, to make it mentally visible. Instituting the means for representing separately the substantive’s lexical import and its formal support, i.e. depicting the lexeme and

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its extensity in different words, gives the noun phrase visibility as a grammatical unit within the sentence. Understanding the syntax of the noun phrase in this manner – as involving the incidence of the substantive to its support in the article – has an important consequence for analyzing the processes involved in constituting the phrase. It implies that during the act of language we think the meaning components of the noun phrase in the reverse order from the way we pronounce them. Whereas we express the article first, then any adverbs and adjectives, and finally the substantive, we represent the substantive first, then any adjectives and adverbs (as we have seen above), and finally the article, an order which appears to be necessary if we consider that it is the way a substantive’s lexeme is actualized which determines its extensity. For example, actualizing ‘dog’ to represent the species or to represent a particular animal calls for quite different extensities, for different uses of the article. Recalling the discussion of the theory of incidence in lesson 2 will help clarify this point. It was shown there that the genesis of the mental content (the psycho-genesis) of the noun phrase a small dog begins by calling to mind the lexeme ‘dog’. Since ‘dog’ is felt inadequate to represent the experiential entity, the lexeme ‘small’ is called to mind and made incident to it. This was depicted as follows: ‘small’ ‘dog’ 'small' 'dog'

The result of this operation of incidence is ‘smalldog’, a single complex lexical whole. To complete the noun phrase an article is required in order to provide, not additional notional content, but a formal support for this lexical import. The operation of making ‘smalldog’ incident to the article can be depicted as follows:

‘a’ 'a'

‘smalldog’ 'smalldog'

Effecting the internal incidence as indicated here to give ‘asmalldog’ constitutes the mental content of the noun phrase, readying it to carry out its role in the sentence. Conceiving the mental genesis of an article + substantive noun phrase in this manner, which appears to be similar for other determiners, helps explain several of its characteristics.

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By considering the substantive’s internal incidence as the final operation in the construction of a noun phrase, this analysis shows why a substantive is its crucial component: it provides the mechanism for a lexical import to be made incident to its own support, the mechanism for expressing both a meaning and what the meaning is said about. This explains that self-sufficiency which is characteristic of a noun phrase, that ability to “stand alone,” as an expression of meaning, which traditional grammarians attribute to the substantive. It also explains why on hearing or reading something like I saw small dog we think of a non-native speaker or a typo and mentally fill in a or the: without the article (or another determiner) in this context the internal incidence is not complete and we need to give the substantive an extensity for the sentence to make sense. This operational view also explains why the article can be first in the expression phase, i.e. when speaking the noun phrase, and yet is dependent on what follows for the realization of its physical sign. Proposing that the article arises last during the mental genesis of the noun phrase, after the substantive and any other words have been called to mind with their actualized meanings and potential signs, indicates how the initial sound, vowel or consonant, of the word that is to follow the article can determine the way the article’s sign is actualized (a/an, and the vowel variation for the). Unless the following word’s sign is present in the mind of the speaker as a potential, it would be difficult to explain how it can determine the way the article’s sign is realized. Finally, as we shall see in the next two lessons, proposing that the lexical matter is represented before the formal element, the extensity, is represented gives us the grounds for examining noun phrases without a determiner, where the internal incidence is not made explicit. Thus we will proceed in our examination of the article by considering that it is the last to arise in the mental genesis of the noun phrase and that the process of constituting the noun phrase usually ends by transporting the substantive’s lexical import to its support represented by the article. It is this effecting of internal incidence, called for by the substantive to complete its own mental program, which makes the noun phrase a grammatical entity ready to play its role in the sentence. It is time now to examine more uses of the articles in the light of the theory of representation presented in the last lesson. Examples of

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each article expressing minimum or ‘singular’ (S) extensity will be examined first, then uses with maximum or ‘universal’ (U) extensity, and finally those with intermediate or ‘non-specific/parti-generic’ (I) extensity. This will provide the opportunity for comparing the two articles for “definiteness” when they express equivalent extensities. The examination of examples which permit the use of the article to be compared with its non-use (i.e. when extensity is not explicitly expressed) will be undertaken in subsequent lessons. It goes without saying that anything approaching a complete view of the articles in discourse would require a far more extensive and detailed study than can be presented here. MINIMUM EXTENSITY

The most common way of distinguishing between the two articles in usage is through the expressive effects of ‘definiteness’ vs. ‘indefiniteness’. Thus in examples like: (1) The car is parked in front of a hydrant.

The definite article refers “to something which can be identified uniquely in the contextual or general knowledge shared by speaker and hearer” (Quirk et al., 265). Here then the car presumably refers to the family car or the one we rented or the one recently mentioned, etc. A hydrant on the other hand does not refer to something already known but rather makes the entity known by introducing it into the “shared knowledge” of those concerned. This difference between the articles results from their different positions within the system. The indefinite article’s particularizing movement, from the widest possible to the narrowest possible extent of reference, is intercepted at its end thus bringing into focus one specific entity among all those that ‘hydrant’ might have designated. Hence a hydrant in the sentence expresses ‘singular’ not only in the quantitative, numerical sense of ‘one, not several’ arising from the substantive’s -ø morpheme of number, but also in the qualitative ‘unique individual’ sense thanks to the article. As a consequence, the noun phrase can designate an entity in the intended message by introducing it as something new, situating it in the speaker’s intended message. The car here also expresses ‘one’ thanks to number in the substantive, and a specific unit of ‘car’

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thanks to the representing a minimal extensity. Because of its position in the system, however, the represents its extensity, not as a result of particularization but at the beginning of a movement of generalization, a movement which begins with an already defined minimum extensity. As a consequence the noun phrase does not suggest introducing or identifying or situating something in the intended message, but rather recognizing or recalling something already situated in the speaker’s experience. Each expressive effect thus arises from the morpheme’s position in the system and from the moment in their respective movements where a ‘singular’ extensity is obtained. It is not always clear what the déja vu impression of the is based on, so it is worth examining several examples with minimum extensity to give some idea of how a calls something to mind whereas the recalls it, how a “minds” us of something whereas the reminds us of it. In the clearest cases, a first use of a substantive explicitly represents something by means of a as being made known; this permits the in a subsequent use of the substantive to represent it as already known: (2) John bought a TV and a video recorder, but he returned the video recorder.

Grammars sometimes call this use “anaphoric reference” (cf. Quirk et al., 267) to suggest that the refers back to a video recorder, often called the “antecedent.” This however involves “a very different sense of ‘refer’ from that in which we say that an NP refers to a person or other entity in the outside world” (Huddleston and Pullum, 1457), and would in fact attribute a very different function to the article. Such uses of a and the will therefore not be analyzed in terms of anaphor and antecedent, but rather in terms of their coreference (cf. Quirk et al., loc. cit.), i.e. as permitting referential incidence to the same entity, a locating its place in the intended message, the depicting it as already located there. The terms “reference” and “refer”, often arising in discussions of the article, call for a comment because they can express very different senses. To avoid confusion here it is important to clarify the distinction between what Huddleston and Pullum call the “outside world,” which suggests the universe outside our minds (cf. also Lyons 1977, 177 ff), and what is called here, as in Diver (74), the “intended message,”1 that portion of our on-going stream of

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consciousness that we decide to talk about. Considering reference as the incidence of the noun phrase, or the whole sentence, to the intended message makes it clear that language always refers to, says something about, what the speaker has in mind, whether this has a correlate in the extra-mental world or not. As Rijkhoff (27) puts it: “Noun phrases are referring expressions, but the entities they refer to are not entities in the external physical world. Referents of np’s are rather mental representations of entities as they are created, stored, and retrieved in the minds of the speech participants.” This applies to every act of language because the intended message must exist as a conscious mental reality before one can even begin speaking about it; in order to speak we must have something in mind to talk about because we cannot represent and express something we are not at least minimally aware of. Understanding reference in this way as an intra-mental operation avoids all the complications involved in distinguishing between “referential and non-referential uses,” i.e. whether there is some entity “in the real world (or in some fictional world)” (cf. Huddleston and Pullum, 399–410) corresponding to what the noun phrase expresses, or whether there is not – the case of dreams, hallucinations, lies, etc. Such distinctions, which may be of considerable importance for psychiatrists, judges, philosophers, etc., are not reflected in the way grammatical systems of English are put to use and so are of little interest to the linguist. Here therefore, all sentences are considered to be referential because every sentence expresses a meaning representing more or less adequately the speaker’s intended message and refers this meaning, this “complete thought,” back to the intended message. Because analysis in terms of reference to the intended message provides a more general basis than seeking an antecedent in the text, it covers examples such as: (3) They have just bought a new house. The kitchen needs to be painted.

Although kitchen has no antecedent, the fact of situating a particular house in the intended message makes an inherent part of it such as a kitchen, or anything otherwise associated with it in the mind of the speaker (‘mortgage’, ‘trees’, ‘neighbours’, etc.), present as well, hence the use of the even if this is not, strictly speaking, a case of coreference. The same explanation holds for dates.

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Although we write February 23, we usually say February the twentythird because expressing the name of a month entails the presence of a series of days in the intended message. In each of these cases, then, the speaker designates by means of the first substantive something which situates, explicitly or implicitly, the designatum of the second substantive in the intended message, thereby permitting the to refer to it as already present. It is by no means infrequent to find the used where there is no preceding sentence or word to suggest the presence of its designatum in the intended message. A sentence like the following may well constitute the whole linguistic context: (4) Shut the door!

Here the intended message, drawn from the speaker’s awareness of the speaking situation, involves both the addressee and a particular door and so the can refer to the door as already present. The person addressed, also aware of the situation, can reconstitute the noun phrase the way the speaker formed it and so understand the sentence. The speaker’s intended message is often drawn from an extralinguistic situation which is much wider than the immediate speaking situation. Thus one might begin a class with: (5) The University will be closed next Thursday, so there will be no class.

This informs students that the professor’s intended message is drawn from their present institutional situation, just as to begin with The Prime Minister depicts one’s frame of reference as the country. The speaker’s implicit frame of reference can be extended to include the setting of our planet, as when we speak of the sun, the moon, etc., and even the temporal universe: the present, the past, the future. In all these cases speakers represent the designatum as an inherent part of the setting they have in mind, like the kitchen in (3), though there the setting (a new house) is made explicit. On the other hand, the indefinite article in such cases would introduce its designatum as one among other possible instances, as in a promising future, and in an example from Hewson (1972, 98): (6) A moon illuminated the island’s flowerless garden.

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Here we understand a moon to designate, not what is an inherent part of our experience of the universe, but some particular manifestation or representation of it, as in a painting. It will help to clarify the role of the article if we look at cases where the is used in noun phrases that introduce the designatum to the person addressed. This arises in warning notices such as: (7a) Beware of the dog. (7b) Mind the step.

Here the person giving the warning assumes that the reader of the notice is unaware of something important in the situation. As a consequence, such examples show, according to Quirk et al. (266), that “the assumption of shared knowledge is a palpable fiction” since the reader does not share the warning-giver’s knowledge of the situation. In such uses Hawkins (414) considers the process of “location” in the situation as “something the hearer has to do” in order to understand the definite reference of the article. Since his analysis, based on Gricean principles, is primarily concerned with the pragmatic conditions of communication, he considers this process to be a “conventional implicature” which “does not need to be stated within the conventional meaning for the as such.” In short, the meaning usually proposed for the does not explain this use. The difficulty here arises because the uses of the article are usually considered from the point of view of the sentence, the resulting communication, and so it is assumed that the definite reference of the article is based on both participants having the same knowledge of the situation. Considered from the point of view of speakers (warning-givers) representing and expressing their intended message, however, these uses are quite normal since the noun phrase depicts what is already situated in the speakers’ frame of reference and so the sentences express what they have in mind. In order to trace the reference, the reader must follow much the same path as the speaker did in representing the message: actualizing and forming the lexeme of dog or step, depicting its ‘singular’ extensity by means of the, forming the noun phrase, relating the noun phrase to the rest of the sentence to get the sentence meaning, and finally referring this meaning to the situation where the notice is found in order to understand the speaker’s message. As Lyons (1977, 655–6)

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remarks: “The definite article, when it is used deictically …, is to be understood as instructing, or inviting, the addressee to find the referent in the environment, without however directing his attention to any particular region of it.” Uses of the that introduce the designatum to the addressee in this way are therefore valuable because they show that the article is primarily an instrument for speakers, a means of representing how they relate the lexeme to something already present in their intended message, regardless of whether it is known to the listener (reader) or not. This small detail of usage thus highlights the important fact that language is structured primarily as an instrument of thought permitting the mind to organize and represent its ongoing experience, and only by way of consequence as a means of communication permitting the expression of what has been represented. No expression without representation. Focusing on the pragmatic conditions for communication as opposed to focusing on the conditions permitting a speaker to represent the intended message can give rise to differences of analysis for an example like: (8) I met a professor yesterday.

When Hawkins (407) comments that this sentence “could be true of more than one professor,” he is apparently considering it from the point of view of the hearer, for whom the professor is not a uniquely identifiable individual in the “outside” world. For the speaker, on the other hand, the sentence can refer only to a particular individual because in this sentence the article depicts minimum extensity. Furthermore this is what would be understood by the hearer, who would nevertheless be unable to identify which professor it is in the “outside world.” The point here is that the minimum extensity of the lexeme ‘professor’ is an abstract spatial representation singularizing an individual in the speaker’s intended message, whether or not that individual is identifiable by the hearer in the extra-mental world. According to Huddleston and Pullum (368) this is also true of the definite article: “The kind of identifiability signalled by the is thus of a relatively weak kind.” Examples of this would be: (9a) I heard a dog bark last night. (9b) A beluga surfaced in the distance.

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There is no suggestion that either speaker or hearer could identify which dog or beluga. And even in a subsequent sentence such as: (9c) The dog must have been close to the tree over there.

The “uniqueness” of reference permitted by the involves no identifiability in the extra-mental world, outside the time and space implied by the speaker’s intended message. That is, analyzing the articles as representing the lexeme’s extensity in relation to the intended message provides a sufficiently general framework to explain these ‘indefinite’ and ‘definite’ expressive effects of minimum extensity as reflecting the speaker’s view. The effects of midextensity and maximum extensity can be explained within the same framework, as will be seen below. This difference between what is being situated or identified in the speaker’s experience and what is already situated or known can give rise to some fairly subtle expressive effects as in: (10) I had a feeling that I was being watched.

The article here is exploratory, suggesting something unfamiliar to the speaker, whereas the here would suggest something familiar, a feeling the speaker has already experienced. Similarly in: (11) … knowledge of a sort that brings wisdom (Kruisinga, 316)

The suggestion here is that of introducing the sort of knowledge, but with the there would be the impression of something déjà vu. Christophersen (139–40) describes an interesting nuance resulting from the use of the two articles in: (12) From the/a military point of view.

With the, the speaker takes for granted that there is “a limited set of viewpoints … military and civilian”; in the speaker’s view the two possibilities are already known. With a however the sense is rather the personal opinion of someone in the military, an opinion which must be introduced since “one’s opinion may not be that of the entire military profession; there is room for divergence.”

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What has sometimes been described as the identifying effect of the indefinite article can perhaps best be illustrated by the wellknown example: (13a) It’s a bird! (13b) It’s a plane! (13c) It’s Superman!

To identify what has appeared in their experiential fields the three speakers call on three different viewing ideas. The indefinite article here reflects how the general lexemes ‘bird’ and ‘plane’ are brought to bear on a single exemplum, thus identifying the nature of the perceived entity for that speaker. The proper noun achieves the same result, but through its own internal makeup as we shall see in a later lesson. The definite article can be found in a similar context, as when characterizing a sound at the door: (14) It’s the postman.

Though this use may well help a listener identify something, for the speaker it is a case of recognizing something familiar, of bringing out something already identified in one’s stream of consciousness. Such distinctions of expressive effect all arise from the introductive, identifying role of a intercepted at the end of its particularizing movement, as opposed to the resultative, recalling role of the intercepted at the beginning of its generalizing movement. They are endless in their variety and offer an interesting field of research in discourse analysis, but for present purposes it will be more useful to look briefly at the use of the articles to express maximum extensity. MAXIMUM EXTENSITY

When the articles express the extensity of their substantive as ‘universal’ or ‘generic’, there is a distinction between the two. Christophersen (130), considers a “more colloquial,” the “more formal.” In its generic use, a “is at times only a masked individual use. The speaker has often one definite case in mind even if he veils his speech in the garb of a generic statement,” as in: (15) What’s a man to do in such a case?

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The noun phrase “is here almost equal to one or I,” but with the added suggestion that any man would find himself in the same quandary. The explanation for this is that the movement signified by a tends toward a ‘singular’ extensity. When intercepted at the first instant of its movement, a represents the widest possible extensity as a support for ‘man’ with this ‘singular’ extensity in prospect suggesting that the speaker has “one definite case in mind.” As a consequence the numerically ‘singular’ lexeme could be incident to any point within this wide extensity, whence the ‘generic’ reading of the noun phrase with the “masked” nuance suggesting an individual without specifying which one. This is why, as Christophersen (loc. cit.) points out, “when giving admonitions and advice, one is much more inclined to use” a, as in: (16) A boy who tells a lie should be punished.

It follows that a “cannot be used in attributing properties which belong to the class or species as a whole” (Quirk et al., 281), rather than to each individual, and so would not be used in an example already cited: (17) The tiger is becoming almost extinct.

Here, thanks to the definite article’s generalizing movement, the import ‘singulartiger’ is incident to the full extent of the support, i.e. to the lexeme’s maximum extensity, and any suggestion of an individual is lost. The difference between the two articles here is significant. The substantive with the in a ‘universal’ sense “is often formal or literary in tone” (Quirk et al., 282), as in: (18a) The dog was the earliest species to be domesticated. (19b) No one knows when the wheel was invented.

Since the provides as support a maximum extensity obtained from a generalizing movement, the notional import of the substantive is made incident to this total scope and so expresses “a philosophical, abstract attitude towards things” (Christophersen, 130). On the other hand, a “picks out any representative member of

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the class” (Quirk et al., 281), and so is close in meaning to any in an example like: (20) The best way to learn a language is to live among its speakers.

Since a provides as support a maximum extensity obtained at the first instant of a particularizing movement, the substantive’s notional import can be made incident to any point in this wide scope, and so suggests that the sentence can be applied to whatever language one may have in mind. This is why, according to Jespersen (1954, VII, 424), the substantive with a “refers to all members (or any member) of the class or species it denotes…. It does not denote the class or species in itself.” Such remarks suggest a distinction between the following examples: (21a) A beaver is a semiaquatic rodent. (Burton-Roberts, 435) (21b) The beaver is a semiaquatic rodent.

The first might well arise while watching a beaver in a pond, whereas the second would be more appropriate in the lecture hall. The same could be said of Christophersen’s two examples (130): (22a) The book, the play, the film are strong influences on our social life. (22b) A book is the best companion you can get.

The articles are not interchangeable here because the first example, appropriate to introduce an intellectual discussion, presents ‘book’ as a means of social intervention, whereas the second might be said while rummaging for an interesting volume. There are of course problem cases, as in: (23) A cloud is made of particles of water.

This sentence might well be said as a definition, i.e. in an abstract sense, but the definite article would not be used here. The reason for this has not yet been discerned. But the fact that, as Christophersen (128) mentions, lake, mountain, house, brother, effect, entity, circumstance,

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possibility, remedy, etc. “are rarely used in the -form in a generic sense” suggests that it may well be the particular lexeme which is the determining factor. It remains to explore this and other problems of usage from the point of view of the theory proposed here. INTERMEDIATE EXTENSITY

Since the movements they signify can be intercepted at any point throughout their duration, the articles can also signify any of the intermediate extensities between these two extremes. We have already seen one example of this for a: (24) Leonard wants to marry a princess who speaks five languages.

Disregarding the possible minimum-extensity interpretation (that Leonard has already chosen his bride-to-be), we can see that the movement of a, when intercepted at some mid-point suggests the eventuality of a particular individual. That is, the notion of marriageable-polyglot-princesses is used here to evoke a set of possible candidates among whom one is to be chosen some day. As in the case of maximum extensity with a, this effect arises because the movement of particularization is held up before its end, at a moment when the single individual remains prospective, and so the lexical import brought in by the numerically ‘singular’ substantive is set off from the rest of the subset of princesses as an individual yet to be identified.2 The possible ambiguity of the following example can be explained in the same way: (25) I usually have lunch with a colleague.

Assuming the speaker has in mind the same colleague on each occasion, the article represents a minimal extensity. If however there is a “serial multiple situation” involving “variation between one occasion and another” (Huddleston and Pullum, 406) in the intended message, the lexeme will be provided with a mid-extensity support allowing for lunching with different colleagues on different occasions. A similar effect can be observed in the following sentence, where the movement signified by the article is also intercepted before its final limit giving a mid-extensity:

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(26a) Marie is thinking of getting a kayak. She will probably go downtown and buy one tomorrow.

The set of possible candidates does not have to be explicitly defined in the sentence because Marie’s choice is obviously restricted to those available to her tomorrow. This is a very different message from the following: (26b) Marie just bought a kayak. She will probably pick it up tomorrow.

Because a here represents the notion’s minimum extensity, the coreferring pronoun it is required in the second sentence, whereas in the previous example the co-referring pronoun one represents the same extent of reference as ‘mid-extensity’ a, which gives the noun phrase its ‘non-specific’ sense. Similar usage is found in common remarks like: (27) Let’s go see a movie.

Here the speaker has in mind any one among an implicit set, the movies showing at the time. The following example is similar: (28) Call a Coop taxi. They are stationed on the campus.

The speaker obviously meant one vehicle among those the Coop company taxis on campus. With an expression of negation, this use of a can provide an “emphatic alternative” to no, according to Quirk et al. (786), as in: (29) We left not a single bottle behind.

Because of its intermediate extensity the noun phrase calls to mind the set of bottles and single depicts explicitly any one of them as a prospective candidate for being left behind. This makes the negation by means of not emphatic as compared with no bottles. Similarly, we have “emotionally coloured expressions” in: (30a) She didn’t say a word about it. (30b) He didn’t give me a thing.

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The noun phrases evoke the set of words or things that might have been expected in the particular situation and the negation denies the saying or giving of even one of them. Mid-extensity gives rise to a very different effect in expressions of rate or measure like: (31) She works thirty-five hours a week.

The suggestion here is no longer that of choosing one among many as in examples like (27), but rather of considering any week as an example typical of every other week. This is a sort of “distributive” effect somewhat similar to the use of each, as Jespersen points out (1954, VII, 425), an effect which requires a greater than minimal extensity for the ‘singular’ substantive. Other examples: seventy miles an hour, forty dollars a day, twelve kilometres a litre. The definite article can also represent an extensity somewhere between the individual and the total range of the lexeme but here the effect is not that of an individual, either prospective or typical, but rather that of a category or type. Guillaume (1985, 84) describes the operativity here as “searching for a field of extensity by intercepting the second movement in mid-position.” This “always constitutes a background” for the substantive’s import “which extends, expands in the extensity offered to it, with which it merges dimensionally” to give an effect of “expansion, of spreading throughout the field of extensity chosen.” This is exemplified in: (32) This is an ideal gift for the man who has everything.

The ad obviously is not intended for a single person or for all men. That is to say, the writer of the ad had the idea of ‘man-whohas-everything’ as a familiar category of people we buy gifts for. To represent this idea, the lexeme ‘man’ was called to mind and formed as ‘singular’ by the system of number. Through its generalizing movement the article extends or spreads this import so that it covers an extensity which is wider than the minimum, but not as wide as the maximum. This mid-extensity is then made explicit by means of the qualifying clause. Had a been used here, it would also have expressed intermediate extensity but would not have evoked the category as a familiar one with the nuance that ‘we all know people of this type’, but rather would have suggested ‘you may know someone like that’.

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In the following example from a grammar, two extensities of the same substantive can be contrasted: (33) The clause, particularly the independent clause, is in many ways a more clearly-defined unit than the sentence.

In the first noun phrase, the clause, and in the final one, the sentence, the article represents the maximum extensity of the lexeme, but the second noun phrase obviously has a narrower scope than the first because here the comprehension of ‘clause’ has, by internal incidence, been applied to only a portion of its own extension, the adjective independent making the limits of this application explicit. Thus the article here expresses a mid-point interception of the process of representing the extensity, so that the incidence of ‘independentclause’ to this support expresses a partial generalization reflecting the scope of application the speaker has in mind. Some writers (cf. Curat) would reject this analysis, claiming that there is no interception at a mid-point giving intermediate extensity. They argue instead that this is a ‘universal’ or maximum extensity since the noun phrase is concerned with all independent clauses. Such an analysis, however, is based merely on the resulting sense in discourse, the lexical import of the noun phrase, and fails to take into account the different operations involved in constituting the noun phrase. In particular it fails to take into account that the substantive is a part of speech with internal incidence. The theory adopted in these lessons implies that a lexeme like ‘clause’ exists in tongue as a permanent comprehension which determines its range of application or extension, and that each use of a lexeme as a substantive requires its comprehension to be made incident to (part of) its extension. In the case under discussion, the lexeme ‘clause’ is incident to only a portion of its possible field of application, the portion delimited by independent, and so applies only to clauses within that limited extensity, not to all clauses as in the first noun phrase. A similar use is found in the following description of a book: (34) Wonderful wide-ranging portraits inspire us with awe for the unpredictable artist, the Goethe, the Coleridge, the Sergei Eisenstein, the Martha Graham, the Stravinsky.

Since artist here cannot be applied to its greatest extensity (all artists) or to its least extensity (a single artist), its actual scope,

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represented by the, can only be intermediate. Again it is an adjective, unpredictable, which makes the limits of this extensity explicit. The indefinite article here would also express an intermediate extensity but would not suggest a category or type of artist distinct from other types. (The other uses of the article in this example will be treated in lesson 13, where proper nouns are discussed.) In the following example, mid-extensity the helps depict a subcategory or type of surgeon: (35) He spoke with the consummate assurance and charm of the successful Harley Street surgeon.

The indefinite article here would not be so appropriate “to identify the typical characteristics of a class” (Quirk et al., 283). These examples help show that the substantive’s extensity, and particularly its intermediate extensity, is a component of the noun phrase brought in by the article and should not be confused with the expressive effect observable on the level of the sentence. This point can perhaps be made more clearly with another example from a grammar where there is no attributive adjective in the noun phrase: (36) In a subordinate clause, the verb can be either indicative or subjunctive.

Here the verb designates neither a particular verb nor every possible verb but rather a subcategory. The article represents a mid-extensity support for the lexeme ‘verb’ to accommodate it to the situation expressed by in a subordinate clause. The following should probably be interpreted in the same way: (37) … concentrating on the eighteenth century, especially the novel.

While the eighteenth century represents a specific entity, i.e. a particular century, the novel represents the novels of that time as a type or subcategory of that literary genre. Moreover in a study devoted to the eighteenth century or, for the preceding example, to subordinate clauses there would be no need to indicate within the sentence or even the paragraph the frame of reference the writer has in mind. In such a context, the novel or the verb would suffice to call

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the lexeme to mind with the extensity the writer has in mind. Again, one can easily imagine cases where no particular element in the linguistic context makes it clear: to speak of a student in the regulations of a given university or to speak of the driver in a law concerning automobiles surely implies that ‘student’ and ‘driver’ are conceived as applying to only a portion of their extension in tongue, a portion readily discernible by the reader of the documents in question. In an example like the following we can see what makes the extensity clear for the listener: (38) Nora is studying the medieval mystery play.

Here the noun phrase “refers to mystery plays as a genre” (Quirk et al., 281) and because of this expressive effect is considered to have “generic reference.” This interpretation however loses sight of the fact that the noun phrase designates a subcategory of ‘play’. That is, the notion ‘medievalmysteryplay’ does not constitute a lexeme in tongue, but rather a complex lexical import put together for this sentence and so expresses a mid-extensity of the lexeme ‘play’. On the other hand, in: (39) The bull terrier makes an excellent watchdog.

it is not immediately clear if the speaker treated the lexeme ‘terrier’ to give it mid-extensity. The stress pattern would suggest this, but it is not impossible that for some speakers bullterrier, as it is sometimes written, has been instituted as a lexeme in tongue (like watchdog), in which case this would be a noun phrase with maximum extensity. We touch here on lexical semantics and the complex problem of compounding. The interesting thing about mid-extensities brought out by these examples is that they can be seen to arise from the same potential meaning as gives rise to both maximum and minimum extensities. That is, both the ‘non-specific’ reading of a noun phrase with a and the ‘parti-generic’ reading of a noun phrase with the can be explained by the movement proposed by each article in the last lesson. From this brief survey it can be seen that the theory of the article has yet to be applied in detail to a number of areas of usage, and to intermediate extensities in particular.

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In this lesson, the theory of the article presented in the previous lesson has been applied to a number of uses to explain their observed expressive effects. Besides confronting theory and data in this way, our discussion has helped to distinguish between the roles of number and the article by showing that a substantive formed by number as ‘singular’ can be given different extensities by the article. Both the explanation of particular examples and this distinction between number and article within the noun phrase provide evidence supporting the theory of the article. In the next lesson we will examine the relation between the article and ‘plural’ substantives.

LESSON TWELVE

Bare vs. Articled -s Substantives The English Articles are but few … and such as will presently discover any stranger [= distinguish any foreigner] in the world from a natural Englishman. Charles Wiseman 1764 cited in Michael, 361

INTRODUCTION

Examining numerically ‘singular’ substantives with an article in the last lesson brought out that the substantive’s extensity can vary from maximum to minimum while its numerical value remains fixed, thus demonstrating that the system of number and the system of the article give different representations of the space involved in the substantive. Number forms the actualized lexeme’s space by configuring it as continuate or discontinuate and quantifying it to represent its designatum in the intended message. The article represents the designatum’s space by relating it through particularization or generalization to the lexeme’s extension, its range of possible extensities. Since the role of extensity is to provide the lexeme with a support corresponding to the space occupied by its designatum in the intended message, it was pointed out that the article makes it possible to effect both the substantive’s internal incidence and the noun phrase’s referential incidence to the designatum. This lesson and the next will be concerned with bare substantives, uses without an article or other determiner, what is sometimes described as “zero article.” Substantives being words constituted by means of internal incidence calling for their lexeme-import to be applied to its own extensity-support, the first question will be to see how the support is represented within the substantive itself. The

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comparison of articled and bare substantives will bring out why the latter do not require the article. Bare substantives are found most frequently in three uses: as proper nouns, as ‘unbounded’ nouns, and as -s substantives. Although the definite article is found in the last two uses, the indefinite article is found with none of them1 so a comparison between the two articles will not be possible here. In this lesson -s substantives will be discussed, and the two uses involving -ø substantives, proper nouns and ‘unbounded’ nouns, in the next lesson. It should be recalled that not all -s substantives are ‘plural’. Thus it is not uncommon to find the indefinite article with ‘singular’ -s substantives such as an airlines, a bleachers, a crossroads. We even find various extensities expressed with -s ‘singulars’, as in: … an incredible little crossroads of six hardtop routes to nowhere in particular. (Wickens, 195) An unlit crossroads can be a hazard. A crossroads always slows down traffic.

Although not numerous, such uses show that ‘singular’ -s substantives function like the ‘singular’ -ø substantives examined in the last lesson insofar as extensity is concerned. Furthermore they help confirm the distinction between the form provided by number – ‘singular’ in all three examples – and the representation of extensity provided by the article, minimum, intermediate and maximum respectively in these examples. Since ‘singular’ -s substantives all call for a determiner they will not be considered further in this lesson. ‘Plural’ and ‘generic’-s substantives are found without determiner and will be discussed here in terms of their extensity, starting with maximum. MAXIMUM EXTENSITY

At the opposite extreme from the ‘singular’ in the system of number, we find -s substantives with a ‘generic’ or numerically maximum sense. Grammarians point out that these do not take the definite article, for example: Birds do not sing in the winter.

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This sentence expresses the idea of “birds in general” (Sweet II, 57). With the definite article in such contexts, on the other hand, the noun phrase would express “the birds around us or near us,” a more limited sense. When it expresses a completely general sense the bare -s substantive can be used for defining something, as in: Islands are pieces of land surrounded by water.

Here the would not be appropriate since it would restrict the generality of the noun phrase so the sentence would not be a satisfactory definition. This use of the bare substantive is revealing. Representing by means of number the scope of discontinuate space to include all birds or islands without any restriction, all possible entities to which the lexeme can be applied, is equivalent to representing the total extension of the lexeme. Similarly for beggars, wishers and woulders in the following examples from Jespersen (1954 VII, 443): Beggars must not be choosers. Wishers and woulders are never good householders.

That is, when the -s morpheme represents maximum number this entails the maximum extensity of the lexeme. In these four sentences, then, it appears that the substantive’s extensity is implied by its number morpheme so the substantive can accomplish its internal incidence on its own and there is no need for the article to make the extensity-support explicit. Basing the analysis on the distinction between number and extensity in this way helps explain expressive effects observed by grammarians. In the last lesson we discussed maximum extensity noun phrases of the type the + ‘singular’ substantive, such as: The whale is a mammal.

With a bare -s substantive noun phrase like the following, the expressive effect arising from maximum extensity is not the same. Whales are mammals.

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The difference as described by Jespersen (1954 VII, 442) is significant: The term toto-generic in connexion with plurals should not be taken to mean ‘denoting the genus’ in a strict sense such as the sg with the def. article … The plural has rather a general than a generic sense. It rather denotes all members of the genus than the genus as a whole. This distinction follows from the two theories developed here. In the theory of number outlined previously, -s represents a proliferation, a multiplication, of a unit view resulting in “all members of the genus,” with the implication that the extensity is equivalent, i.e. maximum. In the theory of the article outlined in the last lesson, the + ‘singular’ substantive represents, not the multiplication, but the generalization of a unit view extending it throughout the substantive’s range and resulting in a representation of “the genus as a whole.” Distinguishing between number and extensity in this way is important, not just for analyzing the different ways of forming a noun phrase and explaining their expressive effects, but also for understanding what the article adds to our means of representation. The fact that extensity is tied to the representation of number in the bare substantive suggested to Guillaume that the system of the article was invented in the history of French (and other languages) by a sort of dematerialization of the system of number, i.e. by taking its binary reductive-expansive mechanism and applying it to a field (the lexeme’s extension) where there is no need to number, i.e. to depict a numerical singular and pluralize it. By disengaging the representation of extensity from the representation of number in this way, the article makes it possible to depict the genus or category “as a whole,” as a concept or abstract mental object, independently from its realization in particular entities. As such the invention of the article marks a significant step in the mind’s endless endeavour to theorize our experience of the world around us, and within us, by means of language.2 Viewing maximum-extensity the as resulting from the generalization of a unit view in this way has another consequence. It entails a limit beyond which a given lexeme cannot apply, where it would lose its capacity to designate (a limit determined not by the number of

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entities but by their perceived nature). On the other hand, it has just been argued that -s morpheme in this use tends toward the representation of a maximum number. But this raises a question: for a given lexeme like ‘bird’ or ‘island’ is there a limit to the number of entities it can designate? One has difficulty imagining a total number beyond which the lexeme cannot be extended. This suggests that the -s movement tends toward a limit which is not fixed, which could always be pushed further to represent a greater quantity, so that ‘maximum’ -s suggests something like ‘all members you can imagine’. If this is the case, one can understand why in English the article is not found with maximum-quantity -s substantives: it would depict the limit determined by the comprehension and this would conflict with the ‘no fixed limit’ expressive effect of the number morpheme. These purely theoretical considerations find some confirmation in an observation made by Christophersen (146), who suggests that the articled -s substantive is sometimes found with full extensity: “the the-form is actually used on the whole species. Thus in a book on natural history the lions is not at all uncommon; it is felt as more exact and precise than the zero-form.” Christophersen gives no examples to illustrate his observation. Quirk et al. (283) also point out that “In scientific descriptions … we may find expressions like the rodents (referring to the whole order Rodentia).” Schibsbye (222) gives the following examples of this use: different trees vary in their responses to fertilization … The conifers, especially, do not require rich soils. Fashion among the Primroses. – That there are fashions in flowers may seem deplorable to the purist gardener. He points out that -s substantives designating “the whole of the kind concerned have no article.” When they express a kind “distinguished from other kinds however the article is used,” the case of conifers and Primroses here. To distinguish one kind or species from another, often the intention in a scientific text, implies establishing a limit between them and this seems to be what calls for the in these two examples, particularly since the superordinate category is expressed by bare trees and flowers. Moreover this suggests what gives rise to the expressive effect of a “more exact and precise” configuration of the species: representing the lexeme’s extensity by means of the article establishes a limit, whereas merely implying the extensity by means

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of the substantive’s ‘generic’ number and omitting the article would not depict a fixed limit in these uses. Again a detail of usage provides evidence that the article expresses the extensity of a lexeme as represented by the speaker. MID-EXTENSITY

In the preceding example from Sweet, birds without the article expressed a ‘toto-generic’ sense, whereas with the article the noun phrase would have a more limited ‘parti-generic’ sense: The birds do not sing in the winter.

Here a less than maximum, i.e. intermediate, number is depicted by -s, and the noun phrase expresses “the birds around us or near us” (Sweet II, 57). Again number and extensity appear to be equivalent, but this more restricted extensity here is expressed by the article, not left implicit. That is to say, in the mental genesis of the substantive the -s morpheme is intercepted at some midpoint, but in the above context it requires the article, also intercepted before the end of its movement, to make the extensity explicit. In a slightly different context, mid-extensity might be implied without using the article: Where I live birds do not sing in the winter.

The subordinate clause here suffices to indicate that the speaker is not thinking of all birds, birds in general, but rather all birds that happen to be in the area, and so the article is not required. The article could of course be used here but it would suggest a limit, as in making a comparison with another species: … but the squirrels are very active. This suggestion arises from the systemic position of the and the mid-point where its movement is intercepted, indicating a limit. The same can be said of the following use: Evil communications corrupt good manners.

Although Jespersen classifies this example (1954 VII, 444) as “totogeneric,” presumably because the noun phrase designates all evil communications, from the point of view of the substantive’s lexeme

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in tongue it designates only part of what communications can designate. That is, -s in the substantive depicts intermediate quantity (those communications considered evil), not maximum quantity (all communications). As a consequence, in the light of the analysis developed here the noun phrase is considered to have a ‘partigeneric’ sense, i.e. to imply a mid-extensity of the lexeme. Like comments apply to another of Jespersen’s examples: Impressions (or stimuli) conveyed to the central nervous system … give rise to sensations of smell, taste, touch, or sight, etc.

The substantive represents, not the greatest possible number of impressions but only those conveyed to the central nervous system, thus implying mid-extensity for the noun phrase. With the, the sentence would imply a contrast with another type of impressions, those not conveyed to the central nervous system. Jespersen (loc. cit.) gives examples of parti-generic uses where there is no modifier to make it explicit: Children are poor men’s riches.

Although nothing in the noun phrase expressly limits the field of ‘children’ here, the sentence indicates that the writer had in mind ‘children of poor men’ and not ‘children in general’. Similarly in: Half the night I waste in sighs. Remenham has principles, and I have only prejudices. Advertisement: Businesses for Sale.

In each case the context indicates that the speaker does not have maximum number in mind (no individual could actualize all sighs or possess all principles or prejudices, just as no company could list all businesses). On the other hand, each example suggests an indefinite number and so it would be quite out of place to use the definite article intercepted at mid-point to depict an intermediate extensity because this would bring in an effect of something delimited and categorized in the mind of the speaker. Thus the businesses would evoke a definite number, those known to be for sale at a given moment, and so would not be appropriate in an ad of the above type. Similar remarks apply to an ordinary expression like

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applications now being accepted (cf. the applications), and to the expression best wishes at the end of a letter, as with sighs above, where one does not wish to evoke a limit to the good wishes offered. The point of all this is to show that in the bare -s substantive the extensity is merely implied by the number morpheme. That is, the -s morpheme configures the lexeme to represent the discontinuate space occupied by the designatum in the intended message, not an extensity drawn from the lexeme’s extension in tongue. Granted the movement underlying the -s morpheme, bare substantives can provide spatial supports for the internal incidence of their lexeme, supports implying mid- and maximum extensities, and this results in noun phrases which are either ‘parti-generic’ or ‘toto-generic’, as Christophersen (36) and Jespersen describe them. When the is used the explicit representation of the extensity gives the sentence a different expressive effect. But before going on to illustrate this further, a question of terminology should be disposed of. The above considerations, which bring out that -s morpheme can provide a spatial support implying a mid-extensity for the substantive, lead us to call into question the existence of a “zero article,” as proposed in other studies.3 When examining the system of number, zero (-ø) morpheme was described in terms of its meaning – the operation of representing ‘continuate’ space – and its occurrence – any substantive without -s has -ø morpheme. The expression “article zero” to indicate the non-use of an article, however, is misleading on both these counts. There is nothing in the use of bare -s substantives (or in bare -ø substantives, as we shall see in the next lesson) to indicate the presence of an article without visible semiology signifying a particular operation for representing extensity, different from that of a and the. Furthermore it fails to clarify the situation when there is a demonstrative or other determiner: “article zero” or simply no article? That is, there is no either-or situation as there is with number. Finally if, as in languages with no article like Latin, the number morpheme can provide the substantive with a spatial support implying (but not representing) extensity, then there appears to be no analytic reason for proposing a zero article, and whatever descriptive utility it might have is better served by an expression like “bare substantive,” which can include proper nouns. Distinguishing between number representing space with regard to the intended message and the article representing space with regard to the lexeme’s extension in tongue brings out cases where

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the expressive effect of using the article is more pronounced than those examined so far. Thus a sentence like: Lectures start tomorrow.

expresses a “kind of restricted genericness,” according to Christophersen (150). It “means ‘lectures in general, on all the various subjects taught at university’. But their number is in fact quite limited!” That is, the number of lectures is limited to those given in the particular university setting that prompted the sentence, and this implies a mid-extensity support for the lexeme. The here would give quite a different effect, suggesting a set of lectures “previously talked about or alluded to,” and in fact if spoken by the lecturer, who presumably has prepared the lectures and has them in mind, the noun phrase could hardly be considered to express a kind of “restricted genericness.” Rather than ‘partigeneric’, the expressive effect of the lectures here would be that of something ‘already known’, like the ‘definiteness’ expressive effect of the with ‘singular’ substantives discussed in the last lesson. The following example brings out similar expressive effects: The Greek and Turkish negotiations are supposed to be going on as smoothly as the circumstances permit.

In this sentence a certain familiarity with the set of circumstances is implied whereas without the article in this use Poutsma (1914, 657, 659) considers that circumstances would express “a more or less vague meaning.” That is, the bare substantive would suggest ‘circumstances, whatever they may be’, a sort of open-ended, ‘partigeneric’ effect, but with the there is an effect of ‘definiteness’, suggesting a speaker aware of the circumstances. A like comment would apply to negotiations here. Lastly, for the ‘parti-generic’ use (Jespersen 1954 VII, 444), in: Funds were lacking for the journey.

funds expresses “complete unfamiliarity,” where (citing Christophersen) “interest centres round the generic qualities; hence the indefiniteness of the quantitative delimitation” (442). With the, however, the noun phrase would suggest a certain amount, and

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again one gets the impression that the “generic qualities” would not be dominant, but rather the definiteness of the quantity in the mind of the speaker. Examples like the last three raise a problem. Christophersen (36) describes a “parti-generic” noun phrase as one which gives the “impression of something continuous with indefinite limits.” On the other hand the lectures, the circumstances and the funds would express a set of entities “previously talked about” or in some way familiar, defined, limited in the mind of the speaker. One would hardly describe noun phrases with the article in these sentences as ‘parti-generic’. This would not characterize their expressive effect, and in fact would contradict impressions of something ‘familiar, defined, previously talked about’. What then is the extensity of the substantive? Since these are ‘plural’ substantives it would seem they call for an extensity-support which is greater than minimum. On the other hand, one would not expect a substantive with mid-extensity to contribute to expressive effects of familiarity and definiteness. This raises a question that has not yet been considered in the theory of the article: what is the relation between ‘plural’ and extensity in such cases? To find an answer, the question will be considered in the light of the theory of the and the theory of -s, i.e. not from the point of view of direct observation of usage but from the point of view of analytic observation as Guillaume calls it. MINIMUM EXTENSITY WITH

‘PLURAL’ SUBSTANTIVES?

In the last three examples, insofar as -s is concerned there is little to be said. Regardless of whether the expressive effect of the noun phrase without article is “something continuous with indefinite limits” or, with article, something “previously talked about,” the uses just considered are clearly ‘plural’ – neither numerically ‘singular’ nor ‘generic’ – and so arise from an intermediate interception of the movement signified by -s. Insofar as the is concerned, things are less clear. The problem can be posed by recalling the example for introducing the idea of mid-extensity in a previous lesson: The tiger in captivity is a sorry sight.

It was pointed out that the movement of the -ø number morpheme here produces a unit view of ‘tiger’ and the article generalizes this

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view (leaving out particularities of individuals such as age, sex, health, and the like) until it is intercepted at some mid-point and so the noun phrase expresses a subcategory of the species, the set of tigers in captivity. This loss of the view of the individual combined with the interception before reaching a representation of the species gives the noun phrase a clear ‘parti-generic’ effect. However there would be a noticeable difference here if the noun phrase were only a bare -s substantive. With tigers in captivity an indefinite number of individuals is represented, whereas the tiger in captivity defines a subcategory, notionally limiting its extent, without, of course, defining the number of individuals it might include. Where -s multiplies, numbers, quantifies, the generalizes, categorizes, qualifies. Things are quite different in: The tigers are sleeping in the cage.

It could be said that the tigers here depicts “something which can be identified uniquely in the contextual or general knowledge shared by speaker and hearer,” as Quirk et al. (265) describe the singular version of this example. The sentence designates particular animals here because the view of individuals is not lost. That is to say, even though the substantive is numerically ‘plural’, the noun phrase does not give rise to any ‘parti-generic’ effect, any generalization. It does not evoke a subcategory that is open ended insofar as membership is concerned. This suggests that the movement of the is not carried far enough to generalize the substantive’s lexical import but is intercepted close to its beginning, and points to the conclusion that the tigers in the above example is to be analyzed as expressing minimum extensity, not mid-extensity. Thus it appears that the article can represent the extensity of a ‘plural’ substantive as minimal, just as it can do with a ‘singular’ substantive. This may appear surprising at first because ‘plural’ tends to be associated with the notion of ‘greater than minimal’, an association that is quite valid in the domain of number. However the examination of ‘singular’ substantives in the last lesson made it clear that representing extensity and representing number are independent operations, that all three extensities are found with numerically ‘singular’ substantives. Unless the above analysis has gone astray, it establishes that extensity can vary for ‘plural’ substantives as well. It appears that a lexeme formed as ‘plural’ by the system of

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number can be incident to a minimum-extensity support and, number apart, give rise to much the same expressive effects as a numerically ‘singular’ lexeme made incident to a minimum-extensity support. That is to say, the distinction made previously between two senses of singular – the quantitative, ‘one-entity’ sense when speaking of the number system and the qualitative, ‘unique-entity’ sense when speaking of extensity – applies here as well. So when a speaker perceives a plurality as consisting of known individuals they will be represented by a ‘plural’ substantive with minimum extensity, i.e. expressing a ‘unique-set’ sense. Thus if the distinction between number and extensity, between the process of multiplication signified by -s and the process of generalization signified by the, is kept in mind the result of this analysis need occasion no surprise since it amounts to extending the analysis of the + ‘singular’ substantive from the last lesson to the case of the + ‘plural’ substantive here. Consider an example like: The children aren’t in school today, so I’ll be at home.

Said by a mother or father, we would understand the sentence to refer to the speaker’s children, i.e. two or more specific individuals. In this case, there is no ‘parti-generic’ sense, no suggestion of an open-ended set or subcategory, and so it seems that ‘children’ has an extensity involving minimal generalization on the part of the speaker. The, intercepted at the beginning of its movement, depicts no more than the space required to support the lexeme as actualized, a minimal extensity. This could be contrasted with: The children aren’t in school today, but the teachers are.

Spoken by the head of a school district or a minister of education one would understand ‘children’ here to include all those within the speaker’s jurisdiction, a mid-extensity. This understanding of minimal extensity can be applied to many other common uses of the with ‘plural’ substantives, as in: Here are the three books you loaned me. Are the doors locked? (on leaving one’s car or house) The girls sitting over there are my cousins. (Quirk et al., 268) They got married in grand style. The bride wore a long brocade dress, and the bridesmaids wore pink taffeta. (Ibid.)

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None of the noun phrases here are understood as ‘parti-generic’. The expressive effects of the three books, the doors, the girls, the bridesmaids can be variously described as specifying, individualizing, identifying, demonstrative, definite, etc. Grammars for the most part concentrate on ‘singular’ substantives when discussing this use of the article, but it is important to recognize that these effects are also found with ‘plural’ substantives and that they can be explained in the same way: the article here represents a minimum extensity, sufficient as a support for the lexeme depicting those individuals the speaker has in mind. Huddleston and Pullum (369–70) do bring out this aspect of usage. They put it this way: “The account of identifiability by virtue of uniqueness can be extended to plural … definite np s” as in: Where did you put the keys? The parents of one of my students came round to see me last night.

They point out that “the uniqueness applies now to a set … rather than to an individual,” presumably because the speaker has in mind particular keys or persons making up a limited set. As a consequence the sentence: The bathroom tiles are cracked.

does not necessarily mean that “every individual tile is cracked: rather the totality of the tiles gives the impression of being cracked.” This observation is interesting from the point of view of our analysis because it suggests that even here, with minimum extensity, the effect of the definite article is minimally generalizing, depicting the referent as a limited set and not just a number of individual entities. Thus similar effects in discourse for noun phrases with ‘singular’ and ‘plural’ substantives can be traced back to the same minimumextensity use of the article, while the difference between them can be seen to arise from the difference of number. This is a satisfying result obtained from analyzing in terms of the theory of the article, but, like all such results, has to be verified by contrasting minimum and mid-extensity uses of the with ‘plural’ substantives in many more examples to see if the proposed theory can explain all observed expressive effects.

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In some cases the extensity of the ‘plural’ substantive can be discerned without difficulty, as in a sentence from the introduction to a book on linguistics (Croft and Cruse, 4): This inductive process of abstraction and schematization does not lose the conventionalized subtleties and differences found among even highly specific grammatical constructions and word meanings.

It seems obvious that the subtleties and difficulties are represented by the writers with mid-extensity, as a type – those that are conventionalized and found among … – and not as a set of “uniquely identifiable” entities they have in mind. A different extensity seems just as obvious in an example from the introduction to a book on Galileo, where, after being informed that “Galileo made six long visits to Rome,” we find: The six trips occurred over a period of 46 years.4

The authors clearly had the particular trips in mind (they go on to mention each one of them) and so we understand the to express the lexeme’s extensity as minimal. In fact the noun phrase here has the same ‘recall’ expressive effect as that described in grammars for the + ‘singular’ substantive. Normally usage is less clear cut, as in the following example from the same book: … the reader will find the sources of our quotations at the end of the book.5

Although there are eleven pages of references, one gets the impression that sources represents a specific set, one for each quotation, and that the provides a minimal extensity support for it. The following sentence gives a different expressive effect: In this grammar we will be at pains, therefore, to specify the distinctive grammatical properties of the concepts we introduce. (reference lost)

One gets the impression that the author had in mind, not a set of particular concepts but rather an undefined number, whatever concepts may be introduced, and so the can be analyzed to represent mid-extensity as a support for concepts. Had the sentence occurred

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in a short article, on the other hand, one might well understand that only a few concepts are involved and that the author had them in mind as something “uniquely identifiable,” in which case the substantive would be analyzed as having minimum extensity. Similarly the distinctive grammatical properties is open to different interpretations depending on what the speaker had in mind. Although these examples indicate that many uses can be understood as expressing either minimal or mid-extensity – perhaps because there are not enough indications concerning the speaker and the situation, but perhaps because there may be real ambiguity for the hearer/reader – the above analysis does allow for both interpretations, thus accommodating the real conditions of usage. In any case, these considerations suffice to show that a noun phrase consisting of the + ‘plural’ -s substantive can express a minimal extensity. With this in mind, we can get back to ‘plural’ -s substantives without article. In the preceding section we saw that uses such as at pains in the above example express an indefinite number. In a sentence examined in the last lesson for the mid-extensity use of artist, however, there is a noun phrase with a bare -s substantive that gives a minimal extensity reading: Wonderful wide-ranging portraits inspire us with awe for the unpredictable artist, the Goethe, the Coleridge, the Sergei Eisenstein, the Martha Graham, the Stravinsky.

Taken out of context, wonderful wide-ranging portraits might be interpreted as ‘any portraits that are wonderful and wide-ranging’, i.e. as implying mid-extensity for the lexeme ‘portrait’. When considered as a blurb on a dust jacket however, it is understood as referring to the portraits in the book, and in fact the demonstrative these might have been used here to express much the same sense. That is, assuming that the writer had in mind a specific set of portraits, the substantive implies an extensity sufficient to be a support for the lexeme representing that known set, a minimal extensity. Similarly in a headline like: Champions acclaimed by thousands of fans

‘plural’ champions depicts the members of a particular team, a set of athletes known to the journalist, and the -s implies a minimal extensity as a support for its internal incidence. The article is not

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required since a headline is followed by a text indicating the designatum. (Something similar occurs for verbs in photo captions.6) It is interesting to note that the -ø substantive champion could also be used here to indicate a single athlete, a case to be examined in the next lesson. Guimier (1996) discusses a use of the indefinite article which can perhaps illustrate the distinction between number and extensity being explored here. He analyzes expressions with a ‘plural’ substantive like a good two hours as an expression of discontinuate quantity being brought down to a unit by means of a “globalizing viewing idea.” Good is the most frequent means for summing up in this way with the expressive effect of ‘at least’, but we also find a brief ten minutes, a mere four votes, etc., where the expressive effect is ‘barely’, ‘no more than’. The effect of these adjectives is thus to characterize as a whole the discontinuate quantity expressed by numeral + -s substantive and so to unify it. Even in a tough two weeks, a very uncomfortable ten minutes, a very quiet ten years, and the like, where, as Guimier points out, the expressive effect of the noun phrase is not quantitative but rather durative (‘throughout the whole period’), the result is to unify, to bring out the single period rather than its constituent moments. On the basis of this analysis it would appear that the indefinite article provides a minimal extensity as a support for the stretch of time depicted by the noun phrase. Before this can be affirmed, however, the role of the numeral in these expressions has to be analyzed. CONCLUSION

The examination of usage undertaken here may appear overly fastidious in distinguishing expressive effects, but it should be recalled that the data we are working with is meaning expressed and that this can best be observed by contrasting two nearly identical sentences. Moreover the object of our study at this point, the article, is probably the most abstract of grammatical words. To describe its contribution to the noun phrase can only be done in abstract terms like extension and extensity, and relational terms like minimum, mid-, and maximum. Experience shows, however, that this type of observation and analytical reasoning makes us more sensitive to the nuances of usage and leads to greater understanding of the grammatical systemics involved.

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What has been examined in this lesson brings out a parallel between ‘singular’ and ‘plural’ substantives: extensity can vary independently of the number. The preceding lesson showed that a noun phrase with article + ‘singular’ -ø substantive can express the full range of extensities, and in this lesson it has been proposed that a noun phrase with article + -s substantive can also express minimum and mid- and maximum extensities, as in respectively: The children aren’t in school today, so I’ll be at home. The children aren’t in school today, but the teachers are. … different trees vary in their responses to fertilization … The conifers, especially, do not require rich soils.

Although minimum and mid-extensity uses appear to be quite common, it remains to refine the means of distinguishing between the two by a closer observation of expressive effects in order to see if our analysis of minimal extensity with ‘plural’ substantives is valid. Christophersen says that the use of the article with maximum extensity as in the conifers is “not at all uncommon” in certain contexts, but it is rarely mentioned in grammars and so must be more extensively observed. Analytical observation of the use of the article with -s substantives has thus helped bring out more clearly the relation between the system of the article and the system of number, and how these two variables interact in a noun phrase. This has helped confirm the theory that the article represents a substantive’s extensity. Finally, contrasting bare and articled substantives has shown that the bare -s substantive can imply all three extensities, minimum, intermediate and maximum, as in respectively: Champions greeted by thousands of fans (newspaper headline) Businesses for sale (advertisement) Birds do not sing in the winter.

In such cases, the substantive does actualize (a portion of) its lexeme’s extension but this is not represented as such – as a known set, as a sub-category or the general category – and so is only implied. To complete our survey of the article in the next lesson, it remains to examine two other cases of noun phrases consisting of a bare substantive: proper nouns and substantives expressing an ‘unbounded’ notion.

LESSON THIRTEEN

Bare vs. Articled -ø Substantives … it’s puzzling work, talking is. Mr. Tulliver in The Mill on the Floss

INTRODUCTION

In lesson 11, after distinguishing the system of the article from that of number we examined both articles with ‘singular’ substantives and explained their different expressive effects as consequences of their respective positions in the system and their one variable, the various extensities each article can represent. In the last lesson bare and articled -s substantives were discussed and their different expressive effects explained as consequences of two variables: the number, ‘plural’ or ‘generic’, expressed by -s and the various extensities, minimum, mid-, or maximum, expressed by the. It remains to examine bare and articled -ø substantives from the same systemic point of view, an area of usage that brings in a third variable, the lexical distinction between ‘unbounded’ and ‘bounded’ senses, a variation which does not arise with either ‘singular’ or -s substantives. Here it will be a matter of focussing on the main lines of usage, i.e. why, as many grammars put it (cf. Jespersen 1954 VII, 437): 1) “unit-words” or “count nouns” take both articles; 2) “mass-words” take only the definite article; 3) proper nouns take neither article. Some of the apparent exceptions to these observations will be discussed below. It should be recalled at the outset that substantive’s -ø morpheme in the system of number is the sign of a reductive movement in the field of continuate space starting from the maximum and tending

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toward the minimum quantity of whatever the lexeme designates. The greatest magnitude with -ø, like that with -s seen in the last lesson, corresponds to the greatest amount of the entity a lexeme can designate – obviously a quantity without any limit, illimitable. In discourse reflecting ordinary experience, one could not imagine a quantitative limit to what ‘beer’ can designate in a sentence like: Beer is a fermented drink.

At the other extreme -ø morpheme corresponds to a continuate, bounded quantity, a unit made up of a certain amount, as in: One beer, please.

Between the two extremes, -ø morpheme gives a continuate view of uncircumscribed quantity, a quantity whose limits are left vague, undefined, as in: Beer and wine are sold in grocery stores here.

Keeping in mind this manner of forming the lexeme by means of grammatical number, we can now turn to the question of the use or non-use of the article with -ø substantives.

‘ UNBOUNDED’ SENSE SUBSTANTIVES It is useful to recall that the terms adopted here, rather than “count” and “mass,” are “bounded” and “unbounded” because they designate how a lexeme’s potential is actualized: with or without spatial limits respectively. Since both possibilities are open to theoretically any lexeme to be formed as a substantive this does not divide lexemes into two classes, as some grammarians suggest. On the other hand, although it has grammatical repercussions it is a lexical, not a grammatical, distinction. The first question concerning the article to be raised is why the indefinite article with -ø substantives is restricted to their ‘bounded’ sense, their numerically ‘singular’ uses? Why is a not used with ‘unbounded’ sense substantives? (To speak of a water would call to mind a type of water, i.e. a ‘bounded’ sense.) The reason is to be found in the form of the movement constituting the potential meaning of a.

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This is a particularizing movement tending toward a minimum extensity, a representation of the space occupied by an individual entity. Only when the lexeme is actualized in a ‘bounded’ sense is there the possibility of representing something with minimum extensity. It was shown in lesson 10 that when a’s particularizing movement is intercepted earlier, before reaching its end-point or goal, the article represents either maximum or an intermediate extensity but even these extensities have the numerically ‘singular’, ‘bounded’ version of the lexeme in prospect because particularizing involves discriminating, distinguishing, establishing limits. When however the lexeme is actualized in its ‘unbounded’ version, it offers no inherent unitizing limits, no view of minimum extensity as a possibility. Because the lexeme offers no end-point for a particularizing movement, the indefinite article cannot provide a representation of its extensity. The use of words like snow, society, freedom as bare substantives raises a problem already met in discussing bare -s substantives in the last lesson: how is the extensity indicated? In that discussion concerning ‘bounded’ notions it was shown that the quantity expressed by the -s morpheme, intermediate or maximum, implied the extensity. The same applies to ‘unbounded’ notions: the quantity expressed by -ø morpheme, maximum or intermediate, implies the extensity, but does not represent and express it. Thus thanks to the context describing the nature of the referent in: Bread is made from flour or meal.

one understands that the speaker has used -ø morpheme to represent and express the maximum quantity of bread and as a consequence suggests the greatest extensity possible. In a sentence like the following, spoken while a meal is being prepared: There is bread on the table.

the context indicates to the listener that the speaker has represented the lexeme ‘bread’ with an intermediate quantity (whatever quantity is required for the meal), thus implying mid-extensity, whence the vague, ‘non-specific’ expressive effect. In a similar situation, one might say: The bread is on the table.

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Here ‘bread’ is formed to express the same quantity as in the previous sentence but with the presenting this as a recall (‘the bread you sliced’, ‘the quantity we usually put on the table’, etc.). That is, with the there is no suggestion of a generalization of ‘bread’ but rather of a known quantity, of a minimal extensity, a counterpart of the expressive effect observed with -s substantives (Did you lock the doors?), as contrasted with a comment on a bakery: The bread is excellent, but the pastries are too sweet.

As in the previous discussion, this brings out the distinction between article and number: both represent the same space of ‘bread’, but the article represents it as an extensity, i.e. implying a relationship will other possible extensities of the lexeme in tongue, whereas the -ø morpheme represents it as a quantity, implying a relationship with other possible quantities of the designatum. This distinction may even be observed when the substantive is used without the article. In the following example from Quirk et al. (280), the quantity expressed by brushwood does not imply its extensity: They pitched camp between a small winding river and a ridge covered with brushwood.

Unlike river and ridge, which express ‘bounded’ senses, brushwood expresses an ‘unbounded’ sense with an intermediate quantity and yet the noun phrase suggests, not what this quantity would normally imply – the vague, ‘however much’ sense of an ‘unbounded’ substantive – but rather a delimited area of shrubs and small trees. This arises because the area is already defined in the mind of the speaker by the space occupied by the ridge, and ‘brushwood’ is depicted as covering that area, no more and no less (in fact, the brushwood might well extend beyond the ridge), i.e. implying a limited extensity. In this use, then, other indications in the context override what, without them, the substantive’s number morpheme would suggest. Besides indicating how bare substantives are interpreted in English, examples like this give an idea of how, in languages like Latin where there is no article, number in the substantive and other elements in the context imply the extensity the speaker has in mind, i.e. permit the listener to work out the support required by the substantive for the internal incidence

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of its lexeme-import. The interpretation of camp in the above sentence will be discussed below. First however it will be useful to contrast ‘bounded’ and ‘unbounded’ senses of the same lexeme. The ordinary lexeme ‘water’, for instance, usually represents a mass substance, a liquid, and so is almost always used in its ‘unbounded’ sense. Since no limits are represented in this sense there is nothing in the lexical import calling for a minimum-extensity support and so a is not used. Although far less frequent, we do find the ‘bounded’ sense of ‘water’, which can then take the indefinite article expressing minimum extensity. For example in: This spring gives a water rich in certain minerals.

a water distinguishes one type or brand from others. The very use of the indefinite article here indicates to the hearer that the speaker has actualized the lexeme as somehow circumscribed, bounded. Uses such as this are of interest because they reflect the indefinite article’s particularizing movement. This can also be seen in an example given by Huddleston and Pullum (339): Jill has a good knowledge of Greek.

They comment: “The effect of a is to individuate a subamount of knowledge.” The expression of a subamount is the outcome of actualizing the lexeme with limits, i.e. in a ‘bounded’ sense distinguishing a certain amount of knowledge as opposed to that of a native speaker or a specialist, an expressive effect reinforced by good in the sense of ‘not small’. The individuating effect arises from the support for the lexeme provided by the article’s particularizing movement carried to its end, an effect that is brought out more clearly by contrasting the above example with: Jill has a little knowledge of Greek.

where the article has the same individuating effect but distinguishes a different subamount. Without the article (Jill has little knowledge of Greek) ‘knowledge’ would be understood in its usual ‘unbounded’ sense and this effect of individuating a subamount

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would be lost. Huddleston and Pullum consider knowledge in these examples “a non-count noun” and so not pluralizable since “this individuation does not yield an entity conceptualised as belonging to a class of entities of the same kind.” Be that as it may, it does have a ‘bounded’ sense in the first two examples but, like proper nouns to be examined below, this does not mean it will be found in the plural. If in fact ‘knowledge’ is not pluralizable, this brings out the importance of distinguishing between the way the lexeme is actualized (‘unit’) and the external reality (non-count). In most cases, of course, using the indefinite article with words that are usually actualized with a ‘unbounded’ sense (cf. Jespersen 1954 VII, 432–5) does imply an opposition with other entities of the same class. Since examples of this were considered when the -ø number morpheme was discussed in a previous lesson, it will suffice here to call to mind a few more by contrasting bare and articled substantive. Compare: salt vs. a salt, behaviour vs. a behaviour, silence vs. a silence, truth vs. a truth, space vs. a space, kindness vs. a kindness, experience vs. an experience. In each case here, the effect of the article’s movement toward minimum extensity is to make the reader think the lexeme in a ‘bounded’ fashion but each of these articled substantives could be understood with maximum, mid-, or minimum extensity depending on where the article’s movement is intercepted in a particular use. The lexemes of many words can be readily actualized as either an ‘unbounded’ or a ‘bounded’ notion and the contrast hardly attracts attention. Examples: paper vs. a paper, glass vs. a glass, fire vs. a fire, aspirin vs. an aspirin, whiskey vs. a whiskey, genius vs. a genius, wind vs. a wind, talk vs. a talk, thought vs. a thought. Words such as these are so frequent in both uses that they provide ample evidence for the analysis proposed here, namely that these are two different actualizations of the lexeme which, in tongue, is a potential permitting either one. There are of course many words which prototypically bring to mind a ‘bounded’ view, and so their use expressing an ‘unbounded’ view is often commented on. We have already seen out that expressions like in hospital, by letter, by word of mouth, by bus, on foot, call to mind not an individual entity but the role or function of any such entity. The following example shows how readily different lexemes lend themselves to this use: At present everyone was out at work, or busy in kitchen and store, and the hall was empty ….1

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Since one ordinarily thinks of ‘kitchen’ and ‘store’ as well defined entities, ‘unbounded’ uses of this sort are striking and suggest that this particular expressive effect may be possible for any lexeme used to designate entities implying a certain purpose or function. A slightly different effect is found in the following: Her disorder had become a feverish cold, caught, doubtless, between open window and door, whilst the bedroom was being aired for breakfast.

Here the substantive “partly loses its character of a singular classnoun and is equivalent to a plural class-noun, an abstract noun or an adjective” according to Kruisinga and Erades (535), a comment suggesting that this is an ‘unbounded’ sense here. Open window and door can perhaps be analyzed as implying a means to an end, that of bringing in fresh air, and so as expressing a sort of function. And in they pitched camp from the above example, camp can be understood in an ‘unbounded’ sense, so the expression suggests doing whatever is required to have a camp. Any interpretation of this type of use, however, must remain tentative until we have a clearer view of what there is in the lexical makeup of these substantives that can give rise to expressive effects of this sort in ‘unbounded’ uses. The fact that the definite article, unlike the indefinite article, is used with ‘unbounded’ notions can also be explained in the light of its systemic meaning, a movement of generalization. That is, the represents a support, not in the perspective of minimum extensity corresponding to a self-contained unit, but of maximum extensity corresponding to the nature or general concept of what is being talked about. As a consequence, with the ‘water’ can express either a ‘bounded’ or an ‘unbounded’ sense, as in, respectively: The water you recommended is no longer available at the supermarket. The water is not warm enough for swimming.

In both cases here the noun phrase depicts something already defined or implied – a particular brand or type in the first case, what is present in the speaking situation (in the pool for example) in the second. The first example, opposing one brand to others, is a ‘bounded’ sense of water formed by -ø morpheme as a numerically ‘singular’ substantive and the article depicts as its support

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the minimum extensity required, an extensity calling for no generalization. In the second, water, actualized in its ‘unbounded’ sense, is formed by the -ø number morpheme and given an ‘intermediate quantity’ sense, not a ‘singular’ sense. As for the extensity, here too the represents a minimum extensity as the space required to support this lexical import. That is, in both examples, notwithstanding different lexical senses and quantities, the expresses a minimum extensity of the lexeme, an extensity calling for no generalization. This explains why both noun phrases have the individualizing, identifying, specifying expressive effect. There is a clear contrast between this effect and the ‘partigeneric’ effect typical of mid-extensity, as in: The water in a river or lake with beavers is not safe for human consumption.

Here ‘water’ is actualized in its ‘unbounded’ sense and formed by number with an ‘intermediate quantity’ sense. The represents as a support for this lexical import a mid-extensity to accommodate the intended sense of ‘any water in …’. That is, the speaker has in mind, not a specific expanse of water, but whatever water may have been contaminated by beavers, a generalization that is captured by intercepting the article’s movement at a mid-point. All this brings out a parallel with ‘plural’ substantives discussed in the last chapter. There it was seen that the can, depending on the intended message, provide either a minimum or a mid-extensity as a support for ‘plural’ substantives. The last two examples above show that the can do the same for ‘unbounded’ substantives, so here too it is important to distinguish between the representation of number (‘intermediate amount’) and the representation of the article (‘minimum or mid-extensity’). As grammars point out, the parallel between ‘unbounded’ substantives and ‘plural’ substantives extends to ‘maximum extensity’ uses as well. Just as the article is not generally used with ‘maximum quantity’ -s substantives (Horses are mammals), so it is not found in examples like: Water is composed of hydrogen and oxygen.

Actualizing the notion ‘water’ in an ‘unbounded’ sense and forming it with a ‘maximum quantity’ reading of -ø number

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morpheme takes in all possible water, implying as a referent the lexeme’s widest application. That is, -ø ‘unbounded’ substantives, like -s substantives, can express ‘toto-generic’ by means of the system of number and so imply maximum extensity, but they do not express the extensity qualitatively, by means of the article, as in French. In a noun phrase it is not always easy to distinguish the roles of the three variables involved here: the lexical (‘unbounded’ vs. ‘unit’), the quantitative (number), and the lexeme’s range (extensity). It will therefore be useful to examine a few examples of noun phrases with substantives expressing an ‘unbounded’ notion with ‘intermediate quantity’. Hewson (1972, 124) gives examples of bare ‘unbounded’ substantives expressing a quantity that is “unknown or uncertain to the speaker” implying a mid-extensity: Steel for the new building arrived some time ago. They estimated that furniture damaged by the fire was worth more than $100,000.

The use of the with steel or furniture here would not change the interpretation of ‘unbounded’ notion and ‘intermediate quantity’, but would avoid the “vague reference” by representing the extensity, depicting it as already familiar, defined, i.e. as minimum. The difference between the following uses is more subtle: We breathe air. We throw a ball into the air.

In both examples, air expresses an ‘unbounded’ notion, calling to mind the substance without imposing any limitation and yet not suggesting a ‘generic’ sense (as it would in Air is a gas). That is, the substantive in both cases expresses ‘intermediate quantity’. Without the article, this implies mid-extensity. In the example with the article, however, the noun phrase expresses the sense of something limited and already known in the situation, namely ‘the surrounding atmosphere’. That is, the article represents a minimum extensity, an extensity calling for no generalization, as a support to which the ‘unbounded’ notion of air is incident. This use is very similar to the water-in-a-pool example discussed above (The water is not warm enough for swimming).

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The three variables can be brought out by contrasting bare and articled substantives of a type already mentioned: She is in (the) hospital.

With the article the noun phrase represents the building or institution itself, but the bare substantive, it will be recalled, calls to mind the function or “the purpose for which the building or the institution exists” (Kruisinga and Erades, 530). The bare substantive hospital here resembles steel, etc. in the preceding examples since it expresses an ‘unbounded’ notion with ‘intermediate quantity’, implying midextensity. On the other hand, with the article here hospital expresses a ‘bounded’ notion with ‘singular quantity’ and the represents minimum extensity. Quirk et al. (276–9) give a number of examples of this “institution” use and of another use that can be explained in the same way: Maureen is (the) captain of the team.

While the articled substantive is usual for complements, the bare substantive occurs when the complement “names a unique role or task.” That is, with the article captain – ‘unit’, ‘singular’, minimum extensity – designates the person, whereas without the article it expresses what Maureen does (‘M. captains the team’). In such cases the bare substantive depicts not a particular building or person but the function or role of any hospital or captain. It is as though actualizing the lexeme as an ‘unbounded’ notion called to mind, not the entity as such, but only some salient quality inherent in it, so that the substantive in this use is “more like an adjective” (Bolinger, 1). Something similar can be seen in the following: That day, (the) lunch was served on the terrace.

With the article representing minimal extensity, the noun phrase expresses the usual ‘bounded’ sense of a particular lunch. Without the article it suggests more the ordinary noonday function, as in the popular expression to do lunch. Quirk et al. (280) point out a number of paired substantives where the article is sometimes used, sometimes not, as in: I read the novel from (the) beginning to (the) end at one go.

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This pair can perhaps be distinguished in much the same way as those just discussed. With the article, ‘beginning’ and ‘end’ express what exists in their respective positions (e.g. the first and last episodes of a novel) but without the article one gets the impression that the lexemes are reduced to evoking merely the function of these positions, i.e. the point where the novel starts and finishes. This would suggest why the article would not be used in parallel constructions like the following: They talked face to face.

Here only the position is of importance, not the particularity of one face as opposed to another. Quirk et al. (loc. cit.) give two examples of parallel structures where the distinction between bare and articled substantive is less easily analyzed: They pitched camp between a small winding river and a ridge covered with brushwood; but neither (the) river nor (the) brushwood afforded the protection they needed in the event of attack.

In the first clause, which was discussed above, river and ridge express ‘bounded’ notions, ‘singular’ in quantity, with their article expressing minimum extensity, whereas brushwood expresses an ‘unbounded’ notion, ‘intermediate’ in quantity, with its limited extensity indicated by its being indirectly incident to ridge. In the second clause, both river and brushwood could occur as bare or articled substantives, but with different expressive effects. With the article, each would have minimum extensity, representing the same referent as in the preceding clause with the recall effect, a typical use of the, and either one could be used alone (the river did not afford …). Without the article, however, ‘river’ and ‘brushwood’ would not have the same distinctness, and they must be coordinated (neither … nor). This suggests that they depict their referents not as independent entities but, like beginning and end above, only insofar as they provide a frame for the situation. It is not clear how to interpret the extensity implied here, but one hesitates to take ‘river’ in a ‘bounded’ sense since it and ‘brushwood’ may well be reduced to expressing a functional sense, like the bare substantive beginning in the above example. Similar comments apply to their second example:

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The birth took place this morning; both (the) mother and (the) child are doing well.

With the articled substantives the sentence expresses the usual ‘singular’, minimum extensity representations depicting the persons involved, but what is the expressive effect of mother and child without the article? In a previous lesson examples of boy (It’s boy, only boy) and man (stripped at last down to man) expressing ‘unbounded’ notions were presented, but here, mother and child do not express ‘unbounded’ notions. On the other hand, they differ from the articled substantives in expressive effect, being used rather as complementary notions defining a particular situation. Like the preceding example, this one calls for further reflexion to discern more clearly the means of representation, lexical and grammatical, involved. It is perhaps well to finish this brief discussion of ‘unbounded’ sense substantives with problem cases like these since the few examples considered suffice to pose the basic problem. What is the condition that permits actualizing a lexeme in an ‘unbounded’ sense? How far can this mode of lexical representation be extended beyond the most obvious ‘mass’ cases designating homogeneous substances? If we accept that any substantive’s lexeme is sufficiently general to be actualized in both ways, and article usage seems to suggest this, then the difference between the two constitutes an important question for lexical semantics to investigate. The discussion in this section applies to common nouns with their lexical import, its quantification by number and varying extensity. It does not however apply to proper nouns with their over-particularized import and minimal extensity. The next step in exploring the grammatical semantics involved in bare vs. articled substantives is to examine this area of usage. PROPER NOUNS2

The other type of -ø substantives to be examined here, proper nouns, are used without an article to express their extensity, but not for the same reason that ‘unbounded’ sense substantives are often found without an article. Since it involves explaining why articles are not used, the following discussion, like that in the preceding section, will provide a sort of negative check on the theory of

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the article. Proper nouns will be examined in the light of the three parameters called on so far – the type of lexical actualization, grammatical number and extensity – in an attempt to show how a bare substantive can constitute a noun phrase, resembling in this respect both -s substantives and ‘unbounded’ sense substantives used without determiner. Proper nouns however differ from both in taking neither article. Quirk et al. (see below), unlike most grammarians, distinguish between proper nouns and names, which may take the article, consist of several words and even be pluralized. This more restricted sense of proper noun is adopted here. A bare substantive is recognized as a proper noun in discourse through its referent: it designates a single entity, always the same one. In terms of our three variables, direct observation indicates that proper nouns express a ‘bounded’ sense, are ‘singular’ in number and have the same minimal extensity in all uses. The fact that proper nouns call to mind a particular individual rather than attributes defining a class or category led John Stuart Mill to propose that they have no conceptual content, “no signification” (cf. Jespersen 1948, 65). From a grammarian’s point of view, i.e. in the perspective of actual usage, Mill the logician did not take into account the fact that ordinary examples like Goethe and Venice make us think not just of an individual entity, but of an individual poet and of an individual city respectively. That is, like common nouns such as poet and city these proper nouns call to mind a class or category of individuals but differ from common nouns because they designate a particular member, always the same, of that class or category. This is why no less a grammarian than Jespersen (66) adopted a view concerning the meaning of proper nouns which is just the contrary of Mill’s: “proper names (as actually used) ‘connote’ the greatest number of attributes.” The inadequacy of Mill’s view for grammatical analysis comes out even more clearly when it is considered in the light of the part of speech substantive. A proper noun is grammatically formed as a substantive, a word whose lexical import is said about its own support. That is, a substantive cannot be constructed without some lexical import. In fact, to propose that any word in a sentence could be without meaning would contradict the principle basic to linguistics that words are symbolic units consisting of sign and significate. This is an important question for lexical semantics but it cannot be pursued any further here. Instead, the requirements of grammatical

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semantics will be satisfied by exploring the implications of Jespersen’s view that a proper noun signifies “the greatest number of attributes.” As just mentioned, on hearing Goethe one thinks of a human person, a poet, in all the specificity of a given individual, whereas Venice calls to mind a city with attributes that distinguish it from all other entities in the ‘city’ class or category. The important point here is that proper nouns signify a specific individual by distinguishing it from all others of the same nature, and a fortiori from any entity of a different nature. The reason for insisting on this capacity of proper nouns is that it helps us understand how they are constituted. If Venice makes us think of a specific city it must comprise in its lexical makeup the abstract representation of ‘city’ along with enough particularizing traits to limit the extension of that lexeme to one individual, always the same. That is, in tongue a proper noun’s comprehension, like that of any other substantive, includes a lexeme, the abstract representation of a nature defining a category. But its comprehension also includes – and in this it differs from other substantives (common nouns) – specifying characteristics which give the lexeme only one possibility in usage: naming a single entity with that nature. What determines this limitation of extension can be brought out by recalling what was seen in lesson 2: the greater the comprehension, the less the extension. Compared with a common noun, a proper noun’s comprehension is overloaded, instituted in tongue to characterize a unique entity. Because the comprehension of a proper noun is maximized its extension is minimized, restricted to a specific individual. A proper noun’s extension, its range of application, being thus limited in tongue, it follows that its extensity in discourse is fixed, invariable, involving neither particularization nor generalization. Because a proper noun’s lexical import can be neither particularized from a wide scope by means of a nor generalized from a narrow scope by means of the to cover a wider scope, the article system is not called on to represent its extensity. Thus the article is not used with proper nouns because their potential meaning or comprehension determines their extension as minimal, permitting no variation of extensity in discourse. On the other hand, it will be seen below that the article may or may not be found with names, those words and groups of words that function as proper nouns of discourse.

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The fact that a proper noun is formed to represent an individual entity indicates why its lexeme always has a ‘bounded’ representation. Furthermore, since it always designates one individual it is always ‘singular’ in number, and since it designates this individual as unique it cannot be pluralized. This fact has led some grammarians to classify a proper noun as “non-count” (cf. Huddleston and Pullum, 520), a classification reflecting not the nature of the actualized lexeme but the inadequacy of the term “non-count” to designate the linguistic reality. Above it was pointed out that knowledge in a good knowledge of Greek expresses a ‘bounded’ actualization of its lexeme even though it may not be found in the plural. The same holds for proper nouns. Just because most substantives in their ‘bounded’ version are pluralizable one cannot presume that all are. The grammatical capacity of being pluralized is not a necessary consequence of a ‘bounded’ lexical representation. Because a proper noun’s comprehension is, compared with that of other substantives, far more particularized, consisting of a lexeme supplemented by characteristics belonging to a specific individual, it cannot be multiplied by means of ‘plural’ -s in order to designate a number of individuals. All this is to explain through analytical observation what is directly observable: in tongue, a proper noun’s comprehension has the “greatest number of attributes” and so its extension has the least possible range. As a consequence, in discourse it is a ‘singular’ substantive expressing a ‘bounded’ lexeme and implying minimum extensity. It cannot be ‘plural’, express a ‘unbounded’ notion, or have a greater extensity. If this view of proper nouns is valid, it follows that the articled substantive does not import a lexical overload. That is, use with an article is an indication of the substantive’s lexeme having been actualized in such a way that it does not designate a unique entity. Thus in: He was not a Mozart.

Mozart is used as a common noun to call to mind ‘composer of genius’ or something of the sort, i.e. a class or category characterized by the quality for which Mozart himself is best known, but without any other personal characteristic, such as when he lived. With this in mind, we can return to an example that has already been discussed:

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Wonderful wide-ranging portraits inspire us with awe for the unpredictable artist, the Goethe, the Coleridge, the Sergei Eisenstein, the Martha Graham, the Stravinsky.

It will be recalled that the unpredictable artist evoking a type of artist, not an individual, has been analyzed as expressing the mid-extensity of artist. A similar effect is expressed by the Goethe, the Coleridge, etc., each of which evokes a sort of subtype of the unpredictable artist type. These substantives are not used here as proper nouns to designate a unique person but as common nouns to designate a subcategory, a mid-extensity resulting from intercepting the definite article’s generalizing movement at some mid-point. This type of use poses a problem for lexical semantics since the conditioning factor here is the manner of actualizing the lexeme. When we speak of a Rembrandt to designate one of the artist’s paintings, we actualize the lexeme to depict neither the artist himself nor the type of artist he would typify, but rather something the artist produced. In the young Shakespeare, a new Canada and the like the implied opposition (young vs. mature, new vs. old) arises from thinking the substantive not as a proper noun but as a common noun to represent one of the phases of the entity’s existence. In each of these cases the lexeme of the proper noun has been treated to permit use as a common noun but how it has been treated, whether by a process of metaphor or some other process resulting in a reduced lexical import, is a question to be examined in a study of lexical semantics and cannot be pursued here. The use of family names is not so clear. In army usage, when employed as a vocative: Donne, stand up!

the speaker has in mind a unique person and so the substantive appears to be used as a proper noun. However a family name is probably more frequently used as a common noun, as when pluralized (the Donnes) and in: His mother was a Donne.

Like proper nouns, a family name designates a particular entity, always the same, with the nature of a family, but this entity consists of

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a number of individuals and so in this respect a family name resembles a common noun. A clearer view of how the lexeme is treated to permit these uses will help us discern its status in tongue. Quirk et al. (288) bring in a distinction which will be useful here. They distinguish “between a proper noun, which is a single word, and a name, which may or may not consist of more than one word.” This distinction is pertinent because it brings out two ways of achieving the same end in discourse: by the ideogenesis of the lexeme within the substantive and by a construction of discourse. To designate entities as unique, names such as Park Avenue and McGill University combine a proper noun and a “descriptor,” here a common noun. The effect of the common noun is to make explicit for the hearer the class to which the particular entity belongs, with the proper noun playing the role of a sort of determiner, though the relation of incidence between the two has yet to be clarified. When there is no danger of misunderstanding, these names are often expressed as proper nouns – just off Park, studying at McGill – a shortening bringing out the fact that although it represents something as unique, the proper noun represents it as a member of a class, as one among others of the same nature. Most other cases of names, however, are much more complicated and it is perhaps useful to examine several of them. In esl classes it is often mentioned that the article is used when naming rivers and valleys, as in the Fraser River, the Fraser Valley. This is certainly a valuable rule to go by to avoid mistakes since it reflects the usual practice. With their ‘bounded’ notion, ‘singular’ number (but not pluralizable), and minimum extensity (which cannot be any greater) these noun phrases designate unique entities and so are names. This raises the question of why they require the article, whereas the names of lakes, for example, do not take the article. A possible avenue of reflexion is suggested by the fact that we do find valley names without the article, for example: Death Valley, Sunshine Valley, Snow Valley. It has been pointed out that these names designate valleys without a river, an observation confirmed by San Fernando Valley, a former resident of which mentioned that newcomers to the area tend to use the article with the name but soon drop it, as though they soon conceive of this valley as an area in itself and not just one adjacent to a river. The next example to be observed was Capilano River, the name of a river (in North Vancouver) which has no valley since it flows through Capilano Canyon. Again the suggestion

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is that the manner of naming depends on the manner of conceiving the geographical reality, that even with names of rivers and valleys the article is found where the extensity allows for a variation. Before this question can be satisfactorily analyzed, however, more details of the usage of cognoscenti, speakers familiar with a given valley or river, are required. Lake names provide a second case with an intriguing variation. The article is not used with names of lakes, so that Lake Superior is sufficient to designate a unique geographical entity. What complicates matters here is word order since we also find Salt Lake, Shuswap Lake, Mud Lake, etc. and we would not say *Lake Salt, *Lake Shuswap, or *Lake Mud. The point is that the relation between the two words varies according to whether Lake precedes or follows. Where Salt etc. characterize the lake in specifying it, Superior simply specifies it in the manner of a proper noun. Where both constructions are possible, e.g. Okanagan Lake vs. Lake Okanagan, the effect is not the same. Again a small area of usage to be explored by cognoscenti, especially with regard to the differing expressive effects of the two constructions, in order to throw more light on how names are constructed and why the article is not required here. Names consisting of one substantive are generally used with the definite article. One can understand its use with ‘plural’ names such as the Hebrides, the Rockies, the Netherlands since the extensity of a ‘plural’ substantive is variable and the is required here to limit it, to represent it as invariable. Barbados on the other hand is a proper noun and takes no article because the final -s is not felt as the ‘plural’ morpheme. The use of the article with certain ‘singular’ substantives can perhaps be explained in a similar way. For example, it is common to use the article with the names of regions: the Gaspé, the Crimea, the Negev. One gets the impression here that these regions are thought of, not as self-defining entities, but as dependent on some other entity containing them, and so the substantive may require the article to represent its extensity, its limits within the greater whole. The case of the Orient vs. the Occident vs. the Middle East suggests something similar. This impression has some confirmation from names of areas which have recently gained more independent status and are used less and less with the article: (the) Ukraine, (the) Sudan, (the) Yukon. Such cases suggest that speakers for whom these are selfcontained geographical entities construct the words as proper

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nouns, that is as substantives whose extensity is determined in tongue, and so do not use the article. Speakers who still conceive of these as somehow dependent regions would not represent them with proper noun status but as names and so would call on the article to determine their extensity with regard to a greater whole. Finally, a comment on an occasional use of -ø ‘singular’, ‘bounded’ sense common nouns with minimal extensity but without article, as in a typical headline like: Champion acclaimed by thousands of fans

The bare -ø substantive depicts not just ‘singular’ but a particular individual in the manner of a name or proper noun, provided that an article or photograph, or both, specify the person. That is, where a proper noun (thanks to its makeup in tongue) and often a name (thanks to its construction in discourse) can, on their own without a determiner, call to mind a unique entity, a common noun can function in this way if spatial and temporal parameters indicated in the context imply the extensity provided by the speaker. Even this condition can be dispensed with when speaking with oneself as in the following inner dialogue of a photographer setting his camera: Red color coming up, sky brightening. Lower camera six inches, adjust tripod legs … . Level camera on tripod head … .3

In spite of an as yet fragmentary understanding of names, enough has perhaps been said to indicate that the use of the article is not an arbitrary matter even where usage varies from one individual to another. Other areas of usage treated in grammars (e.g. Quirk et al., 288–97) call for detailed examination but to explore them would require a specialized study and would not contribute further to the objective pursued here, which is to show the role of the articles in the noun phrase. The discussion of usage can best be ended with an example that brings out a speaker’s awareness of the expressive effects resulting from the use or non-use of the articles. It describes a discussion by the council of a religious community concerning essentially the different ways each article represents the extensity of a noun phrase, and how extensity is merely implied when there is no article:

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After considerable debate, the Council resolved the contentious issue of whether the Bible is “a” foundational authority or “the” foundational authority for the Christian life by removing both “a” and “the.” It is: “foundational authority.”4

In the final text, since neither extensity was represented it was left to the reader to determine what is implied and so the solution is, as one commentator pointed out, “a bit ambiguous.” CONCLUSION

In this discussion of the articles, their system has been outlined and its working illustrated by showing how the articles provide a representation of the substantive’s extensity in various types of usage. While certain uses brought out problems yet to be solved, a good number of uses have been explained, and these results were achieved by appealing to the system of the articles in tongue. It is by confronting particular uses with the general theory that we will better understand the nature of these most abstract words and explain more of their uses. In the meantime, the evidence adduced so far supports the theory that the articles represent the extensity of the substantive, providing a formal support for the lexical import of the noun phrase. Making the rest of the noun phrase incident to this support realizes the substantive’s internal incidence and thus completes the construction of the noun phrase. Bare substantives also function as complete noun phrases. What we have seen in the last two lessons has brought out how they find a support within their own morphogenesis thanks to the system of number. We will see this more clearly when we turn to noun phrases consisting of a pronoun, but before that we must examine other ways of expressing a formal support for the noun phrase. The next lessons will therefore focus on other determiners to bring out how they provide a support for the substantive’s internal incidence.

LESSON FORTEEN

Any as a Quantifier The meaning of any is a many-splendored thing Vendler, 79

INTRODUCTION

Exploring the noun phrase has shown that a substantive, as the lexical head, provides a spatial representation of some fragment of the speaker’s experience and that all the other lexical imports of the phrase are incident to it. It was shown that once the lexeme – the viewing idea focusing on that fragment of the intended message – is actualized it is categorized by gender and is given a spatial form by the system of number. This form, a quantified representation of space as either continuate (-ø) or discontinuate (-s), corresponds to the space involved in the entity represented by the lexeme. By forming a lexeme spatially in this way, the system of number, along with that of gender, prepares it to be applied to a spatial support, i.e. to be made incident to some part of its own extension. Thus gender and number are formative operations that promote the lexeme to a status permitting its internal incidence, the defining characteristic of the part of speech substantive. Because its notion is configured to be made incident to its own extensity in this way, a substantive can fulfil its inherent, existential function, that of providing the lexical support within the noun phrase. The last step in constructing the phrase – effecting the substantive’s internal incidence by relating the lexeme-import to this extensity-support – enables the noun phrase to fulfil its syntactic function as part of the sentence. The lessons on the articles made it clear that they represent the extensity of the substantive’s lexeme independently of number: a notion formed as a numerical ‘singular’, for example, may be found

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incident to maximum, intermediate, or minimum extensity. That is to say, unlike the bare substantive, whose extensity is implied by its number and usually brought out by some other element in the context, the articled substantive’s extensity is represented and expressed by the article, and its lexeme is incident to this support. Thus what distinguishes the articles is that they represent the extensity in abstracto; they represent nothing but that space to which the number-formed lexeme is to be made incident, but they represent it as an actualization of the lexeme’s extension. That is, as an actualized extensity, the articles depict a space equivalent to that occupied in the intended message by whatever the speaker is talking about by means of the noun phrase, the “extent of reference” as one grammarian describes it. As a consequence, with an article the actual extent of reference is seen as a particular extensity in relation to all other extensities made possible by the lexeme’s extension. This is what distinguishes the articles from quantifiers, demonstratives, possessives, etc. Generally considered to “determine” a noun phrase’s “kind of reference,” each of these determiners carries out this function in its own way, depending on its “own specialised meaning,” according to the grammars. That is, they all express some way of determining reference to the intended message, but in order to do this they must first provide a support for the substantive’s import. This is why Guillaume often calls them “completives”: like the article, other determiners permit the operation which completes the substantive’s morphogenesis, its internal incidence, and so function as the grammatical head of the noun phrase. However only the article expresses a determination as an actualization of the lexeme’s extension. The case of any and some is particularly intriguing in this respect. Although most grammarians and linguists consider that these two completives bring in a quantitative determination, there is little agreement about the quantity they express and, as a consequence, whether or not each should be considered one word. In this lesson any will be observed analytically from the theoretical point of view adopted here, namely that in tongue a word has one potential meaning which can never be expressed in discourse, and so never observed directly. All that can be observed directly are its actualizations, the different senses expressed by any, but the potential permitting them can be reconstructed by discerning the thread running through the different senses and reflecting on how they

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are related. Thus polysemy viewed as a manifestation of a word’s potential meaning, far from being an obstacle in analyzing a word, is rather a stepping stone to its meaning potential, the means of discerning the underlying unity of a word. The first task in this lesson will therefore be to observe the different senses of any (and those of some in the next lesson), what quantities it expresses in discourse. This phase of analysis proves more difficult than the corresponding phase with the articles because the latter represent something found in every substantive, its extensity, whereas any and some, as we shall see, are far less general since they represent the substantive’s quantity only insofar as it is viewed as a part, but they exploit all the quantitative relations between part and whole. These two determiners will first be observed in discourse in order to infer the meaning potential of each in tongue. This will permit the reconstitution of their system. Our analysis will lead to the claim that any and some are partitive quantifiers. ANY IN AFFIR MATIVE CONTEXTS

The quantitative sense any brings to a noun phrase can be most readily observed with any in affirmative sentences. To work out the quantity the speaker had in mind and represented by means of the quantifier, it is necessary to imagine for each example a situation in which the sentence might plausibly arise because no sentence, no genuine data, can exist without a speaker constructing it to express a real experience. The first examples have noun phrases with ‘singular’ substantives, where the quantity represented by the substantive’s number is constant. For example, the following sentence might well arise in typical university regulations: (1) Any student registering late will be charged a late fee.

Although this regulation applies to all students at that university, the intent of the writer is obviously to distinguish the subset of students who register late, however many they may be. In this use, therefore, any can be paraphrased1 ‘every’. The following example, which might arise when someone is doing a card trick, is quite different: (2) Pick any card, look at it, put it back ….

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It goes without saying that the set of cards from which one is to be picked consists of those cards displayed by the speaker. Equally obvious is the fact that the quantity intended is a single card out of the total set. Thus any here could not be paraphrased ‘every’ but rather by ‘a’ or ‘one’ or even ‘some’. These two ordinary examples show that any can express quite different quantitative senses: all the members of a given set, the total quantity, as opposed to a single member of a given set, the smallest quantity. That is to say, any is clearly polysemous, expressing now the greatest number possible, now the smallest number possible, out of a given quantity. The quantitative difference is so striking here that it is worth illustrating further, particularly since it provides grounds for an analysis which does not “attempt to derive all instances of any from a universal quantifier” (cf. Langacker 1991, 138). The following is a general comment on swimming pools: (3) But problems cling to pools, as any pool owner knows. (Sahlin, 29)

We again understand the ‘all-inclusive’ sense, ‘whoever owns a pool’. That is, even though the substantive itself is singular the support provided by any is broad enough to accommodate the whole set of owners with pools however numerous they may be. On the other hand, to help someone get to a particular place one might say: (4) Any policeman will be able to tell you.

According to Huddleston and Pullum (382) “there is a free choice as to which policeman can be selected, but no matter which policeman it is, that policeman will be able to tell you.” Again a set of policemen is understood (presumably those in the area where the person addressed is intending to go) but here the support provided by any can accommodate only one of them, the one eventually chosen. A third contrast of these two opposed quantitative senses, ‘all’ and ‘one’, is found in the next two examples. The following is a manufacturer’s instruction accompanying a set of computers furnished to a retailer: (5a) Any computer with a defective keyboard should be returned. (ibid.)

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Here, as in (1) and (3), there is the expressive effect of a yet-to-bedetermined subset of computers all of which are to be returned, an effect produced by the ‘singular’ substantive incident to its anysupport represented wide enough in scope to include them all, however many or few they may be, if there are any. On the other hand, a prospective user might make the following comment: (6) Any computer will do.

Here, as in (2) and (4), the any-support is restricted to one computer out of some set the speaker has in mind (those on the market or in the store or in the office) giving rise to the expressive effect of one yet-to-be-chosen out of those available. That is to say, any in these examples provides the ‘singular’ substantive with a support which either takes in all entities in the subset or is limited to only one among the implied set. Because the following example is ambiguous without any further indication of context or situation, it will help bring out these two opposing senses: (7) Ask any student you meet.

If the sentence is said to help someone new to a campus find the library, the speaker obviously has in mind a single student out of all those met, as in (4). On the other hand, if said to instruct someone who is to poll students on campus about some issue, the speaker would have in mind all, or as many as possible of, the students met. Examples like these bring out the importance of getting back to what the speaker had in mind when constructing the sentence in order to understand how the determiner is used. They are also useful in a teaching situation to help students grasp the range of meaning any can cover. Observing these two senses of any recalls what was seen when examining a: a ‘singular’ substantive can be made incident to different extensities depending on the support provided by the indefinite article. Unlike the indefinite article, however, any can provide a support for ‘plural’ substantives, as in: (5b) Any computers with a defective keyboard should be returned.

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Here as in (5a) the noun phrase expresses an ‘all-inclusive’ sense to designate whatever computers are found in the “defective keyboard” set. There is however a significant difference between the two: in this example any can be omitted without changing the quantity expressed. This is quite understandable if the substantive’s ‘plural’ -s is analyzed as representing the set the speaker has in mind, i.e. whatever quantity of computers the speaker envisages as possibly defective. In this case, unlike the case of (5a) with a ‘singular’ substantive, any with its ‘all-inclusive’ sense represents the same quantity as the substantive. Without the quantifier therefore the noun phrase would express the same thing quantity-wise, but the suggestion ‘however many there are, if there are any’ would be lacking. Similarly for a -ø substantive expressing an ‘unbounded’ notion, as in another example (ibid.): (8) Any remaining dirt will have to be removed.

It will be recalled that an ‘unbounded’ notion like ‘dirt’ here is quantified by -ø morpheme not as ‘singular’ but as ‘undefined continuate’, i.e. to depict whatever amount of dirt the speaker has in mind. Thanks to the support provided by any, wide enough to include all the substantive’s import, the noun phrase expresses ‘however much dirt there is, if any’. As with the -s substantive in (5b), any could be omitted here. If it were, the quantity expressed would not change but there would be no ‘existential’ nuance, no suggestion that there may be a lot, a little or none. By bringing out the fact that any can express different quantities, ‘all-inclusive’ and ‘one’, the above examples show that it depicts its quantity as equal to or part of another quantity. They also show that it represents its quantity as a possibility, as somehow hypothetical. This is why the ‘totality’ sense is paraphrased ‘however many or much’, and the ‘single individual’ sense ‘yet-to-bechosen’. Thus when any and some are said to “express existential quantification” (Huddleston and Pullum, 380), one understands that any represents a variable quantity which is existentially hypothetical in some way. (It will be seen in the next lesson that some expresses “existential quantification” in a different way.) The above considerations will also help explain why, in other uses, any is restricted to non-assertive contexts.

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Grammars often point out that any is found mainly in negative, interrogative, conditional and other such non-assertive or nonaffirmative contexts (cf. Huddleston and Pullum, 834–8), and in this is opposed to some, found in assertive contexts. This contextual contrast, which for some grammarians makes the two quantifiers a pair of “polarity-sensitive” items, is common with -ø substantives expressing an ‘unbounded’ notion, as in: (9a) I didn’t buy any sugar. (9b) I bought some sugar.

and with ‘plural’ substantives: (10a) Do they need any chairs? (10b) Do they need some chairs?

The quantity expressed by the two quantifiers here is not readily characterized. According to Quirk et al. (783–4) “The primary difference between some and any … is that some is specific, though unspecified while any is nonspecific. That is, some implies an amount or number that is known to the speaker.” Even granted that any is “nonspecific,” it remains to discern what quantity it expresses. Huddleston and Pullum (380–1) call this use “non-proportional” because it is “not concerned with a subset … belonging to a certain larger set. There is accordingly no ‘not all’ implicature.” That is to say, any in this use (we will discuss some later) does not express a quantity as a proportion of another, greater quantity. But what quantity does it express? As a quantifier it must represent and express some quantity. In a detailed study of the two quantifiers, Sahlin (90) attributes to any in this use “a light quantitative sense,” but again, what quantity is involved? The fact that any here depicts a quantity which is not part of another, greater quantity, one that is not a subset or lesser amount, suggests a different possibility, namely that it expresses a quantity equivalent to another quantity. That is, perhaps the difficulty in describing what quantity any expresses in the above two “nonproportional” examples arises from the fact that they really are “proportional” since they express a relation, a relation of equality

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between the set or amount the speaker has in mind and the quantity expressed by any. If so, this would imply that the substantive itself represents, through number, this other quantity and that the quantifier provides a support sufficiently broad in scope to accommodate just this quantity. What has just been proposed amounts to claiming that in the above two examples any represents the same quantity as that represented in the substantives, by ‘intermediate quantity’ -ø in (9a) and by ‘plural’ -s (10a). Assuming (9a) to be said by someone who has just returned from doing the week’s grocery shopping, one would understand sugar to represent the amount the speaker has in mind, i.e. the amount one would normally buy, and any to provide a support for just this quantity. Similarly, in (10a), depending on the situation – whether the speaker has in mind friends moving into an unfurnished apartment, the organizers of a concert, etc. – the -s of chairs quantifies what the speaker has in mind, and again any represents a support with a scope equivalent to this quantity. In each case, as in previous examples, any presents its support as possible, as hypothetical. This manner of interpreting any in (9a) and (10a) – as representing the total quantity represented by the substantive – is similar to the ‘all-inclusive’ uses in (8) and (5b). Notwithstanding their assertive contexts, dirt and computers represent the total quantity of what the speaker has in mind and the quantifier’s support has an equivalent scope. Noteworthy here is the fact that the non-assertive uses (9a) and (10a) exhibit the same syntactic possibility that was observed in (8) and (5b), namely that the quantifier can be omitted without affecting the quantity expressed: (9c) I didn’t buy sugar. (10c) Do they need chairs?

Moreover this can be explained in the same way: if the quantifier in these four uses expresses the same quantity as the substantive, its omission does not alter the quantity expressed. There is however a difference between the two contexts. In the non-assertive contexts of negative (9a) and interrogative (10a) there is no suggestion of the ‘however much/many that may be’ nuance observed in (5b) and (8) because in non-assertive contexts any hypothesizes the very existence of the quantity expressed by the substantive, as we will see

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in the next lesson when we compare it with some. Moreover if the analysis of these non-assertive examples is valid, namely that the quantity any expresses coincides with the quantity represented by -ø and -s in the substantive, this would explain why, in the nonassertive examples, any is, as Sahlin (90) puts it, “weakly quantitative” and why it is considered “nonspecific”: it brings no new quantitative information to the noun phrase. This use in non-assertive contexts is quite frequent with ‘unbounded’ and ‘plural’ substantives but with ‘singular’ substantives is “relatively uncommon,” according to Huddleston and Pullum (381), who give the following example, presumably addressed to someone expecting to be offered a day’s work: (11) I haven’t got any job lined up for you today, I’m afraid.

In a situation where some job had been expected, any can depict its existence as one possibility among the set of jobs that might have been offered – a possibility whose existence is negated by the verb so that the meaning of the sentence is one of ‘non-existence’. That is, the quantifier expresses its minimal quantity sense here, ‘one’, equivalent to the quantity expressed by the substantive, and so, aside from the hypothesizing nuance of any, it could be replaced with the indefinite article expressing the substantive’s minimal extensity. On the other hand, the ‘one-possibility-yet-to-be-chosen’ expressive effect, observed in the assertive contexts of (2), (4), and (6), is declared non-existent in (11), i.e. the ‘one-of-the-possibilitiesexpected’ effect is negated. A different use with a ‘singular’ substantive is found in the following example: (12) I haven’t got any car.

which might arise as “an emphatic riposte to someone who thinks I do have a car” (Huddleston and Pullum, 382). Although the substantive here is ‘singular’ and, as in (11), any expresses its ‘one’ sense, the “notion of random choice … is … absent altogether” (cf. Langacker 1991, 138). The reason for this is that the set the speaker has in mind does not include a number of possible cars but only one, and by evoking this one as a possibility the speaker evokes the whole set. The same explanation applies to the following example:

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(13) No wonder this apartment is not expensive. There isn’t any kitchen in it.

Since in an apartment one expects to find a kitchen, only one, the speaker has in mind a set of one. Again the subset is equivalent to the set, but since this is a ‘singular’ substantive the determiner cannot be omitted. Through the negative verb the sentence denies the existence of this expected kitchen represented simply as a possibility by any. As in previous non-assertive uses we find any evoking a quantity equal to the total quantity the speaker has in mind, but here the total quantity is minimal, one. Examples so far have shown that any can express the quantity of its substantive in two ways: as one or as all of the entities the speaker has in mind. Grammarians have observed a third way it can express quantity. A THIRD SENSE

Huddleston and Pullum (381–2) contrast the “non-proportional” uses of any in non-assertive contexts like those just examined with its “proportional” uses, where “we are concerned with quantity relative to some larger set, so that there is a clear ‘not all’ (and indeed ‘not most’) implicature.” This suggests a third ‘quantity’ sense for any, a sense which is neither ‘every, all that the speaker has in mind’ nor ‘one out of those the speaker has in mind’. Examples from Sahlin (98–9) will illustrate this ‘not all but at least a few’ reading for ‘plural’ substantives: (14) The closest scrutiny is owed to the Anglo-Saxon kennings and the Homeric epithets; if any words or phrases are formulaic, they will be.

The expressive effect here is that of a possibly existing type: ‘if there really are words and phrases of this type’. In this example the ‘plural’ substantives each represent a relatively small set and the quantifier provides a support for it as a possible part or subset of a greater set, the whole set of words and of phrases. That is, the very fact of distinguishing one type or subset of words (formulaic words) implies the existence of other types, or at least one other (nonformulaic words), and by the same token a general set or category

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(words). A similar analysis applies to the following question, which might arise with stressed any after an unsuccessful search: (15) Are there any categories into which we can fit these?

The effect of any is to depict a subset of categories, a possible subset that may be found by further searching. From the point of view of quantity expressed, the significant thing here as in (14) is that any has neither its ‘totality’ sense nor its ‘one’ sense but some ‘intermediate quantity’ sense. The contrast with unstressed any helps bring out this ‘intermediate quantity’ sense. Thus one might ask the following question with or without dominant stress on the quantifier: (16) Does he have any good qualities?

With unstressed any this would be an ordinary question for information concerning the good qualities one would expect to find in a person. In this reading as in the chair example (10a), the -s morpheme forms the lexeme quantity-wise to correspond with this expected set and any depicts a support commensurate with it, with the consequence that it could be omitted. On the other hand, with dominant stress on any the expressive effect would be ‘even a few’.2 That is, the substantive is formed to include a very small proportion of what one would normally expect of good qualities in a person, and any provides a commensurate support to express this sense of a smaller subset. In this case, of course, any could not be omitted. The same ‘intermediate quantity’ sense is found with an ‘unbounded’ notion but the expressive effect is slightly different: (17) … inconsistent with what is termed political realism. But if any realism and feeling for truth remain in the General Assembly, it is time for …

This suggests the possibility of a small amount: ‘if the least bit of realism and feeling for truth still exists …’. Again this quantity is depicted as only a part or subamount of what existed before (or perhaps of what one would expect). That is, the -ø substantives represent a modicum of ‘realism’ and ‘feeling’ for which any provides a support that both relates this import to the larger amount

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implied and represents its existence as hypothetical. Quantity-wise, any expresses, not the ‘however much’ sense of any remaining dirt in (8) or the ‘expected amount’ sense of any sugar in (9a) but a ‘even a little’ or ‘modicum’ sense. This is not the same as the ‘one’ sense of any card in (2), which, obviously, is found only with ‘bounded’ substantives, never with ‘unbounded’ substantives. In these examples of any with a ‘not all but at least some’ interpretation, the quantifier would take greater stress than its substantive, in contrast with its use with sugar in (9a), chairs in (10a), and job in (11), where it is unstressed. Discerning the stress pattern of a noun phrase complicates the task since varying the stress of any categories in (15) and any good qualities in (16) can give different readings. Since stress distinctions are accompanied by a vowel change in some they will be treated in the next lesson, but before going on to examine the other quantifier the analysis of any remains to be completed. QUANTITIES EXPRESSED BY ANY

The aim so far has been to observe the quantity expressed by any in different uses and it is time to summarize findings. This can best be done by regrouping the above examples from the point of view of word context, that is, according to whether the substantive has been formed by the system of number as ‘singular’ or as ‘plural’ or neither, the case of ‘unbounded’ notions. Examples with a ‘singular’ substantive are: (6)

Any computer will do. (also in (2) any card and in (4) any policeman) (11) I haven’t got any job lined up for you today, I’m afraid. (12) I haven’t got any car. (also in (13) any kitchen)

Here any expresses the sense of ‘one’ out of an implied set. In (6), (2), and (4) it is one out of the set to be chosen from, in (11) it is one not available out of the set of possible jobs, and in (12) and (13) it is one not existing out of an expected set of one. That is, in each such case any represents a support for the ‘singular’ substantive’s import, a support for only one entity out of the set, whether the set consists of a number of items or only one. The substantive is again ‘singular’ in:

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(5a) Any computer with a defective keyboard should be returned. (also in (1) any student and in (3) any pool owner)

Here however the sense expressed is ‘every’. That is, any represents a support for the ‘singular’ substantive’s import, a support extending to all items in the implied set, however many they may be. Thus with ‘singular’ substantives any expresses either a ‘one’ or an ‘every’ sense. With ‘plural’ substantives, any again expresses the totality of a possible set: (5b) Any computers with a defective keyboard should be returned. (10a) Do they need any chairs? (also in (15) any categories and in (16) any good qualities, both unstressed)

With its ‘more than one’, ‘intermediate quantity’ import the -s substantive represents the set the speaker has in mind, vague though it may be, and the any-support is wide enough to include it all. That is, with both computers and chairs, any represents a support commensurate with the substantive’s import, which is itself commensurate with the total set the speaker has in mind. As a consequence, any could be omitted. This is not the case in: (14) … if any words or phrases are formulaic, they will be. (also in (15) any categories and in (16) any good qualities, both stressed)

Stressed any here expresses a subset constituting a type of word or phrase as part of the implied set of words or phrases in general. That is, any represents a support for the substantive’s import which is a portion, neither maximum nor minimum, of the implied set. Thus with a ‘plural’ substantive, any expresses its quantity as such or as a subset of a greater implied set. A substantive importing an ‘unbounded’ notion depicts an amount, not a set, and so is formed by the system of number neither as a ‘singular’ nor as a ‘plural’ but as an undetermined quantity, as already seen. Here as well two senses of any were observed, the first in: (8) Any remaining dirt will have to be removed. (9a) I didn’t buy any sugar.

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The -ø substantive represents the total amount the speaker has in mind, whatever its magnitude, and the any-support is extensive enough to accommodate this. Because quantifier and substantive here represent the same quantity, the quantifier could be omitted and the quantity spoken about would still be expressed. A different sense is observed in: (15) … if any realism and feeling for truth remain in the General Assembly….

Here any expresses a subamount or modicum of a greater, implied amount. That is, any represents a support for the substantives’ import, which is a small portion of the implied amount. Thus with an ‘unbounded’ substantive, any expresses its quantity as such or as a subamount of a greater implied amount. Although this process of observing the quantity expressed by any is laborious because of the many factors involved – assertive vs. non-assertive contexts, -ø vs. -s substantives, ‘unbounded’ vs. ‘bounded’ notions, stress – it does show that any can express different quantities in relation to another, often implied quantity. To help discern the quantity expressed more clearly, descriptive expressions such as “all inclusive,” “however many,” “very small,” and the like have been used. Such expressions are certainly useful to paraphrase the expressive effect in given examples but to discern the potential meaning of any it will be helpful to use more general, analytical terms, terms which suggest the relationships relating any’s different senses. So the expression “maximum quantity” will be used to speak of any expressing an amount or set equal to the other, implied or expressed, quantity; “intermediate quantity” will be used to speak of any expressing a subamount or subset smaller than the implied quantity; and “minimum quantity” will be used to speak of any expressing a subset of one out of the implied quantity. Finally, it will make things still clearer if, instead of speaking of the subset/set relation with ‘bounded’ substantives and the subamount/amount relation with ‘unbounded’ substantives, the two are subsumed in a more general relationship and any is considered in terms of part and whole, it being understood that a part can vary in size from the smallest possible (one in the case of ‘bounded’ lexemes) to the greatest possible (equal to the whole).

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All this leads to viewing any not just as a quantifier but as a partitive quantifier because in all uses the quantity represented by any is depicted as part of a whole, i.e. in relation to another, often implied, quantity. As a part, the quantity expressed by any can be of different magnitudes limited only by the size of the whole (a part cannot be greater than the whole) and by the need to be positive in quantity (zero quantity cannot be a part). This explains why the quantity expressed varies from ‘every’ or ‘all’ right down to ‘one’, or, as one dictionary puts it, “one, some, or all indiscriminately of whatever quantity” (Webster’s Third, s. v. any). THE POTENTIAL MEANING OF ANY

These general observations of what any expresses in discourse make it possible to describe its potential meaning, its permanent meaning in tongue permitting all its uses. Although this lesson has focused on its uses as a completive, i.e. as the support of a substantive in a noun phrase, in its suppletive uses as a pronoun any can also express different quantities and, with an of phrase expressing the whole, its role as a partitive is even more evident, as in: (18) If any of the words or phrases are formulaic … (19) Pick any of the cards, look at it ….

An attempt can therefore be made to characterize the hidden meaning potential of any in the light of uses examined above and of what was brought out about a potential meaning in former lessons: it is inherently dynamic, permitting an operation of actualization. The observed polysemy of any leads to the assumption that, as in the case of the articles and the number morphemes, its potential meaning is dynamic. That is, it offers the possibility of a mental operation of representation which can be held up at whatever point best corresponds with what the speaker intends it to express. This operation extends, as in the case of the system of number, through the field of quantity, but in the case of any it is the field of quantityseen-as-a-part. The limits of this field are therefore determined by the part/whole relationship: on the one hand the quantity of a part cannot be greater than the whole the speaker has in mind, and on the other hand a part can be as small quantity-wise as the notion permits. This leads us to propose the following diagram to depict the meaning of any in tongue:

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any any …………………………………………

M M

I I

m m

This diagram is intended to suggest that any in tongue offers the possibility of a movement (the dotted vector) through the field of quantity-seen-as-a-part beginning with the greatest possible quantity (equivalent to the whole) and extendable to the smallest possible quantity (a single entity for ‘bounded’ notions3). To obtain the actualized meaning required in discourse this operation can be intercepted at its beginning to represent a maximum quantity (M), somewhere in its middle to represent an intermediate quantity (I), or at its end to represent a minimum quantity (m). In this way the observed polysemy of any in discourse can be explained as the consequence of its unchanging potential meaning in tongue. The view of any presented so far does not attempt to account for its “existential import,” the curious hypothesizing effect observable in all its uses. This will be discussed once some has been examined because some contrasts with any in this respect. The next lesson, then, will focus on some to see how it both resembles and differs from any and to discern its potential meaning. After exploring the relations between the two determiners, their system will be described.

LESSON FIFTEEN

Some and the System Unstressed some, although it is sometimes considered a plural article, actually keeps its quantifying function, and indicates reference to a specifiable (though indefinite) quantity or amount. Quirk et al., 275

QUANTITIES EXPRESSED BY SOME

The examination of any as a completive pronoun in the last lesson will make it easier to observe both the different quantities some expresses and its partitive effect. Thus examples like the following from Sahlin have the clear “selective” sense of ‘a certain number but not all’, similar to “proportional” uses observed with any. (1) They had divided the Congo into six provinces – Leopoldville, Kasai, Kivu, Katanga, Equator and Eastern – unfortunately with little regard for ethnic groupings. Thus some provinces contained tribes which detested each other, and to them independence meant an opportunity for war. (2) … individual libraries in any area might join or not, as they saw fit. Some library boards are wary of the plan.

Some here represents the quantity of provinces and library boards as a subset or part of the total sets constituted by six provinces and all the boards implied by individual libraries in any area. (To be noted in passing is the use of ‘all-inclusive’ any in (2) to evoke every area included in the plan.) This sense of some also comes out clearly in the following example with an ‘unbounded’ notion:

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(3) What hurts most is the damage the automobile has done to central-city retailing …. Some retailing, of course, always spreads with the population.

The portion of retailing expressed by the noun phrase is only a part of the central-city retailing represented in the preceding sentence. Similarly in: (4) It was not broken by hunger, because some food did get into the township, though not enough.

the amount of food expressed by the noun phrase is only part of the amount expressed by enough. In these examples, then, some represents the quantity of its substantive as a subset or portion of a larger set or amount. In most cases the larger set is not explicitly evoked. Thus in an ordinary remark like: (5) You’d better check your flight, because some flights have been cancelled.

some flights expresses only a part of the total set of flights the speaker has in mind, say all the scheduled flights from the local airport in the case of bad weather, or all those of a particular airlines in the case of a strike. This total set may vary in size, as we see in other examples from Sahlin: (6) Some women get a thrill out of housework. (7) Some gems are hard but the majority are soft.

In these sentences the speakers evidently have in mind women or gems in general. Wanting to talk about a subset of them, however, they represent this smaller quantity by means of the ‘plural’ substantive and, thanks to some, depict this quantity as a part of the greater implied whole. The remainder of the total set is represented by the majority in (7), but is left implicit in (6). When the total set or whole is not expressed different elements in the context or situation provide clues of what the speaker has

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in mind. The tense of the verb is indicative in ordinary examples like the following: (8a) Some dogs are hard to train. (8b) Some dogs were hard to train.

Without more context in the first example, we can only assume that the speaker had in mind ‘dogs in general’ but in the second, because it is restricted to a given moment in the past, we understand that only a limited set of dogs is implied as the whole. Examples like these bring out once again the importance of getting back to what the speaker had in mind when constructing the sentence in order to provide a satisfactory explanation of usage. In the foregoing examples some represents the quantity expressed by the substantive as part of a greater whole. The same is true of the following examples, but the quantity expressed, the size of the part, is not the same: (9) I saw it in some newspaper. (10) I suppose I am missing some elementary point but I honestly cannot see how two wrongs can make a right. (11) Some day, many years in the future, true spacecraft will ….

The expressive effect of the noun phrase here is ‘one, I don’t know (or it doesn’t matter) which’. It arises because the ‘singular’ quantity of the substantive is represented by some as a part, a minimal part, of the implied set of newspapers (those I have read recently), of elementary points (those implied in the discussion), of days (those arising many years in the future). Although the quantity expressed in these examples, ‘one out of a larger number’, is the same as that expressed by any in the ‘free choice’ uses examined in the last lesson (Pick any card), the expressive effect here is not the same. The difference between them will be discussed below. This use of a some-phrase to designate one out of a larger set can take on a depreciative nuance, as in: (12) She’s writing some book or other.

In situations where the speaker would be expected to take enough interest to know about the particular entity, the sense of

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‘one I don’t know which’ implies ‘and I don’t care which’. When the substantive is a proper noun, as in: (13) There’s some Mr. Martin here to see you.

this nuance is even more marked, ‘one out of all those called Martin’, as though one were treating someone’s name as a common noun. A curious use of some to suggest ‘approximately’ can perhaps be analyzed in the light of these examples depicting a single entity as part of a set. This is found in expressions with a numeral like some twenty houses suggesting ‘around twenty’. The effect of making twenty houses incident to some is to treat it as a single quantity and to present this quantity as part of a greater whole, as merely one quantity among other quantities, whence the suggestion that ‘it might be twenty or nineteen or twenty-one, etc.’ It remains however that the noun phrase expresses its quantity as ‘plural’ (Some twenty houses were …) so that even this manner of analyzing the use is questionable. It can perhaps be clarified through examining the relation of the numeral with its substantive. Examples so far have shown that some can express its quantity as either a minimal part, ‘one’, or as an intermediate part, ‘a number or amount of, but not all of’. In the following example it expresses neither of these senses: (14) There are some letters for you.

This is the unstressed use of some, where “we are not concerned with a subset of letters belonging to a certain larger set” (Huddleston and Pullum, 380), and where some “is sometimes considered a plural article, [but] actually keeps its quantifying function” (Quirk et al, 275). The quantity some expresses here is indefinite, something like ‘a number of’. The interesting syntactic fact in this use is that some can be omitted with little change in meaning. The same thing has already been observed with a similar use of unstressed any, and this was explained by interpreting the quantifier as depicting a part equivalent in size to the whole the speaker has in mind. The same interpretation applies here as well: letters represents the total quantity the speaker has in mind and some provides ‘letters’ with a support equal in quantity to this whole. That is, some does “nothing more than

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express the size of the set of entities denoted by the nominal” (Milsark, 23). What Sahlin calls the “slightly quantifying” effect of some here thus arises from it representing the substantive’s quantity as a maximum part commensurate with the totality the speaker has in mind. Here, as in its other uses, some represents the substantive’s quantity by situating it in a part-whole relationship. What distinguishes this unstressed use from the others is that the subset is equal to the set the speaker has in mind, i.e. the part is equivalent to the whole. For this reason some here, like any in negative contexts of this type, does not suggest that there is a greater quantity implied, “a certain larger set,” and so it can be omitted. Thus in a way, some does play the role of an article here but with an added quantifying effect. The difference between stressed and unstressed uses can be brought out by the following ambiguous example: (15) I’ve found some glasses in the cupboard.

If unstressed here, some would have the “slightly quantifying” effect of ‘a number of’, suggesting the number I was looking for. If some were stressed here, however, the sense expressed would be ‘a certain number but not all I need’. Here, some depicts the number expressed by ‘glasses’ as fewer than the implied number of glasses looked for. The effect of stressed uses like this, sometimes described as “selective” or “contrastive,” brings out the partitive nature of some more clearly than unstressed uses, where part and whole do not differ quantitatively. The same difference between stressed and unstressed uses is observable with substantives expressing an ‘unbounded’ notion. The following sentence, spoken with unstressed some, might arise when someone notices that the floor next to the refrigerator is damp: (16) There must be some water under there.

Here, the speaker imagines a certain amount of water under the refrigerator as the cause of the dampness and depicts it by means of the -ø substantive water. Some then represents this as a portion equal in quantity to what had been imagined. A similar sentence but with stressed some might be said by someone digging a well. The interpretation would then be ‘at least a little water, if not as much as I had expected’ because some depicts the amount

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represented by the -ø morpheme of water as expressing only a small part of the expected whole. The fact that unstressed some can be omitted indicates that its role as a determiner can be played by the bare substantive. There is however a slight difference of meaning between sentences like the following, a difference which provides evidence for the analysis just presented: (17a) Would you like coffee or tea? (17b) Would you like some coffee or some tea?

According to Quirk et al. (275–6) the distinction here “is between the categorial meaning of zero, and the quantitative meaning of some.” That is to say, in (17a) the bare substantives, thanks to their ‘unbounded’ notions, name the “kinds of drink,” the nature of what is being talked about. They also represent its quantity through the system of number – in this case, as was seen in a previous lesson, intercepting the -ø movement at some point before its end represents an indeterminate amount. With unstressed some, however, “the focus changes to whatever quantities of tea and coffee … the speaker has in mind” because some “keeps its quantifying function and indicates reference to a specifiable (though indefinite) quantity or amount.” Although the quantity expressed or implied does not vary, it remains that there is a difference between the two examples, a slight shift in impression, “more a matter of focus than of clear contrast of meaning.” As a consequence, one would be more likely to use some when actually serving, whereas the question with the bare substantive would be more appropriate before preparing the beverages. THE POTENTIAL MEANING OF SOME

The above discussion has brought out that a noun phrase with some represents a support for the substantive depicting the substantive’s quantity as part of a whole, a whole which may be expressed, usually the case with suppletive some (as in some of the apples) but with completive some often just implied by the context or situation. The size of the part varies: “being always at least one, but often a few and sometimes all of” (Webster’s Third, s.v. some). That is, out of the whole, the total quantity, some can express a minimum subset of

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one (as in (9) in some newspaper), an intermediate subset or amount (as in (1) some provinces or (3) some retailing), and when unstressed a maximum subset or amount equivalent to the total (as in (14) some letters or (17b) some coffee). Like any, therefore, some can express all the quantitative relations between part and whole, and in this sense is also a partitive quantifier. This polysemy is, as always, a valuable clue in discerning the meaning in tongue permitting the different senses since it indicates both what is constant (the representation of quantity as a part) what is variable (the magnitude of the quantity), and the limits of this variation (the greatest possible part and smallest possible part). The operational principle inherent in the notion of potentiality leads to the proposal that the potential meaning of some is the possibility of a movement through the field of the total quantity or whole from a point corresponding to the minimum quantity (m), through points corresponding to intermediate quantities (I), to the point corresponding to maximum quantity (M), a movement which the mind can intercept at whatever point corresponds best to the speaker’s intended message. In a diagram:

some some ....…...……………………………………

m m

II

M M

In this diagram, the dotted vector is intended to suggest the possibility of a movement inherent in the potential meaning of some. While m (minimum) and M (maximum) represent respectively the beginning and end points of the movement, I (intermediate) stands for any point between these two. A comparison of the two quantifiers below will show why the movement proposed here, from smallest to greatest, is the reverse of that proposed for any in the last lesson. The three quantitative senses of the noun phrase observed in the examples above are the only possible actualizations of the meaning potential proposed for some. They are actualized by intercepting its movement at different points: at its beginning point giving rise to the ‘one’ sense (with its ‘I don’t know which’ effect), at some intermediate point giving the ‘a certain number/amount but not all’ sense (with its “selective” or “contrastive” effect), at its end point giving the

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‘part equal to the whole’ sense (with a ‘lightly quantifying’ effect). Since anything less than a minimum quantity (m) would imply no part, and anything greater than a maximum quantity (M) would imply that it is not a part (a part cannot be bigger than the whole of which it is a part), all possible quantities seen as parts can be represented by the above meaning potential proposed for some. These different senses are expressed by some as a completive, i.e. as a determiner that provides a support permitting the substantive to complete its morphogenesis, but the same variation is not found when it is used as a suppletive, i.e. as a pronoun that is used in the place of a substantive. In its frequent suppletive uses with of, it is the of-phrase which expresses the whole, and the sense of ‘a part smaller than the whole’ comes out clearly with ‘plural’, ‘unbounded’, and even ‘singular’ substantives as in: (18) I used some of the eggs in an omelette. (19) Some of the wine is ready. (20) Some of the island is sand and not suitable for living.

Even without an of-phrase, suppletive some expresses its quantity as a part of a greater whole, as in the following description of the colouring of snake skins: (21) Some are annular, some are reticulated, some are dotted and some are akin to spirals.

Similarly, in the following example of what is sometimes called the “absolute” use: (22) Some say he has left the country.

the whole set is left implicit, but the sense is quite clear: ‘a certain number among those who have an opinion on the topic’.1 On the other hand, the unstressed use with its ‘part equal to the whole’ sense giving the “slightly quantifying” effect is not found with suppletive some. Neither is the ‘one part out of a number’ sense found with the suppletive – nothing like the following example cited in the oed from a seventeenth century text: (23) All such sins being easily reducible to some of the former three.

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Thus some is more versatile in its completive uses than in its suppletive uses. In both roles, however, it is, like any, a partitive quantifier. Like any also, some as a completive can represent a quantity as a minimum, intermediate, or maximum part of a whole, a parallelism to be discussed below. These fundamental similarities are a clear indication that the two determiners constitute a system. On the other hand, when it comes to a ‘minimum’ representation the expressive effect is not the same: any gives a ‘free choice’ effect (Ask any doctor) whereas some gives a ‘one I don’t know which’ effect (in some newspaper). There is an even more striking difference between the two quantifiers when they have a ‘maximum’ representation: because of its uses expressing ‘every’, ‘all whatever’, any is often considered a “universal quantifier” whereas some is never characterized in this way because it cannot express a sense similar to ‘every’ or ‘all’. These differences call for an explanation but this can be provided only after the place each quantifier occupies in the system is determined. To do this calls for examining the different contexts in which each is found and trying to discern the conditions governing this syntactic distribution. ANY VS. SOME: EXISTENTIAL IMPORT

The remarkable similarity just observed between the two quantifiers is a clear indication that they belong to the same system of representation, but it raises another problem. If they can represent the same range of quantities but are not interchangeable in usage, they must somehow represent these quantities differently. As mentioned in many grammars, some is the usual form in positive sentences, any in negative sentences, and both forms are common in interrogative sentences and if-clauses. This syntactic distribution, which leads some grammarians to consider the two determiners as an alternating or suppletive pair, is both a further reason for assuming that they form a small system and a means of bringing into focus how to approach the problem of what distinguishes the two. Since, as seen in previous lessons, it is the meaning of a word which determines its syntactic behaviour, what in the meaning of each quantifier conditions its use in this particular way? How does the meaning of some predispose it for expressing quantity in positive contexts? How does the meaning of any predispose it for use in negative contexts? Why do they bring slightly different

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meanings to questions and if-clauses? Besides explaining usage in their typical syntactic environments, the answer to these questions must also explain why, on occasion, we find some in negative contexts (e.g. I didn’t understand some words in this paragraph.) and, far more frequently, any in positive contexts as in many of the examples examined in the previous lesson. That is, it should be possible to explain all the uses of a determiner in terms of its one potential meaning if the postulate that meaning preconditions usage is valid. The first problem is the use of some in positive contexts and any in negative contexts, as in: (24a) I bought some apples. (24b) I didn’t buy any apples.

It has been suggested by different scholars that what distinguishes the two quantifiers here is their “existential import,” some expressing the existence of whatever it quantifies, and any its non-existence. This is a valuable insight because it indicates a path to be explored, but it requires a certain refinement in the light of examples of interrogative sentences like the following: (25a) Would you like any more of this pudding? (25b) Would you like some more of this pudding?

With any, according to Poutsma (1916, 1204), the speaker is expecting “a negative answer” (perhaps because the pudding is not very good), but with some it “seems to elicit an affirmative answer” on the part of the person addressed. (If the speaker were a waiter in a restaurant, the question with any would be quite surprising.) So here it is not just a question of existence vs. non-existence but rather a matter of the speaker sizing up the situation in terms of the probability of the other wanting more pudding: in the mind of the speaker the existence in the mind of the person addressed of morepudding-wanted is either unlikely (any) or likely (some). Something similar has been observed by Kruisinga and Erades (577) for usage in if-clauses, as in: (26a) If you find some mistakes in my translation, don’t be angry. (26b) If you find any mistakes in my translation, don’t be angry.

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The sentence with some suggests that “the speaker is afraid there will be some mistakes,” the expressive effect being that the existence of mistakes is quite likely. However in the sentence with any “the speaker does not know whether there are any mistakes,” i.e. ‘there may or may not be mistakes’. The distinction between the two sentences seems to be between what appears probable to the speaker (some) as opposed to what appears possible (any), an expressive effect slightly different from the ‘unlikely’ effect of example (25). The following example of any in a positive sentence provides yet another expressive effect: (27) It was little short of a miracle that any passengers in the train escaped with their lives. (Poutsma 1916, 1058)

Here it is clear that some in the train did escape but this fact is presented as surprising, most unlikely. That is, any evokes something that is possible, since it exists, but only barely possible, practically impossible. In these contests, then, the quantity expressed by any is seen in different lights: as ‘negated, not existing’ (any apples), as ‘probably not existing’ (any more pudding), as ‘perhaps existing’ (any mistakes), and as ‘quite unexpectedly existing’ (any passengers). The fact that any is capable of expressing different degrees of possibility, according to the context, suggests that it simply represents its quantity as possible, as having virtual or potential existence. The key point here is that any neither affirms nor denies the existence of its quantity but leaves both the existence and the non-existence options open. It is other elements in the context which bring out one or the other option: didn’t buy implies ‘not existing as a purchase’ whereas little short of a miracle implies ‘quite unexpectedly existing’. Or again the context may be such as to leave both options open: any with do you want implies ‘probably not existing as a want’ whereas with if it implies ‘perhaps existing’. That is to say, any permits the speaker to represent a quantity in terms of hypothetical existence, before its existential status is settled, with the result that in a negative context it is the non-existence option which is brought out, in positive contexts the existence option, and in questions and if-clauses both options are left open. On the other hand, some is found in sentences where its quantity is seen in terms of real existence. That is, it is expressed in an if-clause or a question as ‘probably existing’ (If you find some

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mistakes …, Do you want some pudding) whereas in a positive context (I bought some apples) the expressive effect is ‘actually existing’. Whatever the context, then, it appears that some represents its quantity in terms of real or presumed real existence. This brief summary of usage gives a clear contrast between the two determiners: any represents quantity as hypothetical, some as real.2 Before examining what this distinction implies on the level of the system, it will be useful to look at a few more examples to illustrate the difference: (28) This is the first time that any accident has happened.

The positive context here tells us that the accident did happen, that it is real, but the fact that it is the first time indicates that it could have happened on other occasions but never did, and so is seen as quite out of the ordinary, unexpected, unlikely. In this respect this example resembles (27), but quantity-wise, it expresses a single accident, whereas any in the previous example expresses an indefinite number of persons among those on the train. In the following example referring to the proofs of a book or article, any expresses possible existence, ‘if there are any’: (29) Any changes could be made in proof. (Sahlin, 22)

Here the determiner has its maximum reading (= ‘whatever changes may be necessary’, ‘all’), representing the whole set of changes as hypothetical, as perhaps not existing, since there may be no changes required. This is very different from: (30) Ask any doctor and he will tell you that ….

a sentence that might arise when one advises someone to check an opinion with a doctor. Here any expresses a minimal quantity, ‘one’, out of the implied set of doctors one might consult. This is a ‘free choice’ use where any does not hypothesize the existence of the implied whole as in (29), but merely the identity of the one to be asked. Which particular doctor will be asked, or even if one will be asked, remains unknown, hypothetical. In the uses of some this hypothetical element is not present: (31) I asked some doctor and he told me that ….

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Here the determiner again expresses one out of the implied set of available doctors (presumably those in the area where the speaker was), but expresses it as a real, even if unspecified, person. As a consequence, the suggestion is ‘one, I don’t remember (or care) which’. The use of some in negative sentences is instructive because it brings out the fact that it is used because of its meaning and not because of the context. Thus in: (32) I didn’t understand some words in this paragraph

the quantifier tells us that even though certain words in the paragraph were not understood, they are real, they do exist. The example remains ambiguous, however, as long as there is no indication of the degree of stress on some. If unstressed, some simply quantifies the set of words evoked by the substantive as equivalent to the set the speaker has in mind. If stressed, some would quantify a subset out of the total set of words in the paragraph, giving a “contrastive” reading and implying ‘but I did understand most of them’. As seen above, both determiners are found in questions with a nuance of meaning separating the resulting sentences: ‘unlikely, negative answer expected’ (25a) vs. ‘likely, affirmative answer expected’ (25b). A somewhat similar distinction can be observed in comparing the following pair: (33a) Are you expecting any visitors? (33b) Are you expecting some visitors?

Where the first is merely a question of information, implying ‘maybe yes, maybe no’, the second gives a clear indication that the speaker, perhaps observing special preparations, has reason to expect an affirmative answer. Similarly for the following pair, which might arise when, arriving home with the week’s grocery shopping, one cannot find the butter: (34a) Didn’t we buy any butter? (34b) Didn’t we buy some butter?

With any the question implies that perhaps they forgot to buy butter, but with some the speaker has the impression they really did purchase butter.

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This discussion should make it clear both why any is so frequently found in negative contexts and why some arises mainly in positive contexts: by presenting its quantity as ‘hypothetical’ any leaves open the option of denying its existence by the negation whereas some presents its quantity as ‘real’, and this is affirmed by the rest of the sentence. Furthermore, granted that the degree of likelihood expressed in questions and conditional clauses goes all the way from the barely possible to the highly probable, it is quite understandable why both quantifiers are found in these contexts, though with different expressive effects depending on the one used. Thus from the point of view of their potential meaning it is not the quantity represented but the manner of representing its existential import which distinguishes any and some. THE SYSTEM

Both any and some are partitive quantifiers, that is, they represent the substantive’s quantity as part of a whole, as different sized portions in relation to whatever total set or amount the speaker has in mind. They can represent a single entity or individual, which is the smallest possible part with substantives expressing a ‘bounded’ notion (with ‘unbounded’ notions there is no clearly defined minimal amount). They can also express an indefinite number or amount as a part of the implied whole. Finally, they can express a part equivalent to the whole as expressed by the substantive’s number, a quantity which cannot be greater simply because a part can never be greater than the whole. This similarity is why they can be considered to constitute a system for representing quantity. Like any other system in tongue, that of any and some is postulated to be an operative one, and so it is crucial to discern their respective places in the system, to discern which of them arises first and which second in the binary operation of representation. What distinguishes between the meanings of the two quantifiers and conditions their different syntactic possibilities is their manner of representing quantity, as either ‘hypothetical’ or as ‘real’. This distinction is an essential finding because it suggests an order in which the determiners arise in the system. The crucial point here is that the two notions ‘hypothetical’ and ‘real’ imply a temporal relationship, a relationship that is a commonplace of ordinary experience: things are always hypothetical before they are real. (For example, one’s activities during the coming weekend are merely possible,

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hypothetical until the weekend is here, when they become real.) As a consequence, when thinking of something as hypothetical, one thinks of it as prior to being real. That is, assuming that word meanings are generalizations of experience – and so can represent experience, whatever it may be – leads to the postulate that the hypothetical arises before the real in the operation representing partitive quantity. This is the reason for proposing that the movement signified by any as given in the last lesson precedes that signified by some as given above. The following diagram depicts this sequence as constituting a single operation linking the two determiners into a system in tongue:

any any

some some

................................................... ..................................................

M M

II

m m

II

M M

The two movements are depicted by dotted vectors to indicate that they are possibilities made available by the system in tongue. Each of them can be intercepted at (M), at (m), or at any point in between these two limits (I). They are movements through the field of the whole the speaker has in mind in order to situate the quantity represented by the substantive. The very fact of representing the quantity as a part calls to mind that it belongs to a whole, whether this whole is expressed or merely implied. The striking similarity between this system and the system of the articles is by no means a coincidence. In conformity with the initial postulate that grammatical systems are essentially for representing what the speaker has in mind to say, each system is operational, consisting of a double movement because in each case there are two morphemes: a and the, any and some. Another similarity is the form, greater to less and less to greater, of the movements, a form which permits a scanning of the whole field in each case. Furthermore, each movement can be intercepted at any point to represent the magnitude that corresponds to what the substantive represents in the speaker’s momentary experience. That is to say, the same mechanism is being proposed for each system, the radical binary tensor. The difference between the two systems is however important. In order to represent the substantive’s momentary extensity,

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the article scans its extension, its permanent range, made available in tongue. In order to represent the substantive’s momentary quantity as a part, the partitive quantifier scans the whole, the field which, in the speaker’s passing experience, contains it. Comparing the two systems can throw considerable light on determiners and their syntactic operativity, but this more general question will not be gone into until the examination of particular determiners is completed with a discussion of the demonstratives in the next lesson. First, however it remains to mention three questions of usage that have not been discussed and to comment on an error in a former analysis. REMAINING QUESTIONS

The first question is concerned with a use of any which is not paralleled by some. Any has often been considered a “universal” quantifier in uses where it can be paraphrased by every or all, as in the following example from Sahlin (115): (35) Any organism that falters or misperceives the signals or weakens is done.

As we saw in the preceding lesson, any in such examples represents a support for the ‘singular’ substantive’s import, a support extending to all possible items in the set of those that falter or misperceive or weaken, however many they may be. Similarly, in an example seen in the last lesson: (3) But problems cling to pools, as any pool owner knows.

the sense of ‘whoever may own a pool’ implies as a whole all possible pool owners. Some cannot express this sense and so is never considered to be a “universal” quantifier. The reason for this difference is to be found in the existential import of each quantifier. Since any depicts its quantity as somehow ‘hypothetical’, it can provide a support for all possible items, even those the speaker is not aware of or which do not yet exist. Some on the other hand expresses its quantity as ‘real’, as limited to what the speaker sees as existing or at least probable, and so cannot express the ‘all possible’ effect of a “universal” quantifier.

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The second question concerns the difference of expressive effect between the two quantifiers when they represent a minimal part of a greater whole, one out of a number of items, as in an example from the last lesson and one from this lesson: (2) Pick any card. (9) I saw it in some newspaper.

The ‘random choice’ expressive effect of (2) arises from any providing a ‘hypothetical’ support for ‘card’, which is therefore seen as a yet-to-be-determined item in the implied set. The ‘one I don’t remember which’ effect of (9) arises from some providing a ‘real’ support for ‘newspaper’, which is therefore seen as an alreadydetermined (but not identified) item in the implied set. That is to say, this difference of expressive effect is also a consequence of the quantifiers’ respective existential imports. A third question of usage deserving attention is the case where the substantive designates a single entity as part of a whole which is minimal in size. This use of any was discussed in the last lesson (the case in (13) of any kitchen). The following gives another example of it: (36) This bucket is useless – it hasn’t any handle.

Here the speaker quite obviously expected a handle, i.e. has a set of one in mind as the implied whole. Any quantifies ‘singularhandle’ as part of this set. That is, the noun phrase expresses a single item as part of a whole which is made up of a single part, a part whose existence is represented as ‘hypothetical’ by any and then declared nonexistent by the negation. Some is also found representing the part of a minimal-sized whole, as in: (37) That was some race.

Here too the speaker has in mind a single entity, a particular race, i.e. a set of one as the implied whole. Some quantifies ‘singularrace’ as part of this whole. That is, the noun phrase expresses the part of a whole made up of a single part, representing it as ‘real’. This has the effect of putting the part, that particular race, in a class of its own, of depicting it as something special, unique.

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These questions of usage help to illustrate the interplay of the three elements involved in each use of any and some: the whole (often implied) the speaker has in mind, the lexeme with its number quantified by the determiner as a part, and its existential import. To explain the uses of the partitive quantifiers and show how they provide a support for the substantive, the interaction between these three variables must be discerned but this can be done only if the underlying system is kept clearly in mind. From this point of view it should be mentioned that the analysis presented here differs in one important respect from a former attempt to describe the functioning of any and some (cf. my 1988 article). That article was not based on a sufficiently clear view of their support role and as a consequence attributed to the substantive the role of expressing the whole, being unduly influenced by their use as suppletive pronouns (e.g. any/some of the students) where the substantive does express the whole, and by certain uses of the completive (e.g. Some women get a thrill out of housework.) where the whole implied by the context (women in general) is particularly evident. It required a more careful analysis of the support role of determiners, and particularly of the articles where this role is most clearly manifested, to bring any and some into clearer focus. That is, a systemic view of how the substantive’s internal incidence is effected by means of an article revealed that the partitive quantifiers play a similar role by offering a support for the substantive’s import, but that the support they provide is represented as part of a context-bound whole, and not as an actualization of the substantive’s extension in tongue, the case of the articles. This view of the partitives’ support role made it clear that the substantive’s import is depicted as the part, not the whole, in the underlying relationship expressed by any and some. What can be learned from this error? In attempting to explain usage of particular morphemes in discourse and their various expressive effects one becomes more and more sensitive to, there is always a danger of losing sight of the larger picture, of giving an explanation for observed facts of usage without taking into account what is already known of other systems in tongue. Without this wider view, there is the risk of attributing to a word like the substantive a role which conflicts with its role elsewhere. Keeping in mind the larger picture – in this case the substantive seeking a support in the articles and other determiners to complete its internal incidence – led to

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envisaging the role in discourse of any and some as one of providing that support, and providing it in a way quite distinct from the way the articles provide it. Hence when examining usage in discourse the ideal is to have in mind as comprehensive a view as possible of the system of systems in tongue. This minimizes the danger of going astray by proposing an ad hoc explanation that may account for the uses under scrutiny but does not really explain them because it does not show them to be consequences of prior, more general conditions in tongue. Thus what is to be learned here, or rather recalled since it is not new, is simply that to explain some phenomenon one must first see it in its proper place, understand it, and this in turn depends on observing how it relates to other phenomena, or as Guillaume (1984, 69) put it: “We can explain to the extent that we have understood. We can understand to the extent that we have observed.” CONCLUSION

This then is the theory to explain how any and some are used in discourse. Their system in tongue, like that of the articles, enables them to provide a spatial support for the substantive’s lexical import. Applying its import to this support realizes the substantive’s internal incidence, a necessary condition for constituting a noun phrase. Any and some differ from other determiners, however, in representing the spatial support as part of a whole, which is sometimes expressed but usually left implicit (implied by the context of the noun phrase or the situation of the act of language). In relation to the whole which the speaker has in mind, the size of the part varies from a minimum (one item) to a maximum (equal to the whole). Both partitive quantifiers can provide support for a lexical import regardless of its type (‘unbounded’ or ‘unit’) or the substantive’s number (-ø or -s), but they differ insofar as its existential status is concerned: the support provided by any depicts its import as ‘hypothetical’, whereas that provided by some depicts it as ‘real’. This difference determines their respective positions in the system, any preceding some in the operation inherent in the system. Assuming that any and some are systemically related in this way, and that like all morphemes as potentials in tongue they signify an interceptible movement between limits, has permitted us to explain a large number of directly observable facts in discourse. Because

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usage is endlessly varied, this process of applying the theory to observed facts can never be considered finished. As a consequence, this theory cannot be considered definitive because, like any other theory purporting to explain some aspect of observed reality, new data may require it to be refined, extended, modified, or simply replaced. Until such time as counter evidence arises, however, this theory provides a viewing apparatus for explaining observed uses as consequences of a necessary3 precondition of representation, namely the underlying system.

LESSON SIXTEEN

The Demonstratives the demonstrative … a morpheme signifying … a case of transition of the potential noun to the actualized noun, and therefore used to give a momentary definition in discourse of a certain nominal extension. Guillaume 1985, 61

INTRODUCTION

The last two lessons brought out how any and some provide a formal support for the import of the substantive by quantifying it as part of a whole implied or expressed. Before that it was shown that the articles also provide a support for the lexical content of the noun phrase in the form of the substantive’s extensity, but by representing that portion of the lexeme’s extension in tongue which corresponds to the space occupied by the substantive’s designatum in the intended message. In this lesson, another set of determiners, this and that, will be examined briefly in an effort to understand what enables them to effect referential incidence to the intended message, the role attributed to them by grammarians. In 1946 Guillaume remarked that, besides pointing to the designatum, demonstratives are used to provide “a momentary definition in discourse of a certain nominal extension,” i.e. the representation of a certain extensity. This remark is significant because it indicates that, like the articles, the demonstratives provide a formal support for the noun phrase and so constitutes a first step in discerning what these determiners have in common, what in their makeup gives rise to the syntactic characteristics described in grammars – a question to be examined in the next lesson. In grammars, the usual way of characterizing this and that is by means of their most concrete expressive effect, ‘nearness to’ vs. ‘distance from’ the speaker respectively. Provided care is taken not to consider such expressive effects as their underlying, potential

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meaning, these observations are invaluable because they lead to the idea that this and that are demonstratives, deictics, that is, they point to or locate the substantive’s designatum in relation to the speaker.1 The fact that they locate the designatum differently raises the question of how their potential meanings differ to bring about these different effects. This in turn will lead to the more fundamental question of what they have in common: what space do they point to, situate their substantive’s import in? It should be recalled here that the demonstratives are the only determiners to be declined for number, continuate vs. discontinuate, a fact which would appear to reflect something quite distinctive in their system. As a consequence, this and that are used with ‘singular’, these and those for ‘plural’ substantives, and in this differ from any, some, and the, which provide a support for substantives of either number. However, this and that are not restricted, like a, to ‘bounded’ notions (this/that/a book), but are also used with ‘unbounded’ notions (this/that/*a snow). That is, they can provide a support for -ø substantives expressing ‘continuate’ quantity in either its ‘singular’ or ‘indeterminate’ versions, and not merely its ‘singular’ version (i.e. with ‘bounded’ notions) as some grammars might suggest. On the other hand, neither this and that nor these and those can provide a support for substantives expressing a ‘generic’ or ‘maximum’ version of number. These observations of usage, commonly found in grammars, are mentioned at the outset since they are telling us something about the system in tongue. To discern what this might be is the aim of the present lesson. The analysis of the demonstratives as completive pronouns outlined below gives a first approach to their system in English but it has not yet been developed to the point where an adequate description of the system can be provided. It is hoped, however, that even this incomplete view may be of value to indicate what permits the demonstratives to play their role as determiners and to suggest directions for further research. Four areas of usage will be examined, starting with the most concrete: spatial deixis. SPATIAL DEIXIS AND THE INTENDED MESSAGE

In Huddleston and Pullum (1505), “the central deictic use” of demonstratives is described as follows: “The primary use of the demonstratives is in NPs referring to objects present in the situation of utterance, with this applying to objects relatively close to the

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speaker (proximal), and that to objects relatively distant from the speaker (distal).” This use, which is often accompanied by a gesture manifesting the speaker’s deictic intention, can be illustrated as follows: This tree is a maple; that one is a birch.

The observation that the demonstrative refers to something as “present” is significant because it brings out an obvious fact concerning situations involving physical perception like that of the example: one can point only to what is present. That is, concrete spatial deixis is not possible with something that is out of sight, absent. Although both demonstratives depict something as present, they do it in different ways. This difference is particularly evident in the following example spoken by someone looking for a particular house: The odd numbers are on this side of the street, so 52 will be on that side.

We know which side of the street the speaker is on because the oddnumbered side is situated by this as “relatively close to the speaker (proximal),” whereas the other side is seen as “relatively distant from the speaker (distal).” A further illustration of spatial deixis is provided in the following example, where wearing something gives an impression of ‘proximity’ calling for these: These glasses are a big improvement on my old ones.

When wearing the glasses a speaker would not use those. On the other hand, in an example like the following, where the object is perceived to be out of reach, this would not be possible: Would you hand me that book, please?

Because the book is felt to be at a certain remove, outside the speaker’s range, the demonstrative expressing ‘distance’ is called for. Either demonstrative could be used in the following sentence: Would you read this/that book and tell me what you think of it?

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This would suggest that the book is in the speaker’s possession whereas that would be used if the book is closer to the listener or, if the sentence is uttered just as it is handed over to the listener, to express the impression that it is leaving the speaker’s possession. Finally by way of illustration, two expressions generally considered substandard because of their redundancy, this here car and that there car, combine the demonstrative with the corresponding deictic adverb. The fact that here and there are not interchangeable in these expressions brings out clearly the opposed impressions involved: oriented toward and away from the speaker respectively. As always in the approach adopted here, consistently observed expressive effects like these lead to the question of the prior grammatical conditions that give rise to such results. As in the case of the articles, all grammars consider the two demonstratives to be systemically related. Indeed, the fact that both depict something as present indicates what appears to be at the basis of their system, the fact of being present, and so one cannot help wondering how presence in relation to the speaker can be represented in two ways so as to result in ‘proximal’ and ‘distal’ expressive effects. In Hewson (1972, 83) an answer to this question was proposed: this is the sign of a movement of approach to, that a sign of moving away from, the point determining presence. This proposal obviously is not to be taken in the sense that what is being talked about moves, that the two trees in the first example above move toward or away from the speaker. Rather it is to be understood as describing the movement in the speaker’s mind to locate the designatum: this and that signify the mental scanning movement required to determine its position in relation to the speaker’s. The advantage of considering their meanings in terms of these movements is that the ‘proximal’ and ‘distal’ senses observed in discourse are obvious results of them. That is, the result of any approach movement is an impression of greater proximity, whereas any distancing movement, even the slightest, leaves an impression of greater distance, and this regardless of the absolute distances involved. Besides, it is significant that in the grammarians’ paraphrases, “relatively close to” and “relatively distant from,” the very prepositions used to describe their resulting expressive effects, to and from, reflect the movements hypothesized by Hewson. Such considerations suggest a first view of the systemic relation between this and that, a relation which can be diagrammed as follows:

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..................................................

that that PP. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

As usual the dotted vectors indicate the possibility of a movement to be actualized in any particular use. The central point P, for presence, implies the position of the speaker and so provides a reference point for any other position, near or far, perceived by the speaker as present. Hewson (ibid.) labels it hic et nunc, ‘here and now’, indicating that the notion of presence implies time as well as space, and so the same view of the relation offers a basis for examining usage of the demonstratives to express temporal deixis. Before going on to that, however, it will be useful to discuss a use of spatial this that gives a different expressive effect. In the following example this expresses a relation between speaker and designatum which is not that of proximity: What this country needs is a new government.

Without other indications, such as the speaker pointing to a map, one understands from this sentence that the speaker is in the country spoken about whereas with that one would understand that the speaker is not in it. Similarly, without any other indication this city, this house, this room, etc. indicate that the speaker is within the space so designated, whereas that room, etc. would indicate that the speaker is not in it. In like fashion, someone plodding through a downpour would say this rain; they could say that rain only after stepping into a house. The impression here is not so much one of distance, but of being out of the rain. Similar observations apply when the substantive designates clothing the speaker is wearing: this is required, as in this shirt, these gloves. Using that/those with names of clothing is possible only when the speaker is not wearing the garment. Should we consider clothes we are wearing as a sort of container or as something so close to us that that cannot be used, as in the glasses example? Or is there some other impression in the intended message that the demonstrative answers to? Examples like these show that the expressive effects in uses of spatial deixis cannot be reduced simply to greater or less distance from the speaker, and so some grammarians have tried to characterize them in more general terms. Kruisinga (203) for example suggests that this depicts the substantive’s import “as in the sphere

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of the speaker or first person … that as belonging to the sphere of the second or third person or away from the speaker.” Another writer contrasts them simply in terms of “I-sphere” and “non-I sphere” (cf. Karlsen, 42). Such descriptions help characterize the resulting expressive effect but do not indicate what permits this to represent a support that is close to or includes the speaker’s position, that to represent a support distanced from or excluding the speaker’s position. The above diagram suggests why the speaker’s position is crucial here since that is what defines presence, (P). That is, ‘proximal’ presence is the result of a movement through a “sphere” toward a point identified by the speaker’s place in space, an approach to the speaker’s position, whereas the opposite movement through a “sphere” leaving behind the speaker’s position tends away from presence and results in ‘distal’ presence. This more general way of conceiving the “sphere” or space within which each demonstrative operates leads to a question which has been left implicit: what determines the circumference of the “sphere,” the outer limits of the two movements? In other words, what are the limits of presence? The very notion of deixis, of pointing out, suggests an answer. Just as pointing out something by means of a physical gesture is limited to one’s momentary field of vision, so pointing out something mentally by means of a demonstrative is limited to one’s momentary field of awareness, to what is present to one’s mind at the moment of speaking. What speakers are not aware of at the moment of speaking, what is absent mentally, they cannot represent, speak about and refer to. This implies that it is the limits of the momentary intended message, whether it be the result of perceiving, remembering, imagining, etc., that impose the limits of the system of deixis. Viewing the system of demonstratives in this way, as a means of representing the presence of the substantive’s import, entails referring the lexeme to its correlate, its designatum, in the field of the speaker’s awareness. This view, based on the notion of reference adopted previously whereby a determiner refers the noun phrase not to something in the extra-mental universe but to something in the momentary experience of the speaker, is little more than a generalized version of the deictic role attributed to demonstratives in grammars, but with an important addition: it entails the capacity of the demonstratives to scan the whole of the intended message,

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each in its own direction, in order to refer the substantive’s import to it. That is, this view of the system is an attempt to bring out the mental operations presupposed by deixis, what permits each demonstrative to relate something to the speaker’s position in order to situate it in the intended message. These considerations thus bring out the space within which the system of demonstratives appears to operate: the field scanned by each of its movements is the extent of what a person has in mind to talk about, the space occupied by the speaker’s intended message. This distinguishes them from the articles, which operate within the limits of the lexeme’s extension in tongue, and from the partitive quantifiers, which operate within the limits of a contextually defined whole, implied or expressed. By contrast, the demonstratives operate within the limits of the speaker’s momentary experience and so can situate the substantive’s lexeme anywhere within that space by representing the place it occupies therein. That is, they appear to represent neither an extensity (a and the) nor a part (any and some) but a position in the speaker’s intended message. The idea that a demonstrative situates the designatum in the speaker’s mental panorama thus helps to explain certain aspects of the system. It remains, however, to discern how each of the movements constituting the system is exploited, how the towardmovement of this and the away-movement of that give rise to the different senses observed in discourse. Thus the question that arises at this point in our analysis is to determine whether the two expressive effects just described – ‘proximal’ and ‘contained in’ for this, ‘distal’ and ‘not contained in’ for that – correspond to different points of interception in their respective movements. Other areas of usage will now be examined with this question in mind. TEMPORAL DEIXIS AND THE INTENDED MESSAGE

Uses expressing temporal deixis can have a ‘proximal’ effect, as when this Saturday refers to last or next Saturday, whereas that Saturday designates a day outside this period. Often temporal uses suggest something similar to the container uses just discussed. In an example like the following one understands ‘at present’: These days one has more free time.

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Depending on what the speaker has in mind here, the extent of time within which the present of speech is situated could be fairly short (the period of the Christmas holidays, for example) or quite long (in the post-industrial era). In the following example, of course, one understands ‘in the past’: In those days, we worked a 48–hour week.

That is, those does not depict its space of time as containing the speaker’s position, but rather as excluding it. This is the “non-I sphere” of the grammarians. More precise expressions of time vary according to their relation with the speaker, as in: I only learnt about it this week. I promise I’ll finish the job this week.

Here, this “refers to the time-unit containing the moment of utterance” (Huddleston and Pullum, 1561). That is, we find this depicting the container-contained relationship, with the substantive’s import seen as including the speaker’s place in time. It is interesting that the current week is always understood regardless of the tense of the verb, presumably because a speaker always has the impression of being in a week. Similar remarks apply to this month and this year, but things are somewhat different with this summer. As in the preceding examples, the summer is understood to contain the present of speech, and so that would not be used in: The garden is doing well this summer.

The following examples, however, might also suggest that the speaker has the coming or preceding summer in mind, depending on the form of the verb: I’ll be working on my thesis this summer. I worked on my thesis this summer.

If said in the spring and the fall respectively, neither sentence would situate the moment of speaking in the summer, though they do situate it in the present year, the year containing the summer.

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The difference between summer and week in this respect would seem to arise because the present of speech is not always in a summer, as it is in the case of week. With that, the two noun phrases would refer to a summer outside the present year, in some future or past year. These examples show that impressions of ‘proximity-containing’ and ‘distance-excluding’ observed in examples of spatial deixis are also expressed in cases of temporal deixis. There is nothing surprising in this similarity because, as Guillaume often pointed out, time, which is inherently mobile in our experience, must be represented by means of spatial parameters. Only thus can we get a static view of it, a representation. Even though the substantive’s lexical import depicts something temporal, the lexeme is spatialized, given a spatial form and made incident to a spatial support in the demonstrative, which relates it to the speaker’s place in the intended message. In a far more abstract way, the expressions at this time and at that time can be used to indicate the speaker’s involvement in, or exclusion from, a past period. The following example is typical: The turning point in Jung’s development seems to have been his return from his trip to America in 1909. He felt convinced then that he had caught sight of basic weaknesses in Freud’s approach. At this time, also, Jung seems to have undergone a period of personal uncertainty and intellectual doubt resulting from the fact that he had to withdraw the reliance he had begun to place in Freud.

The comments of a grammarian on this use are worth citing at length: It might be thought that to an author writing in 1953 (the year in which the book quoted from was first published), 1909 was long enough ago to warrant the use of that. So it is, and that would have been the word used if the author had been thinking of the pretty long interval separating the two points of time. ‘But the element of “approach” enters in: he places himself mentally at the point of time, or in the circumstances, he has just mentioned: he is no longer separated from them. Or, perhaps, we may put it this way: that views the time in question from a present-day point of view, this from a contemporary point of view.’ (Erades 1975, 148)

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Besides illustrating how each demonstrative situates an entity in relation to the speaker’s position, examples like this one show that impressions of ‘proximity-inclusion’ vs. ‘distance-exclusion’ can give rise to far more subtle expressive effects than those examined so far. These effects will be examined below, after a third area of usage is discussed, that described in grammars as “anaphoric and cataphoric reference.” CONTEXTUAL DEIXIS VS. COREFERENCE

As just seen, the deictic uses examined above are considered by many grammarians to refer to the “extralinguistic situation” or the “situation of utterance.” By contrast, they often speak of “anaphoric” or “backward-pointing” reference for that and “cataphoric” or “forward-pointing” reference for this, suggesting thereby that the demonstrative refers, not to something outside language, but to something else in the sentence or discourse, something that has already been introduced or something that has yet to be said, as in: It appears that Tom did most of the damage. That boy’s becoming quite a problem.

the noun phrase is said to refer back to Tom and so to be “anaphoric”, but not in: These language options are open to our students: Spanish, French and German.

The noun phrase in this sentence is said to refer “cataphorically” to what comes later in the sentence, the specified languages. This terminology calls for a comment to avoid a possible misunderstanding which would make it impossible to see what links this type of deixis with spatial and temporal deixis. The term “situation” is usually understood to designate circumstances in the physical universe surrounding the speaker and listener. Since an act of language necessarily arises in a particular spatial and temporal setting, for some grammarians the only feasible interpretation of examples discussed in the preceding sections is that the demonstrative, like a gesture with the hand, refers directly to that extra-mental situation. In contrast, the terms “cataphoric”

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and “anaphoric” are understood to signify reference to another part of the linguistic context, preceding or following. That is, demonstratives are considered to refer sometimes to the situation, sometimes to the context, and it is by no means obvious what temporal or spatial deixis (usually considered situational) and contextual deixis have in common. What is the link between ‘proximal’ this and ‘forward-looking, cataphoric’ this, between ‘distal’ that and ‘backward-looking, anaphoric’ that? What is the unity of each demonstrative’s meaning based on? When one’s view is restricted to the expressive effects and the way each word contributes to the discourse, when there is no attempt to discern the prior conditions giving rise to these effects, the usual result is a fragmented view of the linguistic unit. To get beyond these expressive effects and find their common root, an important point mentioned above should be reiterated, namely that to speak of something, be it in the physical universe around us, in the discourse developing as we speak, or in the mental universe within us, we must have it in mind as part of our ongoing stream of consciousness. That is, the linguistic referent or designatum2 – that outside of language to which the noun phrase refers – must be present in the speaker’s field of awareness as part of the intended message. The following examples illustrate this: This car you are thinking of buying …. That maple tree you pointed out to me ….

The demonstrative here indicates that the car and the tree are present not as physical entities or as elements of an on-going discourse but as mental entities in the speaker’s intended message. This includes entities with no physical existence: I don’t know what to make of this dream I had last night. For some philosophers freedom consists in being exempt from external coercion. That way of conceiving it has certain limitations.

The demonstrative refers the substantive’s import to the designatum in the intended message even though there may be no element in the extra-mental universe or in the surrounding context that correlates with it. In short, reference is always to what a speaker

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has in mind, a notion of linguistic reference which is, as we have already seen, quite different from that in Huddleston and Pullum (404), where the expression the man of my dreams, interpreted as a person that “exists so far only in my dreams,” is considered “nonreferential.” The view of linguistic reference presented in these lessons applies to all acts of language and so brings out what the different uses of completive this and that have in common: they always refer their substantive’s import to the intended message by depicting where its designatum is situated in relation to the speaker. All this is not to suggest that distinctions of expressive effect are of no value. Grammarians have long distinguished between uses of a demonstrative that “point to something in space or time” and uses that “point to something in thought,” something “that has just been mentioned” (Sweet II, 83–4), i.e. between spatio-temporal deixis and contextual deixis. This distinction is useful in examining usage, in helping to describe expressive effects, but it does not reflect a distinction on the level of the system in tongue. By keeping in mind the crucial role of the intended message, uses of the latter type can be analyzed the same way as the uses already discussed, and this will show that, as with spatial and temporal deixis, the demonstrative in uses expressing contextual deixis locates the substantive’s designatum in the speaker’s intended message. According to Kruisinga (206), “A special case of deictic this and these (not that) in its local meaning is its use as an anticipatory pronoun, to announce what is following,” for example: Under the inscription are these words in Greek letters, Kairos ho Pandamator.

Here the noun phrase prefigures the particular words in Greek expressed later in the sentence. They do this thanks to the demonstrative, which, as always, provides a support for its own substantive in order to refer it to its place in the intended message. Since there is no gesture or indication in the noun phrase itself to specify which words or language options the speaker has in mind, the approach movement of these orients the view toward what is being made present by the sentence itself, whose final words are therefore understood to refer to the entity in the intended message already designated by the noun phrase these words.

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Something similar arises with a use of this that is “extremely common” in “very informal conversation” (Huddleston and Pullum, 1510). This introduces its substantive as the topic of some incident or joke that is being related: I was in Penang and I met this man, and he gave me your address and a present for you. There was this Irishman walking down the road and ….

It is as though the hearer understands this to mean ‘situate a man, an Irishman, in the message you are constructing as you listen to me; I’m going to talk about him’. Here the demonstrative, something like the indefinite article, actually makes something present, brings a new element into the context, but with the added implication that it will be identified in the ensuing discourse. That can also have the effect of presenting something but it does so by recalling it. As Kruisinga remarks (211), that “is frequently used when a speaker resumes a conversation that has been interrupted.” This is the use in: That problem you mentioned in class intrigues me.

Here the speaker recalls the problem by means of that which carries the viewpoint back to something that was present and makes it part of what is being talked about. By contrast, this in the example would have suggested “an uninterrupted course of ideas,” as though the speaker had been mulling over the problem since it was mentioned in class. This is a slightly different expressive effect, which will now be examined. Besides its “anticipatory” use and its use introducing something new, a this phrase can keep the focus on something already introduced, already present. For example one might begin a talk or essay as follows: I want to discuss the problem of pollution. This problem is …

This here refers its noun phrase, not back to a noun phrase in the preceding sentence, but to the extralinguistic message obtained from that sentence, a message speaker and listeners still have in

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mind. That is, the demonstrative represents as a support for its own substantive the same space as that represented by the article the in the first noun phrase, with the consequence that This problem refers to the same designatum as the problem of pollution. The effect of this here is therefore one not of anticipating or introducing something, or even recalling it, but of maintaining the focus on the pollution problem as a subject of discourse, of keeping it present by means of coreference. In an example already presented we can see the same use of the demonstrative to corefer to something in the intended message already represented in a preceding sentence: The turning point in Jung’s development seems to have been his return from his trip to America in 1909. He felt convinced then that he had caught sight of basic weaknesses in Freud’s approach. At this time, also, Jung seems to have undergone a period of personal uncertainty and intellectual doubt resulting from the fact that he had to withdraw the reliance he had begun to place in Freud.

Here this expresses not a retrospective but “a contemporary point of view” with regard to the moment in time already referred to, keeping it in focus by referring to it again. Some grammars would consider the this phrase anaphoric in the last two examples, arguing that it refers back to and recalls a noun phrase in a previous sentence. This interpretation however does not account for the fact that in the pollution example that, usually considered anaphoric in reference, would not be used. (As a consequence, esl students have sometimes to be corrected for using that instead of this when they want to develop a topic which has just been introduced.) Because of its movement away, that would not be used in this context since it would clash with the idea of beginning the discussion: by removing the problem of pollution from the centre of attention it would suggest that the discussion is over. This is the effect it has in: I should first relate the gathering on the way to Mrs. Jamieson’s. That lady lived in a large house just outside the town.

By coreference to the designatum of Mrs. Jamieson, that dismisses the lady as a subject of discourse, indicates that it is no longer in

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focus; this on the other hand would not have been appropriate here since it would have suggested that the writer was going to talk about Mrs. J. rather than the gathering, as indicated in the first sentence. In cases like the following, it is very difficult to sort out the different nuances expressed by the demonstratives in uses involving coreference: A fire had been lighted and things had been set out for drinks, and his response to these comforts was instantaneous.

There seems to be a suggestion here that the speaker will dwell on, or at least keep present, the situation characterized by the comforts. Those might also be used here with perhaps a hint of leaving aside the comforts to concentrate on his response. The next example is hard to interpret as well: They were running very slowly. At that speed they didn’t have a hope of catching the train.

The other demonstrative could also have been used and a similar distinction between expressive effects can perhaps be made – that dismissing the speed as a topic of discussion and this maintaining it – but without more context this could not be affirmed. What is clear, however, is that in these and other examples there is at least a slight difference in what is expressed and this indicates that the respective positions and movements of this and that in their system in tongue are somehow reflected in their uses in discourse. The last two examples and a number of others are given in Huddleston and Pullum (1507) to illustrate how the “antecedent” of a demonstrative can be other than a noun phrase. In terms of reference to the intended message rather than the context, however, they show that a demonstrative can refer to the designatum of a whole clause as in the case of these comforts, or to something implied in it as in the case of that speed. This capacity of the demonstrative can even extend to a whole discourse because after reading a fairly complex text one might say: This/that idea of his strikes me as quite original.

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The point here is that the demonstrative refers not to some antecedent in the written text but to the message the reader obtained from reading that text, the effected message, which in turn becomes part of an intended message when the reader/speaker decides to speak about it. Thus it seems that the demonstrative refers the noun phrase, not to something else in the linguistic context or to something in the extra-mental, spatio-temporal universe, but to something, some complex of impressions, in the intended/effected message. These impressions may come from the physical universe or from some discourse just heard or read or from the speaker’s memory or imagination, but whatever their source, once represented by a lexeme and substantivized they can be designated by a completive demonstrative as the referent of a noun phrase. It remains to examine uses which do not correspond to the types discussed so far, uses that arise from shared knowledge, according to grammarians. DEIXIS IN SHARED KNOWLEDGE

Both demonstratives have a “recognitional” use which designates something assumed to be known by those involved in the act of speech “on the basis of specific past shared experience or knowledge” (Huddleston and Pullum, 1510). Since the designatum is presumed to be part of common knowledge, there is no need to specify it in this use. Thus one might begin a conversation as follows: This railway strike is a serious matter.

That is, taking for granted that the designatum is an element everyone is aware of, the speaker can designate it by means of this without further specification, such as that required by the introductory use discussed in the preceding section (these words in Greek …). Similarly in the following example from Kruisinga (207): They say at Burkitt’s he’s one of these artistic chaps – got an idea of improving English architecture.

Here the speaker, assuming that his view of artistic chaps is shared by the person(s) addressed, categorizes them as a well-known contemporary phenomenon, whence a touch of “contempt.”

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The use of expressions like this article, this study, this book to refer to the text one is writing may be a case of shared knowledge since anyone reading it necessarily has the same text in mind as the writer when writing it. On the other hand, if the expression arises right at the beginning it might be taken as introducing the text that is to follow. Or again, it might be analogous to the containing or including effect seen in spatial and temporal deixis since during the process of writing or reading the text one would necessarily have the impression of being in the middle of it. Whatever expressive effect is intended or understood, the above expressions could be paraphrased the present article, the present study, the present book. Thus it seems that the noun phrase depicts the presence of the designatum, and does so in such a way that this cannot be replaced by that in such cases. The corresponding use of that to express shared knowledge has a different effect: Everywhere there was the sense of that far-distant waking of the world, when a cock crows in the East, another faintly answers him in the West and then all is still.

Here the demonstrative gives the impression of calling to mind something everyone knows about but which is outside their conscious awareness at the moment, as though that here involves extending the limits of the intended message to include it. Other examples of that reminding us of something assumed to be known by both speaker and listener are: They sent me abroad to that school at Geneva to get well. Those memories that we acquire in early childhood rarely lose their vividness.

The demonstrative here “loses its deictic quality” according to Quirk et al. (374), presumably because they view deixis simply in terms of the extralinguistic situation and the linguistic context. Viewing deixis in terms of what the speaker has in mind, however, permits us to see that here too that points to something known, but which needs to be recalled, included in the intended message. That is sometimes used in much the same way in ads: That Pepsi feeling.

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The purpose here seems to be to remind us of the existence of something by implying that everyone knows about it, that it is part of common experience, with the implication that anyone reading the ad is missing something if they are not aware of the feeling. A final example shows how that can actually introduce something by depicting it as shared knowledge and so presenting it as though reminding the reader of it. The following passage (cited in Fraser and Joly, 32) is the beginning of a novel: It happened that green and crazy summer when Frankie was twelve years old. This was the summer when for a long time she had not been a member.

Where that in the first sentence presents the summer as something well known, memorable, in the second sentence suppletive this, then maintains the focus on the summer, keeping it “contemporary” as in an example discussed above. A QUESTION OF NUMBER

Among determiners, perhaps the most distinctive observable characteristic of the demonstratives is that they are, like the substantive, declined for number. They are in fact the only morphological manifestation of the -ø/-s number opposition in Modern English outside the substantive. The first question this gives rise to is why, when all other manifestations of so-called agreement between determiner and substantive have disappeared, the demonstratives have kept it. The reason is to be sought in the meaning of the demonstrative itself, in the fact that, like other determiners it represents the place of the designatum, but unlike other determiners it represents this place in relation to the rest of the intended message, not in relation to the lexeme’s extension (the articles) or to a contextual whole (the partitives) or to a possessor (the possessives), etc. That is, a demonstrative represents the space occupied by the experiential entity depicted by the lexeme as contained in the intended message, and so like the lexeme is focused on the spatial disposition of that entity, the space it occupies in the speaker’s momentary experience, and hence the manner (continuate/discontinuate) of occupying it. Other determiners represent the space occupied by the experiential entity as

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a portion of, or in relation to, a containing space where spatial disposition need not be represented. Does this mean that number in the demonstrative and number in the substantive represent the same thing? Yes and no. Both represent the spatial disposition of the experiential entity but in different ways and to different ends: the demonstrative represents it as part of the intended message in order to locate it therein, to fulfil its deictic role as a determiner; number in the substantive represents it indirectly, as a reflection of the way the lexeme is actualized in order to give it a grammatical form, its role in morphogenesis. This difference, discernible through analysis, is occasionally observable in discourse, as in these people, these green-fly, and other cases of internal plural discussed in lesson 6. Here the demonstrative depicts the space occupied by the experiential reality (a number of persons or insects) as discontinuate in the intended message, whereas the -ø number morpheme depicts the space occupied as continuate, the way this space is implied by the lexeme, which is actualized to represent, not the individual entities as such, but their common nature (human, insect species). Examples like these thus make it manifest that the role of morphemes within the word’s morphogenesis is to bring out the form of the lexeme, show under what form it represents the experiential entity, whereas the role of a determiner is to indicate how to locate the referent in the intended message. As a consequence, there is no redundancy in this double expression of number, and by the same token, it would be misleading to speak of the relation between determiner and substantive here as one of “agreement.” They both represent ultimately the same thing in the intended message but since they do this in different ways it is important to keep this distinction in mind to better understand the nature of the grammatical elements involved. CONCLUSION

Although the foregoing rapid survey touches only on the main uses of this and that as completives, it provides sufficient material for present purposes, namely to suggest how the demonstratives function as determiners in a noun phrase. Even if, for particular uses, it is not always possible to distinguish clearly between deixis in space,

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in time, in discourse and in shared knowledge, examining these expressive effects has brought out what each determiner contributes to them: deixis space and time: discourse: shared knowledge:

this ‘nearness’ and ‘including’ ‘anticipating’ and ‘maintaining’ ‘current awareness’

vs. vs. vs.

that ‘distance’ and ‘excluding’ dismissing’ and ‘recalling’ ‘reminding’

Some of these effects can be seen as resulting from the movements proposed by Hewson as the potential meaning of the demonstratives: ‘nearness’ and ‘anticipating’ can arise from the approach movement of this, ‘distance’ and ‘dismissing’ from the away-movement of that. Although none of the other expressive effects appears to contradict the suggested movement it is not clear how that movement would give rise to them, so further observation, which may bring out other expressive effects, and reflexion are required to confirm or invalidate the hypotheses advanced. The attempt to discern what is common to the contributions of each demonstrative led to the proposal that the field in which they operate, the sphere in which they locate something, is that of the intended message. This field is a mental space common to all uses, to every act of language in fact, but what occupies this space varies with each act of language. That is to say, what speakers have in mind to talk about regardless of what gives rise to it – the immediate experience of something in space or time, the message obtained from a previous discourse, shared knowledge, or anything else – is contained in their field of awareness. In each of the uses examined above the demonstratives “point” to this field. They exercise their deictic capacity within the scope of the intended message in order to locate therein whatever is represented by the import of their substantive. In this way they can fulfil their role as determiners by representing a support for the substantive’s lexeme and provide for the referential incidence of the noun phrase to its linguistic referent, thus permitting it to express what the speaker has in mind. These considerations can only be tentative at this point since it will take a much more extensive examination of usage, particularly

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uses of the suppletive pronoun, to see if they are valid, but at least they suggest what to look for in further analyzing usage. They also reflect the basic hypothesis proposed here: that both demonstratives operate in the field of the intended message, situating whatever their substantive represents in that field. This is quite different from the articles, which depict an extensity within the field of the substantive’s extension, and from the partitive quantifiers, which depict a part within the field of an implied or expressed whole. That is, the matter of the demonstrative, what distinguishes it from other determiners, is a representation of the particular place an entity occupies in the speaker’s momentary experience, a space to which it can refer the substantive. Viewing the intended message as the basis of the system in this way also helps complete the view presented in the diagram (p. 274) and so brings out what characterizes the system of the demonstrative: a discussion of different ways of being present in the speaker’s momentary field of consciousness. Besides suggesting why the demonstratives are declined for number, this view would give a reason for a limitation in their usage. Because they depict the substantive’s import as present by representing the place occupied by its designatum in the intended message, demonstratives limit its extensity to what is present. As a consequence they cannot provide a support for a notion with maximum extensity, an extensity which includes anything which has the particular nature represented by the lexeme, anything that exists, has existed or can exist, not just what is present. At this point in the analysis of a binary system it is tempting to postulate the radical binary tensor as its underlying mechanism, as it is for the systems of number, the article, and the partitive quantifiers. To situate the designatum in the intended message by bringing it into relationship with the speaker’s position, does the movement of this start with the whole extent of the intended message and tend toward the position occupied therein by the speaker so that, wherever it is intercepted, it always situates the entity in the perspective of the speaker’s position? Contrariwise, to situate its entity with regard to the speaker’s place, does the movement of that start from the speaker’s position and proceed toward the full scope of the intended message so that, wherever it is intercepted, it always situates the designatum within the perspective of the limit imposed by what the speaker has in mind at that moment? Without clearer indications from observed uses concerning the different actualized senses

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of each demonstrative, there would be little justification in postulating the form of the movements involved. On the other hand, as a hypothesis, this more complete conception of the system provides the sort of viewing lens required to indicate what is pertinent in observing the endless variation of usage. Tentative though it may be, this description of the demonstratives provides a first view of another system of determiners. This makes it possible to compare their role in the noun phrase with that of other determiners in the next lesson.

LESSON SEVENTEEN

Determiners as Completive Pronouns From a general point of view, person is the support the mind gives itself for attaching the imports of meaning it has determined for itself, in tongue. Guillaume 1973, 61

INTRODUCTION

It is time now to bring out what the examination of three sets of determiners in preceding lessons tells us about the noun phrase as a basis for proposing a general hypothesis concerning determiners. Although there are a number of other sets which have yet to be examined it is useful to extrapolate in this way since what appear to be general parameters underlying a complex phenomenon, here the determiners of English, can provide invaluable guidelines for further observation and analysis, hence the precariousness of any such hypothesis since later findings can, and often do, show its inadequacy. It remains, however, that the hypothesis to be outlined here is quite consistent with what has been proposed so far both for the substantive and the system of parts of speech in tongue and for the act of language itself beginning with an act of representation and ending with linguistic reference, i.e. designating what has been represented. This coherence, a significant achievement in itself, is a factor of credibility, but it must not be forgotten that the facts of observation, the data accessible to all competent observers, remain the final arbiter as to the validity of any hypothesis in linguistics. A general hypothesis for determiners should then first explain what has been observed of the way they function in discourse. One aspect of this functioning, as described by Quirk et al. (253) has already been examined:

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The kind of reference a particular noun phrase has depends on its determinative element, i.e. the item which ‘determines’ it. This function is typically realized by a set of closed-class items, or determiners, which occur before the noun acting as head of the noun phrase (or before its premodifiers). Examining the three systems – a/the, any/some, this/that – brought out what it is that enables each determiner to carry out its function of linguistic reference, namely representing the space occupied by the designatum, but that each of the systems does this in its own way: representing the designatum’s space as an extensity in relation to the extension (the articles), representing it as a part in relation to a whole (the partitive quantifiers), representing it as a place in relation to the speaker (the demonstratives). It remains to comment on the other function of determiners: their role of providing “the support the mind gives itself for attaching the imports of meaning it has determined for itself, in tongue.” This has been alluded to in preceding lessons but it will require more detailed development here to bring out what enables determiners to fulfil this role, without which many noun phrases would be incomplete. The aim of this lesson, then, is to show why determiners are completives – what they complete, why they are so often required and yet are not a sine qua non for having a noun phrase, and what links most of them to suppletive pronouns. This will involve a certain repetition of what has already been said, but one advantage of presenting things in the form of lessons, rather than as a grammar, is to permit and even require repetition to enhance understanding. In any case, retracing the steps leading to a hypothesis is never wasted effort since only in this way can mistakes in analysis be brought to light. DETERMINERS AS COMPLETIVES

As Hewson 1991 points out, many scholars, basing their view on observations of syntax, have maintained that it is the determiner and not the substantive that is head of the noun phrase. As always, observations of behaviour in discourse call for a description of the conditions giving rise to it, and in this case of what in the determiner itself enables it to function as head. Guillaume, the first to begin exploring this question with his work on the article, concluded

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that the article is a type of pronoun, a completive pronoun, that plays the role of a support for the substantive. It will be useful to review what led him to this conclusion, summarizing what was presented above in the lessons on the article, in order to see what light it throws on the functioning of the other determiners. Having seen that a substantive’s lexeme or comprehension can only be said about, made incident to something within its own extension, Guillaume characterized the substantive as a part of speech with internal incidence. Struck by the variations resulting from effecting a substantive’s incidence to its own range of application – most any substantive can be used to express senses of varying generality, anywhere from the sense of an individual to the sense of a universal, of everything within its range – he concluded that the grammatical makeup of the substantive must involve some means for representing that portion of its extension that corresponds to the scope of the designatum in the intended message which its lexeme represents and is to be referred to. And so it became clear that in any given use the substantive’s lexical import finds a support in that portion of its extension corresponding to the actual “extent of reference.” That is to say, this actualization of the extension, the extensity as it was later called, is a support, the actualized lexeme an import, and internal incidence a transporting of the import to the support, as Guillaume would say. In a language like Latin, which has no article, the system of number with its possible variations is largely responsible for indicating the extensity within the substantive itself. Where an article has developed however, it takes over this role and so whenever it is used it has become the sign of the substantive’s transit from a state of potency in tongue to its actualized state in discourse. What is striking here is that the extensity, a possibility inherent in the lexeme in tongue, is represented by the article outside the substantive thus making its internal incidence explicit through “deflection” (rather than inflection as in some languages). Since a substantive exists in discourse only by virtue of its internal incidence being actualized, it follows that the substantive’s grammatical formation is complete only when its incidence to the article has been effected, and so Guillaume calls the articles “completives.” This manner of viewing the role of the article has many implications. Insofar as other determiners are concerned it raises the question of how their role compares with that of the article. As already

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noted, in Guillaume’s eyes the demonstratives also provide “the momentary definition in discourse of a certain nominal extension.” That is, they represent the scope (and place) of the designatum in the intended message, and since this scope corresponds to a portion of the lexeme’s extension it provides a support permitting the lexical import to effect its internal incidence. But since the demonstratives, being deictic by nature, depict the place occupied by the designatum insofar as it relates to the speaker’s position, they cannot represent the same range of extensities as the article, whose field for representing is simply the extension of the lexeme in tongue. How about the partitive quantifiers any and some? Do they also provide “the momentary definition in discourse of a certain nominal extension”? They represent the designatum as part of a whole, explicit or implicit. The scope of this part being variable, this space they represent as a part necessarily corresponds to an extensity made possible by the lexeme’s extension in tongue. That is to say, the part these quantifiers represent can serve as a support for the substantive’s lexical import and so they appear to play the same role as articles and demonstratives with regard to realizing the substantive’s internal incidence. Since the scope of the partitives cannot exceed that of the whole implied or expressed in discourse means that some, depicting its part as ‘real’, does not have the same extensive versatility as the articles, whereas any, depicting its part as ‘hypothetical’, does have an extensive versatility approaching that of the articles. Thus, within the range of their possibilities each partitive quantifier appears to represent a support making possible the substantive’s internal incidence. To summarize: the three sets of determiners examined so far provide a support for the substantive, permitting it to effect its internal incidence. Since there can be no substantive without internal incidence, it seems clear that realizing this relationship between substantive and determiner completes the morphogenesis of the substantive as a word, and so it “should perhaps be considered as belonging to a different level and order from the traditional dependency relationships of the sentence,” as Hewson (1991, 321) suggests. That is, the substantive-determiner relationship is not the same type as, for example, the adjective-substantive relationship. These considerations suffice to indicate why the determiner is so often described as head: it provides the final grammatical prerequisite for forming the noun phrase, namely a formal support for the

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lexical import of the substantive (and any adjectives incident to it). On the other hand, this conclusion does not necessarily contradict those who, regarding the noun phrase from a different point of view, consider the substantive to be the head. Adopting the point of view, not of grammatical form but of lexical matter, it is clear that the various lexical imports of the noun phrase are all, directly or indirectly, incident to the support provided by the substantive’s lexeme. Can this view of articles, demonstratives, and partitive quantifiers be proposed as a basis for analyzing other determiners? This would include the distributives every and each, the disjunctives either and neither, the negative no, the possessives my, your etc., the relatives and interrogatives what, which, and whose, and others – the list is long especially if we include words which do not appear to function as determiners in all their uses (one mistake vs. his one mistake). Only a detailed analysis of usage in each case will show if the hypothesis that all determiners either represent (the articles) or imply (other determiners) the substantive’s extensity is well founded, i.e. to show if it explains what permits each determiner to provide a support for the substantive’s lexeme and so to function as formal head of the noun phrase. In any case, there is no obvious contradiction between attributing this role of formal support for the substantive to determiners and attributing to them the role, recognized by many grammars, of reference. On the contrary, it can be argued that the referential incidence of a substantive’s lexical import to its designatum in the intended message can be effected only through its extensity, whether expressed by the article or implied by other determiners and the bare substantive (lessons 12 and 13). Recalling briefly what is involved in linguistic reference will help bring out more clearly the relation between the two roles of the determiners. DETER MINERS AND REFERENCE

Discussing separately the two functions of determiners, the referential function of designating and the syntactic function of support (formal head), makes it easier to see what each involves. According to the above hypothesis, assuming it proves to be valid, the determiner exercises its completive function as head during the construction of the noun phrase by providing a formal support for its whole lexical import. On the other hand, the noun phrase as a

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whole is involved in designating something in the intended message, something outside language. More exactly, it is the noun phrase as a unit which is made incident to the intended message through the support provided by determiners and so reference can be effected only after its assembling has been completed. Linguistic reference is often understood as the act of referring to something in the external situation in which the act of language is taking place, or as the act of referring to something in the discourse resulting from an act of language. Since it is assumed in these lessons that we necessarily talk about what we have in mind, the intended message, which may have arisen from something in the external universe or from on-going discourse, neither of those views has been adopted and so it is worth recalling once again how linguistic reference is viewed here. It is understood as the operation of establishing a relation between the integrated set of linguistic representations that constitutes the meaning of a sentence or noun phrase (our concern here) and that which is represented by it, namely what the speaker is talking about. The key point here is that the meaning of a word or phrase is a representation, a linguistic depiction, of something the speaker has in mind. Since any representation is obviously distinct from what it represents – a portrait or plan for example is never confused with the person or building represented – the distinction between the extra-linguistic experience one has in mind to talk about and its linguistic representation must never be forgotten when discussing reference. Reference then is the act of referring one mental entity to another, that of establishing a relation between a meaning and the experiential entity that has been represented by that meaning. In technical terms, reference is the incidence of a linguistic representation or import of meaning to what it represents, its designatum or extra-linguistic support in the intended message. This view of reference will make sense only to those who recognize the fundamental importance of representation in any act of language. If one adopted the view of certain scholars that the meaning of, say, dog is the living entity that barks and bites it would remove meaning from language, which would thus be reduced to a collection of physical signs. It is more common for scholars to identify meaning with something mental – our experience of the entity we are talking about – but this too removes meaning from language since our ongoing experience, our stream of consciousness, is

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outside our language and largely independent of it. The view at the basis of these lessons is that the meaning of a word is a mental construct, related to a sign, within a given language for representing diverse experiences. Thus linguistic representation, arising at the beginning of an act of speech, is that part of the process which depicts the intended message by means of the best word meanings available in order to express it. And linguistic reference, arising at the end of the act of speech when the sentence has been constructed, is the process of designating, whereby the meaning of the noun phrase is related back to the experience it represents – and in the case of listeners this usually involves reconstructing in their own minds the experience of the speaker that prompted the act of speech in the first place. What permits determiners to carry out reference conceived in this way? According to some grammarians determiners are characterized by the fact that they “indicate whether the phrase is definite or indefinite” (Huddleston and Pullum 357). This manner of characterizing determiners is based on distinctions between expressive effects in discourse, and so, in order to explain these effects, calls for a description of what each determiner represents since there is “no expression without representation.” As already shown, this definite/indefinite effect is produced by the articles because the depicts the designatum of the noun phrase as occupying the extensity represented, whereas a depicts an entity to be found anywhere within the extensity represented. Like the indefinite article, any and some depict the designatum as a part somewhere within the whole and so have the effect of leaving it indefinite, whereas this and that depict it as occupying a space in relation to the speaker’s presence and so express it as definite. Thus these expressive effects arise from different manners of representing the substantive’s support permitted by the system involved, and the same effects observed with other determiners constitute facts to be explained by the means of representation available to each determiner thanks to its system. It remains that this definite/indefinite classification is based on a contrast between determiners and not on what is common to all and so it seems preferable to explore a more general way of characterizing them. Some scholars have described a determiner in more general terms as a word that expresses “the extent of reference” or “specifies the range of reference.” What is interesting in this way of

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characterizing them is the implication that, whatever the definiteness or indefiniteness of the reference, the determiner represents an “extent,” a “range,” that is, a certain space. The importance of this observation can be seen if it is recalled that determiners are used with a substantive and that a substantive is, by definition, a space word, a part of speech whose import is constructed by means of spatial parameters. Understood in terms of incidence to something in the intended message, reference calls for a linguistic representation, i.e. within the noun phrase, of the spatial dimension of the substantive’s extralinguistic field of application, its extent or actual range. As just pointed out, this is what the determiner does as formal head of the noun phrase. That is to say, the determiner provides a support for the substantive (with its adjuncts) by representing its extensity corresponding to the extralinguistic extent of reference and thereby permits the referential incidence of the noun phrase to its designatum in the intended message. Representing the extensity itself as the articles do, or a space corresponding to the extensity as the other determiners do, is thus a necessary condition for reference. Regarding the noun phrase in this way provides a general framework for considering reference but does not of course clarify all the problems related to this difficult subject. Among other questions, it remains to clarify just when the referential incidence made possible by a noun phrase takes place. For example, when it is constructed to function as the object of a preposition or a verb, is a noun phrase referred to its designatum before entering into relationship with its preposition or verb, or is its reference effected after all the syntactic relationships have been established and the sentence as a whole is referred to the intended message? What is involved here is the relation between the grammatical incidence linking the components of the sentence into a single unit and referential incidence relaying the sentence meaning back to the intended message, a question which has not yet been explored from the point of view of the theory of syntax presented in these lessons. DETER MINERS AS PRONOUNS

The preceding sections have outlined how a determiner serves as a completive and how it provides a precondition for reference. It remains to examine its part of speech. Some grammars speak of

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“demonstrative adjectives,” for example, on the assumption that, when used as completives, this and that characterize a substantive’s lexeme the way an adjective does. As pointed out above however the relation between adjective and substantive is one of material incidence, the lexical matter of the adjective being made incident to the lexical matter of the substantive, whereas the relation between substantive and determiner is one of formal incidence, the lexical matter of the substantive (and its adjuncts) being made incident to the dematerialized, formal support provided by the determiner. More concretely, where ‘big’ would tell us something about the entity represented by ‘dog’, this and that tell us not about the entity but about how the speaker conceives the entity, situates it in the intended message, and so can hardly be considered to be adjectives. On the other hand, Guillaume considered them pronouns because of their completive role. A determiner is certainly not a pronoun in the sense of a word that “replaces a noun” as such. On the other hand, because a determiner represents the space occupied by the designatum of its substantive, it depicts outside the substantive an element that would otherwise be left implicit within the substantive, its extent of reference. In this more limited respect, a determiner can be seen to replace, or should we say to displace, this formal element of the substantive and so has perhaps a certain claim to the category of pronoun. This claim is strengthened by the consideration that the determiner provides a spatial representation. That is to say, it is in terms of representing space that we have analyzed the three systems of determiners and so, although a transpredicative part of speech, a determiner appears to be formed with spatial parameters like the substantive. This suggests that, though they have no lexeme, determiners, like substantives, are space words and so can be considered to be pronouns by nature, even if they do not replace a substantive. This question will be examined more carefully in lesson 19 on suppletive pronouns, which in their syntactic behaviour resemble a substantive, or more precisely a noun phrase, thus implying some common element enabling them to function in like fashion. The very fact that most determiners have a twin which functions as a suppletive pronoun is further evidence that they are pronouns. Simply to declare, for example, some to be both a pronoun when used on its own and an adjective when used with a substantive not

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only fails to indicate what conditions its syntactic behaviour but also ignores all that is common to some in the two uses. Getting back to the system in tongue and discerning the potential of a completive and of its suppletive counterpart will help explain how the same grammatical morpheme can have these two uses, and will help clarify why completives like a, and the are not found as suppletives. Finally, “From a general point of view, person is the support the mind gives itself for attaching the imports of meaning it has determined for itself in tongue.” If this view of Guillaume’s is valid, it implies that person is represented in completives as well as in suppletives, a point we shall return to in lesson 19. Such considerations point to the conclusion that determiners are pronouns. This brings up the question of terminology: the term commonly used, “determiner,” names these words only by one of their functions: what determines “the kind of reference a particular noun phrase has” as Quirk et al (253) put it. The less common expression “completive pronouns” names their function within the noun phrase but also names them by their part of speech and brings out the distinction between completive and suppletive uses. Being more explicit, this terminology calls our attention to the real problem of analysis, their grammatical makeup. The importance of raising this problem will be brought out in the next lesson, which examines a construction that functions as a determiner yet is not a pronoun.

LESSON EIGHTEEN

-’s Phrase The import of the possessor phrase is thus to make explicit the mental path that the hearer must follow in order to identify the target. Taylor 1996, 17

THE SUFFIX AND ITS FUNCTIONS

Although the term “genitive” is found in many grammars it will not be used here to designate the -’s suffix because it suggests, at least for me, one among a series of cases as in Old English or Latin, i.e. a declension reflecting a system of different cases in tongue, whereas, as seen in lesson 4, there is nothing to suggest the existence of such a case system in the Modern English substantive. The other common term, “possessive,” will therefore be adopted here since it evokes the expressive effect most commonly associated with the suffix, and permits us to speak of “possessor” and “possessee,” even though none of these terms characterize adequately the relationship involved. Indeed, the very fact of being aware that ‘possession’ is only its prototypical effect and that the suffix contributes to the expression of other effects, can serve as a stimulus to work out the underlying meaning potential of the suffix. It was also brought out in lesson 4 that -’s is not always added to the substantive that designates the possessor. For example in the University of Minnesota’s president, where of Minnesota is a postmodifier of university, it is the university’s, not Minnesota’s, president. Examples of postmodification of the ‘possessor’ like this have led grammarians to observe that the -’s is added to the last word of the noun phrase, so the result is analyzed into its constituents as follows (Quirk et al., 328)1: [[the University of Minnesota]’s] President

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As a consequence the suffix is not considered to be an inflexion of the substantive, and this even in cases without postmodification, like the university’s president. That is, the conclusion drawn from examples involving postmodification of the ‘possessor’ has been generalized to include all cases where the ‘possessor’ noun phrase precedes the ‘possessee’ substantive. This of course makes it clear that the substantive is no longer inflected for case and so clarifies one issue, but it raises another problem because, as already seen, “poss ‘s in Present-day English qualifies neither as a genuine inflection nor as a genuine clitic” (Rosenbach, 13). Would it make any sense to propose that a noun phrase can take a suffix? A third point explained above is that the -’s phrase functions as a determiner. As Quirk at al. (326) point out, in cases like this patient’s results “we … see the genitive construction as a noun phrase embedded as a definite determinative within another noun phrase.” This role can be recognized by the fact that the ‘possessor’ phrase provides the means of effecting the referential incidence of the ‘possessee’ substantive. Thus this is a completive for patient (this patient) not for results (*this results), and so it is ‘thispatient’s’ which serves to indicate the reference of ‘results’, the lexical head of the whole noun phrase. Recognizing this role of the -’s phrase – relating the import of the ‘possessee’ substantive to its correlate in the intended message – is an important step toward understanding the ‘possessive’ construction, but as always we must look beyond what the morpheme does to try to see what prior conditions make it possible. That is, recognizing this role raises the question of discerning what the suffix contributes to the ‘possessor’ phrase this patient enabling it to refer the ‘possessee’ substantive results to its designatum. Our discussion of completive pronouns has shown that, besides their referential role, they fulfil the role of support. The notional import of the substantive finds a support in the space represented by the article, the demonstrative or other completive, and it is this incidence of a substantive’s import to its completive’s formal support that completes the internal incidence of the substantive and constitutes the noun phrase. Apparently this is the case for ‘possession’ phrases as well since without the suffix, as in *this patient results, the expression would not make sense, there being nothing to institute a syntactic relation between this patient and results. In order to understand how the -’s phrase fulfils its determiner function, therefore, the question of what enables it to fulfil its

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completive function – to provide a support for the ‘possessee’ substantive – will also have to be addressed. Grammarians have pointed out that not all uses of -’s occur in ‘possession’ phrases with determiner function. It is also found with a “modifier” function, that is, where the suffixed substantive characterizes the following substantive, as in a women’s college. Here the article obviously provides a support for college (a college) and not women (*a women), a clear indication that the noun phrase has not been constructed in the same way as in ‘possession’ uses like this patient’s results. This raises a new problem: is it the same suffix that permits a modifier function or are there two different, homonymous suffixes? Examining the -’s phrase’s determiner function in its most obvious role, that of reference, will provide a basis for analyzing its support role and subsequently for attempting to discern the underlying meaning of the suffix. Only then will we be in a position to consider the modifier function. DETER MINER FUNCTION: REFERENCE ROLE

In his detailed study on possessives Taylor describes this role as follows (1996, 17; italics in the original): The special character of the possessive construction lies in the fact that it invites the hearer to first evoke the possessor entity, and conveys that the referent of the possessee nominal is to be located in the neighbourhood of the possessor. The import of the possessor phrase is thus to make explicit the mental path that the hearer must follow in order to identify the target … In opting to use a possessive expression, the speaker is instructing on how best to identify the referent that he, the speaker, intends. In order to explain what permits the ‘possessive’ construction to make this mental path explicit to the hearer, it is necessary to discern what the abstract morpheme -’s expresses. Since there is “no expression without representation,” this will lead us to focus on what the speaker represents by means of this linguistic sign, and here it appears obvious: -’s represents the mental path followed by the speaker in order to identify the target. That is, speakers must first represent something in their experience by means of a linguistic meaning before they can express it, thereby “instructing” the

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hearer on how to identify it. This is essentially what resulted from discussions in previous lessons. The analysis of three sets of determiners brought out that each completive pronoun represents a mental space, a space corresponding to that occupied by what their substantive represents, its designatum. Moreover the completive represents its space within a containing space or field: an article depicts its substantive’s space as an extensity drawn from the lexeme’s extension in tongue; quantifiers some and any depict their substantive’s space as a part of a whole; demonstratives this and that depict their substantive’s space within the speaker-centred field of the intended message. Thus each completive is able to effect referential incidence because it represents within the field depicted by its system a mental space corresponding to a certain place in the intended message. This representation of what the speaker does to situate some experiential entity permits a completive to express “the mental path that the hearer must follow in order to identify the target” thereby determining how the import of the noun phrase is referred to its designatum. Turning now to the -‘s, these findings concerning completive pronouns suggest that for the suffix to fulfil the same function of reference it too must represent a mental space, the space occupied by the entity the ‘possessee’ substantive represents. Thus in This patient’s results are not available yet, it would seem that -‘s represents the space occupied by the designatum of results, a space located with regard to the field of the ‘possessor’ entity, which in our example is represented by a noun phrase with its own determiner: this patient. That is, the ‘possessor’ entity designated by patient is located in the intended message by means of the demonstrative this. Thanks to the ‘possessive’ suffix the place of the ‘possessee’ results is depicted in relation to that of the ‘possessor’ patient, more precisely, “in the neighbourhood of the possessor” as Taylor puts it. Thus, once results is made incident to the ‘possessor’ phrase, or rather to the space represented by -‘s, the referential incidence of the whole noun phrase can be effected. The proposal that -‘s represents the space occupied in the intended message by the ‘possessee’ entity gives it as abstract a meaning as that proposed for completives – depicting the place of something without the something. Since -‘s is not a pronoun, however, its space is not located within a containing space or field by means of a system of pronouns. On the contrary, it depends on the

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input of its own ‘possessor’ noun phrase to determine where it is located. This helps us understand what is perhaps the most striking point here: that the determinative function can be fulfilled by a momentary construction of discourse, a ‘possessor’ noun phrase with all the particularity of its lexical import, and not by a completive pronoun drawn from a system in tongue. The fact that reference can be effected either with the abstract means made available by a system of pronouns or with lexical means provided by a noun phrase permits us to distinguish clearly between the determinative function and the instrument used to carry it out. Comparing in this way the different instruments available helps refine our understanding of what is involved in referential incidence. Syntactically speaking, of course, things are more complicated with an -’s phrase than with a completive pronoun as determiner. It will perhaps help to concretize the above discussion if this sequence of syntactic operations is traced by means of diagrams. It will be recalled that each such operation involves making one import of meaning incident to another in order to establish a syntactic relation between two items. As usual in the sequence of operations constituting a noun phrase, what is to be talked about is represented first, and then how it is to be talked about is represented. That is, in the above example once the ‘possessee’ entity has been represented by the lexeme ‘results’ it calls for a determiner, a spatial support permitting the completion of the substantive’s internal incidence and its referential incidence to the designatum. This can be diagrammed as follows:

‘results’

Here the vertical arrow depicts the word-forming processes of ‘results’, as outlined in previous lessons. The dotted arrow is intended to suggest the projected incidence of ‘results’ to a spatial support representing its place of reference. In order to represent this support, the ‘possessor’ entity must first be represented by means of a noun phrase. This begins with evoking ‘patient’, which also calls for a support as suggested by the following diagram:

-’s Phrase

‘patient’

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‘results’

Here the vertical arrow depicts the word-forming processes of ‘patient’ and a dotted arrow the projected incidence to its spatial support, the incidence of ‘results’ to its own support being still in abeyance. To complete the ‘possessor’ noun phrase calls first for a representation of the space occupied by the entity that ‘patient’ represents. The forming of ‘this’ provides this support, as in the next diagram:

‘this’

‘patient’

‘results’

With its spatial support represented, the projected incidence of ‘patient’ to ‘this’ can be realized, as the following diagram depicts by means of the full arrow:

‘this’

‘patient’

‘results’

Making the import ‘patient’ incident to the support ‘this’ results in a noun phrase with a combined notional import (which we write ‘thispatient’), and with the capacity to effect the referential incidence of ‘patient’ to its designatum, as in the following diagram, where the vertical arrow depicts this potential operation of incidence to the intended message.:

‘thispatient’

‘results’

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The incidence of ‘results’ cannot yet be effected since, as we have seen, *this patient results makes no sense. It requires the -‘s to permit actualizing the projected operation of incidence and so the suffix must be called on from the resources of tongue as in the next diagram:

‘thispatient’s

‘results’

The import of -’s provides a spatial support for results, and so the incidence of results to this support can be effected, as in the following diagram:

‘thispatient’s

‘results’

This operation of incidence produces a new composite meaning formed as a new noun phrase. ‘thispatient’sresults’

Because ‘results’ has completed its internal incidence, the new noun phrase is now enabled to effect its referential incidence to its designatum. The dotted arrow here depicts this projected reference to the intended message, an operation to be realized once the verb has been made incident to the noun phrase in its role as subject, as support of the predicate. Bringing out the operations involved here in detail is worthwhile because this helps to distinguish clearly the reference role from the support role and show that both are necessary. ‘Thispatient’ is

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quite capable of designating a place in the intended message but cannot situate ‘results’ unless the -‘s first intervenes to provide a support for it. The opposite situation is illustrated by the “general impossibility of *the tail’s dog” (Taylor 1996, 241), an impossibility so long as the ‘possessor’ phrase, the tail, cannot provide the means of reference for the ‘possessee’ phrase dog. In our ordinary experience, the place of a tail is determined by that of the dog but in an extraordinary situation like that of a game where children must match tails to the appropriate picture of a dog, the instructions might well call for choosing a tail and looking for the tail’s dog. The result in discourse of all these operations of representation and incidence is thus to express a ‘possessive’ noun phrase consisting of a first noun phrase, one capable of designating the ‘possessor’, with the -‘s representing an adjoining mental space, followed by a substantive representing the ‘possessee’. The incidence of the ‘possessee’ substantive to the space in the “neighbourhood” of the ‘possessor’ with its referential potential is what “instructs the hearer on how best to identify the referent.” Things can of course be far more complicated, as suggested by examples like the following: the teacher of music’s room the man she was speaking to’s reaction a guy I know’s house

The ‘possessee’ entities are first represented by ‘room’, ‘reaction’, and ‘house’. Then the ‘possessor’ entities are represented and the operations of grammatical incidence involved both in relating the substantive to its article and in the postmodification of teacher, man, and guy by of music, she was speaking to and I know are completed to constitute a noun phrase. This noun phrase is then suffixed by -’s thereby providing a support for the ‘possessee’ substantive to form a more comprehensive noun phrase and permitting its referential incidence to a space in the “neighbourhood” of the ‘possessor’. This manner of conceiving the genesis of the total noun phrase shows how the -’s phrase helps carry out the role of reference, but it raises a problem insofar as the other role of the suffix is concerned, the role of support. How can one substantive be incident to a space defined by another substantive? This is our next concern.

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It has been proposed in previous lessons that besides permitting referential incidence determiners provide a support for the head substantive enabling it to complete its internal incidence. They do this by depicting outside the substantive a space corresponding to the substantive’s place of reference, a space which can therefore serve as a support for the lexeme to be applied to. In the above example, where the -‘s phrase functions as a determiner, this implies not only that the incidence of patient to this permits patient to effect its internal incidence, but also that the incidence of results to the support provided by this patient’s permits results to effect its internal incidence. Here is where the difficulty arises: the support provided by this for patient implies an extensity actualized from the extension of the notion ‘patient’, and the same for results: to effect its internal incidence requires a support corresponding to, implying an extensity drawn from its own extension. That is to say, it would contradict all we know about internal incidence as the defining characteristic of a substantive to propose that results completes its morphogenesis through an incidence to this patient, to a support within the extension of another substantive, and yet at first sight that appears to be what is taking place. If, from the point of view of the theory of the substantive, results cannot be incident to this patient that leaves only one other possibility: it is incident to the -’s suffix. It has already been noted that the suffix plays an essential role here because without it (*this patient results) there would be no resulting noun phrase, and the reason is now clear: as a substantive, i.e. a word incident to its own extension, results cannot find a spatial support corresponding to its extensity within the extension of another substantive, patient. Suffixing -’s to this patient however makes possible the incidence of the second substantive’s notional import, which must be incident to whatever the suffix signifies. That is, we are led to infer that it is -’s and not this patient which signifies a spatial support corresponding to the extensity of ‘results’ and so permitting the incidence of the ‘possessee’ to the ‘possessor’ noun phrase. That is, -’s represents a space corresponding to the extensity of ‘results’, a mental space distinct from that represented by the ‘possessor’ noun phrase it is suffixed to. This analysis gives us a first view of the underlying meaning of the suffix. Like completive pronouns, -s represents a spatial support

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corresponding to the extensity of the following substantive. The only innovation here is that -’s does not situate this extensity within some containing locus but rather outside the locus of the suffixed noun phrase. To depict one space as outside another it is first necessary to delimit the other space; only then can one go beyond its limits and represent a space outside it. That is to say, the mental space of the ‘possessor’ noun phrase and the space of the suffix are distinct but related, the latter adjoining the former, or better, transcending it.2 It is this representing of different mental spaces, one located beyond the other, that helps us understand why “the possessive construction … invites the hearer to first evoke the possessor entity, and conveys that the referent of the possessee nominal is to be located in the neighbourhood of the possessor.” This view of what -’s signifies may help explain the variety of expressive effects the suffix contributes to, provided being in the “neighbourhood of the possessor” is understood, not merely in terms of perceivable, geographical space, but more abstractly in terms of mental space whereby one notion is depicted as distinct from but related to another. Certainly a suffix with this meaning is quite appropriate for expressing a relation of possession in the strict sense, as in Mary’s book, since we can often identify something by referring it to, by mentally situating it next to, its owner. Furthermore, this relation of dependence between two mental spaces whereby the place of the ‘possessee’ substantive’s designatum is determined by that of the ‘possessor’ noun phrase is sufficiently abstract to help clarify other expressive effects like, for example, that of the patient’s death, which does not express ‘possession’ in the proper sense. Here it seems that other than mentally situating ‘death’ next to ‘thepatient’ the suffix in no way specifies the relation between the two, but rather leaves this to the lexical relation between the two notions. As a consequence, there is often room for different interpretations calling for a knowledge of the particular circumstances involved, as when Mary’s book is understood in the sense of ‘the book Mary wrote’, ‘the book Mary is talking about’, etc., rather than in the strict sense of possession, or when “my grandfather’s school suggests that the grandfather has (had) some function with regard to it, e.g. as pupil, master, headmaster, builder, architect, member of the board, or what not” (Erades 1975, 53). Whether or not the meaning proposed for -‘s will provide a basis for explaining all expressive effects remains to be seen, but this

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analysis will not be pursued here since it would lead us into a consideration of the lexical relations involved whereas our concern is the grammatical makeup of the noun phrase. The next question to be examined involves a less frequent use of -‘s, what has been called its modifier or characterizing use. CHARACTERIZING FUNCTION

It will be recalled that -‘s is also found in expressions like a women’s college, where it expresses a relation quite different from ‘possession’, a relation whereby the notion ‘women’ characterizes that of ‘college’ in such a way as to suggest a type of college. Moreover the determiner of college is not provided by women’s but by the article, so that it means ‘a college for women’. The difference between the two uses of the suffix can be illustrated by an expression like that woman’s magazine, which could be interpreted in two ways. Taking the suffix to be in a determiner function one would understand the expressive effect as ‘the magazine belonging to, being read by, edited by, etc. that woman’. Taking the suffix to be in a characterizing function we would understand the expressive effect as ‘that magazine published for women readers’. As Taylor points out, in the latter interpretation suggesting a type of magazine, the expression has a stress pattern suggestive of compounds, and he calls it a “possessive compound.” However, since it expresses a characterizing relationship (something like the relation of an adjective to its substantive), not a ‘possessive’ relationship, and since it does not have a determiner function, this use will be referred to here as the characterizing or modifying function. In his discussion of this use Taylor (1996, 287–94) brings out various details of usage indicating that this is a construction of discourse in which the suffixed substantive characterizes the head substantive. This is the important point here because it indicates that in an example like this old people’s home, thanks to -‘s the notion of ‘oldpeople’ characterizes that of ‘home’ to give the sense of ‘this home for old people’. Involved here is a syntactic relationship quite distinct from that of ‘possessive’ -‘s (as in this old couple’s home where the sense is ‘the home belonging to this old couple’). To give rise to a characterizing relationship in this way, the suffixed item, ‘oldpeople’s’, must be made incident to the final substantive, ‘home’, as suggested by

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the following diagram (which takes for granted the preceding operations of representation and incidence):

‘oldpeople’s’

‘home’

This is the way the incidence of an adjective to its substantive was described in a preceding lesson, but is just the contrary of what was proposed above for ‘possessive’ -‘s (cf. Quirk et al., 1335–6) for tree diagrams contrasting the two). The result of this operation of incidence is a complex notion ‘oldpeople’shome’, which then finds a formal support in the completive this. That is, it is the substantive home, once characterized by the notional import of old people, that completes its internal incidence through the demonstrative and can then be referred to the intended message. It is important to notice here that old people has no determiner, that there is no need to evoke which, how many, etc. old people. That is to say, unlike the import of noun phrases examined so far, ‘oldpeople’ is not referable to its designatum in the intended message. It is clear that ‘people’, like any other substantive, provides a support for the incidence of ‘old’, and yet the result, ‘oldpeople’, functions more like an adjective seeking a support than a substantive here. It would seem that, at the point where the suffix intervenes, the grammatical forming of the substantive people is incomplete, that its extensity is not represented and so its internal incidence is yet to be finalized. That is, as a characterizing morpheme, -‘s is suffixed, not to a full-fledged noun phrase as is the ‘possessive’ morpheme, but to what appears to be a substantive lexically complete but grammatically incomplete. We have touched here on an area of usage where the distinction between the use of the -‘s and its non-use is by no means obvious, as Taylor points out (1996, 301–12). He gives pairs like a ship’s engine and a car engine, the driver’s seat and the passenger seat, children’s clothes and baby clothes, and the like to illustrate the point. It may well be that with car, passenger and baby it is a case of forming the notion as an adjective (what grammars call “conversion,” as we saw in a previous lesson), whereas with ship’s, driver’s and children’s the process of substantivizing is initiated but intercepted before its end by the suffix. This is another problem whose solution must await further

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consideration in a more appropriate context. Suffice it to say here that the -‘s in its characterizing use is not added to a noun phrase but to what appears to be a proto-substantive, giving it an adjectival function with regard to the following substantive. CONCLUSION

Briefly evoking the second use of the -‘s in this way shows that it does not raise a new problem for the noun phrase. The problem it raises is rather that of the relationship between -‘s in the determiner use and -‘s in the characterizing use. Is this a case of homonyms establishing different syntactic links, two quite different suffixes that happen to have the same sign? If so the meaning of the second suffix will have to be described, and the coincidence of their signs explained. On the other hand, do we have here two uses of the same suffix? If so it will have to be shown how two apparently unrelated uses can be permitted by the same underlying meaning, which was described for ‘possessive’ -‘s as representing a support space. Our examination of ‘possessive’ phrases has been useful in bringing out that the term “determiner” should not be thought of as designating a type of word but rather a means of fulfilling a certain function, that of referential incidence. The term “completive” can be applied to them to indicate their support function with regard to the ‘possessee’ substantive. The use of ‘possessive’ phrases in a suppletive function (e.g. That is the teacher’s) has not been brought up since it does not appear to introduce problems other than those discussed here or in lesson 19 on suppletive pronouns. That is, the makeup of the ‘possessive’ -‘s phrase permits it to function, like some, this, and many other pronouns as either a suppletive or a completive. The discussion in this lesson has raised an important problem concerning the nature of a noun phrase. What is implied by the observation that ‘possessive’ -’s is suffixed to the noun phrase? In psychomechanical analysis it is customary to explain morphemes within the confines of the word’s genesis, treating grammatical suffixes in the morphogenesis of a word and lexical suffixes as an extension of its ideogenesis. In the genesis of the noun phrase, is there a place for a suffix? Or rather – since we have observed that in fact a noun phrase does take a suffix – what are the characteristics of a noun phrase which permit this? The very fact that, unlike

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pronouns, -‘s can never stand as a word indicates that it lacks one of the essential components of a word, either a lexical or a grammatical import. In operative terms this means that the suffix is not, like words, the result of a binary operation: ideogenesis + morphogenesis. One of these formative phases of a word is missing. This is the case of all suffixes, as Guillaume has pointed out. A grammatical inflexion like ‘plural’ -s in the substantive has only a grammatical meaning resulting from its place in a grammatical system. A lexical suffix like -ish (as in boyish) has only a lexical meaning. How about -‘s? Is its representation of ‘a support space transcending another space’ a grammatical import or a lexical import? There are arguments on both sides. The very abstractness of its meaning import would seem to put it on a par with grammatical inflexions. Besides it is the descendant of an OE grammatical inflexion. On the other hand, it has no counterpart in another suffix which would make it part of a system in tongue. It is a characteristic of grammatical morphemes to belong to a systemic construct in tongue, but this is not the case of ‘possessive’ -‘s. Furthermore there seems to be no limit to the abstractness of meaning expressed by a lexical element so there appears to be no reason why a lexical suffix could not express something as abstract as certain grammatical elements. There is therefore a certain grounds for proposing that ‘possessive’ -‘s is a lexical suffix adding to the import of the noun phrase a little lexical supplement consisting of a transcendent space, a mental space beyond that occupied by noun phrase’s designatum. This proposal for the meaning of the ‘possessive’ suffix remains a hypothesis which will have to be confronted not only with all the data of usage and the systemic requirements of what has already been established in analyzing the noun phrase but also with what is found for characterizing -‘s. Whatever the fate of this hypothesis, some such description of the underlying meaning of -‘s is required because a description limited to the way -‘s functions fails to describe what explains and so remains incomplete.

LESSON NINETEEN

Suppletive Pronouns as Noun Phrase … the Authors of Language were not content with this [Pointing or Indication by the Finger or Hand]. They invented a race of Words to supply this Pointing; which Words, as they always stood for Substantives or Nouns, were characterized by the Name of … Pronouns. James Harris 1751 cited in Michael, 323

INTRODUCTION

In the last few lessons we have been examining the noun phrase made up of a determiner and a substantive with its adjectives and adverbs if any. In all cases it has been brought out that, thanks to the noun phrase, the lexical import of the substantive can effect its internal incidence and then be referred to the extra-linguistic referent through the process of referential incidence. Providing the necessary conditions for carrying out these two processes is the role of determiners: they provide a support for the lexical import of the substantive by representing the space occupied by its designatum. And so one feels that the noun phrase is somehow incomplete when a determiner is erroneously left out.1 When examining noun phrases with an article, we compared them with minimal noun phrases, consisting of a bare substantive. There it was shown that the substantive itself provides the necessary conditions for internal incidence and reference: through number, the system of the substantive represents the space occupied by the entity in the intended message, a space corresponding to the lexeme’s extensity in that use. However internal incidence, which is made explicit when a determiner is used, remains implicit with the bare substantive.

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This lesson will focus on another type of minimal noun phrase, that made up of a pronoun. It is often said that, as its name suggests, a pronoun replaces a noun, or substantive, what is usually called its antecedent. As Quirk et al. point out (76), however, this is misleading since a pronoun “tends to be a surrogate for a whole noun phrase rather than a noun.” That is to say, a pronoun can supplete for a noun phrase in the sense of fulfilling the same functions in the sentence, though obviously it can not express the same lexical import because, as a transpredicative part of speech, it does not bring its own lexeme to the sentence. Once again words formed by a particular part of speech will be approached by first observing their behaviour in discourse and then trying to discern the conditions permitting them to behave as they do. So in this lesson our task will be to probe the mental makeup of pronouns to see what enables them to function suppletively in this way. The first question to be explored through some uses of it is the way suppletive pronouns effect reference when used suppletively – how they “supply this Pointing” as Harris put it – to see if they carry it out the way described for completive pronouns in preceding lessons. The second question involves how they provide a support, and, since they bring in no lexeme of their own, what it is a support for, a question to be explored here by examining some uses of the partitives some and any and, in the next lesson, the personal pronouns even though analysis has not progressed enough as yet to describe even tentatively their system, probably the most complex among the pronouns. SUPPLETIVE PRONOUNS AND REFERENCE

As in the case of completive pronouns, the suppletives are often said to have the role of reference. They “incorporate their own determiner” as Quirk et al. (335) put it. This means that suppletive pronouns incorporate their own capacity to effect referential incidence and so it is part of our task to try to understand what it is in their makeup that permits them to do this. It is sometimes maintained that they fulfil this role by referring to an antecedent in the linguistic context, either to some preceding element (anaphoric reference) or some later element (cataphoric reference). Because this view of reference is limited to describing expressive effects

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obtaining between syntactic components, a more comprehensive view has been adopted in these lessons, namely reference as incidence to the extra-linguistic intended message. In this wider view, both antecedent and pronoun are considered to refer to the same entity in the speaker’s experience. It will perhaps be useful at this point to illustrate how a suppletive pronoun effects referential incidence in this way. In situations involving two speakers reference requires each person, when speaking, to take into account how the linguistic context has contributed to what the other has in mind at that moment. For example, in a conversation such as: Wife: “My mother is dropping in this afternoon.” Husband: “What time is she coming?”

the noun phrase my mother makes it clear that the first speaker has her mother in mind as one element in the intended message. Once the second speaker has understood the sentence addressed to him and obtained the message arising from it, the sentence itself no longer exists, but its message forms part of his current experience, of what he has in mind, along with other impressions such as wanting to see his mother-in-law, of having to be in his office by two o’clock, etc. From this experiential complex he constitutes his own intended message and, to represent it, constructs the question. The pronoun she thus calls to mind, not the substantive mother in the defunct sentence, but the set of impressions corresponding to it in the second speaker’s intended message. More precisely, because a pronoun has no lexical import and so cannot represent the characterizing traits constituting a particular lexeme, she represents the experiential entity, not in its set of particular impressions but in its spatial form, including the space occupied by that entity within the intended message. Once the question is expressed and the first speaker, now the listener, has understood it, she refers the sentence meaning through the subject to what she already has in mind, namely the message of the first sentence. That is to say, the personal pronoun here is understood to refer, not to another noun phrase in the linguistic context, but to the same referent in the speaker’s intended message that the noun phrase had referred to. Both she and my mother have the same extralinguistic support for their referential incidence. In this view, then, it is misleading to speak of contextual or

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anaphoric reference, as grammars sometimes do, since what is involved here is a matter of coreference, of two noun phrases referring to the same designatum. Quirk et al. (76) compare two examples that help to bring out this use of pronouns. They point out that in the sentence: Many students did better than many students expected.

the two identical noun phrases “are normally taken to refer to different groups,” to different designata. On the other hand, in the sentence: Many students did better than they expected.

“many students and they are normally taken to refer to the same group of people,” to the same designatum. In fact elsewhere (347) they consider that a pronoun and its antecedent are “coreferential,” implying that they refers, not to the noun phrase many students but directly to its linguistic referent, which in the view adopted here is not the “group of people” but the speaker’s experience of the people, i.e. the set of impressions in the intended message represented by students and already designated by its noun phrase. That is, they, like the determiners already examined, depicts the space occupied by the designatum of students and so can refer to it a second time. Of interest because they help clarify the notion of coreference here are examples cited in Wales (23–4): Wash and core six cooking apples. Put them into a fireproof dish.

Since the apples have undergone “a change of state,” can we say that six cooking apples and them have “identical reference”? This may be a problem for anyone who considers that the two noun phrases refer to the “real world” but not for readers of the recipe, who already have in mind the message of the first sentence (‘accomplishing the transformation of the apples’) when they read the second sentence. The point is that real language refers directly to our mental world, and only through it to the extramental world. Similarly, a case of “sloppy reference” like the following “would cause problems for a grammatical substitution and identity of reference approach”:

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Sampson himself did baby-sitting, and they didn’t mind a bit about hurting his feelings, or any other part of him for that matter.

They does not evoke by anaphora, or substitute for, any antecedent. Rather, it refers to the message of the first clause which necessarily implies the presence of babies in the speaker’s mental scenario. The question of “identical reference” in the sense of calling to mind the same lexical notion or “real world” entity is irrelevant since “in order to identify the target,” as Taylor puts it, the pronoun depicts only where it is, its place at that moment, and not what is in that mental space. In these examples then, the personal pronouns refer to an individual or group in the speaker’s intended message by representing the place it occupies. Effecting coreference with another noun phrase in this way is perhaps the most common use of personal pronouns but it is not the only use. They are found in coreference with clauses, sentences and even a sequence of sentences, as Quirk et al. (348) show: Many students never improve. They get no advice and therefore keep repeating the same mistakes. It’s a terrible shame.

As in the above cases of she and they, it here is coreferential, but with the two sentences preceding it, not with a particular noun phrase. That is, it represents the space occupied by the total intended message that prompted those sentences. As a consequence it, being subject, makes its own sentence incident to the place occupied by the whole complex of impressions represented by the preceding sentences, thus permitting the speaker to characterize the situation he or she has in mind as a terrible shame. The examples given so far have shown how a suppletive pronoun represents the place occupied by something already expressed. It can also represent the place occupied by something before that something has been represented lexically. It is interesting to observe how this type of coreference, with the formal representation anticipating the lexical representation, is exploited in journalism as Huddleston and Pullum (1480) point out, illustrating it with the following example: Peter Costello calls her a Labor Party hireling, but she could be the academic that ultimately saves the Government’s bacon on the goods

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and services tax. Ann Harding will today become one of only two witnesses in the five-month Senate ordeal on the GST that all sides want to hear from.

The effect of introducing an individual by means of the formal representation provided by her and she in the first sentence is “to catch the listener’s or reader’s attention” because it puts off identifying the individual until the second sentence. The first pronoun, her, could have been replaced by the proper name, Ann Harding, but this stylistic effect would then have been lost. Similarly, in the preceding example from Quirk et al. the sentence order could have been different: It’s a terrible shame. Many students never improve. They get no advice and therefore keep repeating the same mistakes.

In this order, anticipatory it depicts the locus of the intended message, but does not tell us what its predicate characterizes in that locus. It is only in the next two sentences that the content of the intended message is represented and we learn what situation a terrible shame characterizes. It is interesting to note here that we understand many students in the second sentence to be part of that situation, that is, to be referred to a space contained in the space already referred to by it. But this is merely implied, there being nothing to indicate coreference except that every sentence is necessarily said about the intended message a speaker has in mind. A slightly different relation of incidence appears to be manifested in a use sometimes called “impersonal it,” where it is not, strictly speaking, a question of coreference: It seemed that things would never get any better.

As a complement of seemed, the subordinate clause is made syntactically incident to the support provided by it, and through this support to the intended message, so it is not a case of coreference. A similar analysis applies to it in uses such as: It’s raining today. What time is it? It’s a long way from here to Cairo.

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According to Quirk et al. (349) it here can be taken as referring “generally to the time or place of the event or state in question.” This suggests that here too it represents the place occupied by the intended message but not its particular content, so that the predicate is attributed to the setting as a whole. That is, the predicate is incident to the subject, which then effects the referential incidence of the sentence meaning to the intended message. This use of it to represent the space implied by the intended message contrasts with its use to depict the space of a particular entity. The difference can be brought out by means of a sentence like It’s cold, which, out of context, is ambiguous. If said when one has just had a sip of coffee, the pronoun would be understood to refer to the space occupied by something specific in the speaker’s experience, namely the coffee. If said when one is out walking, or sitting at home, the sentence would be understood to refer to the general setting of what the speaker has in mind, to its full scope, and the speaker might well give an indication of this scope by means of an adverb, as in It’s cold out; It’s cold in here. The point is that it here appears to vary in scope, in the space it represents, in its extent of reference. This variation in scope is something we have already observed with the articles, and with some and any, and so there is no need to imagine two different it’s to account for cases of specific and general reference. Rather, it appears that its potential meaning permits it to represent more or less of the space implied in what the speaker has in mind to talk about. Another case of it with referential incidence involving no coreference arises in certain uses where the pronoun is object of a verb or a preposition. Its referential incidence is carried out indirectly (through the verb or preposition) without any expression of what is found in the locus it designates. The following examples are typical (cf. Huddleston and Pullum, 1483 for others): Make it snappy. Just cool it, OK ? I can’t hack it. Let’s get on with it.

If grammarians find that they cannot find any “identifiable independent meaning” for it here it is perhaps because they have not

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considered that each time one of these sentences is spoken, both speaker and listener have a particular situation in mind. As a consequence it refers to something to be done snappily (e.g. getting ready for school), or some attitude to be tempered (e.g. the listener’s angry mood), or some situation to be struggled through (e.g. difficult professional circumstances), or a task to be undertaken (e.g. cleaning up the house). Since both participants are already aware of the particular situation there is no need to represent it lexically and express it, and so it suffices for the speaker to designate it. This use of a pronoun is not limited to it. Wales (46) gives a particularly clear example of he without antecedent in a telephone conversation which begins as follows: “Have you heard? He’s out. He’s on his way to Damascus now!”

Although there is no coreference, not even by implication here, the pronoun can carry out its function of reference because it is incident to what both speaker and hearer already have in mind, “what is part of their common mental universe,” a person who has been held hostage. Uses like these thus give clear evidence that the pronoun refers to the intended message, not to something else in the linguistic context. There is a case where it does not refer to any specific situation which both speaker and listener have in mind. Often when two people meet the first remark is: How’s it going?

The question is about “life in general” according to Quirk et al. (349), and in fact sometimes one hears How are things going? Here then it appears that the pronoun depicts not the locus of a particular situation but a much broader setting so as to include whatever the person addressed may have in mind, and as such makes a common conversation opener. By way of contrast, a student working on a project would understand the teacher who asked the question to be referring to something specific, the project, not to life in general. Comparing these two interpretations, life in general vs. particular situation, one gets the impression that it has a broader scope

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in the first than in the second. The above example can be compared with the following involving coreference: Your new job – how’s it going?

Here both your new job and it refer to the same particular element in the speaker’s intended message. This examination of it has only touched on several questions of usage but it does help bring out the fact that a suppletive pronoun has two roles: by means of coreference it can evoke something expressed elsewhere in the discourse, and it can indicate something not expressed elsewhere by simply referring to its place in the intended message. The latter use, which is the usual case for I and you, raises the problem of the relation between import and support, a problem to be dealt with in the next section, where the support role of the pronoun will be examined. Our discussion has centred on it, which, because it is often considered a meaningless word, provides the best test for our meaningbased approach, but the considerations concerning it are applicable to the other personal pronouns. Wales (Ch. 2) gives a good view of the variety of usage any proposed explanation must confront and stresses “the importance of our own mental activity as users of English in both appreciating and resolving ambiguity, finding relevance in indeterminacy and, generally, in assigning the appropriate reference” (49). Her study constitutes a challenge to the explanation proposed here since it is not based on the conception of reference as the relating of the meaning (a representation of space) expressed by the pronoun to what the speaker has in mind. Thanks to this conception, which will be illustrated more fully in the next lesson, there is no need to regard the pronoun sometimes as relating to an antecedent in the linguistic context, sometimes as relating to something in “the outside world,” and sometimes as “a dummy, semantically empty pronoun” (Huddleston and Pullum, 1482). Nor, as we shall now see, is there any need to consider determiner and pronoun two different types of word. SUPPLETIVE PRONOUNS AND SUPPOR T

In preceding lessons, the examination of words used as determiners brought out that they can fulfil two functions, that of formal

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support for the lexical import of the noun phrase and that of referring the lexical import to the intended message. Paralleling most determiners are words with identical signs usually called pronouns, i.e. words constituting a minimal noun phrase. This fact was considered evidence that, from the point of view of the system in tongue, what is involved here is really the same word, a pronoun, with two distinct uses, completive and suppletive. In this lesson, to determine the wellfoundedness of this view pronouns in their suppletive use are being examined to see if they can fulfil the same two functions, support and reference, discerned in the lessons on determiners since a similarity of function would imply a similarity in their makeup. In the last section, it, because of the particular problems it poses, was taken as an example to observe the way suppletive pronouns carry out their referring function, and we found that just like determiners, i.e. completives, it, a suppletive, refers to the place occupied by what is being talked about. Insofar as their support function is concerned the similarity is less evident because of the obvious difference between suppletives and completives: from the point of view of support, suppletives have no substantive in the noun phrase providing it with a lexical import. As a consequence one might well ask if there is an import for the pronoun in suppletive uses, i.e. if there is the representation of some entity whose place in space the pronoun represents, because if there is no import, it would seem that the pronoun cannot have the role of support. If on the other hand there is an import, this import does not seem to relate to the support-space signified by the suppletive in the same manner as the substantive’s lexeme to the support-space signified by a pronoun in its completive use. This question of support in the use of pronouns as suppletives will be explored through several examples of the partitive quantifiers, mostly from Sahlin. as in: The American dream was compounded of many strains. Some were clearly of Christian origin.

Many grammarians would consider some to have anaphoric reference here, but as was proposed for it in the last section, some here permits referential incidence, not to many strains in the preceding sentence but to the designatum of that noun phrase; as a partitive quantifier, some represents a part of the space that designatum occupies in the

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writer’s intended message. But some, as subject of its sentence, also provides a spatial support for the predicate. Similarly for any in: At each step of a derivation, we look through all the transformations to see if any are applicable, apply … .

Any also provides a spatial support for its predicate, are applicable, a support produced by representing part of the space occupied by the designatum of all the transformations. The difference between the two quantifiers comes out clearly here: ‘realizing’ some gives rise to the expressive effect of ‘a certain number’ as opposed to the ‘perhaps some’ effect of ‘hypothesizing’ any. These two pronouns in their very common suppletive use with an of-phrase also signify a support-space as in the following examples, which some might consider cataphoric: Some of these speculations may have some merit, others are somewhat ambiguous. … and there was no sound or light in the entire house to indicate that any of the occupants were awake.

In both cases the of-phrase, which depicts the whole of which the quantifier represents a part, is incident to the support provided by the pronoun, and the resulting noun phrase then serves as support (subject) for the following verb. One can observe a quantitative variation of any in this use by comparing the last example with the following: God knows, it must be a traumatic experience to be kidnapped, but I don’t believe any of the four is in immediate danger.2

Here partitive any depicts the possibility of a minimal part, one, out of the whole, four. Although suppletive some expresses a minimal part in some of these days (cf. Webster’s Third) this use has not been found elsewhere and as already pointed out the following 17th century example from the oed strikes one as archaic: All such sins being easily reducible to some of the former three.

The reason for this quantitative limitation of suppletive some in contemporary English has not yet been discerned.

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Each of these examples shows that any and some in their suppletive use can provide a support for another component of the sentence, but the relation between import and support is not the same as in their completive use. As completives, pronouns provide a support corresponding to the extensity of its substantive’s lexeme, thus permitting the substantive to effect its internal incidence and constitute a noun phrase, whereas they make possible a quite different operation of incidence when, as suppletives, they provide a support for a finite verb or for a prepositional phrase, something outside the noun phrase. Granted this difference, however, there is something in common here: both as completives and as suppletives these pronouns signify a space that can serve as a support for something else in the sentence. On the other hand, there are cases where the pronouns do not appear to function as a support for another sentence component. I am thinking here of very common uses like the following: Do you want some? I don’t care for any, thank you.

Without any prior or following discourse, these sentences would arise only if both participants have in mind the same situation, say one offering coffee to the other. Although each speaker has something different to say, both employ a partitive quantifier to represent a portion of the space occupied in their intended message by their impressions of the coffee. That is to say, each pronoun here depicts the place occupied by an unnamed entity. This same representation of space could also have served as a support for something in the sentence, as it does in completive usage (Do you want some coffee?), or with a prepositional phrase (some of the coffee), but whether or not there is an import from something else in the sentence, the pronoun always signifies a space representing the place occupied by something in the intended message and this is what permits it to effect referential incidence to that place and whatever occupies it. To help bring out the importance of representing as a supportspace the place in the intended message it refers to, let us reconsider an example from the OED where the reader may have trouble effecting reference through suppletive some: Some are annular, some are reticulated, some are dotted and some are akin to spirals.

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At first I found this example perplexing because, without any context, the sentence indicates how each pronoun depicts its space – as part of a whole in each case – but does not indicate its place in the intended message: there is no designatum, nothing to indicate what the parts are taken from, what the whole consists of. The sentence is well formed and makes sense because each predicate finds a syntactic support in a pronoun-subject, yet it does not tell us what the writer is talking about. That is, without any idea of the linguistic context it was not possible to effect referential incidence to what the writer had in mind, the intended message, in order to reconstitute it mentally as the communicated message. I was able to effect reference only by checking the source and surmising that the sentence was taken from a text dealing with markings on snake skins. For the reader of the original text, of course, there would be no such problem since the author presumably had already introduced the idea of snake skins as the setting of his intended message and so could depict within the scope of this experiential entity the different impressions associated with it by means of the adjectives. The pronouns then referred to that setting, each delineating a portion of the space it occupies. That is, to effect reference, the support designated by some and the impressions of snake skins must be brought into relationship as part of reconstituting the message. This example brings out why the pronoun is said to signify a support: it depicts the place occupied by something as its spatial support. The example also shows why a sentence out of context may make sense and yet leave us wondering what the writer is talking about: we cannot make the link with the extra-linguistic reality of the speaker’s experience. That is, sentences have a double function: to express a meaning and designate their referent. They should tell us both what speakers are saying and what they are talking about. In context, the above sentence tells us this through some, which as subject provides a support for the meaning import of the predicate in each clause, and as noun phrase permits us to refer each of these meaning complexes to the locus of a set of impressions identified by the speaker in the intended message. What at first may appear to be an exception to this is the “absolute” or “independent” use of some, where the speaker does not express what is being talked about, as in a sentence seen in a previous lesson: Some say he has left the country.

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Here there is no prior evoking of the total set of which some represents a part, and yet the expressive effect is something like ‘certain people say’. It is thanks to the verb say that the listener realizes it is people the speaker has in mind, and that the group or whole concerned is all those who could express some idea of where he is. Some, then, depicts a portion of the space occupied by this whole, a place within it (and so would contrast with they, which in the same context would be more general). Thus in this case a more extended context is not needed to effect the incidence of the partitive to the intended message, but it would be necessary for the reference of he. These examples of any and some have brought out an important point: in suppletive usage whether or not these pronouns provide a support for something else in the sentence the space they express as their own meaning is a representation of the place occupied by something the speaker has in mind. This place will thus be the support for the pronoun’s referential incidence, the target for referring whatever is incident to the pronoun (Do you want some?), and in cases where nothing in the sentence is incident to the pronoun, it refers its own abstract spatial representation to that place. The same applies to the personal pronouns, each of which represents a place in the speaking relationship, and the demonstratives, which represent a place with regard to the speaker’s presence. In cases where something else is incident to these pronouns – a predicate or an of-phrase as in the above examples – the content of this import is also made incident to that place in the intended message. So what characterizes a pronoun in its suppletive uses, whether or not it provides a support for something else in the sentence, is its representation of a place – the place occupied in the speaker’s mind by what she or he is talking about – as a supportspace for that experiential entity. SUPPLETIVE AND COMPLETIVE PRONOUNS

To conclude this discussion of pronouns, it remains to bring out what suppletives and completives have in common in the attempt to see what characterizes them as a part of speech. In both uses a pronoun can effect reference, though there is a difference. The completive acts as a determiner by providing a support for the substantive’s lexeme, a support that depicts the place occupied by the

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substantive’s designatum in the speaker’s momentary experience. It can thus transport the whole lexical import of the noun phrase to what it represents in the intended message. As a suppletive, however, a pronoun generally constitutes the noun phrase so that it has no substantive to refer to the intended message, no lexeme representing the designatum, and yet it can effect referential incidence to a designatum, usually with an import from another part of the sentence. Even when nothing else in the sentence makes a lexical import incident to the suppletive pronoun, it expresses an abstract spatial representation of the place in the intended message occupied by what the speaker wishes to refer to, the complex of impressions in the speaker’s experience being talked about. What the two uses have in common, then, is the representation of a space that can serve as a support and thanks to which reference can be effected. This is not the same kind of support we saw when examining the relation between adjective and substantive. There it was a question of material incidence, i.e. of the lexical import of the adjective being incident to the lexical support of the substantive. In the case of the pronoun the support is grammatical, formal, configured by means of general spatial parameters, with no particularizing traits of a lexical nature. Abstract though it is, this support-space does have something in common with lexemes of substantives, namely the fact that it too is a representation of something in the intended message – the place of the designatum. The opposition here between a lexeme’s representation so particularized that it is distinct from all other notions, and a representation of space so general it can accommodate an unlimited number of notions, arises from the more fundamental opposition between the substantive, a predicative part of speech, and the pronoun, a transpredicative part of speech. In the reality of our experience, of course, nothing is distinct from the place it occupies, but the role of transpredicative words like pronouns is to abstract elements, draw out and represent some general aspect of our experience which does not present itself independently on the level of particular experiences. And it seems that the element abstracted by pronouns, completive and suppletive, is the place where any entity or set of impressions is located in the speaker’s current mental scenario, a place which, represented by the means made available by the system of pronouns, is depicted as a support-space.

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This is not to say that pronouns are so abstract that they all represent a support-space in the same way. Where the demonstratives represent it as either ‘continuate’ (this, that) or ‘discontinuate’ (these, those), each and every represent it only as ‘singular’, while some and any are quite indifferent to any such distinctions. These differences reflect the manner in which each of the pronouns is formed through its systemic import. That is to say, each set of pronouns configures its support-space according to its own spatial parameters instituted as a system in tongue, as we have seen for the articles and the partitive quantifiers. Through their morphogenesis, however, all pronouns appear to produce the same result, the representation of a place in the intended message to permit referential incidence. Characterizing the pronoun as a word signifying a support-space calls for a comment on the distinction between the two ways of forming a minimal noun phrase, by means of either a suppletive pronoun or a bare substantive. We have just seen that the suppletive depicts the support of something, but to characterize that something counts on what is already present in the speaker’s experience, whether represented (It’s raining.) or not (Do you want some?). The bare substantive on the other hand represents linguistically by means of its lexeme what the speaker is talking about but there is no word expressing the support to which this import is made incident. This is due to the fact that the substantive’s internal incidence is effected within the substantive itself, without the intervention of a completive pronoun. As was shown in a previous lesson, within the substantive grammatical number provides a spatial representation implying its extensity, and the lexeme is incident to this support. This brings out a difference and a similarity between pronoun and substantive. Unlike a substantive, a pronoun is not a word capable of internal incidence since it cannot represent a lexeme-import which is incident to the support it represents. On the other hand, the very fact of proposing that the morphogenesis of a substantive involves representing a support amounts to proposing a grammatical category for the substantive which it has in common with the pronoun, a category for representing a support-space. Since this appears to be essential for any noun phrase, minimal or not, it will be examined in lesson 21, but first it will be useful to illustrate the view of suppletive pronouns presented above by looking at a question of usage particular to English, the expression of gender in the personal pronouns.

LESSON TWENTY

Personal Pronouns and the Expression of Gender … the category of gender, certainly the most obscure of grammatical categories, at least in the Indo-European languages. Guillaume 1999, 26

PERSONAL PRONOUNS

The personal pronouns constitute a particularly complex set of grammatical words involving many relationships which have not yet been analyzed from the operational viewpoint adopted in these lessons. They are named for their most obvious characteristic, the fact that they are declined for first, second, and third persons. It is important to recall at the outset that the term “person” is a technical term in grammar with a wider sense than in ordinary discourse. Although first and second person pronouns designate participants in the speaking relationship, i.e. human persons or personified entities, third person pronouns designate nonparticipants – humans, objects, ideas, etc., in fact anything that can be talked about. In this case, then, the grammatical sense of “person” is something like ‘what is being talked about’, and this also applies to first and second person pronouns as we shall now see. In grammars it is usually pointed out that a first person pronoun represents the person speaking, a second person pronoun the person spoken to, and a third person pronoun the person (i.e. anything) spoken about. These descriptions are incomplete because, as such, they imply that only a third person pronoun represents something or someone spoken about, whereas it is obvious that when we use I or you we are talking about the speaker or the addressee(s). As Guillaume pointed out, a more complete description would have to say that a first person pronoun represents the person

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speaking about himself or herself, that a second person pronoun represents the person spoken to about himself or herself, whereas the third person represents simply the person spoken about. Thus in each case there is an indication of who or what is being spoken about, a representation pointing to something or someone in the intended message. What varies between persons is the place they occupy with regard to the speaking relationship. A third person pronoun depicts a nonparticipant and so is represented outside the speaking relationship, whereas a first person pronoun and a second person pronoun depict participants and so are represented, each in its own place, inside the speaking relationship. This amounts to yet another way to “make explicit the mental path that the hearer must follow in order to identify the target,” as Taylor put it. That is to say, whatever its position with regard to the speaking relationship, each of the personal pronouns represents the place occupied by the entity or support in the intended message to which it will be referred through referential incidence and in this respect resembles the other pronouns examined above. Another characteristic of the personal pronouns is their declension for case: subjective and objective (and some would include possessive and even reflexive). Considering this variation from the point of view of incidence, it appears that a pronoun in the subjective case can always realize the referential incidence inherent in it, whereas in the objective case it can realize this only indirectly, through some other element in the context (the verb, a preposition, etc.) to which, as a noun phrase, it is syntactically incident. That is to say, where a pronoun in the subjective case provides a support for the predicate, which it can then refer to a support in the speaker’s experiential situation, a pronoun in the objective case provides a formal import for some other part of the sentence through grammatical incidence. This view of case, which will be developed more fully in lesson 22, is based on that proposed by Valin (1994, 383–94). Besides the relations between first, second and third persons, and the relations involved in the declension for case, these pronouns raise the problems of number and gender. What is often called the declension of number for each person requires careful scrutiny. It seems clear that to say we is the plural of I is not exact because we usually represents, not a plurality of speakers, but rather the speaker and the addressee(s) and/or those outside the speaking relationship. In the case of you, there is no distinction in sign

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between one or more individuals addressed (just as there is no distinction between subjective and objective cases), and the pronoun can evoke even those not directly addressed. Finally, they does usually express a number of individuals, but since it does not exhibit the usual -s as the sign of the plural and it is sometimes used to designate a single individual, one cannot assume that it expresses an ordinary external plural of he, she, or it. Such different relations between what are considered singular and plural pronouns suggest that to explore the question of number will require a clearer view of the operational link between first, second, and third persons in their system. That leaves the question of gender, which will be the main concern of this lesson since it throws light on the way these pronouns fulfil their referential function. GENDER: CONTEXTUAL REFERENCE VS. “ REAL WORLD” REFERENCE

Among the three subsystems – gender, number, and case – of these pronouns, the only one that has been even partially elucidated so far from the systemic point of view adopted in these lessons is the question of gender as expressed by the third person singular pronouns he, she, and it. This question has been examined in considerable detail in Joly and in Morris, a study which throws new light on how the reference of these pronouns is effected. Many of the ideas expressed below, as well as illustrative examples, are taken from these studies, particularly the latter. The many grammarians for whom the essential role of these pronouns is to refer to a substantive antecedent, i.e. contextual reference, consider that it is the gender of the substantive which determines the gender of the pronoun. Quirk et al. (341–2), however, adopt a different approach: “The choice between personal and nonpersonal gender is determined primarily by whether the reference is to a ‘person’, i.e. to a being felt to possess characteristics associated with a member of the human race … The choice between masculine and feminine pronouns is primarily based on the sex of the person (or animal) referred to.” That is, for Quirk et al. it is reference to something or someone in the extra-mental situation which determines gender, not contextual reference to a substantive. In support of this view that gender is a matter of “real world,” not contextual, reference, it could be pointed out that

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these pronouns are sometimes used with no possible incidence to a substantive, no contextual reference, whether anaphoric or cataphoric, like it in It’s blowing a gale and generic they in They say we’re going to have an election. Quirk et al.’s manner of viewing gender as expressed by the third person pronouns certainly corresponds to the majority of uses, but it is contradicted, especially in spoken English, by a number of uses, some of which will now be examined. It should be pointed out here that from a practical point of view such uses are relatively rare and so are often dismissed as exceptions, but from a scientific point of view, where the aim is to find “unity in hidden likenesses,” i.e. to understand each particular use in the light of a single principle applicable to all, such infrequent and apparently exceptional manifestations of the nature of the phenomenon are invaluable. The problem posed by he, she, and it is therefore to understand what it is that conditions the expression of gender in all uses. To explore this problem we will examine a few of the examples cited in grammars and studies on gender where neither the “real world” nor the contextual approach to reference provides a satisfactory explanation. IT FOR HUMANS

It is not uncommon to find it referring to babies, as in the following passage on learning one’s mother tongue: The infant’s acquisition of language is a unique event, though one that is at present far from being fully understood. The infant has little else to do, has the strongest social compulsion to learn, is continually surrounded by the language it is learning, and has no mental habits likely to interfere with what it is doing. And it is not just learning a language – it is learning the basis of all its future activities, the means by which it is going to learn almost everything else. In learning to speak it not only ceases to be infans, but becomes sapiens. (cited in Joly, 262) As Quirk et al. point out (316), such usage is not uncommon for “somebody who is emotionally unrelated to the child,” and so would be unlikely for the mother of the baby. One could however hardly argue that this sort of emotional detachment is inherent in either the sex or the human nature of the baby itself, the “real

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world” referent, since reactions of this sort are part of the speaker’s experience. That is, the emotional relationship is something in the intended message colouring the speaker’s view of the infant and calling for a linguistic representation by means of it. On the other hand, adopting the contextual reference point of view and claiming that infant, baby, and child are substantives with “common” gender permitting the use of he, she, and it would explain neither the expressive effect of emotional detachment observed with it, nor the pronoun’s use with humans in the next examples. Although quite rare, it is also found to designate an adult: Would you like to marry Malcolm? Fancy being owned by that! Fancy seeing it every day! (Curme 1931, 552)

Here, as opposed the use of it for infants, the expressive effect is quite depreciative, as though the one referred to were not even granted the status of a human. That is, it again reflects the speaker’s reaction, not the sex of the individual or the gender of the proper noun. A very different expressive effect, one of affectionate protection is also found when the person addressed is designated by it, as in the following remark addressed by a wife to her husband: Poor Frank! Was all the beef gone? Did it get nothing but bread and cheese and gingerbeer? (Erades 1956, 4)

Again the use of it appears to be conditioned, not by the antecedent substantive or by the sex of the “real world” individual but by the speaker’s attitude toward him. Although these expressive effects of it in designating humans have yet to be explained, examples like these suggest that once it’s place in the system has been discerned it will be more fruitful to regard the speaker’s experiential scenario (the intended message) than the external situation or the antecedent in discourse. HE AND SHE FOR ANIMALS

Although it is most common with nonhuman entities, he and she are by no means uncommon. They are often found referring to animals in fables, children’s stories, and the like, where there is an effect of personification, of referring to animals as though they had a human personality, and indeed where they often speak. We are

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interested in examining other uses, where the effect of using he or she (or a possessive) to refer to animals is not one of personification. For example, in: … a sow and her litter of pigs (Joly, 269)

the speaker is concerned with the sex of the animal. Such usage would be quite normal for cognoscenti – farmers, veterinarians, and other animal specialists for whom sexual duality is important, part of their ordinary experience of animals. Similarly, the owner of a cat may well be aware of its sex and so adopt cognoscenti usage, using he or she for that particular animal. This might be thought to support Quirk et al.’s view that it is the sex of the animal itself that determines which pronoun is used, but in reality it shows that it is the speaker’s experience of that reality which calls for a masculine or feminine pronoun when its sex is a pertinent element, or a neuter pronoun when the speaker is unaware of the sex or ignores it. Thus most speakers use it when speaking of a duck or a drake, a horse or a mare, a dog or a bitch, a mosquito, etc. because, not being specialists, the sex of the individual animal does not form part of their usual experience and so does not call for he or she. In this respect, then, gender in the personal pronouns as a representation of sex in the linguistic referent is explained on much the same basis as gender in the substantive (lesson 8). There is however another, probably more frequent, use of masculine and feminine pronouns for animals where the impression of sex does not come in. As more than one scholar has pointed out, once the speaker’s “interest or sympathy is aroused” he or she is found. Thus for many pet lovers, a cat is commonly she even though they may not know its sex. According to Jespersen (1954 VII, 209) however, it seems that “the prevailing tendency in ordinary modern prose is to refer to any animal, whether a mammal, a bird, a reptile, or an insect, etc, as he, if it is not used.” Thus in the well known adage: You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.

there is no sexual connotation, just as there is none in: Look how that seagull wheels and turns – will I ever know how he feels? (Joly, 272)

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These examples bring out the crucial question here: what is it that calls for the expression of animate gender, either feminine or masculine subgender, in cases where sex is not a factor? The following remarkable passage, where the same animal, a mole, is referred to first by it, then by he, and finally by it, will give us a lead: But at this juncture the mole almost succeeded in wriggling clear. It wrestled and twisted frantically, waved its pointed blind head, its mouth standing like a little shaft, its big, wrinkled hands spread out. “Go in with you!” urged Anne, poking the little creature with her forefinger, trying to get it back into the handkerchief. Suddenly the mouth turned like a spark on her finger. “Oh!” she cried, “he’s bit me.” She dropped him to the floor. Dazed, the blind creature fumbled round. Frances felt like shrieking. She expected him to dart away in a flash, like a mouse, and there he remained groping; she wanted to cry to him to be gone. Anne, in a sudden decision of wrath, caught up her sister’s walking-cane. With one blow the mole was dead …. One moment the little wretch was fussing in the heat, and the next it lay a little bag, inert and black – not a struggle, scarce a quiver. (Joly, 273–4)

Clearly here the pronouns do not refer to their antecedent (mole or creature) because a substantive cannot be both inanimate (neuter) and animate (masculine) at the same time. As a consequence, the principle of contextual reference does not apply. Nor would the principle of reference to the external world apply since the sex of the animal is of no concern here, and in any case it could not change. Finally there is no suggestion of personification, of humanizing the mole. What seems to be expressed in this passage is Anne’s changing impression of the mole: first as a captured entity (it), then as something out of control, opposing, confronting (he/him), and finally as a dead object (it). Again it is the writer’s intended message, consisting of Anne’s experience of the external situation, rather than the external situation itself, or the gender of the substantive, that is reflected in the gender of the pronoun: it depicts the referent without any particular emotional reaction, whereas he/him gives it the status of actively intervening in Anne’s situation.

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This way of referring to animals by means of he is quite common in ordinary speech. The following example, heard while people were trying to catch a wasp in the house, brings out the impression of the wasp contending with the speaker: There he goes! He’s on the window …. Got ‘im!

In the following example, there is a slightly different expressive effect: Beside the little old gentleman sat a little old lady, plump and placid like himself, and the pony was coming along at his own pace and doing exactly as he pleased with the whole concern.

The masculine pronoun here helps bring out the suggestion of ‘doing its own thing’, of an independent agent in the situation. All this suggests that what conditions the gender of the pronoun is not the gender of a substantive and rarely the sex of the animal in itself. As Erades (1975, 23) suggests “it is perhaps rather the psychological make-up of the speaker, among which his sex, his temper, his mood of the moment, and his attitude towards the animal in question, that decide the nature of the pronouns.” In other words, it is the impressions the animal awakens in the mind of the speaker at that moment, impressions where the animal’s sex opposing it to those of the opposite sex may dominate, as for a breeder or other cognoscenti, or where some affective relationship distinguishing a particular animal from others is dominant, or, the usual case with it, where the animal is perceived as simply another entity in the speaker’s experience. That is to say, it is not the animal in the extra-mental, “real world” situation as such but rather the speaker’s experience of it, the designatum in the intended message, which determines the gender of the pronoun. SHE AND HE FOR THINGS

The consideration of animate pronouns used for lifeless objects and general settings leads to the same conclusion. She is much more common than he in this area of usage, but has been less commented on in grammars, perhaps because it is largely restricted to popular speech, as in the following example:

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“All right. Much obliged to you. You’ve sure got a son-of-a-gun of a drink there.” “She’s all right, ain’t she?” the other agreed.

The effect of using she here instead of it is to emphasize the impression the drink makes on the speaker. The same expressive effect of something exceptionally impressive arises when she is used rather than it in expressions concerning the weather: She’s blowing a real gale.

This is brought out even more clearly by the expletive boy in: I’ve been in Baie Comeau in the winter and, boy, she gets down there …. It gets cold!

Here, where she implies the speaker’s emotional involvement in the extreme of temperature, it gives a more objective view. The use of she in the following greeting also brings this out: How’s she going?

Here the expressive effect is of a more intimate concern with the other’s situation, as though the speaker were familiar with it and wanted to sympathize with and even reassure the person thus greeted. Likewise, in: O.K. Bring your bindle over here by the fire. It’s gonna be nice sleepin’. Lookin’ up, and the leaves. Don’t build up no more fire. We’ll let her die down.

the pronoun adds to the effect of cosiness, of reassurance. It seems to be a similar reassuring, everything-under-control feeling that prompts the use of she in the following remark made about the Christmas turkey: All I have to do is stuff her and throw her in the oven.

Likewise in the following comment by a politician after winning a very close election: I think we’ve pulled her out.

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And in the following invitation to a square dance, her seems to give more assurance of a lively dance than it would, and so is more effective in inciting the participants to engage actively: Everybody take pardners, and whoop her up.

Finally, in the following example a radio announcer is speaking to a technician just after the music has stopped: Keep her going!

With it the sentence would have expressed an ordinary command, but with her it seems to imply a closer involvement of the speaker in the music and so is more of an appeal to ensure continuation. In each of these uses of she/her, the expressive effect is that of some entity or situation that is particularly impressive, in a reassuring, everything-under-control sort of way. Even in the case of expressions of weather, she suggests this, and so would not be found in all situations. For example one might refer to particularly cold weather in a sentence like: She’s a cold one tonight.

But if the weather conditions were felt to be threatening in any way, as for someone lost in the bush, she would not be used. The difference of expressive effect between she and it can be felt but is particularly difficult to describe because it is so elusive. What does come out clearly, however, is that in each case it is the designatum as experienced by the speaker, or rather how it relates to the speaking relationship, that is represented by the pronoun. The use of he for lifeless entities is far less frequent but it also brings in a suggestion of the speaker’s reaction to the object. This can be seen in the following example: It was a little leaden bullet, slightly battered about the nose, and having upon it some bright new scratches. “Is that the one?” Trent murmured as he bent over the inspector’s hand. “That’s him,” replied Mr. Murch. “Lodged in the bone at the back of the skull. Dr Stock got it out within the last hour, and handed it to the local officer, who has just sent it on to me.”

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Here it designates the bullet as an inert object, whereas him is used when the bullet is regarded as the cause of death. Erades (1956, 7–8) gives several examples of this usage. In: A dentist with reference to a molar that won’t come out: “Dug himself in, has he?”

One gets the impression of something to be contended with and in the following example the masculine pronoun suggests something presenting a challenge: About a desk that must be searched: “Never mind looking at the desk now. We’ll do him to-morrow.”

These expressive effects of the masculine pronoun are quite different from those observed in above uses of she, a difference that can be appreciated in the last example if him is replaced by her. In all cases, however, the effect is to give a special status to the object referred to, as can be felt if the animate pronoun is replaced by it. GENDER IN THE PRONOUNS

The various expressive effects brought out by the above examples of less frequent usage suggest the complexity of the data to be taken into account when reflecting on the grammatical basis of gender in English personal pronouns. Like the sources mentioned above, Wales also gives a wide selection of such uses, considering the pronouns to arise from a second system of gender. In their ordinary, prototypical uses, “based on the biological sex of referents (male, female, non-sexed),” these pronouns belong to “an ‘unmarked’ gender system” and “in co-reference indicate ‘person-hood’ or lack of it.” (165) In the co-referring uses discussed above, however, they belong to a “marked” system, “a metaphoric or symbolic system, where concepts are re-categorized” to “indicate ‘person-ality’, or lack of it.” That is, these uses are interpreted as cases of personification, an interpretation that raises certain difficulties. Outside of cognoscenti usage as seen above, whenever she and he are used to designate nonhumans, whether animals or things, they bring in no suggestion of a binary categorization based on sex even by way of metaphor, but rather the

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perspective of the speaker. Indeed, one wonders how words as abstract as pronouns could be used metaphorically. Furthermore, the notion of re-categorizing concepts is open to the same objections raised previously concerning “conversion.” Finally, uses that are not co-referring, like She’s a cold one tonight, offer no concept to re-categorize and express no personal attributes of the designatum, but rather the speaker’s depicting some situation as out of the ordinary, since “Gender is in the mind’s eye of the beholder” not in the designatum. As various studies have stressed, the above examples bring out an effect of special concern for that particular entity or situation, an “emotional” link, an indication of “sympathy” or “aversion” or special “interest.” That is, the subgender, be it feminine or masculine, has the effect of giving a special status to the designatum in the eyes of the speaker, of implying that it is a special exemplum of that type of situation or entity. This is apparently occasioned by any sort of circumstance which strikes the speaker as out of the ordinary, as putting a particular entity or situation in a special position with regard to other such entities or situations. As a consequence it is often a fleeting impression, something that can vary during the same discourse and even during the same sentence, which calls for she or he to refer to nonhumans, it to humans. Because the net result is to refer to something or someone as an individual different from all others, it is particularly difficult to give a general description of the various expressive effects found as a basis for working back to the underlying system. One attempt to do this, that of Joly (257) provides an interesting distinction between he and she used to designate nonhuman entities as opposed to it. Based on a careful analysis of examples drawn from less frequent usage and the observations of scholars concerning the history of gender in the Indo-European languages, this study proposes that masculine is “major power” and feminine “minor power,” both opposed to inanimate gender characterized as “no power.” This view may help categorize a large number of the expressive effects observed, but it is not clear how distinguishing subgenders in this way would apply to common uses of he and she. Insofar as he and she are concerned, ordinary usage for humans appears to reflect the same underlying opposition as seen in the substantive, where we saw (lesson 8) that a subgender is called on because the nature of the designatum is represented by the lexeme as binary, and so as animate in gender. Any individual must

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therefore be subcategorized as either masculine or feminine. That is to say, where humans are concerned (and presumably animals when categorized for sex in cognoscenti usage), subgender in the pronoun reflects a binary division perceived in the nature of the designatum and so has the effect of grouping one individual with all those of the same subcategory. On the other hand, it in its usual nonhuman usage categorizes something as inanimate because no possibility of interior division is perceived in the designatum, of subcategorization for gender to oppose one set of individuals to another of the same nature. Considering the less usual uses exemplified above from this point of view, the very fact that they reflect a temporary, individualizing impression setting the particular entity off from others of the same category or nature suggests that they do have something in common with the customary use of she and he for humans. In both sorts of usage the effect of using she and he appears to be to indicate that the designatum, an individual entity, is distinct from other entities of the same type or nature, mentally set apart from them. That is, the binary character of subgender divides the category in two, but in different ways: she used for a human designatum depicts it in a subcategory, likens it to all other “she’s” of the same nature, and so opposes it to all in the “he” subcategory; she used for a nonhuman entity depicts that entity as momentarily distinct from all other entities of the same nature. Thus one’s pet, the particular drink, the weather scenario at that moment, the impression of the fire, etc. in the above examples take on a special status, different from other such animals, drinks, etc. Similarly for he: in ordinary uses it categorizes a human designatum with other “he’s” and opposes it to all “she’s,” whereas in less usual uses it sets a nonhuman designatum (the mole, the pony, the bullet, etc.) off from all other entities of the same nature. As for the use of it for humans, one wonders if the diverse expressive effects observed might arise from the fact that, besides its third person role of situating the designatum outside the speaking relationship, it assimilates the human individual to inanimates, which have no possibility of participating in that relationship. In the light of what was proposed for gender in the substantive, then, we can distinguish between inanimate and animate genders in the usage of personal pronouns in the third person, it configuring the person of the pronoun as inanimate, she and he configuring

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person as animate, specifying a subgender, feminine or masculine. They on the other hand can express either animate or inanimate and can even designate a single human being without expressing a subgender, as in: Someone called while you were out. They said they would call back.

This range of usage calls for further reflexion to discern how person is configured for gender in this pronoun. Finally, the first and second person pronouns, I, we, and you, configure person as animate in gender, the subgender for I and singular you presumably being dependent on how the speaker perceives her- or himself and the person addressed. All these considerations and proposed explanations are, of course, tentative because much remains to be analyzed concerning the question of gender, both in the pronoun and in the substantive. Moreover, until the underlying systemic relations between the three persons have been more clearly discerned, explanations of gender usage will remain incomplete. CONCLUSION

The personal pronouns appear to form a system based on the relations between the first, second, and third persons. These three persons are distinguished by the place they designate with regard to the speaking relationship, a relationship instituted anew by every act of speech. That is, as in the other systems of pronouns we have looked at, the personal pronouns represent a place in the intended message, the place occupied by what is being talked about, situating it either inside the speaking relationship as one of the participants or outside it as a nonparticipant. Because they signify a space representing a place in the intended message in this way, these pronouns are able to carry out their function of referential incidence by referring back to that place. It was pointed out above that gender, number, and case are all involved here, but it is through the expression of gender that we can get the best view of how these pronouns effect referential incidence. Being third person, she, he, and it target a place outside the speaking relationship. Their less usual, nonprototypical uses as exemplified above show that they not only refer to the place of the

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entity or situation the speaker has in mind but also, through the spatial configuration of gender and subgender, orient the listener to the speaker’s attitude with regard to the designatum. This of course raises the question of the design of the system of gender in tongue. Since it is assumed that there is in English one grammatical system of gender, this brings us back to the question, raised in an earlier lesson, of how gender contributes to the spatial configuration of the substantive. Taking a cue from Guillaume’s discussion of the question, Morris (223) makes an interesting proposal in this respect: gender in the substantive plays essentially the same role as in the pronoun: it provides a representation of the space required for the notional content the speaker wishes to express. The only discernable difference is that substantival gender provides a lexeme, not an ephemeral impressive complex, with a representation of its own space, and thus depends on a concept already existing in tongue rather than an essentially ad hoc designatum. This insight, to the effect that gender in the substantive is a formal configuring of the space involved in the lexical content to be expressed, has been developed here in our examination of the personal pronouns, applying it to the space represented by the pronoun. It remains to explore the link between the systems of gender and number in both the pronouns and the substantive. Our brief survey has not provided a description of gender as an operational system in tongue capable of contributing to all the observed effects in discourse. As we saw when discussing gender in the substantive (lesson 8), Guillaume (1992) ventured to suggest a basis for systems of gender when he proposed that the proper role of gender and number in forming a substantive is “to resolve the final problems involved in the incidence of the word, the lexeme, to the spatial universe.” (121–2) For him (140) “Space is inert, immobile. The animate, especially the personal animate [as in English] incident to it, contrasts with this. The solution of the contrast is gender.” The contrast arises because, in his view (115), the animate, as opposed to the inanimate, is characterized by “internal mobility,” operating by external movement or “activity” in the masculine whereas in the feminine it operates by internal movement, “vital

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movement.” Such comments have the merit of situating the question within a broader framework and may provide valuable avenues for reflexion on the personal pronoun in English, but until the system is discerned, they must be considered no more than possible leads for exploring “the most obscure of grammatical categories.” Thus we are still a long way from understanding how the various expressions of gender observed in any pronoun can be manifestations of a single, underlying representational potential. On the other hand, by bringing out the difficulties involved in observing the expressive effects arising from pronoun usage our survey has at least shown that subgender involves more than an opposition based on sex. Moreover, in spite of our present incomplete view of the system, one thing is clear: gender in the personal pronouns represents, not a substantive-antecedent, nor the “real world” situation or some entity in it, but the speaker’s experience of that situation or entity, the designatum. This appears to be the only basis for explaining both the possibility of gender in the pronoun varying without any change in either the situational entity or the contextual antecedent (where there is one) and the fact attested by many grammarians that, in certain circumstances, the personal pronoun through its referential incidence to the designatum, to what the speaker has in mind, helps bring out some very subtle expressive effects. Insofar as the noun phrase is concerned, then, this examination of gender confirms the view of reference developed throughout these lessons, namely that the noun phrase refers to the speaker’s intended message, and helps us understand better how the personal pronoun can fulfil the referential role of a noun phrase. It is time now to undertake an examination of what in the noun phrase enables it to fulfil this role.

LESSON TWENTY-ONE

The Noun Phrase and Person This account of Persons is far preferable to the common one, which makes the First the speaker, the second, the Party addrest; and the Third the Subject. For tho’ the First and Second be as commonly described … yet till they become subjects of the discourse, they have no existence. Again as to the Third Person’s being the subject, this is a character, which it shares in common with both the other Persons, and which can never therefore be called a peculiarity of its own. James Harris 1751 cited in Michael, 324

THE SUPPORT FUNCTION

In attempting to discern the nature of the noun phrase we have examined three ways of constructing it, the composite type (determiner + substantive), the bare substantive type, and the suppletive pronoun type, and have seen that in all three cases it permits speakers to indicate through referential incidence what they are talking about. Each of these types brings out one aspect of the functioning of the noun phrase. The composite type shows clearly the incidence of a particular material import to a formal support, and when this support is lacking, as in a learner’s utterance like I saw car going very fast, it leaves us wondering, trying to fill in mentally: a car? that car? some car? etc. The minimal noun phrase shows that a substantive without determiner really does have a formal support within its own makeup, a formal support making internal incidence possible and permitting referential incidence as readily as a composite noun phrase, so that the proper name Queen Elizabeth and the proper name with article the Queen Elizabeth both permit clear reference but to very different linguistic referents. And the minimal noun phrase consisting of a suppletive pronoun shows that

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referential incidence is a function permitted by the support-space since the pronoun carries out this function without any material import in the noun phrase, although it does have to call on some complex of impressions in the intended message for its content, as we saw in a previous lesson with the snake-skin example (Some are annular …). That is to say, even with an ordinary sentence like They need water, in order to find out who or what is being talked about, the listener must have some indication (perhaps provided by the message obtained from a preceding sentence) of the setting or frame of reference where the space represented by they is located because, as a suppletive, it has no material import. The constant in all types of noun phrase is thus a formal support, a fact suggesting that what characterizes the noun phrase is the representing of a support-space. This however does not end our search to find what a noun phrase is because the term “support” itself depicts its designatum by means of what it does, its function, and as always in analysis this manner of describing something is an invitation to find what permits the function. That is, we are led to look for what it is in the makeup of the substantive or pronoun that represents the spatial support, what component makes possible the support function observed in all three types of noun phrase. Being a very abstract formal support, not a particular material support of the type a substantive’s lexeme provides for an adjective, this component must be some general grammatical or categorial means of representation. Thus our investigation raises the crucial question concerning the noun phrase as a grammatical entity: what is its nature, inherent in all its various manifestations in discourse? As in many other areas of grammatical concern, we find that Guillaume has reflected on the same problem and has proposed an answer (1984, 122): “It is the grammatical person, ultimately, that forms the support for the meaningful import of the word … The presence of the support entails the presence of person.” This proposal is of interest since it involves nothing new insofar as the morphogenesis of the substantive and the pronoun are concerned. That is, person is generally recognized as part of the grammatical makeup of both parts of speech and so may well be what provides a formal support in each of them. On the other hand, this does throw a new light on the role of person. We will therefore examine this proposal to see how person can provide for the function of

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support, but first a basic distinction that Guillaume makes within the category of person itself must be recalled. PERSON: ORDINAL AND CARDINAL

As was pointed out in the last lesson, it is traditional in grammars to distinguish the three ranks or orders of person, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, defined respectively in terms of the person speaking, the person spoken to and the person or thing spoken about. This manner of characterizing them involves a double criterion, the speaking relationship between speaker and addressee (1st and 2nd) as opposed to what is spoken of (3rd). To have a single basis for comparing the three persons, more recently grammarians (cf. Huddleston and Pullum, 1463–4) have described them in terms of the speaking relationship only. The 1st and 2nd persons refer to speaker and addressee, the two terms of the relationship, and the 3rd person to neither, i.e. to what is excluded from the relationship. Besides distinguishing them on the basis of a common criterion – each person’s place with regard to the act of language – the latter approach helps bring out that all three persons effect linguistic reference, but it does not tell us what permits them to function in this way, what common element is at the basis of the three persons enabling them to carry out referential incidence. Since this approach distinguishes the three persons in terms of a particular language act, Guillaume sometimes (cf. 1987, 189) referred to them as personnes de langage, ‘language persons’, though more commonly he called them ordinal persons because of the order involved in the three ranks. Guillaume had also pointed out the fact that in the ordinal persons a 1st person pronoun like I calls to mind an individual both as the speaker and as what is being spoken about, and so he described it as the speaker speaking about him/herself. Similarly for the 2nd person: you (tu) calls to mind an individual not only as the person spoken to but also as what is being spoken of, namely the addressee him/herself. And the 3rd person depicts someone or something not only as excluded from the speaking relationship but also as spoken of. Describing them in this fashion helped him see that each ordinal person represents both what is being spoken of and its own position with regard to the speaking relationship. Thus, as Harris pointed out in the 18th century, besides their distinguishing characteristics there is a feature

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common to the ordinal pronouns, something that is more general than the relationship established by an act of speech, something representing what is being talked about. To designate this common element, Guillaume sometimes called it cardinal person not only to oppose it to the ordinal persons but also to suggest by its etymology (Latin cardo = ‘hinge’) that they depend on it. He often called this same reality “logical person” and sometimes “objective person” to suggest that it points to reality outside language. In French, in opposition to la personne de langage, it has also been called la personne d’univers, ‘universe person’, to bring out that it can depict any space in the speaker’s extra-linguistic universe, be it the space occupied by the speaker, by the addressee, or by anyone or anything else. Being common to all three ordinal persons and permitting them to refer to what is being talked about in the intended message, this very general representation could also be called “referential person.” However as we shall see, effecting linguistic reference is not its only function so the more general expression “cardinal person” will be used here, thereby calling to mind what distinguishes it from ordinal person. To make noun phrase reference possible, cardinal person must have something relating it to the designatum, something in common with it. That is, it must represent something in the intended message to which it can be incident once the noun phrase is constituted. The examination of completives and suppletives in preceding lessons brought out this common element: each pronoun represents the place occupied by the designatum. That is, an entity entering our momentary experience, whether from the physical universe (through our senses) or our mental universe (through memory or imagination), is perceived to occupy a place, and it is a representation of this place (abstracted from the particular entity occupying it) that constitutes the element common to cardinal person and its designatum, the element permitting referential incidence. We can see why Guillaume considers that the essential role of person is that of support: “Support and person are two terms to designate one and the same thing” (1973, 54). Cardinal person represents the space any entity occupies in the mental panorama offered by the speaker’s intended message at the moment of speaking, and this spatial representation provides a support for the import of the different components of the noun phrase.

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Cardinal person is a very general conception of person, so general in fact that it must be called on whenever we want to represent something in our experience arising as a spatial entity from our physical or our mental universe. As such cardinal person is to be found in all the personal pronouns, in each of which it is configured by an ordinal person in terms of the speaking relationship. By the same token, cardinal person would appear to be at the basis of other pronouns, whether suppletive or completive, since in all the cases examined in previous lessons we saw that representing the place occupied by what is being talked about permits referential incidence to it as the designatum. Each pronoun configures this basic representation according to its own particular system and its own position within that system. And since a bare substantive can also carry out referential incidence, it too must have as part of its makeup this very general representation of space configured by the subsystems of its morphogenesis. CARDINAL PERSON AND THE NOUN PHRASE

Guillaume’s distinction between ordinal and cardinal person has permitted us to discern the latter to be common to all the noun phrases examined. Thanks to this grammatical element, speakers can represent the place occupied in their experience by anything to be depicted as a spatial entity. That is to say, by postulating cardinal person as basic for pronouns and substantives we make available the means for targeting what is to be referred to in the intended message by the noun phrase, once it has been constructed. This postulate introduces nothing novel, no new grammatical category, in the analysis of a noun phrase since grammars always take for granted that a noun phrase involves the category of person, ordinal person. Rather, it arises from a deeper understanding of what is implied by assuming the presence of person, bringing out that cardinal person is a necessary constituent of the noun phrase. Thus on the basis of an already known element, this manner of analyzing noun phrases provides an explanation of what enables them to carry out referential incidence. A brief review of what has already been observed of the functioning of different pronouns will help to illustrate this. Because ordinal person is a variable in the personal pronouns, cardinal person was most easily observed as a constant underlying

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each of them. That is, the support provided by cardinal person is configured by the system of the personal pronouns, thereby enabling I to point to the place occupied in the momentary speaking relationship by the individual who is the speaker, and you to the place occupied by the addressee. As a consequence, I and you are sometimes called deictics because they point to their designatum in the intended message and identify it by depicting its place within the speaking relationship. We have already seen that it can refer to something outside the speaking relationship both as a specific entity, as in It is on the table, and to a situation as a whole, as in It is very nice here. This variability of scope in representing the space occupied by the designatum indicates that it can configure the support provided by cardinal person not just in terms of the speaking relationship but with regard to the extent of reference as well. In contrast, no such variability has been observed for I, since, for any given speaker, the 1st person pronoun is something like a proper noun, always referring to the same individual. Each of the personal pronouns has yet to be examined for the way it configures cardinal person, which always represents the same thing: the place in the intended message occupied by whatever or whoever the speaker is talking about. There is no variation for ordinal person in the other pronouns considered here,1 all of which designate something or someone excluded from the speaking relationship, and for this reason the category of person has tended to be taken for granted. Although always actualized as 3rd person in these pronouns, cardinal person is present, as can be shown by the fact that each pronoun can carry out the function of linguistic reference. Because each system, and pronoun, configures this referential person differently, each pronoun exercises this common function in a different way. The demonstratives give perhaps the clearest illustration of this. As we have seen, they are called deictics because their system configures cardinal person in such a way as to enable them to point out where things are in space and time with an implicit reference to the speaker’s position. As in the case of it, we can get a glimpse of how the cardinal person represented by this varies in extent by considering an ordinary utterance like This is very nice. Spoken in a given situation (as when speaker and addressee are beginning a meal), the pronoun would be understood as referring to a particular entity in the setting, such as a dish the speaker has just tasted, because it depicts

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just that limited space as a support. In a different situation (as when one has just reclined on a holiday beach), the pronoun would be understood as referring to the holiday setting as a whole because it depicts the place occupied by all the speaker has in mind at that moment. In each case cardinal person represents the spatial support of the designatum. Similarly for some and any, cardinal person is configured for 3rd person, but unlike the demonstratives, the spatial support is configured as part of a whole, a support whose extent can vary anywhere from a minimum to a maximum part. That is, the partitive quantifiers indicate where things are, not in relation to the speaker’s position, but in relation to a whole, implied or expressed. In this sense, one can consider them to be deictics as well. In fact Lyons (1977, 637) considers all pronouns, including the definite article, to be basically deictic, since their common function is “to be understood as instructing, or inviting, the addressee to find the referent in the environment” (655–6). The articles are probably the most interesting case to bring out the variability of support-space because, unlike the other pronouns we have examined, they configure this spatial representation with regard to something in language, not something in the speaker’s experience. Thanks to their system, the articles permit the representation of a certain scope or extensity within the extension of the substantive’s lexeme, within its range of representation. This extensity, like the extension of which it is an actualization, is a reality of language, not of the extra-linguistic intended message. It is not, however, completely independent of reality outside language since what determines the magnitude of the extensity is something in the intended message, namely the complex of impressions constituting whatever entity or situation the substantive’s lexeme is called on to represent. That is to say, cardinal person in the article represents as a support for the substantive’s lexeme the place occupied by this complex of impressions, relating it to the lexeme’s extension as one of its actualizations. The result is, as we have already seen, a support variable in extent from one use to another, depending on whether the impressions to be represented by the lexeme are felt to cover the whole of its extension, a minimal portion of it, or some extent in between these two extremes. Thus in these, the most abstract of pronouns, cardinal person is configured in terms of the lexeme’s extension. In the other

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pronouns we have examined, cardinal person is configured in terms of the speaking relationship (the personal pronouns), the speaker’s space or time (the demonstratives), a whole implied or expressed (the partitive quantifiers), i.e. in terms of some variable setting in the intended message. Thanks to this setting, which forms part of its significate, a personal pronoun or demonstrative or partitive quantifier provides its own means of locating the designatum in the intended message and so can be used as a suppletive. On the other hand, the articles have no such setting in the intended message since they are configured in terms of a purely linguistic reality, the lexeme’s extension. As a consequence, without a representation of the substantive’s lexeme in the noun phrase, the articles would not be able to locate any designatum in the intended message and so are not found on their own. This helps us understand why articles are not used as suppletives. These remarks are intended merely to suggest how Guillaume’s proposal that “support and person are two terms to designate one and the same thing” can throw light on the manner in which pronouns effect the referential incidence of the noun phrase. It will be interesting to see if further exploration of the systems mentioned, as well as other systems of pronouns, confirms this proposal. When there is no pronoun in the noun phrase – when it consists of a bare substantive – cardinal person is represented within the substantive, and variation in the extent of reference can also be observed. This is, as in the case of the articles, variation within the limits imposed by the extension of the substantive’s lexeme, a difference of extensities mentioned in lesson 7, where the following examples were discussed to show respectively intermediate and maximum extensities: Whales can be seen here during the early summer. Whales are mammals.

This variation in configuring the cardinal person of a substantive is a result of the morphogenesis of the substantive, and particularly of the system of number (cf. Guillaume 1990, 51). That is to say, even in the substantive it can be seen that the postulate of cardinal person representing a spatial support provides a means for explaining how referential incidence is made possible: the support-space is a constant, but its magnitude is a variable permitting different extents

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of reference. Thanks to this representation by means of person, ‘whales’ in each of the above examples is incident to its own extensity. This accomplishes the substantive’s internal incidence and provides a support for the predicate. The sentence thus constituted can then be referred to the intended message by locating the designatum and specifying its nature. That is, the sentence makes sense and we know what is being talked about in each case. Proper nouns do not allow for variation in this way because they always refer to the same single entity out of many possible entities of the same nature. An analysis of the maximized comprehension that limits proper nouns to minimal extension, and so to minimal extensity, is a question for lexical semantics. In the light of these comments it can be seen that, for the substantive, cardinal person is as it were the raw material of the grammatical category of person, something to be configured or formatted by the morphogenesis of the substantive as a support for its lexeme. Moreover, cardinal person is sufficiently general to represent the space occupied in the intended message by any complex of impressions to be represented as a spatial being and thus provide a support for all noun phrases. CONCLUSION

Our discussion in this lesson has led to the conclusion that underlying a noun phrase, any noun phrase, is cardinal person, a grammatical category for representing a constant, namely the space occupied by whatever the noun phrase refers to, an endlessly variable constant since the diversity of entities a noun phrase can talk about is unlimited. This is another way of saying that cardinal person is an abstract category, so abstract in fact that it cannot, on its own, locate the space it represents in the intended message. And so each word that embodies cardinal person must configure it in such a way as to indicate where the space represented is to be found. Suppletive pronouns form it according to the parameters of their particular system and their place in that system. Completive pronouns configure it through their own system and the lexical import of the noun phrase. Bare substantives specify it through their own lexical import configured by the systems of gender, number, and case. In this way, all noun phrases of the types examined here are enabled by cardinal person to fulfil their function of reference to the intended message.

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Proposing cardinal person as a necessary component of noun phrases constitutes a hypothesis concerning the grammatical basis on which they are constructed. Since however this proposed essential component is not directly observable, it can be discerned only through analysis, through the observations and reflexions presented in preceding lessons. The diverse manners of configuring this constant permit the great variety of noun phrases observable in discourse. The pertinence of this hypothesis is that it permits us to conceive of a noun phrase not merely in terms of what can be observed – its endlessly variable constituent words and the way it functions – but in terms of what is constant in its makeup. Only in this way can we understand and explain what is observed. The analysis undertaken in these lessons began with the two observables of noun phrases, function and constituents. Reflexion was guided by the conviction that the constituent words incorporate what is required for the function to be carried out, and this led to an analysis of the words themselves in order to explain the function of the noun phrase. Thanks to Guillaume’s theory of word formation outlined in lesson 3,2 whereby forming a word’s mental import is conceived as a bi-phase operation of ideogenesis and morphogenesis producing its mental makeup, it was possible to discern what appears to be a necessary condition for effecting reference, cardinal person. It remains to examine from the same vantage point the syntactic functions of noun phrases.

LESSON TWENTY-TWO

Syntactic Function Syntax is brought about by the dependence of one element on another. Thomas of Urfurt Grammatica Speculativa Cited in Michael, 125

REFERENTIAL INCIDENCE AND GRAMMATICAL INCIDENCE

Our examination of reference led to the hypothesis that the precondition permitting referential incidence is cardinal person. This entails proposing that a linguistic representation of the place occupied by some experiential entity we want to talk about provides the precondition for referring back to it as a designatum once the sentence has been constructed. Referential incidence is clearly exhibited when the noun phrase is subject of the sentence since in this syntactic function it provides a support for the predicate and so is enabled to refer all the import of the sentence to the intended message. This of course raises the question of the referential role of the noun phrase in its other syntactic functions of direct object, object of a preposition, etc. Does a noun phrase exercise its referential incidence in all its functions or only when subject of the sentence (or in one-word sentences)? Through the noun-phrase subject the whole import of the sentence is referred to the position of the subject’s designatum in the intended message but this does not entail that all the other designata of the sentence occupy the same position. On the contrary: the object’s designatum, for example, occupies a position different from but related to that of the subject (unless it is a reflexive pronoun). That is, it appears that, once the subject’s designatum has been established, the sentence’s other noun phrases exercise their referential incidence, each positioning its designatum in relation to the

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subject’s. Thus by unravelling the different syntactic relationships established in constructing the sentence the designatum of any other noun phrase is situated in the mind of the listener in relation to the subject’s, and in this way the intended message is converted into an effected message. This indicates the close relationship between these two types of function, referential and syntactic, though the operations involved in carrying out one or the other function are not the same. How do they differ? It is clear what these two types of process are operations of incidence because both involve the transport of a semantic import to a support. The difference between the two also seems clear. While reference involves incidence of a linguistic import to a support outside language, i.e. within the intended message, syntax (understood in an operative, not a resultative sense) involves the grammatical incidence of an import to a support inside language, i.e. within the sentence. As a consequence neither noun phrases in a vocative use like Waiter! nor interjections like Wow! characterizing the speaker’s reaction to some situation exercise a syntactic function since there is no other part of the sentence they can be incident to or provide a support for. On the other hand both exercise a referential function, applying their respective imports of meaning to the speaker’s intended message, but only the former through a representation of cardinal person. So it appears that what distinguishes syntactic or grammatical incidence from referential incidence is the type of support – linguistic (within language) or experiential (outside language) – to which the meaning-import is applied. GRAMMATICAL INCIDENCE AND CASE

Exploring grammatical incidence entails, as did exploring referential incidence in previous lessons, attempting to see what in the makeup of the noun phrase enables it to assume the different roles observed in a sentence. Because of historical precedents, it is common to speak of syntactic function in English in terms of case – nominative or subject, accusative or direct object, dative or indirect object, and, as we have seen with -‘s, genitive or possessive. These cases, visibly indicated in the nominal inflexions of Old English, were what remained of the eight-case system of Proto-Indo-European. Historical studies show that, from this system (as reconstituted by means of the comparative method) down to the present day, the original

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eight cases have gradually been reduced in number. In some languages this historical process concerning a grammatical category within the substantive has taken place more rapidly than in others, but this bears witness to a long term tendency involving the substantive’s morphogenesis, “the slow reduction in number, tending toward a greater generalization, of the cases of notional import” (Valin 1994, 389–90). This tendency to reduce to a minimum – the bare essentials required for sentence construction – the categories providing for the different syntactic relationships a substantive can enter into was accompanied by the development of prepositions to specify the relation between a noun phrase import and another component of the sentence (cf. Hewson and Bubenik). As indicated in lesson 4, this process of reduction within the substantive has been carried to the point where, in Modern English, one can even question whether the substantive’s morphogenesis still has case, alongside gender and number, as one of its grammaticizing categories. This question appeared particularly pertinent in view of the fact that the -‘s is now suffixed to the noun phrase and so is no longer an inflexion of the substantive itself. Because no case inflexions persist in the English substantive, it would seem, from the point of view of the substantive’s semiology, that case is no longer a formative category of its morphogenesis. On the other hand, it is the substantive which enables noun phrases to enter into various syntactic relationships, sometimes with the help of a preposition, and so, as it was argued above, the substantive must have the built-in capacity to do so. That is to say, words formed as other parts of speech cannot fulfil the same syntactic functions as a substantive, and so there must be something inherent in the substantive permitting it to do so, something not found in any other type of word – except the pronoun. And in certain personal pronouns there is a clear indication of case distinctions: I vs. me, she vs. her, etc. Thus it was decided in lesson 4 to explore more fully the role of substantives and pronouns in the noun phrase and to reflect on these findings before abandoning case as one of its grammaticizing categories. It is this reflexion which will now be undertaken. It will help to reconsider the historical development just mentioned to discern more clearly what it tended toward. What are the essentials the old system has been reduced to in Modern English? A promising lead has been suggested by Valin in an article (1994, 383–94) dealing with case in Modern French in the context of its

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development in the Indo-European languages. He points out that throughout the devious and complicated developments of the system of case in these languages one fact of usage remains constant: all syntactic cases except one, the nominative, are found after a preposition. That is to say, all the oblique cases permit incidence to something else in the sentence through the mediation of a preposition. In terms of representation, this fact leads us to infer that, lying behind the inflexions of the different oblique cases, there is some common element of formal meaning permitting the substantive’s import of meaning to be made incident to a preposition and through it to another support within the sentence – once the substantive’s own internal incidence has been effected, of course. (The same situation arose in our discussion of referential incidence, where we saw that the substantive’s internal incidence must be accomplished within the noun phrase before the noun phrase can be made incident to its designatum.) This capacity of substantives in any of the oblique cases to have their lexical import made incident to something else in the sentence was not limited to their use with prepositions but was often found when they function without a preposition as well – as direct object, for example. The fact that substantives in the nominative are not found in such functions or with a preposition is evidence that there is some element of grammatical meaning that differentiates the nominative from the oblique cases. From this observation, Valin drew the conclusion that the historical development has tended to define two basic cases, support case and import case, the two cases he proposes for Modern French. He calls the nominative “support case” because its main function in the sentence is that of subject, the support of the predicate, whereas the various oblique cases of Old English, Latin, etc. are characterized by the fact that they provide an import for another sentence component. Turning now to Modern English, the same two basic cases can easily be observed as sentence functions: as subject, the noun phrase provides a support for the predicate but is not an import to any other component of the sentence; as direct object, indirect object, object of a preposition, etc. it provides an import for another component but is not the support for the rest of the sentence. The same basic opposition is expressed by the two cases of personal pronouns (I vs. me, etc.). These considerations lead to the proposal that case is a grammaticizing form of the substantive and the pronoun which is expressed by the noun phrase as either support or import.1

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This proposal arises, as always in an analysis based on the assumption that language is systematic, from trying to imagine what conditions in the system of tongue would provide the potential for realizing what is observed in discourse. Observing the Modern English noun phrase in the light of Valin’s hypothesis concerning nominative and oblique cases in Indo-European languages, its diverse functions can be seen to manifest either import case or support case. Since the substantive (or pronoun) is the essential, and sometimes only, component of a noun phrase, it can be inferred that in the substantive’s morphogenesis there is still a formal means, the category of case, for enabling the noun phrase to function as either an import or a support. At first sight this inference may appear unwarranted because nothing in the substantive’s semiology indicates the existence of case as a category, and moreover it is the noun phrase as a whole which exercises each function. On the other hand, if there is some potential making these functions possible – the basic postulate of our systemic approach – it must be found in tongue in the system of the substantive because the noun phrase itself has no such system instituted in tongue. That is, only words have an instituted program of formation as a permanent potential in tongue – a program for each part of speech, whence the relatively few grammatical types of word in discourse. Noun phrases on the other hand are produced in discourse by exploiting the lexical and grammatical imports of words. For its syntactic versatility therefore a noun phrase depends on the syntactic potential of the substantive or pronoun, i.e. case. This is why the category of case is considered to form part of the morphogenesis of the substantive even though there is no indication of it in the substantive itself. Case is expressed in one of its possible actualizations, either support or import, by the noun phrase. The reason for this, as will be seen below, is that case deals with use in the sentence and not (like gender and number) with representing something in the intended message. SUPPORT CASE AND IMPORT CASE

As subject, then, a noun phrase in the support case is enabled to receive the import of the rest of the sentence, the predicate, and so to indicate who or what the sentence is about. In its other functions, on the other hand, a noun phrase is in the import case2 and so cannot provide a support for the rest of the sentence. That is, the

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support case has the capacity to exercise reference for the whole sentence, whereas the import case does not have this capacity. Here the notion of reference is limited to making the “complete idea” expressed by the sentence incident to the intended message so that referential incidence takes place only after the sentence has been constructed. During the construction of the sentence, especially when one is writing, there is nothing to prevent a person from checking some word about to be used with what it is intended to represent in the intended message and perhaps changing it for a more appropriate one with a view to providing a more adequate representation. This, however, is not the same process as referring what a sentence expresses to the intended message, the purpose of reference being to designate what the speaker is talking about, not to represent it. Thus the import case enables its noun phrase to exercise grammatical incidence but not the referential incidence of the sentence, whereas the support case enables its noun phrase to exercise referential incidence of the sentence but not grammatical incidence to something else in the sentence. This view of cases, one calling for the noun phrase to find a support in another part of the sentence, the other enabling it to play the role of support for the rest of the sentence, suggests something parallel to the system of the parts of speech as outlined in lesson 2. This system, it will be recalled, is based on the opposition between internal incidence (the substantive providing its own support) and external incidence (the adjective and the adverb seeking a support outside their notional field). In an analogous fashion for cases, one provides a support for the import of the rest of the sentence, and the other seeks a support somewhere else in the sentence. One might even extend the similarity to include the two ways of actualizing the import case of a noun phrase – without a preposition and with a preposition – as parallel to the two ways of actualizing external incidence – first degree (adjectives) and second degree (adverbs). Thus in I gave a present to my wife, both noun phrases are incident to the verb, a present directly as object, my wife indirectly through the preposition. As we have seen, adverbs are incident to “an on-going incidence,” i.e. to another word or unit itself seeking a support, and, since a preposition is a word seeking a support, the incidence of its noun-phrase import appears to be similar to that of an adverb. In fact, this would suggest that the position of the indirect object in I gave my wife a present, is an indication that my wife is

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incident to a present’s on-going incidence to the verb, hence a meaning similar to that expressed by the postposed prepositional phrase. If these parallels between cases of the noun phrase and parts of speech are in fact an indication of the same mechanism of incidence operating at different phases of sentence construction it will be an example of iterative operativity, an operational possibility applied, as Guillaume liked to point out, to the results of its first application. Proposing two cases for the noun phrase implies that there is some means of distinguishing them in the sentence, some sort of sign to indicate which case has been actualized. It has often been pointed out that, where there is no preposition, position in the sentence usually provides the required indication (cf. The man saw the bear vs. The bear saw the man). This is an appropriate means because, as we have just seen, a noun phrase, like a sentence, is a momentary construction whose organization is determined largely by the needs of discourse, of what is to be expressed. The many variations in syntactic incidence are more appropriately portrayed by a position in the sentence than by inflexions since positioning in discourse better reflects the mental positioning giving rise to, and expressed by, incidence. That is to say, where a case inflexion arising from a system in tongue is not found, prepositions and the order of components in a sentence are sufficiently flexible means to signify the diversity of manners of effecting syntactic incidence in discourse. Although the above discussion leaves many uses to be examined, considering case from the point of view of the theory of incidence does appear to provide a framework sufficiently broad to include whatever may arise in usage. The point of the present discussion is simply to provide a systemic basis for further reflexion, a basis sufficiently general to explain all uses and not leave some noun phrases “case-less.” 3 CASE AND THE NOUN PHRASE

The discussion so far has brought out a point that is important for our understanding of the noun phrase, namely that it is the noun phrase and not just the substantive that exercises syntactic function. The significance of this point lies in its implication: as expressed in discourse, case, support, or import, is a grammatical characteristic of the noun phrase, a situation quite different from

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that of Old English, where case is expressed as a characteristic of the substantive or pronoun through its inflexions. A second point, even more important, has also been brought out: it cannot be assumed that case in Modern English exists only in the noun phrase, a momentary construct, since the permanent potential permitting the alternation of two cases observable in discourse must pre-exist as a grammatical system. That is, as proposed above, the system of case, along with those of number and gender, is part of the substantive’s morphogenesis in tongue making it possible to actualize the case observable in discourse in any noun phrase, but the relation between the system’s two components has yet to be discerned. Another question arises from the proposal that support case makes referential incidence of the sentence possible. Analysis of the articles and other determiners in previous lessons led us to propose that it is cardinal person which makes reference possible. It would seem that both are responsible for this function. If our analysis has not gone astray, we are thus confronted with the question of the relation between case and person. This question can be envisaged in the light of a frequent comment by Guillaume concerning the morphogenesis of a substantive. He often referred to gender, number, and case as formes vectrices, literally vectorial forms, i.e. grammatical formatives that carry the substantive’s lexical matter through successive phases of categorization to its final, most general categorization as a part of speech. In this context, the configuration of the lexeme provided by gender and number is, as seen in preceding lessons, a means of forming a spatial support, cardinal person, that enables the substantive to effect its internal incidence and play its role in the noun phrase, whereas the configuration provided by case enables the noun phrase to play its role in the sentence. That is, each of these vectorial forms contributes to configuring a spatial support in such a way that it results in a word with internal incidence and endowed with certain syntactic possibilities. Without this, there would be no substantive as we know it, no word expressing a lexical import predicated of its own support and permitting the forming of a phrase which can function as import or support in the sentence. Both person and case are therefore grammatical forms found in the noun phrase but there is no conflict or overlap here since the two forms are complementary. It is the support within the noun phrase provided by cardinal person with its gender and number

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which is configured for syntactic incidence by case in view of the role the noun phrase is to play in the sentence. Characterizing a noun phrase in terms of case thus helps make more precise the notion of person by showing that cardinal person is configured not only for ordinal person, to situate it with regard to the speaking relationship, but also for case, to situate the noun phrase in the sentence thus enabling it to carry out the function foreseen for it. CONCLUSION

Previous lessons were concerned with the noun phrase mainly from the point of view of its component words and how they fit together to constitute a grammatical unit. In this lesson we have approached the noun phrase as a unit to see how it functions in the sentence, examining its syntactic function from an operative point of view and analyzing it in terms of syntactic incidence. This has permitted us to recognize that the noun phrase can fulfil two basic sentence functions, import and support. Since, in the light of the theory being developed here, any function is the manifestation of a grammatical form, a two-case system was proposed as the precondition for the two functions. By attributing one of these cases to a noun phrase as the grammatical requirement for it to take its place in the sentence, we were thus able to situate it, in a very general way, in the process of sentence construction. Proposing that each noun phrase is provided with a case raised the question of where these cases come from, of how this element of grammatical meaning was represented. The source could not be in the noun phrase itself since phrases are constructed thanks to the possibilities built into each word by the word-forming system in tongue. That is, case in discourse must arise from the representational possibilities of some part of speech. Thus we were led to recognize case as a systemic part of the program instituted in tongue for forming a substantive or pronoun and to propose that, along with gender and number, it configures the substantive’s spatial support, which is also the spatial support of the noun phrase. The two cases observable in discourse are the two actualizations of this potential in tongue. They are not signified by the substantive but by the noun phrase through its position in the sentence because they provide for the function of a phrase as a component of the sentence, not the function of a word as a component of a phrase.

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This led us to propose case as a grammatical form of noun phrases. Although this does not involve anything particularly novel – most grammars distinguish between noun phrases on the basis of sentence function – it does entail proposing case as a potential in tongue, a grammatical precondition of all noun phrase functions. Since case arises as a subsystem in the morphogenesis of the substantive and the pronoun it can be seen why these two parts of speech are basic to a noun phrase. Furthermore, this view of case has permitted us to see a link between case and another constant of the noun phrase, cardinal person. This will be discussed further in the next lesson, the last of this series.

L E S S O N T W E N T Y - T H RE E

Concluding Remarks Phrase is a category which cannot be said to exist, in grammar, until modern times. Michael, 44

A SUBSTANTIVE AS HEADWORD

Guillaume postulated that each time a word is used the speaker must reconstruct it mentally from the resources of tongue by means of a binary process consisting of calling to mind its lexical import and forming it grammatically as a part of speech – ideogenesis and morphogenesis. This of course implies that, as instituted in tongue, a lexeme has no grammatical categorization prior to its being caught up in a process of word formation, though the lexeme’s own specific makeup may predispose it for a given part of speech. Thanks to this conception of word formation as a preconscious binary process, we can understand what enables speakers of English to substantivize and adjectivize lexemes of all sorts with such facility and use them in noun phrases. It is a commonplace that the substantive is central to the noun phrase. To explain what permits this, i.e. to describe what grammatical characteristics enable the substantive to fulfil the role of headword, we examined the substantive in the light of Guillaume’s theory of incidence. Exploring the implications of defining the substantive as a word with internal incidence led to distinguishing it from the adjective and the adverb, and from the verb. Like these other predicative parts of speech a substantive brings to the noun phrase a lexical import depicting a designatum, but unlike them it also represents what this import is applied to, its spatial support or extensity, obtained by actualizing the lexeme’s extension in one of its possible realizations. Because this support is internal to a

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substantive, drawn from its lexeme’s own extension, the incidence of the lexical import to what it is said about, its support, can be carried out internally, within the confines of the word’s own range of representation, a capacity shared by no other type of word. This explains, among other things, what enables a substantive on its own to function as a noun phrase. The theory of internal incidence also helps us to understand the role of the system of grammatical number and its importance in the substantive. Number provides the internal support with a spatial parameter, continuate or discontinuate, as well as its quantitative realization. The system of gender and what it contributes – it appears to categorize a lexeme according to whether it represents the nature of the designatum as unitary (inanimate) or binary (animate) – is less explicit and remains to be explored more fully in the light of Guillaume’s general theory of word formation. The system of case in the substantive enables the noun phrase to participate in syntactic incidence as either a support or an import. Thus gender, number, and case arise as successive phases of morphogenesis promoting the lexical import resulting from ideogenesis to its final systemic categorization as a substantive. This theory of the substantive as a type of word formed with internal incidence can explain a number of the observed characteristics of the noun phrase, and particularly the substantive’s role as headword. Other lexical imports are incident to the substantive’s import, either directly in the case of adjectives or indirectly in the case of adverbs, since neither of these parts of speech incorporates the grammatical means of forming its own internal support. Because, like other words, adjectives and adverbs are made to say something (their lexical import) about something (a support), they find a support through external incidence in another word, a substantive, which is thus the headword. For some scholars, however, the headword is not the substantive but its determiner, and this view led us to examine the role of determiners in the noun phrase. A DETER MINER AS HEADWORD

Again the work of Guillaume provided the starting point for our reflexions. His theory of the article proposes that this the most abstract of determiners represents the substantive’s extensity and that, therefore, the substantive’s lexeme finds its spatial support in

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the article. The demonstratives and the partitive quantifiers also imply extensity and so, it would seem, do other determiners. It was thus inferred that the grammatical role of determiners is to represent outside the substantive the substantive’s inherent spatial support, a hypothesis that has a number of important consequences for our understanding of the noun phrase. The first consequence is that a substantive must be made incident to its spatial support in the determiner in order to complete its internal incidence. From the formal or grammatical point of view, then, the determiner is the headword of the noun phrase, whereas from the material or lexical point of view the substantive is the headword since the lexical import of any adverbs and adjectives is incident to it. That is to say, the determiner makes explicit the support required for the substantive’s internal incidence, and this nowhere more explicitly than when the determiner function is fulfilled by the -‘s construction. A second consequence of this conception of determiners is a clearer understanding of the role of reference attributed to them in the grammars. Granted that the articles can represent the extensity of a substantive by means of their contractive (a) and expansive (the) movements, they actualize this support by representing the place occupied by the lexeme’s momentary correlate in the speaker’s intended message. As a result, once the noun phrase has been constructed the articles are enabled to refer the substantive back to this place, back to what it designates. This is even more obvious with the demonstratives and the other determiners, which represent the spatial support by means of less abstract parameters for locating the substantive’s designatum in the intended message. Again the most explicit expression of how a determiner functions referentially is provided by the -‘s construction when it indicates the “mental path” to be followed in order to identify what the ‘possession’ substantive designates. What enables it to do this is that, like the articles and other determiners, the -‘s depicts the ‘possession’ substantive’s support in the transcendence of the ‘possessor’ substantive’s mental space, thus locating the former’s designatum in relation to the latter’s. In this way, the theory of the substantive as a part of speech defined by internal incidence can explain why it is often considered the headword, and the theory of a determiner as representing the spatial support of the substantive can explain why it is

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often considered the headword. Moreover, these theories help us to understand how noun phrases are constructed and what enables them to refer to their designatum in the intended message. They also throw light on noun phrases without a substantive, those consisting of only a pronoun. SUPPLETIVE PRONOUNS

Suppletive pronouns, like proper nouns and other uses of substantives on their own, are considered to be noun phrases because they fulfil the same syntactic functions as noun phrases with a completive pronoun. Furthermore, assuming that the role of person is to provide a support, their representation of person depicts the place occupied by their referent in the speaker’s intended message and so permits reference to it. Most pronouns have both suppletive and completive uses but the difference between them has an important effect on the noun phrase: in a noun phrase consisting of only a suppletive there is no lexical import. The ideogenesis of a quantifier like any or a demonstrative or some other suppletive pronoun produces a highly abstract ideational content but not a lexeme representing a designatum. As a consequence it is a commonplace in grammars that, as the term “suppletive” suggests, these pronouns “stand in the place of nouns” since they make it unnecessary to call to mind a lexeme as a representation of their referent. This of course is what differentiates them from a substantive: a suppletive pronoun cannot exercise internal incidence the way a substantive does because it has no lexical import. On the other hand, occasional expressions like a nobody provide a clear manifestation of the basic distinction between non-predicative and predicative parts of speech because here what is usually the abstract content of a suppletive pronoun has been represented by ideogenesis as a lexical import and formed by morphogenesis to produce a substantive. The fact that each pronoun signifies its own manner of effecting referential incidence shows that its ideogenesis provides an abstract configuration of a particular mental path to be followed in order to reach a referent in the intended message. It also shows that the space occupied by the referent is represented in the morphogenesis of all suppletives by cardinal person with its usual configurations, including ordinal person indicating its position in regard to the speaking relationship, and case enabling the noun phrase to function

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syntactically. Considering them to be capable of effecting referential incidence in this way led to rejecting the idea that suppletive pronouns refer to an antecedent in discourse and proposing rather that in such uses they refer to the same place in the intended message as the “antecedent” noun phrase. By including uses where there is no such antecedent this proposal gives a more general view not only of pronouns but of the noun phrase since it explains the impression of anaphoric reference to an antecedent as a result of co-reference, i.e. as the expressive effect in certain contexts of a function common to all noun phrases, referential incidence. Thus it seems that the suppletive pronoun gives a view of the noun phrase reduced to its bare essentials, and lexical matter is not one of them. That is, a noun phrase is a grammatical entity consisting essentially of person configured in such a way that it can assume a syntactic function and effect referential incidence. SYNTAX WITHIN THE NOUN PHRASE

Guillaume’s view that meaning in language is a mental representation to be said about something led to his conceiving syntax as essentially the set of processes, the operations of grammatical incidence, required to say something about something. This implies that in the construction of a noun phrase the meaning import of one word is made incident to the meaning support of another until the meaning of the phrase is constituted. The process of constructing a determiner + substantive type of noun phrase begins with the process of forming the substantive with the possibility of intercepting this process to form any adjectives and adverbs and make their lexical import incident to that of the substantive. The forming of a completive pronoun (or -‘s construction) to provide a spatial support corresponding to the extensity of the lexical import finally enables the substantive to carry out its internal incidence and bring the process of substantivization to a close. This completes the construction of the noun phrase and permits it both to assume its role in the sentence and refer to its designatum. Without a determiner, a substantive can still play its role as support for other lexical imports and effect its internal incidence. However the spatial support permitting internal incidence, cardinal person, remains implicit, represented through the morphogenesis of the substantive by gender, number, and case, but not outside

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the substantive. As a consequence the mental path to be followed in referring to the designatum is not designated by a determiner but simply implied by the lexeme with its grammatical formatives, or perhaps by some other sentence component or even a gesture. This outline of the processes involved in constructing a noun phrase leaves a number of questions untouched. Among these is the question of the order of preposed adjectives, to be explored in the light of the principle of grammatical incidence. Nor has the question of post-modifiers and the moment of their incidence been considered, but a promising lead has been suggested in Valin’s 1981 study, where an analysis of the question in French is proposed. Although much remains to be worked out in greater detail, it is hoped that the problems examined have been clarified and that confronting the hypotheses proposed with a wider range of examples will permit others to refine, rectify, or replace them with a more adequate view of the systems in tongue underlying the construction of a noun phrase. CASE

It is a commonplace that the noun phrase can entertain different relationships with other components in the sentence, can exercise different functions. To explain these functions many studies appeal to the category of case, but there is no consensus concerning the number of cases in English: “as few as three … up to an estimated forty to fifty categories,” according to Schlesinger (29). In these lessons syntactic function was examined in the light of grammatical incidence, the operativity permitting each function. The diversity of function was seen to arise from two necessary roles of the noun phrase, support and import – necessary because any syntactic function involves incidence, applying a meaning import to a support in order to say something about something. Two cases were therefore proposed for noun phrases as the preconditions enabling them to enter into the various sentence functions effected by syntactic incidence. Since these two cases presuppose some representational mechanism in tongue, the system of case was proposed as a categorizing form in the substantive’s morphogenesis. That is, case in the system of the substantive is a subsystem permitting the actualization of either support case or import case in the constructing of a noun phrase. Similarly for a pronoun. In this way every noun phrase is

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enabled to exercise its role of syntactic incidence and so contribute to its particular function in the sentence. Reducing case to its operative role in this way leaves the external syntax of the noun phrase, with all the particular functions it can fulfil, to be explored in terms of these two cases. The outcome of this general, two-case view is to suggest a similarity between the operations of incidence distinguishing the predicative parts of speech and those manifested by the noun phrase: the internal incidence of the substantive as opposed to the external incidence of the adjective and the adverb parallels the support case as opposed to the import case; the adjective’s first degree external incidence as opposed to the adverb’s second degree external incidence parallels the noun phrase in import case without preposition as opposed to its use with a preposition. This similarity suggests that the operations involved in constructing the noun phrase are repeated mutatis mutandis in the constructing of the sentence, an iterativity whereby the results of an operation are subjected to the same operation as produced them. This type of iterativity is always indicative of a high degree of systematization. This systemic view of case, innovative for English, calls for careful confrontation with particular uses to verify its well-foundedness. As far as the noun phrase is concerned, attributing to it the expression of case, a grammatical characteristic traditionally expressed by nouns and pronouns, confirms the view that the noun phrase is a grammatical entity, developed in “modern times” according to Michael (44). What we have seen concerning person helps us better understand this. PERSON

Considering a noun phrase as a grammatical entity implies that it is distinguished by some grammatical component or components enabling it to exercise its function in the sentence and to refer to the intended message. Our discussion has led to the view that this component is person, a basic element in the construction of any noun phrase. If our analysis has not gone astray, person – more precisely cardinal person – represents, in its primary role, the place occupied in the speaker’s momentary experience by the entity to be designated by the noun phrase. This spatial representation, which corresponds to the substantive’s extensity, offers a support for the

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lexical import of the noun phrase and permits the substantive to effect its internal incidence thus constituting a noun phrase. Configured by the substantive’s system of case as either support or import case, person makes possible the various grammatical functions of the noun phrase. Cardinal person plays a similar role in suppletive pronouns. In the noun phrase cardinal person never arises without some indication pointing to where the space it represents is located in the intended message, and so we always find it supplied with an ordinal person, a configuration situating the designatum within (1st or 2nd person) or outside (3rd person) the speaking relationship. To point to a referential target outside the speaking relationship some further indication of its location is required: in a substantive the lexeme representing the nature of the designatum, in a pronoun its particular means of showing the way to the designatum, and in the -‘s construction, a place related to that of the ‘possessor’ noun phrase. This understanding of person as fundamental to the noun phrase is based on Guillaume’s view that language is always a matter of saying something about something (or someone), and that person provides a formal representation of that about which something is said, be it within a noun phrase or a clause or a sentence. Since any linguistic support must also be said about something, this view of person offers a basis for analyzing not only various syntactic relations between sentence components but also reference, the relation between the import of the sentence and its support in the extra-linguistic, experiential field of the speaker. Attributing to person such a crucial role both in syntax and reference may occasion surprise but not when considered in the light of Guillaume’s reflexions concerning its fundamental role in language, a question that cannot be treated here.1 Suffice it to say that proposing person as the cornerstone of the noun phrase helps bring out his view that language manifests our specifically human way of confronting the universe around us.

Postscript Thought makes language while being made by language. Delacroix cited in Guillaume 1984, 145

As a postscript to these lessons, I may be permitted to step outside the scientific arena, where the confronting of linguistic data and explanatory theory has occupied our attention, to consider postulates adopted before undertaking our enquiry, the presuppositions with which we have approached the noun phrase in English. Like others involved in a science based on observation,1 it was assumed here both that the object of our reflexions is somehow orderly, systemic, and that it is possible for someone with an appropriate method to “search for unity in hidden likenesses” in order to obtain, in spite of all the pitfalls involved, a view of the underlying system, a view which, partial and imperfect though it may be, does reflect something of the reality of the hidden likeness. Fortunately, this manner of proceeding is open to all comers so that anyone following the method can rectify errors and pursue the attempt to obtain a better view of the system. A third presupposition, one that is usually taken for granted, is that all the effort involved in collecting data, in consulting others, in reflecting on different hypotheses and in writing one’s findings – all this is worthwhile doing. That is, in a discipline which has little utilitarian value – Guillaume considered linguistics the least useful of all sciences – the motive of research is not the possibility of speaking or writing better or of developing technological devices but simply the desire to understand more clearly what enables humans to speak as they do . And this desire in itself is not surprising considering the way some contemporary scholars view man. We are “the symbolic species” for one anthropologist,2 and for a contemporary philosopher

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“the question of language is somehow strategic for the question of human nature” because language “somehow constitutes a way of being which is specifically human.”3 This of course gives linguistics a key position among the disciplines studying man and makes it particularly important to have a clear view of the presuppositions with which a linguist approaches language. Studies like the present one touch only a small part of this essentially human activity of speaking, but any light they can shed on it will help to make us more aware of the remarkable undertaking we engage in each time we speak. They should also incite us to reflect on the wonderful instrument of thought our linguistic ancestors have developed, quite unconsciously, over the generations and that we, as infants, have learned and now exploit. Turning one’s attention toward the past inevitably raises questions concerning what permits us to develop language at all. As a result of their reflexions, some linguists have maintained that we owe our language to genetic mutations, others that it depends on the interplay of thought in the sense of a “neurological, ultimately electrochemical event.”4 For Guillaume (cf. 1984, 145–7) on the other hand, language is primarily a mental construct whose system must therefore be sought in the mind.5 Formed by thought, specifically human thought, our mother tongue enables us to confront our experience of the universe: In this kind of lecture I would prefer to avoid such questions concerning the specificity of human thought, but they cannot be avoided. The science of language inevitably leads us back to them because linguistics is knowledge, not of the physical universe within which man dwells and of which he is a part, but of a mental universe – tongue – that dwells within him. It is the victorious confrontation of tongue with the universe he inhabits that gives man his relative autonomy within it. Thanks to its “human lucidity, the lucidity proper to the human species,” the mind can quell the “turbulence of thought” based directly on our disorganized and even chaotic experience coming from the surrounding universe by categorizing this experience and representing it through language constructs. The linguistic categories acquired in learning one’s mother tongue thus provide ordinary speakers with a sort of template or theory of their on-going

378

Lessons on the Noun Phrase in English

experience and permit the mind to refine, extend, and further develop what has already been constructed. The abstract means of representation described here (the place occupied by something without the something, for example) and the ease with which they adapt to the speaker’s particular experience are manifestly the products of a highly developed capacity for symbolization, a capacity which is already observable in language as it first appears on the stage of history and manifested long before that through the wall paintings of Cro-Magnon. When one considers the great variety of tongues known today – each systemically designed to form words and construct sentences to represent the endless diversity and complexity of human experience – it can readily be assumed, with Guillaume, that these means of representation are the result of a long development permitted by man’s initial mental endowment. In any case, viewing language as the product of an innate mental lucidity enabling us to organize and symbolize our experience gives a certain understanding of the instrument our mind has constructed and may well lead to a better understanding of the mind itself.

Glossary

a n i m a t e g e n d e r : a grammatical form of the substantive permitting the distinction of two subgenders, masculine and feminine. (cf. i n a n i m a t e g e n d e r ) b o u n d e d : the way a lexeme is actualized to represent something as a (usually pluralizable) unit or somehow limited space. (cf. u n bounded) c a r d i n a l p e r s o n : the grammatical means for representing the space occupied by an entity in the intended message. (cf. o r dinal person) c o m p r e h e n s i o n : the set of attributes, characteristics or traits included or comprehended in the word’s lexical meaning; also called “intension.” (cf. e x t e n s i o n ) d e s i g n a t u m : the experiential (mental) entity in the i n t e n d e d m e s s a g e referred to by a word or expression. (cf. r e f e r e n t ) e x t e n s i o n : a word’s range of representation. (cf. c o m p r e hension) e x t e n s i t y : the part or portion or “degree” of a lexeme’s e x t e n s i o n actualized in a particular use. e x t e r n a l i n c i d e n c e : the process of transporting an i m p o r t of meaning to a s u p p o r t in another word or phrase. (cf. i n t e r n a l i n c i d e n c e ) i d e o g e n e s i s : the mental process whereby the material content of a word is called to mind. (cf. m o r p h o g e n e s i s )

380

Glossary

i m p o r t : the meaning brought into the sentence by a word or group of words, and made i n c i d e n t to a s u p p o r t . i m p o r t c a s e : the case of a substantive permitting a noun phrase to function as an i m p o r t of meaning to another component of the sentence. i n a n i m a t e g e n d e r : a grammatical form of the substantive permitting no distinction of subgender. (cf. a n i m a t e g e n d e r ) i n c i d e n c e : the process of transporting an i m p o r t of meaning to a s u p p o r t within language. (cf. r e f e r e n t i a l i n c i dence) i n t e n d e d m e s s a g e : a content of consciousness (feeling, perception, thought, dream, etc.) that one wants to express by means of language. i n t e r n a l i n c i d e n c e : the process of transporting an i m p o r t of meaning to a s u p p o r t within the same word. (cf. external incidence) l e x e m e : the lexical meaning imported by certain words (substantives, adjectives, adverbs, verbs) to be formed by their grammatical meaning. m e a n i n g : the notion (set of traits or characteristics) called to mind by a linguistic sign or set of signs. m o r p h e m e : a unit of grammatical meaning that provides a generalizing form for a word’s lexical meaning. m o r p h o g e n e s i s : the mental process whereby the m o r p h e m e s constituting a word’s formal content categorize its material content. (cf. i d e o g e n e s i s ) o r d i n a l p e r s o n : person configured to show its rank or order, 1st, 2nd, or 3rd, in the speaking relationship. (Cf. c a r d i n a l person) p r e d i c a t i v e p a r t o f s p e e c h : a word (substantive, adjective, adverb, or verb) whose ideogenesis produces a lexeme representing something in the intended message. (cf. t r a n s p r e d i c a t i v e ) r a d i c a l b i n a r y t e n s o r : the bi-phase mechanism of thought consisting of a process of particularization and a process of generalization called into play in grammatical systems.

Glossary

381

r e f e r e n t : the extra-linguistic entity in a speaker’s i n t e n d e d m e s s a g e referred to by means of a word or expression. (= d e s i g n at u m ) r e f e r e n t i a l i n c i d e n c e : referring the meaning expressed to its extra-linguistic d e s i g n a t u m in the speaker’s i n t e n d e d message. s i g n i f i c a t e : that which is signified by a sign; m e a n i n g . s u p p o r t : the meaning in the sentence (or the experiential content in the i n t e n d e d m e s s a g e ) an i m p o r t of meaning is applied to by means of i n c i d e n c e . s u p p o r t c a s e : the case permitting the noun phrase to function as the s u p p o r t of the rest of the sentence. t o n g u e : the preconscious part of our language permitting us to produce whatever words and sentences we need. t r a n s p r e d i c a t i v e p a r t o f s p e e c h : a grammatical word (preposition, conjunction, pronoun, auxiliary, article), one whose i d e o g e n e s i s produces an abstract form representing how the speaker mentally situates something. (cf. p r e d i c a t i v e ) u n b o u n d e d : the way a lexeme is actualized to represent something as a mass or undifferentiated space without inherent limits. (cf. b o u n d e d )

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Notes

PREFACE

1 See my Language in the Mind for an introduction to this theory. LESSON ONE

1 In these lessons “noun phrase” will be used to designate not only collocations, units consisting of two or more words, but also single words that fulfil the functions of prototypical phrases. Shifting the notion from the observable components to the function in this way avoids a certain inconsistency, according to Quirk et al. (40), who liken the phrase to a molecule “which may consist of a single atom, or a combination of atoms bound together within a larger structure.” Accepting this wider notion, however, entails discerning what is common to all noun phrases, minimal or not, permitting them to function in similar ways. This will be a major concern of these lessons. 2 Single quotes, as in ‘more than one’, are used to indicate a paraphrase of meaning. 3 -ø is the symbol for designating “zero” ending, i.e. an inflexion with no visible semiology other than a contrast with another inflexion which is not zero. 4 See my 1995 article for a discussion of meaning as data. For a different point of view see Ricardo Otheguy’s article (2002). 5 Terms in small capitals are defined in the Glossary. 6 See below, lesson 7. 7 See Artigas for a presentation of this point of view. For the view that linguists “impose” an order, see Diver (1995, 52–3).

384

Notes to pages 14–37

8 Interjections like “Whoops!” are constructed in such a way as to constitute one-word sentences. LESSON TWO

1 The reason for adopting “substantive,” rather than the more common term “noun,” will be brought out below. 2 It is perhaps significant that in cognitive grammar this important distinction is expressed in terms of “linguistic units.” As outlined previously, our concern in these lessons is with words, the fundamental units of language. 3 As mentioned above, single quotation marks indicate that I am talking about the word’s meaning. To talk about the word as a whole, both sign and meaning, I use italics, small. 4 The term adjective is derived historically from the Latin verb adicere meaning ‘add’. 5 A mental mechanism is here understood as the means instituted in the mind for carrying out, whenever required, some mental process. 6 The asterisk (*) is used to indicate a set of words that would not arise in usage since they do not make sense, i.e. do not represent a speaker’s experience. 7 The term extension, borrowed from logic where it designates the set of extra-linguistic entities a word can name, is used here to designate a word’s potential for naming, its range or possible scope of representing. 8 I cannot here discuss the question of metaphor and how it permits a substantive to designate something outside its extension. See my 1992 article for a first approach to the question. 9 One does not have to understand the chemical makeup of water to have formed an idea of what water is. 10 That is, not used in a metaphorical fashion, as in modern Shakespeares. 11 The question of what some grammars call “conversion” or “the use of an adjective as a substantive” will be discussed in the next lesson. 12 The Toronto Star, 15 August 1998. 13 Cf. the discussion in Lowe 2007, 510n. LESSON THREE

1 Grammatical coherence is not, however, the only requisite for a sentence. It must also make sense, i.e. represent, usually by lexical

Notes to pages 44–65

2

3 4

5

385

means, some experiential content of the speaker, an intended message. This is why a sentence is often said to be the expression of a complete thought; it is the expressing of a notional content as a coherent whole. This is a translation of Guillaume’s expression idées regardantes (2003, 128). For texts depicting man’s confronting the universe through his language, see Guillaume 1984 (160–1), 2003 (13–16) and Lowe (2007, 263–8). Cf. Ramachandran and Blakeslee (112, and note p. 275). Cf. also Arguin et al. Sufficient for our needs here, this simplified version of word-forming is what Guillaume presented in most of his teaching. When he did go into detail on this “extraordinarily complicated genesis of a word” (1984, 133) he pointed out that the construction of a word to express a given element in the intended message begins with an appeal to the system of tongue to provide the part of speech required by the sentence for that particular lexeme. This part-of-speech form must then appropriate the matter it requires to become a sayable unit of discourse. For example, to make an experiential impression of ‘restricted in size’ sayable, the form ‘adjective’, as yet without any content or matter, must prehend the agrammatical lexeme ‘small’, already activated as a viewing idea, giving it the capacity of exercising external incidence. This process, the act of representation, provides the word with its twofold significate, its mental content. It is followed by the act of expression, the process which actualizes the sign making the word physically perceivable. See Lowe 2002 (223–30) for texts of Guillaume giving more detail. See below, lessons 4 and 5, for a discussion of these terms. LESSON FOUR

1 It will be recalled that single quotation marks enclose the meaning import of words. The convention of writing two (or more) words without intervening spaces is adopted to indicate that the incidence of one meaning to the other has been realized so that the two form a single complex meaning unit until subsumed into a more complex meaning unit in the process of sentence construction. 2 See “Le problème de la déclinaison nominale en français” in Valin 1994 (383–94) where this question is treated from a more general point of view.

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Notes to pages 70–98 LESSON FIVE

1 See my 1982 article and Reid’s (1991) extensive study on the problem for other examples of apparently contradictory data. 2 We will adopt the current terminology for the moment, reserving until later a discussion of more appropriate terms. 3 This does not, of course, deny the possibility of irregularities in the semiology, such as child and children, mouse, and mice, and the like. 4 Cf. Wickens, chapter 6 and Appendix K, for many more examples than can be discussed here. 5 Diver does not of course adopt the principle of a potential meaning giving rise to different senses in order to explain the polysemy involved. LESSON SIX

1 The term “mass” originally indicated, not a characteristic of the substantive, but a quality of what it names: butter, sand, water, and the like designate a homogeneous substance. This term was extended to substantives naming non-physical entities like sincerity and courage since such substantives usually exhibit similar grammatical characteristics. Using “mass” in this way however can lead to problems, as Christophersen has already pointed out (25). As for “count” and “noncount,” they too characterize substantives in terms of what they designate: it is the extra-linguistic entity, not the substantive, which is perceived as countable or not countable. Thus these three terms depict a property of the referent but only by implication something about the substantive itself and so, from a heuristic point of view, it would be preferable to use terms that depict a property of what we are trying to analyze, the substantive itself. 2 The difference between these two approaches to syntax, basically wordbased vs. sentence-based, cannot be discussed in detail here. Subsequent lessons on determiners will help clarify the word-based approach adopted here. See also my 1994 article for a partial treatment of the question. 3 Stewart, M. 1974. The Crystal Cave. London: Coronet Books, 11. 4 Kipling, R. 1899. Stalky and Co. New York: Doubleday and McClure, 110. 5 The only case in Modern English is sheep, but this appears to be an historical survival, like some of the irregularly formed ‘plurals’ such as mouse/mice.

Notes to pages 114–41

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LESSON SEVEN

1 By Patrick Duffley in a private communication. 2 Like most of the examples in this section these are cited in Wickens, chapter 6 and Appendices K and L. 3 This explanation is more general than that of Diver (74), for whom -s signifies “any number other than one,” a view which fails to take into account cases of ‘external singular’ substantive with -s. 4 While a substantive like furniture names a class of heterogeneous objects serving the same kind of purpose, as Wierzbicka points out, to consider that “one thinks of them as separate things” (556) does not correspond to my impression of the lexeme. LESSON EIGHT

1 The expression “gender of agreement” is adopted here rather than the common “grammatical gender” to avoid the suggestion that notional gender is not a grammatical category in the substantive. Similarly, “notional gender” is used here to indicate that it arises from the lexeme or notion and not from the person or thing named, as the more common expression “natural gender” might suggest. 2 As a consequence, these traditional terms, animate vs. inanimate, are not intended to call to mind the suggestion of ‘living’ vs. ‘nonliving’ they might have originally suggested. 3 The question of homonyms, a problem for lexical semantics, cannot be discussed here. 4 In fact, Guillaume considered gender as the solution to a problem arising when representing a singular as the position beyond the dual: “What created masculine and feminine is the need to draw the singular from an antonymous dual. What created the neuter is the need to draw the singular from a homonymous dual” (1999, 25–6). 5 A “space-word” in the sense that it is formed grammatically by spatial parameters, as we shall see. The lexical import formed by a substantive’s grammatical systems can represent most anything, be it spatial (a book), temporal (a week), something abstract (an idea), a mental process (to have a think), a linguistic occurrence (a cheery hello), and so forth. 6 From Guillaume’s unpublished lesson of 4 April 1940. See Lowe 2007 (231) for the excerpt. 7 For the sake of demonstration here, I am assuming that both members of pairs like waiter/waitress and hero/heroine express the same lexeme

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Notes to pages 148–62

under two different modes. If analysis in lexical semantics leads to the view that, because of the distinction signified by the lexical suffix, they express different lexemes, the point of the demonstration will still be made: the two animate subgenders delimit the range of application of two overlapping but distinct lexemes. LESSON NINE

1 And not as a musical composition, a painting or some other means of expression. 2 See Valin 1981 (3–14) for the bases of distinguishing the visée de discours (discourse intent) and the visée phrastique (sentence intent) and a discussion of their relationship. 3 The view adopted here, which has a long tradition (cf. Michael, 38–42, 478–81), has been challenged by Diver (73) and others because there is no satisfactory means of defining the sentence either phonetically or semantically. In the discussion of pronouns below (lessons 19 and 20) the question will be envisaged from the point of view of completing all the syntactic operations required by the words and phrases involved. See also the discussion on cataphoric vs. co-reference in the lesson on the demonstratives and in my article 2007c. 4 Speakers may also call on gesture and other para-linguistic means of expression. LESSON TEN

1 The expression, introduced into English by Fauconnier 1985, recalls Guillaume’s frequent remark that we always configure mentally by means of spatial parameters. 2 Taylor (1996, 16) describes reference as “the establishment of ‘mental contact’ (Langacker 1991, 97) with an entity in a mental world.” This is an appropriate description provided we insist on the opposition between two mental hemispheres: the extra-linguistic hemisphere of our experience and the intra-linguistic hemisphere of our linguistic representations. If this opposition is not kept in mind or is denied (cf. Langacker 1987, 154), there is little to distinguish between referring (relating meaning expressed to something outside language) and signifying (calling to mind the meaning linked to a linguistic sign or set of signs).

Notes to pages 162–90

389

3 We shall discuss what Quirk et al. considers reference to the linguistic context when we come to examine pronouns as minimal noun phrases. 4 It will be recalled that running words together in this fashion is intended to depict the fusion of the two significates, here lexical and grammatical, when the notion ‘tiger’ is formed grammatically by the system of number as ‘singular’. For the needs of the discussion here, no mention is made of the other formative elements, gender and case. 5 In speaking of the article, the term “singular” is used in the sense of ‘individual’, ‘distinct from others in some respect’ as in quite a singular dog, a qualitative sense close to, but not the same as, the quantitative or numerical sense it expresses when used in speaking of the system of grammatical number. 6 The very existence of ambiguity here shows that the article is polysemous, that the same sign can express different senses. But since it is ambiguous only for listeners (speakers know what they are talking about), it also shows that the speaker did carry out the underlying operation of a, intercepting it at the point corresponding to the extent of reference in the intended message. LESSON ELEVEN

1 As in these lessons, Diver makes a clear distinction (73–5) between “scene” (the extra-mental universe), message, and meaning. He does not however envisage meaning as a potential permitting various senses in discourse. 2 Guillaume (1985, 84) describes the operation of the article involved here as “the search for a field of extensity within the first movement, still in mid-position.” This field of extensity constitutes “the background” from which the substantive’s import is (mentally) “withdrawn.” Distinguished from the background, it “contracts dimensionally thus being set off as an individual with regard to the background it is detached from.” (It should be remembered that at this point, February 1945, Guillaume speaks of “a field of extension” rather than “extensity” a term which he had not yet adopted.) Since Guillaume rarely spoke of mid-extensities, some scholars have proposed a different interpretation of Guillaume’s theory of the article, as Curat (1985) points out.

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Notes to pages 198–249 LESSON TWELVE

1 Some grammars consider unstressed some as a sort of third article since it is used with ‘plural’ substantives to express a similar sort of ‘indefinite’ sense. The examination of some in lesson 15 will show what permits it to be used in this way. On the other hand, the very idea of considering it an article in its unstressed use but not in its other uses disregards both the mental unity of some as expressed in its semiology and it systemic relation with any. As a consequence that approach will not be considered here. 2 See the discussion on thought and language in chapter 15 of my 2007b introduction to Guillaume’s theory. 3 See for example Jespersen 1954 VII, 403–5 (and particularly Niels Haislund’s note), Hewson 1972, 76–8, and Joly and O’Kelly, 408–10. 4 Shea, William R. and Mariano Artigas, 2003. Galileo in Rome: The Rise and Fall of a Troublesome Genius. New York: Oxford University Press, x. 5 Ibid., xi. 6 See my 2007a study (82). LESSON THIRTEEN

1 Ellis Peters. 1991. The Potter’s Field. Toronto: General Paperbacks, 196. 2 I have adopted the common appellation “proper nouns” here merely to make the discussion more readily comprehensible, not to suggest that these are not substantives. 3 James Waller. 1992. The Bridges of Madison County. New York: Warner Books, 71. 4 General Council News (The United Church of Canada), 34, no. 8, 1. LESSON FOURTEEN

1 It is obvious that a paraphrase gives an approximate, not an exact, rendering of the meaning of the original expression. The purpose of a paraphrase here is merely to ensure that all interpret the expression in a given way. 2 According to one grammarian (cf. Sahlin, 96), the stressed version could be understood as “does he have even one good quality?”, a sense that has not been observed elsewhere with a ‘plural’ substantive. 3 Whether or not one can speak of s minimum quantity in the case of a ‘unbounded’ notion is at the moment an open question, to be

Notes to pages 257–302

391

determined when a more complete analysis of these two types of notion is available from lexical semantics. LESSON FIFTEEN

1 This use of the partitive can be contrasted with They say he has left the country, where the speaker expresses the opinion common to the whole set of people. 2 Here as elsewhere the terms used to describe an abstract meaning are not fully satisfactory. It would be more exact to oppose hypothetical and thetical, but the latter term is probably so rare as to be opaque. 3 “Necessary” in the same sense that a reconstructed form in comparative grammar appears to be the only possible precondition that could give rise to the observed results. LESSON SIXTEEN

1 The adverbs here and there are also considered spatial deictics, and now and then temporal deictics. 2 It is perhaps not redundant here to recall the distinction already made between experience, representation, and linguistic referent or designatum. The use of any word expresses a meaning, i.e. a representation of some entity or aspect of the experience in the speaker’s intended message. This meaning is a linguistic representation, obtained through the linguistic resources of the language, and so is not to be confused with the experiential entity thus represented. Once the meaning (= resulting representation) is referred back to the intended message by referential incidence that experiential entity becomes a linguistic referent or designatum. The term “referent” is so often used in the literature to denote extramental entities that in order to speak of the intramental, experiential entity referred to by a noun phrase or sentence it is preferable to use the expression “linguistic referent,” or more simply “designatum” – that which in the intended message is designated by a word or phrase. LESSON EIGHTEEN

1 Analyzing the resulting phrase in this way presupposes that the constituents have been assembled. A description of the constructional processes involved in assembling them is called for to complete the analysis. They will be examined below.

392

Notes to pages 311–64

2 The term “transcending,” meaning ‘going beyond’, is more abstract than other terms and as such suggests here a space situated outside an already represented space. There is an analogy here with a form in the verb, the transcendent aspect (have + past participle), resulting from a similar process of going outside or beyond, but in time (the time inherent in the past participle’s event) and not in space (cf. my 2007 study on the verb). LESSON NINETEEN

1 As in I watched movie last night. This of course does not include uses in headlines, such as Prime Minister Resigns, where the writer, thanks to the newspaper setting, has in view a particular political situation with its actors, so that the substantive is used in much the same way as a proper noun here (cf. lesson 13). 2 A. Maclean, Athabasca (London: Fontana. 1981, 198). LESSON TWENTY-ONE

1 A reader mentions the case of I who am 17 …, where the verb form suggests that who incorporates 1st person here (as opposed to 3rd person in Anyone who is …). This variation, perceivable only through the verb and not through a change in the pronoun itself, may well be linked to the animate gender of who. 2 For a more detailed discussion, see my Language in the Mind. LESSON TWENTY-TWO

1 This is not to imply that the systems of the substantive and the personal pronoun are identical insofar as case is concerned. The semiology of I/me, they/them, etc. clearly indicates that the two cases are opposed in the morphogenesis of these words, whereas you and it resemble the substantive, at least in their invariable semiology. 2 Except, apparently, in a minimal sentence like: Me? This use and that in It is I who should …, remain to be examined once the system of the personal pronouns has been discerned. 3 Schlesinger, 236. In Cognitive space and linguistic case, Schlesinger argues that “there is no compelling reason for accepting the rule that every noun phrase has to be assigned to a case category. The present discussion should convince us that such a rule is quite untenable” (166).

Notes to pages 375–7

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From the point of view of descriptive rules this conclusion may be acceptable, but from a systemic point of view it constitutes a challenge to find what in the words making up the noun phrase permits the syntactic functions of “case-less” noun phrases. LESSON TWENTY- THREE

1 See for example his lesson of 24 April 1948 (1987, 177–86). POSTSCRIPT

1 2 3 4

For discussion, cf. Artigas 2001, 27–57. Deacon 1997, title. Taylor 1985/1999, 216 and 244. “What I call a thought is the occurrence of a complex neurological, ultimately electrochemical event; and to say that I have formed a concept is merely to note that a particular pattern of neurological activity has become established” (Langacker 1987a, 100). 5 See my Language in the Mind, passim.

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Index

adjective, 19–21, 31–2 adverb, 21–2, 33 Allan, Keith, 93, 99 anaphoric reference. See demonstratives, contextual deixis any: different senses, 236–48, 325– 7; existential import, 258–63; potential meaning, 248–9; system, 263–5, 354 articles, 160–96; definite, 168–70; indefinite, 163–8; as support, 177–9; system of, 170–4, 354–5; uses, 175–233 bounded, 71, 89, 93–4, 215–24, 228, 386n1 Carlson, Greg, 86–7 case, 53–67, 333, 359–67, 373–4; in noun phrase, 56–7, 62–5. See also -‘s cataphoric reference. See demonstratives, contextual deixis Chomsky, Noam, 69 Christophersen, P., 186–9, 201, 213 completive. See pronoun, completive

comprehension, 26–30, 226–7 conversion, 41–3, 153–7 Corbett, Greville, 123, 127–9 coreference. See demonstratives, contextual deixis count noun. See number, -s morpheme definiteness, 162–3, 171, 180–7 demonstratives, 270–91, 353–4; contextual deixis 279–85; number, 287–8; shared knowledge deixis, 285–7; spatial deixis, 271–6; temporal deixis, 276–9 determiners, 161–3, 292–301, 304–12, 369–71. See also articles, demonstratives, pronouns (completive), quantifiers Diver, William, 47, 87, 383n7, 387n3, 389n1 Einstein, Albert, 6, 8–9, 125 Erades, P.A., 128 extension, 27–30, 226–7 extensity, 28–9, 162, 165–6, 168–70, 176, 353–6; intermediate (mid-), 190–5, 202–6;

404

Index

maximum, 187–90, 198–202; minimum, 180–7, 206–12 extent of reference. See extensity

intended message, 47–8, 148–50, 180–7 it, 321–4, 335–6

feminine. See gender, animate

Joly, André, 128–32, 343

gender, 126–46, 332–47, 387n1; of agreement, 127–32; animate, 134–46, 336–42; he/she for nonhumans, 336–42; inanimate, 135–46, 335–6; it for humans, 335–6; in morphogenesis, 137– 40; notional, 132–7, 342–5; and reference, 345–7 genitive. See -‘s grammatical incidence. See incidence Guillaume, Gustave, xiii, 76, 176, 301, 365, 377; articles, 171–3, 177, 192, 200, 293, 389n2; gender, 128, 133, 135, 139, 145–6, 346–7, 387n4; method, 9–15; parts of speech, 23, 25–6, 28, 33–4; person, 349–54; substantive, 149–52; word, 40, 44, 48– 50, 385n4 Guimier, Claude, 212

Kelly, L.G., 38

Hawkins, John, 184–5 Hewson, John, 93, 273–4, 293, 295 Hewson, John, and Bubenik, Vit, 54, 360 Humboldt, Wilhelm von, 38 ideogenesis, 49–52 incidence, 22, 25–6, 33–5, 306–9, 324–9, 358–67, 372–4; external, 31–3; internal, 26–31, 148–53, 177–9; and -‘s

Langacker, Ronald, 69, 85–7, 123, 128, 237, 243, 388n2 lexeme, 43–6, 48; and part of speech, 154–7 lexicon, 42–4 Lowe, Ronald, 15 Lyons, John, 102, 122, 129, 184–5, 354 Masculine. See gender, animate mass noun. See number, ø morpheme meaning, 39–40; potential, 77–9, 82–5, 87–91, 124–5, 166–70, 175–6 method: in linguistics, 9–15; scientific, 6–9 Michael, Ian, 10, 37–8, 51, 157–8 morphogenesis, 49–52, 137–40 Morris, Lori, 138, 140, 346 name, 226, 230–2 neuter. See gender, inanimate noun. See substantive noun phrase, 3–4, 368–75, 383n1; case in, 359–67, 373–4, 392n3; construction of, 177–9, 356–7; no determiner, 197–233; person in, 374–5; sentence function 56–7, 62–5, 348–50, 359–64 number, 68–125, 333–4; internal plural, 96–104; -ø morpheme,

Index 70–9, 89–104; -s morpheme, 80– 4, 105–21; system of, 84–8, 125 parts of speech, 16–18, 33–52; and lexeme, 154–7; predicative, 49; transpredicative, 49; and word function, 35, 37–8, 44–6, 63–5, 153–5 person, 349–57, 374–5; cardinal, 351–7; ordinal, 332–3, 350–1; in reference, 351–7; as support, 349–50 polysemy, 70–84, 89–121, 163–5, 168–9, 236–48, 250–5, 389n6 possessive. See -‘s pronouns, 329–31; completive, 235, 292–301, 329–31, 369–71; personal, 317–24, 332–47, 353; suppletive, 317–331, 371–2 proper nouns, 28–9, 225–32 Psychomechanics of Language, xiii–xiv; method of analysis, 9– 15, 124–5

405

role 304–9; support role, 310–12 Sahlin, Elisabeth, 240, 242 Schlesinger, Izchak, 54, 374, 392n3 sentence, 148–9, 388n3 some, different senses, 250–5, 325– 9; existential import, 258–63; potential meaning 255–8; system, 263–5, 354, 390n1 substantive, 23–31, 147–59, 368–9; case in, 65–7, 148, 150–2; forming of, 149–52; gender in, 126–46, 148, 150–2; number in, 68–125, 148, 150–2. See also case, gender, number suppletive. See pronoun, suppletive syntax. See incidence Taylor, Charles, xiv Taylor, John R., 18, 30, 47, 60, 173, 304–5, 309, 312, 388n2 tongue, 12–15

quantifiers. See any, some radical binary tensor, 173, 176, 264 range of representation. See extension reference, 161–2, 165, 181–6, 304–9, 317–24, 334–5, 348–59, 388n2, 391n2; as coreference, 181–3, 318–21, 325–6 referential incidence. See reference Reid, Wallis, 75, 100, 122 Rijkhoff, J., 17, 182 Rosenbach, Anette, 61, 303 -‘s, 53–62, 302–15; characterizing function, 312–14; reference

unbounded, 89, 92–4, 215–25, 386n1 Valin, Roch, 65–6, 360–1 Wales, Katie, 144, 319, 324, 342 Wickens, Mark, 107, 110, 113, 115, 118 Wierzbicka, Anna, 122 word, 40, 44, 48–50, 368–9; class, 36–7; forming of, 149–52, 157– 9, 385n4; system of, 14–15, 50. See also part of speech zero article, 204